Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think he misunderstands the basic psychology here. We are talking about people who have already risked life and limb and taken a very dangerous journey to get as far as the channel. The idea that a 0.3% chance of being removed to Rwanda is going to deter people who have already taken such massive risks is simply for the birds, and that is why the Rwanda scheme is fundamentally flawed.

Last but not least, we have the Immigration Minister, whose latest foray into playing the tough guy was to order that Mickey Mouse cartoons in immigration centres be painted over because they were just too cheery for his liking. Many of those children are running away from unimaginable horrors, so I really do hope that the Minister will take some time to reflect on the morality of his actions. The sheer pettiness and petulance are also quite astonishing, because painting over Disney characters in immigration centres will not stop the boats—I cannot believe I even need to say those words. Those three short stories about the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister make it clear that we are not exactly dealing with a well-oiled machine here.

Last week, we finally received the Home Office’s impact assessment for this legislation, which revealed that it will cost the Government £169,000 per asylum seeker sent to Rwanda—five times the figure being briefed out when the partnership was announced last year. That is on top of the £140 million that has already been handed over to the Rwandan Government for what must surely be the most expensive press release in history. This whole sorry tale is a shambolic farce, and the cost to the taxpayer of the Rwanda policy, this legislation and the asylum backlog has become utterly extortionate.

The cost of the asylum system is estimated by the National Audit Office to be seven times as large as it was under the last Labour Government—at an astonishing £3.6 billion. Almost 50,000 people are stuck in hotels, at £7 million a day, with 172,000 in the backlog. For the avoidance of doubt, that is the real backlog, not the imaginary “legacy cases” invented by the Prime Minister as a way of spinning the numbers. In fact, the backlog is nine times higher than it was when Labour left office in 2010. By the way, we are still waiting for the Immigration Minister and the Prime Minister to correct the record on this point after the UK Statistics Authority comprehensively demolished their claims.

As the Home Secretary and her officials have confirmed, numbers are going up, not down. Yesterday, the permanent secretary to the Home Office confirmed to the Public Accounts Committee that the Prime Minister is failing in his pledge to reduce asylum seeker hotel use. To make matters worse, the National Audit Office has declared that the Government will also fail to achieve their aim of clearing the so-called legacy backlog of 92,000 cases by the end of this year.

[Tim Loughton]

We are here to discuss rather a lot of Lords amendments. The hon. Gentleman has now been speaking for six minutes. I have been listening hard and, by my reckoning, he has not mentioned a single amendment. Can he give us an ETA for when he is likely to start talking relevantly about what we are here to discuss? Many of us would like to discuss the amendments.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I simply note that the Immigration Minister was on his feet for one hour and 15 minutes. There was plenty of context and background in his comments, too. We need to understand that the Bill has been brought forward against a backdrop of crisis and chaos and it is important that we have that on the record.

Interestingly, the Prime Minister seems to have concocted a new solution, which is simply to allow asylum seekers to slip off the radar, never to be seen or heard of again. The Government claim that their decision-making rate has increased and that they are getting on with clearing the backlog, but the reality is that more than half of the so-called asylum decisions are withdrawn applications or so-called administrative decisions. In other words, asylum seekers are melting into the underground economy, and many of them will never be heard of or seen again by our authorities. The Government are just letting them go. Withdrawals, as a proportion of completed cases, have increased from 20% to 55% on this Prime Minister’s watch. If that is not turning a blind eye to people absconding and disappearing into the system, I do not know what is.

It is against that backdrop of crisis and chaos that Ministers introduced the legislation before us this afternoon. As we have consistently pointed out, the Bill will only make a terrible situation worse. Far from cleaning up the awful mess that has built up over 13 years of ineptitude, it will simply grow the backlog, increase the cost and ensure that people smugglers are laughing all the way to the bank.

At the heart of the Bill are two instructions to the Government—to detain and remove every asylum seeker who comes to the UK via irregular routes—but with our asylum accommodation capacity already at breaking point, where on earth will the Home Secretary detain them? And with her unworkable Rwanda plan in tatters and with negotiations with the EU on a successor to the Dublin regulation nowhere to be seen, where on earth is she going to remove them to? We therefore commend the work of all the Lords and Baronesses who have sought to improve this profoundly flawed and counterproductive Bill. They really had their work cut out for them, given that the Government were defeated a staggering 20 times in the other place.

Amendments throughout the Bill’s passage have focused on mitigating its most egregious excesses, while trying to steer the Government in the direction of Labour’s five-point plan to fix the broken asylum system that, despite their protestations, Conservative Members know full well is a comprehensive agenda based on hard graft, common sense and quiet diplomacy, rather than the headline-chasing gimmicks they have come up with. Our plan includes repurposing the Rwanda money to the National Crime Agency to recruit a specialist unit of officers to tackle the criminal gangs upstream. Lords amendment 103, in the name of Lord Coaker, places responsibility on the NCA to tackle immigration crime.

Of the other substantial Lords amendments, the majority seek to prevent the utterly unnecessary attacks on some of the most vulnerable people in society, commit Britain to complying with international law, or seek to find long-term solutions to the global asylum crisis via international solutions and controlled and managed routes.

To ensure that Britain meets its obligations under international law, we support Lords amendment 1, which adds a requirement that nothing in the Bill should require any act that would violate the UK’s relevant commitments under international law. We are extremely concerned that the Government are subjecting unaccompanied children to the so-called hostile environment. While the Minister paints over Mickey Mouse murals, we on these Benches want unaccompanied children to be treated with respect. That is why we support Lords amendment 33, which retains the current 72-hour limit on the detention of children, and Lords amendment 31, which retains the current 24-hour limit on the detention of unaccompanied children, both in the name of Baroness Mobarik. We do not believe the Government’s concessions offer enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will call Tim Loughton first, and then it will be Dame Diana take two.

[Tim Loughton]

I will aim to complete my speech in less time than it took the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) to start talking about the Lords amendments, which is what we are here to do—but we will see how we go. I declare an interest as the chair of a safeguarding board of a children’s company.

I thank the Minister for the extensive discussions that we have had about the Lords amendments. I fear that we have not quite got there, so we may be back here again in a while. There has been an inordinate amount of debate on the Bill, and a lot of work has been done in the Lords, which is why we have so many amendments.

I support the Bill and I want it to pass, but it needs properly to balance safe and legal routes, and assurances about looking after the most vulnerable—particularly children—with coming down hard on people who are gaming the system and do not have a legitimate case for claiming asylum in the UK.

I do not have time to talk about every Lords amendment, so I will focus on two main areas: child detention, and safe and legal routes. I am pleased and grateful to the Government for the progress that we have made on the detention of pregnant women; that was a no-brainer, frankly. I also have some concerns around the treatment of people being transported back to other countries on the grounds of sexuality, and I want further assurances on that from the Minister. I also have concerns about accompanied children. There is a real problem with so-called families, who have been put together by people smugglers, as the Home Affairs Committee saw when we went to Dover. We came across somebody claiming to be the uncle of a young girl and they did not even speak the same language. There are problems here, but I absolutely want to concentrate on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

I am also pleased that Lord Carlile’s amendments around retrospectivity have been accepted. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s 10-year strategy has some merit in it, but I do not think that it is for this Bill; it is a strategy for a Government rather than being for a piece of legislation such as this.

On the subject of child detention, despite the substantial discussions I mentioned, it would appear that the Government are setting out only a very narrow concession, just to give the possibility of bail after eight days to one small subgroup of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children detained on the grounds of removal only. The Government themselves said in March in guidance:

“A period of detention can have a significant and negative impact on a child’s mental or physical health and development”.

I think that we would all agree with that, so such detention needs to be used sensitively and sparingly.

This is a really sensitive issue. I think it was a proud achievement of the coalition Government when, after a Citizens’ Assembly back in 2010, David Cameron said that child detention was not acceptable and pledged to end it. It was part of the coalition programme in May 2010. Detention policy changed in 2011 and was codified in the Immigration Act 2014. Large numbers of children were being detained before 2010. There were 1,065 children being detained in 2009 alone. There was a case of a three-year-old girl who had spent 166 days of her life—her short life—in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. That was completely unacceptable, so it was right that the law was changed.

At the time, guarantees were also made in a debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill. The Government made explicitly clear their commitment to the rationale that unaccompanied children should not be blocked from claiming asylum and would be exempt from the inadmissibility process. As the Minister set out on Report of that Bill:

“I wish to emphasise that we will always act in accordance with our international obligations, and to be very clear that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will not be subject to inadmissibility or transferred for offshore processing.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 311.]

There was merit in that then and there is still merit in it now.

This matter was raised as a priority issue in the Committee and Report stages of this Bill. The Minister promised us changes in the Lords. That is why we did not push to a vote the amendments tabled in my name and the names of other right hon. and hon. Members at that stage. However, I am afraid that the promise did not materialise in the House of Lords, and only now, with amendments in lieu, are we seeing some concessions at this late stage, which, frankly, is not good enough. That is why, I am afraid, there is some scarcity of trust in the assurances given from the Dispatch Box, rather than stuff written, prima facie, in the Bill, or in specific guidance linked to undertakings in the Bill. We need to see more details in the Bill, not just assurances from the Dispatch Box, which have not always been forthcoming.

In changing the law, we need to comply with a clear set of principles when we are dealing with vulnerable children. Children should be treated differently from adults. Any child in the United Kingdom is entitled to the same protections whether they arrive on a boat or they were born here. Whether we like it or not, a child is a child and, as such, should be subject to the safety of the Children Act 1989, which is as relevant today as it was when it was first legislated for.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I absolutely agree with the point that he has just made. This also fits in with the 1989 convention on the rights of the child, which the British Government very rapidly and quite correctly signed up to at that time. Withdrawing from that convention surely weakens that protection.

[Tim Loughton]

The paramount piece of legislation in this country is the Children Act 1989. We should be proud of it, as it is copied and envied the world over. That is how we in this country look after children who need the protection of the state for an assortment of reasons. In my book, the Children Act—I always carry it with me, and i have it here today—usually trumps everything else.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will, but I do not want to take too many interventions, because many others wish to speak.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We know from the people who arrive in hotels that perhaps 20% of the migrants will be children—or say they are children. We know that that will be the case among those who arrive at RAF Scampton. As the Government are talking about 2,000 people coming here, we may need 40 or 50 social workers, which we cannot afford in Lincolnshire. We do not have the resources to look after these people properly, to assess them, to work out whether they are children and to decide how they are going to be looked after. Is my hon. Friend not making the point that it is much better to disperse people rather than to shove 2,000 illegal migrants in one place?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend has ingeniously inserted into this debate his particular constituency interest, of which, I think, the entire House and the entire world is aware, and I have some sympathy with him. I agree that there is a problem with dispersal. The dispersal system is not operating properly in this country, which is why Kent in particular, which is at the forefront, has seen more than 600 children come through already this year, of whom many are still within the care of Kent. One local authority cannot be expected to deal with that; we need a better dispersal system, whereby the support services, as well as the fabric, are able to accommodate these children.

There is a specific problem with adults impersonating children. The Home Office’s own figures say that something like 47% of age-disputed children turn out to be adults, which means that 53%, a small majority, turn out to be actual children, although it has not published the evidence for those findings. The JCHR report quotes the Helen Bamber Foundation survey of 2022, which stated that 70 local authorities had had 1,386 young people referred to them, of whom 63%—almost two thirds—were found to be children.

It is really important to have effective and accurate age assessments, and it is really important to do them quickly. The Government assured me that they were bringing forward age assessments. They take, on average, six weeks—I do not know why they take six weeks; it should not take that long to do a Merton assessment and, potentially, some X-ray medical interventions as well. The Government need to speed up that process. If a child is wrongly assessed as an adult and deported, that cannot be corrected.

We have problems with hotels and missing children—I recognise that. We have problems with children potentially going underground as they approach their 18th birthday, as they may well be transported out of the country under the Bill. We have problems with 16 or 17-year-olds, or those purporting to be 16 or 17-year-olds, absconding if they are not in the secure estate. These are the complex problems that the Government have to face.

We also have a problem with the existing law, as there is just 24 hours to detain children for the purposes of transporting them out, which is not enough. We therefore have a lot of problems. However, Government amendment (a) to clause 12 in lieu of Lords amendments 31, 35 and 36 leaves clause 10, which had a lot of Henry VIII powers leaving decisions up to the Secretary of State, largely untouched. The Government’s amendment in lieu retains the position that bail cannot be granted for 28 days to those who fall within the Bill’s scheme. It retains that position for unaccompanied children too where they are being detained pending a decision to grant leave, limited leave as an unaccompanied child, discretionary leave or leave as a trafficking victim.

That means that for the purposes of initial processing, unaccompanied children will be in exactly the same position as anyone else who falls within the Bill’s scheme, that is, there is no statutory limit on their detention and they cannot be granted bail before 28 days. Unaccompanied child arrivals are to be treated the same way as adult arrivals in terms of their detention for initial processing, and the amendment provides nothing for unaccompanied children detained for that purpose. It would only allow for potential bail of an unaccompanied child who has been detained pending a decision to remove them or pending their removal, where the Government are using their discretionary power under clause 3(2) to remove an unaccompanied child while they are still under 18.

In those circumstances, which the Government contend will be the minority of cases, the unaccompanied child will, with this amendment, now have the opportunity of being granted bail after being detained for eight days. Whether in practice the child could apply for bail after day eight would depend on multiple factors, one key factor being whether the unaccompanied child had been transferred to local authority care and subsequently detained prior to removal, or had only ever been detained since arrival in the UK.

Other factors impacting whether bail is obtainable in practice would include where the child was detained, whether any outside services reached the child in detention, whether such services could refer to a lawyer with the capacity to take on the bail case in light of the failure of the legal aid market and legal aid advice, and whether the child has the capacity to instruct a lawyer. There are strong reasons to doubt whether the possibility of bail after day eight would necessarily lead to many, if any, unaccompanied children being released from detention in practice.

There is a currently nothing on the face of the detention clauses about age disputes, which I was assured there would be. There are no additional safeguards for them on the face of the Bill at all. A putative child who is treated as an adult would only be able to get bail after 28 days in line with the Bill’s detention scheme. Much of what I say is on the advice of Coram, which is highly respected for how it looks after unaccompanied child asylum seekers.

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me advance notice that he planned to raise the interaction of clause 12 and clause 10. If I may answer his point briefly, the amendment in lieu relates to the powers to grant immigration bail, so amending clause 12, which is the power to grant immigration bail, is the correct place to set out the eight days. The detention powers themselves remain the same. That provides additional judicial oversight of unaccompanied children. The reason for amending clause 12 is that it is the clause that prohibits the first-tier tribunal from granting bail until 28 days have elapsed from the first day of detention. There is no need to amend clause 10 to give effect to that policy change. Clause 10 deals with the powers of detention and says nothing on bail. I hope that that answers his concerns, but I am happy to follow up with him later if he would like.

[Tim Loughton]

I think we may have to, because that is certainly not my understanding. There are Henry VIII paragraphs in clause 10 that still give ultimate discretion to the Secretary of State, with or without what is going to happen to clause 12. I am afraid that is symptomatic of the continuing problems with the Bill. It has become so complicated, there are many double negatives within it and only last night, at about 7.45 pm, did the Government publish their amendments, which we had just a few hours to scrutinise before today’s debate.

This matter needs proper explanation and it has not been properly explained. The assurances that we were promised have not materialised—or, if they have, I am afraid no one understands them. On that basis I am afraid that we, and I hope I speak here for many on the Government Benches, cannot take these amendments in lieu at face value. More work needs to be done. I hope this House will make sure that this matter goes back to the Lords in order for further concessions to be given. Clause 10 certainly needs to be overhauled.

If we go back to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009, there was a clear duty on the Secretary of State. Section 55(3) states:

“A person exercising any of those functions must, in exercising the function, have regard to any guidance given to the person by the Secretary of State”

for that purpose. There is no such undertaking in this Bill about having to observe and abide by guidance. Why not? Perhaps the Minister will come back to that in his response later.

The Minister keeps referring to the Detention Centre Rules 2001. They certainly need an overhaul, but I repeat my earlier point: they are all about things such as clean clothing, access to nutritious food, respect for religion, family visits and so on. Where are the special provisions for support services specifically for children, the child psychologists, access to social workers and other child support? That is what age-appropriate accommodation and support means—not just a suitable house that, without wishing to labour the point again, may or may not have cartoons on the walls.

Also, the Government have to admit that although those detention laws have been in place since 2001, that did not stop young children, and young children with families, being detained, for upwards of two weeks in some cases, at Manston, and certainly not in age-appropriate accommodation. Frankly, I am afraid that the system is not working now, yet we are looking to dilute the age-appropriateness of what is now on offer. That is where we on the Conservative Benches have serious concerns, and it is not just us: many children’s charities are concerned, and the Children’s Commissioner said:

“The Home Office has still not been able to provide me with vital information I have requested about the safeguarding of children in their accommodation. I am therefore unclear about how they can make informed assessments about the impact of the Home Office accommodating children without having this data.”

We were led to believe that there would be clear distinctions for children who are clearly and genuinely children: they would be detained for no more than eight days on the way in as well as, potentially for a few, on the way out; they would have age-appropriate accommodation; and there would be some form of foster care, children’s homes or whatever it may be. There would then be differential accommodation for those for whom there is an age-verification question mark. We do not know if that accommodation exists, what sort of accommodation it will actually be, or how we will separate adults from those who turn out to be children.

The Minister assured us that if age-appropriate accommodation was not available for that subset, they would be treated as children and subject then to the lesser restrictions on genuine children. That is not in the amendment and it is still not in the Bill. What and where is the available accommodation for children and for disputed children? What is the legal status of detained unaccompanied children during that eight-day period, where it applies to them? What local authority duties apply on arrival and for the eight days, and what is the Home Office responsible for in those eight days? Do the children retain looked-after status while detained, or does the Home Office propose that that status ceases, as with a custodial sentence?

Those are, I am afraid, all the questions to which we needed answers, but we are still in the dark with the amendments tabled in lieu, which is why we just cannot support them. This is a far cry from the undertakings in the Immigration Act 2014, which states:

“An unaccompanied child may be detained under paragraph 16(2) in a short-term holding facility for a maximum period of 24 hours”.

In the absence of a suitable amendment in lieu covering all those considerations, as promised, I am afraid that we must oppose the amendment in lieu. Although it would revert to Baroness Mobarik’s amendment to return to the 24-hour status quo, which is not practical, I agree—we will have to come up with something more—that is all that is on offer at the moment.

I will be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I have broken my pledge. I was pleased that we got safe and legal routes on to the face of the Bill, and that some concessions were made in this place on the understanding that they could be beefed up in the House of Lords. That is what the noble Baroness Stroud’s amendment would do. Clause 59 only accepts a duty to produce a report—a work that requires consultation with local authorities. That should be happening now; it should have started months ago, so saying, “Oh it is going to take several months; we need to do the consulting” is nonsense. That work should already have started.

All the clause amounts to is a loose assurance that something will come in by the end of next year, and it is not in the Bill. The Baroness Stroud amendment seeks to make regulations come in within two months of the report. As she said on Report, her amendment

“is designed purely to place a duty on the Government to do what they say they intend to do anyway—introduce safe and legal routes”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 July 2023; Vol. 831, c. 1248.]

That goes beyond just reproducing a report on how they might do it.

That is what we need to see, and it is why I will vote against the amendment in lieu of the child detention. I will vote in favour of the Baroness Stroud amendment on safe and legal routes. I will certainly not repeat everything that was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), but she made a strong case, and I am tempted to follow her into the Division Lobby on the Randall amendment as well. Those are the three main areas. There is still much more work to be done on the Bill, so that is how I will vote, and I urge hon. Friends to do the same.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind Members that the debate has to finish at 5 o’clock, so please bear that in mind when making speeches. I call Dame Diana Johnson.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

If I may make some more progress, I will happily come to the hon. Gentleman later. I want to conclude the point that I was making to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on the detention periods and standard of accommodation, because that is important. I assure her, and indeed my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has also taken an interest in the issue, that we will seek to detain unaccompanied children for the shortest possible period. Where there is no dispute that someone is under 18, they will be transferred to the local authority accommodation estate as quickly as possible. Where there is doubt about whether a person is indeed under 18 as they claim to be, they will be treated as a child while an age assessment is undertaken. Such a person will be detained in age-appropriate accommodation, as the law already provides. That is set out in the Detention Centre Rules 2001 made under section 153 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Rule 11 provides that:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

If no such accommodation is available, they will not be detained and instead will be transferred to a local authority as soon as possible. I hope that provides my right hon. Friend with the assurance she seeks.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Minister quoted the Detention Centre Rules 2001, which are of course 22 years old. Rule 11 says:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

Although there is a checklist of about 65 things, virtually all of them are about fabric, freedom to practise religion and access to personal hygiene. Which of the rules contains support services that are relevant and age-appropriate to children?

[Robert Jenrick]

The rules are related to 2001, as my hon. Friend says, but as I understand it they have been updated since then. They have also been tested on a number of occasions in the courts, and the Home Office takes seriously its responsibility to live up to them. It would be unlawful if we were to accommodate an under-18 inappropriately. If I may, I will read out the other limbs of rule 11, entitled “Families and minors”. They are, first:

“Detained family members shall be entitled to enjoy family life at the detention centre save to the extent necessary in the interests of security and safety.

Secondly:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

Thirdly:

“Everything reasonably necessary for detained persons’ protection, safety and well-being and the maintenance and care of infants and children shall be provided.”

That, I think, is a comprehensive set of principles. It is one that has stood the test of time over the last 22 years. If it needed to be strengthened, of course we will do so, but I hope that my hon. Friend will take my strong assurance from the Dispatch Box that that is the standard of accommodation in which we intend to house anyone who is a minor. If that accommodation were not available, we would not house those individuals in detained accommodation at all.

[Tim Loughton]

Will the Minister give way again?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way one last time.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister is being generous. I will elaborate on this point if I am lucky enough to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. Where in those 65 rules are relevant child-appropriate support services such as social workers, child psychologists and others that would be necessary mentioned? Nothing that he has described guarantees that children will be in age-appropriate accommodation that has age-appropriate care. That is the point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the problem with our asylum system is not a lack of lawyers; there are plenty of legal representatives around. We have had strong overall progress on the backlog, and I am pleased to say that the early data that I have received suggests that last week saw the best performance in four years.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I know how seriously the Minister takes dealing with the legacy backlog, but, as the Home Secretary showed at the recent Home Affairs Committee, in order to deal with that backlog in the timeframe that the Government have set themselves it would require at least a quadrupling of the number of cases being dealt with as from 1 June. Even with the extra 500 staff appointed at Stoke, that will be challenging. Will the Minister give me an assurance that, if we have not managed to clear the backlog before the end of the year, it will not be done by a blanket amnesty?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and I explicitly chose not to pursue the blanket amnesty approach that the previous Labour Government pursued. Instead, we put in the hard yards to improve productivity by streamlining processes, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, ensuring that, where appropriate, interviews were conducted in a timely fashion, and recruiting more decision makers. Since my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary appeared before the Committee, I am pleased to say that the data coming out of our caseworking team is very strong. We are seeing significant progress. As I just said, early indication suggests that last week was the best for over four years.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

In conclusion, in any event, while Labour continues to celebrate today’s judgment and continues to celebrate every obstacle in our way, we will not be deterred and will not give up. We will do whatever it takes to stop the boats for the British people.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

While respecting the authority of the Court of Appeal, I share the Home Secretary’s disappointment at its judgment. I welcome the fact that she will take the judgment to the Supreme Court.

Does the Home Secretary think that the case before the Supreme Court will be strengthened if she brings forward the safe and legal routes now written into the Illegal Migration Bill, so that there are clear options for genuine asylum seekers not to have to use irregular or illegal routes? Secondly, can she write into the Rwanda agreement a default position that, if the Rwandan Government try to move these people on to a third country, a right of appeal could be heard in the United Kingdom? Does she not think those measures might strengthen her case before the Supreme Court? We have heard not a scintilla of a practical solution to this problem from the Opposition Front Bench?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am grateful for his constructive input. The Illegal Migration Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, makes reference to and contains provisions relating to safe and legal routes, and we are in discussions about how and when those routes will be rolled out. They are an important element of our overall plan to stop the boats. It is vital that we support genuine claimants in need of support, which is why I am very proud of our track record of supporting and welcoming half a million people to the United Kingdom through humanitarian routes in recent years.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Lady misses the point entirely. The impact assessment bears out the cost of the current broken system and makes it clear that there is no option but to completely overhaul our asylum system and make it fit for the decades ahead. The reality, as those of us on the Government Benches see it, is straightforward: if people continue to cross in small boats, the cost to the taxpayer in one form or another will continue to increase and that is a completely unacceptable outcome—but it is the one that can be expected with Labour’s recklessly naive approach to border security.

When the right hon. Lady said that this document was “garbage” and “clueless”, I thought she was referring to her own five-point plan to tackle illegal migration, because we cannot grant our way out of the problem, we cannot simply arrest our way out of this and do nothing to dismember and dismantle the business model of the gangs. We cannot provide a safe and legal route to every single person eligible for refugee status or every economic migrant who views this country as a better place, and we certainly cannot reheat the tired old policies like the Dublin convention that she looks back on through her rose-tinted spectacles. Even members of the European Union have moved on from that, but not the Labour party. She cannot even bring herself to call these unnecessary and dangerous journeys what they are under British law: illegal.

The truth is that Labour’s do-nothing approach to stopping the boats is the fastest route to more crossings, greater taxpayer spending and more pressure on our communities. Left unchecked, the cost will spiral to £11 billion by 2026. That is the cost of a Labour Home Secretary; that is the cost of Cooper. Only the Conservative party will truly tackle the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. We are determined to secure our borders and stop the boats, and the British public can rely on us to do so.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Opposition seem to think that the Rwanda scheme is purely about displacing people who have entered illegally from Kent to Rwanda. In fact, it is about deterring them from coming in the first place and instead encouraging them to use the safe and legal routes that are now in the Illegal Migration Bill, because it will become a lottery whether someone ends up on a plane to Rwanda or in a hotel in Kent. Given that the French authorities admitted to the Select Committee on Home Affairs that when the Rwanda scheme was first announced there was a surge in migrants approaching the French authorities about regularising their position in France rather than hazarding the channel crossing, what discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the French and Germans, who have expressed interest in a Rwanda-type scheme, about having a joint multinational scheme to get this thing up and running?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a view expressed by some, mainly on the left, that the UK is somehow an outlier in pursuing a policy like Rwanda. I can tell him, having spoken to our European counterparts and Home Affairs and Interior Ministers in north Africa and beyond, that leaders across the world are looking to the UK not as an outlier but as a leader in this field. They are looking to the Rwanda policy as one of the most innovative and comprehensive approaches to a problem that everyone is facing. In an age of mass migration, with millions of people on the move, it is right that the UK leads. We will invest in border security, and that is the difference between us and the Labour party. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) does not want to invest in border security; we do. We will pursue the Rwanda policy, we will secure our borders, and other countries will follow our lead.

Stop and Search

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I disagree with the hon. Lady’s characterisation. Last year, stop and search resulted in almost 67,000 arrests and removed around 14,900 weapons and firearms from our streets. Crime statistics show that increased use of stop and search is driving the continuing increase in police-recorded possession-of-bladed-weapon offences, helping the police to save lives. Obviously, we work with all agencies, because stopping crime needs a multidimensional, multi-agency approach. That is what our violence reduction units are all about; that is what our Grip funding is all about; that is what our safer streets funding is all about—bringing together all the relevant agencies to prevent crime in the first place.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I agree with the Home Secretary’s support for stop and search when it is used skilfully and responsibly, but when the all-party parliamentary group for children did some work on this a few years ago, we found that an alarming number of under-10-year-olds were being stopped and searched, and that police procedures for younger children were not being used properly. What assurances can she give me that things have changed and that, in particular for sensitive, younger children, stop and search is used only in extremis and under controlled circumstances?

Migration

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

As a co-sponsor of the debate, I thank the Backbench Business Committee, and I echo virtually everything said by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden). We debate immigration quite a lot in this Chamber, but mostly the latest disaster or controversial piece of immigration legislation. Occasionally, it would be good to look at how we can fashion immigration policy that suits all of us, in the round and over the long term, in so much as it can.

Perhaps the title of the debate should be “Governments’ policies on migration”, because it is not just about this Government: all Governments have problems with migration. It goes up and down. This is an attempt at a measured debate on an issue where we often do not have measured debates, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton for starting the debate in a very measured way.

The subject is topical, but when is immigration not topical? The net figure of 606,000 people coming to the UK was recently announced, but it is always a mistake to be guided by a net figure, and it is certainly a mistake to have a net migration target. The problem with a net migration target is that we have control, in as much as we do, over only one side of the equation; we have no control over the number of people who choose to leave. If a Government are running the country so brilliantly that nobody wants to leave, clearly the number of people coming here is going to outstrip the number of people leaving. It is a something of a false figure, which I will come back to in a minute. We know the figure is so high because of certain groups of people who are here for very good reasons.

The latest figures on small boats are catching up with last year’s figures, as we discussed with the Home Secretary at the Home Affairs Committee yet again yesterday. Recent forecasts from Italy predict that 400,000 people will seek to enter Italy from Africa this year, which is four times the level of 2022. Some 80,000 people have entered so far this year, and that figure was from a few weeks ago. Obviously, that will have an impact on the rest of Europe, including the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister recently attended a European Political Community summit in Moldova, which discussed more transnational approaches to migration; we need to see far more such approaches.

Most of us would agree, alas, that the migration system is pretty broken, has been for some time and shows little chance of getting fixed any time soon. It has been largely characterised by a series of short-term crises: a record number of people on small boats coming across the channel; the overwhelming of processing centres such as Manston; the fact that 9,000 of the 15,000 Afghan nationals who were legally, and quite rightly, airlifted from Kabul almost two years ago are still inappropriately housed in hotels; the pressure on hotel accommodation; the shortage of labour in the hospitality industry, the care sector and other areas, which the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton mentioned; the Windrush scandal; and pressure on the Home Office, which is a fairly dysfunctional Department. All of that gets conflated into the single issue of an immigration crisis.

However, the issue is not just about irregular immigration, but about regular migration levels and about how we decide the skills we want, how we hand out those visas —I entirely concur with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton about the overpricing of visas in many areas—and how we fashion our points system. We need workforce planning and we need to consider the sustainability of how we deal with the increased population, including the pressures on homes for people who have already lived here for some time. The whole sustainability issue and the availability of services is hugely complex.

I want to touch on three main areas: irregular migration, migration policy for planned migration and the global issue, which will probably be the biggest single challenge that we and many other western nations will face.

First, on irregular migration, we know the figures. We know there has been a move to small boats because of the huge success, frankly, of Border Force and British agencies, working with French agencies, around Eurotunnel, ferries and lorries. It is now very difficult to get across the channel covertly in the back of a lorry, which is why people have moved to using small boats. Whatever we think about migration policy—whatever we think about the number of asylum seekers we should or could be taking in this country—paying a people smuggler to cross the busiest shipping lane in the world is the worst possible way to gain access to the United Kingdom. We absolutely must do more to clamp down on it, which is why the Government’s policy, whether controversial or not, is singularly aimed at cutting off that dangerous and criminal supplier.

The first problem is this. We are continuing to subsidise the French police force, to the tune of, now, half a billion pounds, but although they are intercepting more migrants before they get into the boats—the interception rate is now about 54%, which is great—the trouble is that they do not arrest those migrants, they do not detain them, and they are there again the following night and the night after that, with a new boat every time, and they only have to get lucky once. Until we can reach an agreement with the French that they will detain those migrants and scrutinise their status in France itself and then take action, or that if migrants are intercepted in the channel by Border Force or air agencies they can be taken back to France if that is where they started, our problem will remain.

We have not been able to reach an agreement with the French, but there are ways in which progress could be made. Several of us have had discussions with French politicians who see some merit in such an agreement, and I think there are negotiations that could be had, but that is not happening, although it is the long-term, sustainable solution to the problem of the boats. Why would someone pay €4,000 to a people smuggler for what is effectively a round trip, ending up back in France?

Secondly, there is the issue of processing in the United Kingdom, which is far too slow. As we discovered yesterday in the Home Affairs Committee, even given the increase in resources and staff it will take longer than until the end of the year to deal with the legacy backlog, let alone all the people who have come in since June last year. We must become much more efficient. I am glad that the Minister mentioned various new schemes and projects that the Home Office is undertaking, but we need to double up on that; perhaps he will give some more details later.

Thirdly, there is the issue of returns agreements. There are those who think that everything was rosy before Brexit. I am not going to blame Brexit for any of this—indeed, I remain a fan of Brexit—but in the last year of our full membership of the European Union, under the Dublin regulations we attempted to return to the EU 8,500 migrants who did not have a case for being in the UK, and the EU accepted 105 of them; that is 1.2%. So it was not working in the first place, when we were in the EU. Last year, only 215 of the 45,755 migrants who came here irregularly were deported. We have to do a lot better, because we know how problematic it is when certain countries simply will not take back migrants who have left those countries and applied for asylum here.

The whole issue has been discussed ad nauseam in the House of Lords, and will be back in this House next month in the form of the Illegal Migration Bill. There is of course the controversial situation surrounding the Rwanda flights, on which we are expecting a judgment soon. It is an apparently extreme solution, but what else can we do unilaterally if we do not have the agreement of our neighbours to take people back? We know it can be a deterrent, because when the Select Committee went to Calais in January and spoke to many of the officials in charge of the operations there, they said that when the Rwanda scheme was announced there was a big surge in the number of migrants approaching the French authorities about regularising their status in France, because they did not want to risk being put on a plane to Rwanda; but it has not happened yet, so the deterrent effect has subsided. That is why the scheme is so important, controversial though it may be.

I think we should be doing much more—and I have supported cross-party amendments on this in the past—to make better use of the migrants who have come to the UK and are having their claims processed. It is a complete waste of time and labour that they are not allowed to work in a properly organised way, certainly after a few months here, when we have so many labour shortages.

Then there is the foreign aid issue. It annoys me when we are accused of being far less generous than other countries in granting asylum claims, when last year France had something like 150,000 asylum applications—more than this country—but granted only a third of them. They were much tougher; indeed, many European countries do not accept any asylum applications from Albania at all. The Committee has just produced a report asking why on earth we should be taking so many Albanian asylum applications, other than in, say, trafficking cases.

This country also has one of the most generous foreign aid programmes, which supports refugees closer to the homes from which they have had to flee, as any of us who have been to places such as the Zaatari camp in Jordan will know. At one stage there were 85,000 Syrian refugees there, and we were one of the biggest donors to the camp. Something like 90% of the children there were receiving an education in schools that were funded by our taxpayers, and that were often staffed by teachers from Britain or those trained by British authorities. Those people just wanted to go back to Syria as soon as it was safe to do so, rather than come to the UK or another European country, so we should always consider the huge number of refugees we support overseas, no less generously than we do those for whom it is more appropriate to come to the UK.

We have to decide what sort of immigration system we want—who we want coming into the country—now that we have the power to fashion our own policy more than we did when we were part of the European Union. Of the 606,000 net who came to the UK last year, 174,200 were from Ukraine. Nobody is going to argue with the merits of that. Some 160,700 were from Hong Kong. Again, most people would see a justified case for that. I fear, as somebody who has been sanctioned by China and knows a little more about this, that that number will only rise. There is a big Hong Kong Chinese population in this country. They are more easily assimilated through existing links—family links and others—they tend to be very entrepreneurial, setting up businesses after studying here, and they really add to the economic prospects of this country.

Then there are the 155,000-plus dependants who came in—largely Indian nationals—and the many dependants who came on the back of foreign students. Is that where we should be prioritising an increase in population? We want foreign students to come to this country. We want them to study successfully here and then perhaps stay successfully here, contributing to the economy, setting up businesses and, with their expertise and skills, adding to the UK economy, but are valuable places in our creaking infrastructure being taken up by the dependants who seem to come with them? The Government are now looking at that issue.

We must also recognise that we have a very varied workforce, and that is a good thing. Some 20% of the UK workforce was born abroad, and that figure is likely to rise. That is a good thing, as long as we can integrate, and sustain and provide services and employment for everybody to benefit from, but we do have problems. Some 45,000 seasonal farm workers have been brought into this country, and that figure has increased, but we still have a shortfall of 40,000. We have a problem with our own British citizens working in the rural economy. Only 8,000 British citizens signed up for the Pick for Britain campaign jobs. We have a million job vacancies in the United Kingdom. We need to have a grown-up debate about how we fill those vacancies, because surely we want people who will do those jobs well and are appropriate for them. They are going to earn, pay tax and contribute to the economic wealth of the country.

Germany is desperately trying to recruit graduates and blue-collar workers under its points-based system. The trouble is that that is taking a lot of skilled health workers from places such as Albania, which is making Albania less and less sustainable, as the economy collapses in that country. Canada wants 1.5 million more migrants by 2025, and South Korea is bringing in 110,000 lower-skilled migrants.

In this country we completely fetishise the numbers. For me, it is not just about the numbers, although the numbers have to be sustainable—I know there are big pressures on housing, particularly in the south-east of England, in my part of the world—but it is really about control. It is about making sure that we welcome the people who are most appropriately accommodated in this country and who can most contribute to the well- being and economic prospects of this country. It is about controlling who comes here, rather than just raw numbers.

The last consideration is the global context, because the problem, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, is that 19 countries are facing the highest number of ecological threats over the next 30 years. A total of 2.1 billion people live in countries that lack the resilience to deal with the expected major ecological changes over the next 30 years, and a large proportion of them are from sub-Sahel Africa, from countries that are among the most unstable and have some of the highest birth rates.

Those people are on the move. The birth rate in European countries, Japan and elsewhere is falling, so we have to decide what will be the long-term future of global migration. We can only do that in collaboration with other countries. Do we want African countries to thrive and to have economies that can sustain their own population and that can adapt to take advantage of climate change by generating energy, or whatever it may be? Can we invest in some of those countries, or will we see people increasingly coming to these shores? How would we deal with that?

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would like me to shut up now, but this is a hugely complex situation that requires a long-term plan and a long-term vision, in collaboration with our neighbours. Without that, we risk going from one crisis to another, and nobody benefits from that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which I will use as a prompt to also talk about the Israel scheme. Of course, Israel and Rwanda did a deal. What happened with that scheme? Every single one of the people who was sent from Israel to Rwanda had left Rwanda within a matter of weeks and was on their way back to Europe, so it is a very expensive way of giving people a round trip, and I would not recommend it as a deterrent.

Then, just to add to the general sense that the Government have lost the plot, we had the bizarre and frankly appalling spectacle of the Home Secretary jetting down to Rwanda with a carefully vetted gaggle of journalists to indulge in a photo shoot that was akin to a “Visit Rwanda” tourist promo. I may have missed something, but I thought the idea was to deter the channel crossings by using Rwanda as a threat. I am not quite sure how that tallies with the Home Secretary likening Kigali to the garden of Eden. One minute, Rwanda is the perfect place imaginable for a person to rebuild their life; the next, the threat of getting sent there is being deployed as a deterrent.

It is a truly farcical state of affairs, but it is also of central importance to what we are debating today, because the entire Bill is predicated on the Government being able to remove those who arrive here on small boats to a safe third country, and right now Rwanda is the only safe third country they have. As such, the fact that the Rwanda plan is unworkable, unaffordable and unethical renders this entire Bill unworkable, unaffordable and unethical.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

This is an issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised before. As I said during the Bill’s earlier stages, when the Home Affairs Committee went to Calais in January and we met all the people involved in patrolling the beaches and the local officials, they told us that when the Rwanda scheme was announced, there was a surge in migrants approaching the French authorities about staying in France, because they did not want to end up on a plane to Rwanda. There was a deterrent effect; the trouble is that it has not actually started yet, but if it did, it would have an impact. That is the point.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not sure I follow the logic of it. He said that there was a deterrent effect, but it has not started yet, which suggests to me that there has not been a deterrent effect. If we look at the numbers, channel crossings continue to skyrocket, so I think what matters to this House is results and outcomes. As things stand, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Rwanda scheme has acted as a deterrent.

This bigger backlog Bill is rotten to its very core, because it prevents the Home Secretary from considering those who arrive here on small boats as asylum seekers, and instead obliges her to detain and remove them. However, there is nowhere to detain them, and there is nowhere to remove them to either. We already have 50,000 asylum seekers in around 400 hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £6 million every single day, and on average, each asylum seeker is waiting a staggering 450 days for a decision. The backlog now stands at 166,000, more than eight times larger than when Labour left office in 2010, when it stood at just under 19,000. Incidentally, I am still waiting for the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration to apologise to the House and correct the record on that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

My argument is about a negotiation. We clearly have to do a returns deal; it is an important part of the deterrent effect. We do not get a returns deal unless we have something on the table. There is a clear link between policies on safe and legal routes and getting a clear position in terms of negotiations with the European Union. The reality is that it is the only deterrent effect that will work. We are dealing with people who have risked their lives, fought their way across Europe and are prepared to spend their life savings to pay people smugglers to cross the channel. We will not deter them unless they know there is a returns deal in place, and one reason that the Dublin convention worked is that it acted as a deterrent. How else can we explain that the numbers have gone through the roof since we left the Dublin convention?

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this is just nonsense. In the last year that we were covered by the Dublin convention, before the pandemic struck, we applied to the EU for 8,500 returns under that returns agreement and only 105 were granted—that is 1.2%—so what he says is complete nonsense. It did not work when we were in the EU, and he is now expecting to magic up some agreement that the EU will not give us anyway. Stop misleading the House about those figures.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s response bizarre, because there are some simple facts, which are that we left the Dublin convention, and since then the number of small boat crossings has gone through the roof. It is not rocket science; it is a simple fact of mathematics. The point is that we cannot solve an international problem without international co-operation. We have to recognise the flow of asylum seekers coming across the European Union. The idea that we just say to the EU, “You can take them all; we are not going to take any” is for the birds. It is fantasy politics, and I am stunned that Government Members do not seem to understand that simple political fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

With the greatest respect, I have listened at length to the hon. Member for Stone and have yet to find any common ground on these issues.

Frankly, it is about time that we stood up for the importance of the international rule of law and helping people when they are facing these situations. There are no queues in a war zone, there is no administration or bureaucracy: there is fear, terror and persecution, and those people who are in Sudan now will be asking those questions. If the Minister wants to answer them and give those people hope that, if they make it to the border or to one of the refugee camps—they may find one of those UNHCR people who does not think that the UNCHR has that relationship with the UK but thinks the Minister is prepared to do that—we will take a certain number of people, that might stop them fleeing. This legislation will not do so.

More people will keep coming, including from Afghanistan, where the Government have failed to bring in a safe and legal route, and where they still fail to listen to those of us who have constituents who have been affected by that fact. They will come from Eritrea. They will come from the war zones and places of persecution—those people whose religion means that they are at risk. They will come because they see what we did with the Ukrainians; they see this country, and they know that there is a better way of doing it. The Lords will take this legislation on—that is probably the point of it for the Government—but let nobody be under any illusions: the Bill is just about 4 May. It is not actually about resolving the problem.

[Tim Loughton]

It is difficult to know in five minutes how to address the five amendments with my name at the top, including the two that have been leapfrogged by the Home Secretary. I have spent many hours cossetted with the Minister for Immigration and others to try to get some of the adjustments being made, and I am grateful for the time he has spent to try to get us to a better place. I certainly do not have time to respond to the extensive assurances that he aimed to give me from the Dispatch Box earlier.

I support safe and legal routes. I am glad we will now have them on the face of the Bill. We need a balance. I support this Bill, but if we are to be tough on the abusers of our immigration system, we also have to ensure we are open and generous to genuine asylum seekers, to whom we owe a duty of care. The amendments on safe and legal routes are also timely because we needed to address the question that I posed to the Home Secretary some months ago about how the 16-year-old orphan from east Africa with relations in the UK would make it to the UK. This week, that apocryphal scenario became a reality. The measures that the Immigration Minister will be bringing forward need to address that question.

It is essential that the Immigration Minister consults local authorities about capacity, but he also needs to consult refugee organisations and others about the type of schemes with which we will come forward. How will they operate? Who will qualify for them? How will people access them? Let us make sure that those schemes are in place sooner rather than later in 2024, although I would have liked them to be contemporaneous. We have a deal on safe and legal routes, but we need to see some real workable details in the coming months and as the Bill goes through the Lords.

I have no time to talk about amendment 181 on the return of children or amendment 182 on best interest and welfare checks. My real concern has been on child detention, so I was grateful for the assurances that the Immigration Minister gave me, because the measures as they stand do not differentiate between children and adults in detention terms. They ride roughshod through the safeguards on child detention under the Immigration Bill 2014, through which this Government specified the 24-hour limit, and the Government have not even offered to put the maximum detention times for children in this Bill. That is a must when it comes to any amendments that the Minister can bring forward in the House of Lords.

[Edward Timpson]

I very much agree with the points that my hon. Friend makes in support of children. Does he also agree that we need absolute clarity on the responsibilities under the Children Act 1989 in all circumstances where a child is on these shores, and in particular where the Home Office itself has some responsibility?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

That is absolutely right. It is notable that three former Children’s Ministers are behind the measures we are trying to push today. It is essential that any child in this country, whether a refugee here temporarily or someone here for the long term, is covered by the welfare considerations of the Children Act. I am grateful that the Minister referred to the Children Act. As it stands, despite the measures that mean there will be a differentiation between children and adult detention—we do not know what yet—under the Bill a 12-year-old child claiming asylum could still be in a Home Office detention centre facility for 27 days. That is not a good look, and it must not happen.

[Vicky Ford]

I add my voice to the chorus of former Children’s Ministers on this issue. Does my hon. Friend agree that the period for which a child could be detained when they first arrive to find them suitable accommodation needs to be a matter of days, not weeks, and that that needs to be in the Bill?

[Tim Loughton]

That is what we put in the Immigration Act 2014 with the then Immigration Minister, now the Transport Secretary. What has changed between 2014 and 2023 that means apparently we have to detain children indefinitely? We need timescales in the Bill, as we had in 2014. I appreciate there are practical problems about age verification for those who are challenged. We may have to have a two-tier system, but certainly those children who are recognised generally as children should not be locked up in detention centres and Home Office facilities, and that has to be made absolutely clear when this Bill goes to the Lords.

We also need to know how and where the Government plan to accommodate those children once identified. The accommodation does not exist at the moment, and the Government have only a few months to magic it up if we want to get this legislation through in a matter of months. I share the Children’s Commissioner’s concerns. She said:

“The Bill is unclear on what the state of the accommodation will be for children while awaiting transfer to local authority care or removal from the country…What regulations will be in place for Home Office provided accommodation? If the accommodation is regulated which body will inspect them?”

There are a lot of questions to be asked. We are taking the assurances from the Minister on trust. We will not continue with a lack of detail when the Bill gets to the Lords, but for the moment we will not force it, because I trust the Minister to do the right thing before the Bill goes through its final stages.

[Apsana Begum]

I rise to speak to a range of amendments and new clauses seeking to protect people from the attacks on basic human dignity that are before the House today. I am supporting new clauses in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) about the ongoing human rights breaches that migrants endure, which have been happening for some time, but today I shall focus on how the legislation treats those who are pregnant, because not only will the Bill persecute and imprison people fleeing torture, war and oppression, but it will put the health of some of the most vulnerable of them—pregnant women—and the life of their unborn children at risk. That is why I have tabled new clause 2 seeking to exempt pregnant women and girls from provisions about removals. My new clause 3 seeks to require an independent review of the effect of the provision on pregnant migrants, and my new clause 7 is about a review of the effect of the measures on the health of migrants.

I am also supporting related amendments to prevent an immigration officer’s and the Secretary of State’s detention powers from being used to detain unaccompanied children, families with dependent children, or pregnant women, as tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).

In order to cut through the dehumanising othering that too often plagues debates on migration—I note the awful nature of the comments made earlier today in response to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) about the dental testing of young migrants, which I find dehumanising and an othering of different communities—I would like to draw the House’s attention to a real-life example to illustrate the human reality of what is being debated today.

Najma Ahmadi and her family fled from the Taliban and made 20 attempts to cross into Greece from Turkey—20 attempts. On two occasions, Najma nearly drowned, once while pregnant with her baby daughter. She finally arrived in the UK last July on a boat, her terrified one-year-old baby girl clutched against her. Najma and her family were entitled to asylum, which was granted last December, but we must not forget those pregnant women escaping persecution who have died seeking refuge. For example, Yohanna, an Eritrean woman thought to be about 20 years old, who gave birth as she drowned alongside many others, when the boat she was travelling on, trying to get to safety, capsized. And there are many other women who remain unnamed.

These women are not criminals, but this Government are proposing today to treat them worse than criminals, despite knowing that such women are in fact victims of foreign policy failures and the simple, indisputable fact that there were no safe routes for them. They are fleeing countries such as Afghanistan, which has barely had a mention today. As I said during the previous stage of the Bill, as of last month, 22 people had been granted asylum through the Afghanistan resettlement scheme. If that figure has changed, I would be more than happy for the Minister to address it in his closing remarks, but that is such a small number—unless of course the Government have changed tack and do not think there are women trying to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan and believe that they do not deserve safe routes through which to escape.

Not only will the Government refuse sanctuary to those who survive these horrors, but clause 11 will enable the Home Secretary to condemn them to indefinite detention. The Bill will therefore see migrant women who should have finally escaped persecution facing pregnancy and birth alone, without adequate medical support and with the fear of potential separation from their baby.

There is a wealth of information and evidence that the imprisonment of any pregnant women is wrong. We know that pregnant women in prison are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely and are five times more likely to experience a stillbirth. Yet pregnant refugees are to be placed in circumstances worse than the already inhumane situation of pregnant women in UK prisons such as Manston, where there are outbreaks of illness and disease, reports of assaults and drug use by guards, and which last year was estimated to be detaining thousands of people arriving in Britain via small boats, some for as long as 40 days or more. No one should be detained in such places, never mind those who are pregnant.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Midwives, and Maternity Action have all raised that healthcare in immigration detention is often very poor. In 2014, some 99 women were locked up in Serco-run Yarl’s Wood detention centre while pregnant, and research by Medical Justice found they often missed antenatal appointments—

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

The Bill, in its current form, does nothing to protect refugee children. The Minister did not mention children yesterday, yet there are children out there whom we can and must help and whose voices are missing from this Bill. I hope he will look closely at my amendments and ensure that the rights of refugee children are firmly protected.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my registered interest as chairman of the safeguarding board of a children’s group.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair and fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee. I agree with many of her observations, particularly on the recommendations that have come out of various Home Affairs Committee reports.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the specific conundrum in which children—perhaps even babies—who are brought here by their parents, clearly beyond their own power if they are very young, will fall foul of the proposed regulations because they have entered illegally. They will effectively carry a black spot for life, through no making of their own. What would happen if that baby, when he or she grows up, marries a UK citizen? They would effectively not be able to come to their spouse’s country of origin.

These are not completely hypothetical scenarios. They are very real problems that could occur. I was about to say that we should not throw the baby out with the bath water, because the Bill has unintended consequences that could seriously harm a young person’s prospects, for a crime they had no part in committing.

I want to speak for a rather shorter time than I did yesterday, because I will focus on two aspects—how children are still able to be deported as children, and the problems around detention. I think there is a problem in the Bill with trying to adultify children. I acknowledge that there is a difficult situation regarding families and I have concerns about their treatment, but I have also seen—as has the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—cases of people smugglers using children by matching them up with supposed relatives, so that they can come across. When we were last in Dover, we saw such a case; the supposed uncle and the child did not even speak the same language. We have to be cognisant of the fact that these criminals will use children to try to help the passage of other people who are paying them large quantities of money.

I am absolutely in favour of a much more robust and efficient age verification system, because it is a safeguarding issue. We have seen instances of people claiming to be children, who later turn out to be adults and who have actually attended school alongside school-age children—in positions of responsibility, alongside children. This is an important safeguarding issue. Many other European countries already have age verification techniques, which involve various medical interventions. We need to look seriously at age verification if we are to get this one right—but, again, it is a sensitive issue.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the concerns regarding the impact on modern day slavery legislation, which were mentioned by my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I hope the Minister will look carefully at how we can preserve those principles while clamping down on some abuses that may have been happening.

Let me concentrate on amendments 139 to 145—those in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends—which would amend clauses 2, 3, 7 and 11.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend made some very good points yesterday. Will he confirm how happy he was with the Minister’s confirmation that safe and legal routes would, “if necessary”, be brought forward

“with our intention being to open them next year”

while

“launching the local authority consultation on safe and legal routes at the same time”?—[Official Report, 27 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 777.]

Does that give him and those of us who supported his amendment the reassurance needed on that score?

[Tim Loughton]

Sir Roger, if I do too much back-jobbing to yesterday’s business, I am sure you will call me out of order, but let me tell my hon. Friend that there were some intensive discussions with the relevant bodies to get assurances. They were on the basis that I need to see some fairly convincing and robust action in the next few weeks before we get to Report, otherwise we will revisit those amendments and new clauses with a vengeance then. I have given the Government the benefit of the doubt at this stage, so I hope we can work constructively to achieve what I think the Prime Minister wants to achieve. It is what he has put on record that he wants to achieve, but some of us want to see more urgency and some clear undertakings on the face of the Bill.

That was yesterday’s business; let us return to today’s business. I do not intend at this stage to force my amendments to a vote, but I do want some assurances from the Minister. These are very important principles regarding very vulnerable children, and I want to see some concrete action when it comes to proceedings on Report. Frankly, if we do not get that, as with my case yesterday for safe and legal routes, the Bill will be much less easy to defend, and much more vulnerable to being pulled apart in another place and by lawyers. I want the Bill to go through, but I want it to be a balanced Bill that can work and that does not fall at the first hurdle.

The clauses that I am concerned with are those that place a duty on the Home Secretary to remove people, and those with an impact on children and that contain details on removal procedures. I am also concerned with the clause on the powers of detention: here, we must absolutely make sure that we do not adultify children; and they must be subject to the same safeguarding considerations as any other child already legally in the United Kingdom who is taken into custody or subject to some form of restriction on his or her liberty.

It is also worth repeating, and it has been said by several people, that no child rights impact assessment has been undertaken on the Bill, which is of concern. It would benefit the Government if they could back up the legislation with that sort of analysis. We also need justification for the removal of the duty to consult with the Independent Family Returns Panel. Those are the reasons why many children’s organisations and, indeed, the Children’s Commissioner have been vociferous on various aspects of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. In his point about the interaction with the Children Act and Home Office responsibility, this is where we get to the nub of the problem. The characterisation of this debate has become extremely unfortunate, especially when we talk about issues such as detention, which I am sure that, in practice, the Government do not mean. This is really an issue of safeguarding first and foremost and of identifying genuine cases that require all the safeguarding measures that are underpinned by the Children Act. Does he agree that it is a shame, to say the least, that we are not focusing on children in that context, rather than in the context of detention, internment or whatever we want to call it? That language is not helpful.

[Tim Loughton]

I shall come on to detention in a minute, but I entirely agree with the principle of the point that my right hon. Friend is making, which is that, whatever we think about our immigration and asylum system, a child should be treated no differently, however he or she arrived in this country, than one who was born here and is in the care of parents or whatever. There are times in the Bill where it is unclear that that is the case.

All these terms need to be subject to the child welfare prioritisation in the Children Act 1989 and also have regard to the 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child of 1989. Under article 3.1, it says that

“the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration”.

That has been upheld in UK legislation, not least in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.

In giving the Home Secretary the power to remove unaccompanied children when they reach the age of 18—and potentially before—the Bill could see a child arriving alone in the UK aged 10, for example, having fled war and persecution, and be allowed to integrate into UK society, develop friendships and attend school only to be forcibly removed from the UK as soon as they turn 18. There are concerns that a child approaching 18, a 17 and three quarters-year-old, could be encouraged to go under the radar and go underground for fear of that knock on the door when they reach 18. We need to treat that sensitively, because otherwise we are creating a greater problem and putting some of those children at greater risk than they might have been. A decade ago, the majority of unaccompanied children were granted temporary leave to remain, rather than refugee status, until they turned 18, and we know that the fear of removal forced many of those children to go underground and go missing, at extreme risk of exploitation.

My amendment 139 inserts a fifth condition in the Bill that must be met on the duty of the Home Secretary to remove someone from the United Kingdom. Amendment 140 details that the additional fifth consideration is that the person to be removed is either over 18 or a minor in the care of an adult, typically a family member. That would have the effect of ensuring that the Bill does not capture unaccompanied children. Amendments 141 and 142 are consequential amendments, due to the rewording of clauses 3 and 7. Amendment 141 removes subsections 3(1) to 3(4), and the anomalies in subsections (1) and (2) that still give the Home Secretary unrestricted powers.

Now, Ministers—[Interruption.] I am not sure if those on the Front Bench want to listen to this, Sir Roger; it is a little difficult to try to make a speech with people having conversations right in front of me. Ministers claim that there are exceptional circumstances only in which children would be removed from the United Kingdom, and have given examples of those exceptional circumstances, such as to reunite a child with family overseas. Okay—but a child who is to be reunited with family overseas can leave the UK of his or her own accord, or subject to the ruling of a judge, in the same way as we would release a child from care into adoption, for example. I do not see that as a necessary exceptional circumstance.

If the Government are really convinced that there are exceptional circumstances where that needs to be done, there should be more detail on the Bill, or at least explanation in the explanatory notes, because there is none. As things stand, the Home Secretary has the power to remove any child, at her whim, for reasons not specified in this Bill. That is a concern. If the Government have good reason for that, we deserve an explanation of those reasons, and it is for this House to judge on how credible and necessary those reasons are.

Under the amendments, children who arrive in the UK on their own and seek asylum would continue to have their asylum claims heard here, rather than being left in limbo until they reached 18 when, under the Bill, they would face detention and then removal. The amendments do not mean that every child who arrives here on their own will go on to get permission to stay. Instead, they mean that the Home Office must process their claims and, crucially, treat them as children rather than punishing them.

Amendments 143 to 145 deal with the issue of detentions and, along with the amendments I have already described, maintain the safeguards that were put in place under Conservative-led Governments to protect children from the harms of immigration detention. In 2009, more than 1,000 children were detained in immigration removal centres but, following changes made by the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, over the next decade the average was 132 children per year.

What was more, those children could not be detained for longer than 24 hours if they were unaccompanied, or 72 hours if they were with their family members, extendable to a week if a Minister agreed it was necessary. We then legislated for those limits in the Immigration Act 2014, under a Conservative-led Government. Amendments 143 and 145 ensure that those safeguards continue to apply.

I am not asking for a change in the law; I am just asking that the safeguards that were deemed to be sensible and necessary back in 2014 still apply to the same sort of vulnerable children. They would prevent unaccompanied children from being locked up for more than 24 hours. Amendment 145 would ensure that children who were with their family members could still only be detained for a week at the very most and, when they were, that it would be in specific pre-departure accommodation, rather than anywhere the Home Secretary might wish, as the Bill envisages.

Under clause 11, the Home Secretary has wide powers to detain anyone covered by the four conditions in clause 2, which, without my earlier amendment, still includes unaccompanied children. There is no time limit for how long a child can be detained. That amounts effectively to indefinite detention of children of any age anywhere that the Home Secretary considers it appropriate. Under clause 12, the Home Secretary will have a significantly expanded power to decide what a reasonable length of detention is. It is all subject to the definition of what is reasonably necessary and severely restricts court scrutiny of whether that is reasonable or not. Surely that cannot be right for children. I am not seeking to challenge the increased restrictions on adults, but surely we are not going to throw all that out of the window—particularly after all the controversy on how we age-appropriately detain children who are already in this country—by adultifying migrant children, and some very vulnerable children at that.

There is also a practical consideration. If everyone who crossed the channel last year had been detained for 28 days, on 4 September 2022, no fewer than 9,161 people, including children, would have been detained. That amounts to four times the current detention capacity available in the United Kingdom. Where do the Government intend physically to place them—especially minors who need to be in age-appropriate accommodation?

I am also concerned about how the four Hardial Singh principles from 1983 apply to this part of the Bill. Those principles are that a person may be detained only for a period that is reasonable in all the circumstances, and that, if it becomes apparent that the Home Secretary will not be able to effect removal or deportation within a reasonable period, she should not seek to exercise the power of detention. The Government have to make up their mind about the grounds on which they think they need to detain children. Again, I understand the sensitivities—people claiming to be children may later turn out not to be and may abscond—but the Government need to have a clear idea about what they will do in a short space of time to justify detention when those people arrive. We do not have that level of detail or clarity in the Bill, so it is entirely incumbent on the Minister to give assurances to the Committee that children will not be disadvantaged in that way.

Amendment 143 would remove the provision enabling a person “of any age” to be

“detained in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

and would reapply the existing statutory time and location restrictions on the detention of unaccompanied children. That was good enough in 2014; I do not think that the way we should regard and treat vulnerable children has changed so that we need to change the law through the Bill.

Amendment 145 would remove the provisions that disapply the existing statutory time and location restrictions on the detention of children and their families. I do not think that unreasonable, but if the Government want to take issue with me, it is incumbent on them to say why they want to make the changes. I have gone along with most of the rest of the Bill. I have given the Government the benefit of the doubt on what they are going to do, on the detail that they will provide, and on the timing of safe and legal routes, but we need serious assurances by Report, and, I hope, some good signage from the Minister when he gets to his feet shortly, on why law on protections that children have been entitled to—safeguards that we have been proud to give them—needs to be changed in the way that the Government are proposing.

We all want to do the right thing by vulnerable children. Most of us would like to see safe and legal routes that, as I said yesterday, involve something equivalent to a Dubs II scheme, whereby genuinely unaccompanied minors in places of danger are brought to and given safe haven in the United Kingdom. I want to continue in that tradition. I want to ensure that we are offering safe passage and safe haven to genuinely vulnerable children. I do not want them to be penalised by the wording of the Bill in the way that they could be. I am happy to take assurances, but if I do not get them by Report, I do not think that I will be alone in wanting to press various amendments to force those assurances into the Bill.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

I stand today on behalf of the hundreds of constituents who have sent me emails and letters and on behalf of the children at St Dunstan’s Catholic Primary School, which is a school of sanctuary.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Forgive me: I should have reminded Members at the beginning of the debate that when we are in Committee, it is customary to either call me by name or address me as Madam Chair, rather than Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a very common mistake, don’t worry; I should have reminded Members at the beginning of the debate.

I call Tim Loughton.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Dame Rosie. I rise to speak to six amendments that stand in my name and those of right hon. and hon. colleagues: new clauses 13 and 19 and amendments 72 to 75. I am glad to hear the Minister refer to his support for safe and legal routes, because that is the basis of these amendments. I look forward to some warm words from him later on.

This is a very heated subject and a very controversial Bill, so I will start with something that I hope we can all agree on: coming across the channel in small boats is the worst possible way to gain entry to the United Kingdom. We need to be ruthless against the people smugglers who benefit from that miserable trade. We want to continue to offer safe haven for those genuinely escaping danger and persecution, and in a sustainable way. That is why safe and legal routes are the obvious antidote to that problem. The migration system, as it stands, is broken. Whatever we think about this Bill, it is only one part of the solution that we need to bring forward, and the Home Office needs to beef up the processing times and the removals of those who do not have a legitimate claim. We also need more return agreements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

The reality, as the Home Affairs Committee found when we were last in Calais in January, is that the French authorities do not arrest a lot of the people trying to cross the channel; they turn a blind eye. These people are therefore not registered and the authorities do not have a record of who many of them are. They only show an interest in arresting and recording somebody who has come from a country with whom they have a returns agreement, where there may be a reasonable chance to return them. Otherwise—surprise, surprise—the French authorities’ problem becomes our problem if those people then get into boats.

Those are things that I hope we all agree with across the House, whatever our stance on this Bill. We also need to challenge some assumptions. Not all asylum seekers coming across the channel have a credible asylum claim. We are told, “Other countries do more,” but when we look at the totality of the issue, and the amount of people to whom we offer safe haven and support outside of the United Kingdom in refugee camps—those people who just want to go back to their own countries—it is more generous than virtually any other country in the world. We need to look at the totality.

Coming to the UK is not always the appropriate solution for many people. The resettlement schemes that we have generously operated already, particularly with regard to Ukraine and Hong Kong passport holders, are potentially huge. In the case of Hong Kong, it could be up to 2.9 million people. We have also heard the criticism from the French that we are too generous. They describe us as “El Dorado”, which is why so many refugees apparently want to come across to the UK.

The other reality is that even if we wanted to, we cannot take an unlimited number. The fact that almost 10,000 Afghan refugees legally brought here after the airlift from Kabul in the summer before last—more than 18 months ago—are still in hotels is testament to the fact that we have an accommodation problem. Whatever we come up with, we need a system that is disciplined, orderly and sustainable so that we can make sure that people are processed quickly and put in appropriate accommodation, because hotels for young children for a sustained amount of time, be that with their families, let alone on their own, are frankly just not the most appropriate place for them to be.

[Wayne David]

Is it appropriate, in the hon. Gentleman’s view, that former RAF camps are now being used and planned to be used for migrants?

[Tim Loughton]

None of this is ideal, but when people arrive in their hundreds—one day last summer it was more than 1,000—and all of a sudden become the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government, there is a practical limitation on what accommodation is available physically to house them. That is why our hotels are being taken over and are full and why various military bases have been used, with mixed success. It is why the Government are having to look at other solutions. However, we have a serious problem accommodating our own constituents, as we all know, because of the shortage of local authority accommodation, and we just have to be realistic about how we can properly look after people coming across the channel.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

This is not just about illegal migration. The population of this country is growing in net terms, as a direct result of illegal and legal migration, by something like a quarter of a million a year. That cannot long be sustained. Over 10 years it is 2.5 million people, which is the size of many significant cities. That cannot go on, because the housing situation for all of those people is an insuperable challenge.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have made the point that whatever migration system we run needs to be effective, efficient and sustainable, but at the same time we need people to fill job vacancies in this country, and many of the people who have come here are self-sustaining. I had a meeting this afternoon with about 60 Hong Kong British national overseas passport holders who came here in flight from Hong Kong, and they are making a good go of starting a second life in this country. However we think we should operate migrant numbers, the numbers are not the important thing. It is being able to look after people safely and sustainably for all of our community that is the major consideration.

The other truth that is put about that we need to challenge is that the European convention on human rights is everything. If we look at the record of the judgments issued under the ECHR by the European Court of Human Rights in the last 10 years, we see that 47% of them—almost half—have not been complied with. In certain countries that figure is higher. For example, 61% of judgments again Spain from the European Court of Human Rights have not been complied with, and for Italy it is 58%, while for Germany it is 37%. In many cases—particularly France, where the figure is a little bit lower—they are mostly for non-compliance with immigration laws. So let us not try and kid ourselves that the measures in this Bill are in some way completely absurd and out of court compared with what other countries have been doing.

Having said all that, doing nothing is not an option. It allows people smugglers to continue the human misery. It is condoning bogus asylum seekers, and it is allowing those bogus asylum seekers to bump the queue of genuine asylum seekers to whom we do have a duty of care that the vast majority of people in this country want to see carried out. So we need to get the balance right on continuing our generous tradition of allowing safe haven for genuine asylum seekers escaping danger with much more robust action to clamp down on those who have no legitimate claim to be resident in the UK. They are gaming our system, taking advantage of the UK taxpayer’s generosity and, worst of all, queue-jumping over the genuine asylum seekers who need help.

This is where safe and legal routes and the main amendment I am putting forward today come in, and I will be prepared to press it to a vote unless I have some substantial reassurances from the Government, because this is nothing new and it is not rocket science. It is actually something that the Prime Minister has quite rightly committed to in principle. My new clause 13, which is the basis of the safe and legal routes amendments, would require safe and legal routes to be part of this legislation. The regulations referred to in the Bill would have to set out specific safe and legal routes by which asylum seekers can enter the United Kingdom in an orderly and sustainable way.

The routes specified must include any country-specific schemes that we have already. Specifically, we have routes for Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong, but we need additional ones. Additionality is key to this, because as the Bill stands, the Government could just say, “Well, we’ve got those safe and legal routes, and we can just tinker with those.” However, let us take the example of the 16-year-old orphan boy from east Africa —he is not from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong—who has a single relative legally settled in the United Kingdom. There are precious few opportunities for him to be able to come to the UK on a safe and legal route. It is in such cases that we need to offer an opportunity, capped in numbers and capped with all sorts of considerations. We need to offer such people a realistic opportunity that they may be able to get safe haven in the United Kingdom.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I very much support what the hon. Gentleman says. Indeed, I support the need for such amendments to this Bill, probing or otherwise, to clarify what a safe and legal route is and how such routes will operate, because that seems to be at the heart of whether this legislation can actually achieve anything that it claims to set out to do. Does he therefore agree with me that we need clarity, because this Bill does set out where it considers it is safe to be from and, by definition, everywhere not listed in proposed new section 80AA is unsafe? We therefore need clarity about what would be a safe and legal route from the locations not listed in that proposed new section, because otherwise we will end up with “safe” or “unsafe” being ill-defined in legislative terms, and that does not help anybody.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I have drawn up new clause 13 and the accompanying amendments in a way that is not overly prescriptive. It puts the onus back on the Government to come up with schemes, some of which will be safe and legal route schemes that we have run before. The family reunion scheme is something we have run for a long time, although it needs to be adapted outside of the Dublin conventions. I have also suggested a Dubs II scheme and, again, the Dubs scheme was very successful in bringing 483 unaccompanied single children from genuine danger zones safely to the United Kingdom. Those are the sorts of examples I mean. They do not need to create something completely new. We need to adapt what we already have.

That is why additionality is key. These need to be routes on which people from outside the four existing resettlement or asylum schemes can come here. The Government must set out those routes for both adults and children—I think most of us would agree that children need to be dealt with slightly differently—and the means by which those people can access those routes. It may be from the countries from which they are fleeing or from refugee camps, in a scheme like those we have had before jointly with the UNHCR. I think that is what has been mooted in the newspapers—it did not come from me—about 20,000 people being able to come here through agreement with the UNHCR, and that is another possibility. It may be through using reception centres that we have in other countries, including France, where a limited number could possibly apply, subject to a cap. Again, that is all for the Government to decide—I do not want to be overly prescriptive.

[Bob Seely]

As ever, my hon. Friend is making an incredibly interesting and important speech. There have been, in the last decade, 10 safe and legal routes, six of which are country-specific and four of which are general. Of the six, the Syrian one is now shut, but there are two for Afghanistan, two for Ukraine and one for Hong Kong, and there are four other non-specific safe and legal routes. If I understand correctly, he is arguing for a fifth safe and legal route. Can he explain and delineate how that fifth safe and legal route would be different from the other four that we already have?

[Tim Loughton]

Those four existing routes are country-specific for certain emergency situations that arose—for obvious reasons, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and the rather prolonged emergency we are seeing unfold in Hong Kong. There will be other such cases that come up, and I believe the Bill as it stands gives the Home Secretary the power to determine, if there is a new emergency in a certain country and a sudden wave of refugees genuinely fleeing danger to whom the UK Government may want to give a commitment, to enable us to take some of those people, and I think everybody would agree with that. However, in between such a country-specific scheme and the four existing country-specific schemes, the numbers able to come here are minimal. If we look at the just under 500,000 who have come here since 2015, we see that almost 400,000 of those are accounted for by those from Hong Kong and Ukraine alone.

[Bob Seely]

Apologies if I was not making myself clear. Out of those 10 schemes in the last decade, four are non-country-specific safe and legal routes. My hon. Friend is arguing for a fifth, an additional safe and legal route. While I am not arguing against his case, I am asking how his fifth safe and legal generalised route will be different from the other four we currently have, which are non-country specific. We also have six country-specific schemes, one of which—Syria—has been shut.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have given my hon. Friend two examples. The family reunion scheme, certainly in the terms in my new clause 19, is non-country specific. A Dubs II-type scheme is non-country specific. At the moment, if you are not country specific, you have had it, largely, particularly for young children. The numbers, I am afraid, do not add up.

There is another consideration that I should have mentioned earlier. We are told that everything used to be great and fine in terms of us being able to return failed asylum seekers to the EU and that it has all gone pear shaped since Brexit. In the last year that we were covered by the Dublin regulations and still within the terms of the EU, the UK tried to return 8,500 failed asylum seekers to the EU. Of those, 105 were admitted. So it did not work before. This is a long-standing problem, which we have not had any help in solving from our EU partners. That is why we need to take more proactive and robust action now and why the Bill, controversial though it is, is so necessary.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and then I will finish my comments.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument for additional safe and legal routes, but the Bill is designed to try to prevent illegal migration. Although I understand that those few people affected by his new safe and legal route may be deterred from illegal migration by the fact that they are part of that scheme, there will still be many other people who will not be. How will creating a few more safe and legal options for a small number of people prevent people coming across the channel who are not affected by those schemes?

[Tim Loughton]

We are not going to eradicate people coming in boats across the channel totally, unless the French agree to intercept and return them. However, we can limit it to those people who do not stand a credible chance of claiming asylum in the United Kingdom. One problem in the courts at the moment, with the many failed asylum claims that then go through the appeals process, is that there was no other way of getting here, other than on a boat. If the safe and legal route amendment, and everything that goes with it, goes through, that will not be an excuse because anybody could apply through a safe and legal route and, if they are turned down and then turn to a boat, that is not a defence.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend indulge me?

[Tim Loughton]

I will be very indulgent, but I know many other people want to speak.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am very grateful. My hon. Friend makes the most important point in this debate. Judges and tribunal chairs are looking for factual reasons on which to refuse applications. I cannot think of a better one than the availability of, in a controlled way, more safe and legal routes. At the moment, without further action, and without concurrent action from the Government in passing this Bill and creating safe and legal routes, we are opening ourselves up to the risk of more people making those claims and of not being able to control the situation in the way we all want.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful for that intervention from my right hon. and learned Friend, with his huge legal expertise and experience from his former roles. That is the point. We need to isolate the bogus asylum seekers who are paying people smugglers. We do that by making it clear that we are open to genuine cases of people fleeing danger, and there is a legitimate, practical, and usable route for them. If people do not qualify for that, they should not try to get in a boat because they stand no chance of having their claims upheld if they make it across. I am just trying to achieve a balance. If Members want the Bill to go through, we need to have safe and legal routes in it to make it properly balanced. If you do not like the Bill but you want safe and legal routes, you need to support the Bill to get those safe and legal routes. This is mutually beneficial to those on either side of the argument on the Bill.

New clause 19 outlines how a refugee family reunion scheme would work. It includes a wide definition of close family members, including people who are adopted. Again, this is nothing new but it is a generous scheme that would do what it says on the tin.

Amendment 74 is an important consideration. The Government have said that they want the Bill to go through to be able to clamp down on the small boats. I have no problem with that. There are some things in here that are not quite as moderate as I would like, but I think it is necessary for the Bill to go through so I am trying to improve it. However, the Government have said that they will consult on safe and legal routes—we need to consult on safe and legal routes because local authorities, and others, will bear the brunt of how we accommodate many of these candidates—and then come up with some safe and legal routes. That is not good enough. The two sides of the Bill must be contemporaneous. We must not to be able to bring in these tough measures until those safe and legal routes are operational so people can have the option to go down the safe and legal route, rather than rely on people smugglers.

The Government will say, “We need to consult.” Well, start that now because we need to consult with local authorities about how we get more people out of hotels now and into sustainable accommodation for the long term. The Government should be getting on with the consulting now, so that when the Bill eventually goes through—I suspect it may take a while to get through the other place—those safe and legal routes are up and running and ready to go. So amendment 74 is important.

Amendment 75 would add safe and legal routes as one of the purposes of the Bill in clause 1. Clause 1 is all about clamping down on illegal migration—quite right—but it should also be about the balance of providing those safe and legal routes. I want to put that in clause 1, at the start of the Bill. Amendments 72 and 73 are contingent on all of the above.

That is all I am trying to do. Lots of people are trying to misrepresent and cause mischief about the Bill, and in some cases on safe and legal routes. I will end on my own experience when I appeared on the BBC “Politics South East” two weeks ago. I was talking about safe and legal routes and I was challenged, “Why are you supporting this Bill when you were so keen on safe and legal routes and challenged the Home Secretary?” I said, “Because this Bill contains provisions for safe and legal routes.” It does. It talks about “safe and legal routes”, capping numbers and everything else. The following week on the same programme, with no recourse to me, the presenter read out an email from the Home Office, having got in contact with it, unbeknownst to me, to ask about my claim on safe and legal routes. The Home Office apparently replied:

“Nothing in the Bill commits the Government to opening new safe and legal routes or increasing the numbers.”

That was news to me, news to Home Office Ministers—[Laughter.] Hold on, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) may not be laughing in a minute. I was accused of being misleading. When I challenged that, it turned out that the Home Office communiqué actually said that the routes to be included as part of the approach set out for the new Bill would be set out in the regulations, which would depend on a number of factors, including the safe and legal routes that the Government offered at the time the regulations were prepared and, that, as the Prime Minister said, we would “get a grip” on illegal migration and then bring in more safe and legal routes. So actually that is provided for in the Bill.

The BBC completely misrepresented my comments and, I am glad to say, yesterday issued an apology and gave me a right of reply. Let us stick to the facts. Let us not get hung up on all the prejudice about this. We have a problem in this country, which is that last year just under 46,000 people came across in the most inappropriate and dangerous manner. We do not have the capacity to deal with people in those numbers, many of whom have unsustainable claims, and we have to get to grips with it. The Bill is a genuine attempt to get to grips with that issue. It would be much more palatable and workable if it contained a balance that has safe and legal routes written into it that come in at the same stage. I would challenge the Opposition to say that they have a better scheme for how we deal with this dreadful problem. Simply voting against all the measures in the Bill is not going to help anyone.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.