Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Aaron Bell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I shall try to be brief in my reply, Mr Speaker.

The shadow Home Secretary asks why numbers are so high. Global migration has been growing strongly, and he will be aware that 40,000 people—a far larger number than have crossed the channel—have crossed the Mediterranean. Moreover, during the coronavirus pandemic we have seen displacement from other illegal entry routes, such as lorries and the use of fake documents on aeroplanes, into the maritime route, and we have been successful at preventing illegal immigration through the juxtaposed controls. The situation has been compounded by unusually benign weather conditions in the English channel over the summer.

The shadow Home Secretary asks about safe routes. Since 2015, the Government have provided almost 20,000 resettlement places—a number that dwarfs the 3,000 that he mentions. Since 2010, some 44,000 children have been offered protection of one form or another by the United Kingdom. He says our approach lacks compassion, but I direct him to those figures. I also remind him that last year, 2019, this country received more applications from unaccompanied asylum-seeking children than any other European country, and all of them have been generously looked after while their claims are processed.

The shadow Home Secretary asks about children. When children arrive, they go straight into social care and are extremely carefully looked after while their claims are processed. This Government certainly need no lessons in compassion. Our asylum system is extremely compassionate and extremely generous, and the numbers speak for themselves.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his statement. May I impress upon him the strength of feeling on this issue in Newcastle-under-Lyme and elsewhere? It is not because my constituents lack compassion or humanity; it is because they recognise that what is going on is not only illegal but represents unfair queue jumping. I spoke to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) about this issue earlier; she has been working all summer to bring this issue to the Minister’s attention. Does he agree that what is currently happening is in essence a form of asylum shopping, wherein people claim asylum in the first country they reach and then move to another and claim asylum again? They keep claiming asylum—instead of securing asylum in the first safe country, they keep coming to the UK, where they believe we have a more favourable asylum system. Does he agree that asylum shopping needs to end?

[Chris Philp]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) for her tireless campaigning on this issue. She has done a huge amount of work in this policy area. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) is absolutely right: people who are genuinely seeking a safe refuge could and should claim that refuge in the first country they reach. The people arriving in Dover yesterday and today have left from France, which is a safe country with a well-functioning asylum system. If their principal objective was to seek refuge from persecution, they could easily have done that in France or, indeed, any of the other countries through which they passed before they arrived in Calais.