Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Alexander Stafford and Patrick Grady

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alexander Stafford]

I would not wish to comment on what is going on in their lordships’ minds, but clearly they do not care about the concerns of the average person in Rother Valley about the high levels of illegal immigration, which I hear about when I knock on doors. Their lordships clearly do not care about the people dying while trying to cross the channel. They clearly do not care about the cost to the public purse of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants coming over here. They clearly do not care about the everyday person in the street. Their lordships, ultimately, are not democratically elected and answerable to the people. We are, and that is the crucial point: we are the voice of the people, we are answerable to the electorate, we are answerable to our constituents, and we need to get this stopped.

There is so much more in the Lords amendments that will upset and disrupt the Bill, so I will touch on a few more of them. First, I want to talk about Lords amendments 4 and 5, which talk about whether Rwanda is a safe country. I would be very careful about some of the words used by Opposition Members to describe Rwanda. Fundamentally, Rwanda is a safe country. Not only are we in this House declaring it to be safe, but it is patently true. To say that Rwanda is not safe is a fundamentally colonialist attitude to other parts of the world. We are saying to another country, “Your country is not safe; your country is not good enough.” We on the Government Benches are saying that Rwanda is safe. The 1.4 million tourists who went to Rwanda last year—

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alexander Stafford]

Of course.

[Patrick Grady]

If Rwanda is such a wonderful place to be deported to, why would the prospect of being deported there be a deterrent?

[Alexander Stafford]

That is an interesting point. I am under no illusion that Rwanda is a great country, but I will tell the hon. Gentleman a country that is even better than Rwanda: the United Kingdom. So of course they want to come to Britain, because we are a better country. That does not mean that Rwanda is not safe, or that it should not be safe.

On Lords amendments 4 and 5, the Government have already completed a detailed assessment that Rwanda is a safe country. We need to accept the facts of that assessment and start to take even more action while the boat crossings are low. And they are low: they were down 36% last year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) mentioned, that is because of the other stuff we are doing such as the Albanian deal, which is working, and stopping the boats physically getting to the sources.

Hunger: East Africa and the Horn of Africa

Debate between Alexander Stafford and Patrick Grady

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady]

The right hon. Member is exactly right, and I think that key theme will emerge throughout the debate.

On Friday there was a virtual roundtable of aid and development agencies that work in the region, and those of us present heard directly from representatives of Tearfund, among other aid agencies, in Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, who described the reality of the situation on the ground. We heard from Manenji, who works with Oxfam in South Sudan, about the dead livestock that robs families and communities of their sources of income. We heard from Alec, who works with World Vision in Somalia, about the children who are losing out on education because their families have been displaced. We heard from John, who works with Action contra la Faim in Kenya, about how diseases such as cholera spread because there is inadequate sanitation. And we heard from Catherine, who works with the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, also in Kenya, who explained that some rains are arriving, but in quantities that are causing floods and damaging crops even further. Those extremes of weather are further exacerbating the situation—that was perhaps the clearest message from all those who contributed.

The hunger crisis is a climate crisis, and weather patterns have changed beyond all recognition, exactly as the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) said, becoming more extreme and less predictable. All the evidence shows that that is a result of pollution and carbon emissions pumped into the atmosphere by decades of past and ongoing industrial and commercial human activity in parts of the world that are not experiencing such extremes, or at least not experiencing their devastating consequences—in other words, so-called developed, western countries. The people who are most affected by climate change are those who have done least to cause it. That is the basic principle of climate justice, which is a concept, like that of climate emergency, that the UK Government do not appear to be willing to accept, let alone embrace or act on.

Other important structural causes have led to the hunger crisis, but they are also the result of decisions and actions taken by people—often by Governments—so they can be changed by making different decisions and taking different actions. The crisis in Ukraine has led to food price inflation around the world. In the UK, we have experienced inflation rates of about 10%, which has caused great and undeniable hardship to many of our constituents and among the poorest and most vulnerable in society. On Friday, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund told us about the effects of the inflation rate in Ethiopia, which is 30% and which affects people who are already trying to get by on the most basic of incomes and subsistence lifestyles.

Difficulties in ensuring the physical supply of grain, even grain delivered in the form of food aid, have also had a significant impact on the hunger crisis, which is why it was encouraging to hear from British International Investment about its investment in Somaliland to improve capacity at the port of Berbera.

The conflicts across the region compound the food crisis and begin to lead to a spiral, becoming both a cause and an effect of hunger. That has been particularly evident in Ethiopia in recent months. Decades of oppression in Eritrea, as we heard from Eritrea Focus, mean that information on the food security situation in that country is almost non-existent, although we can extrapolate from what is happening elsewhere. In recent days, the escalation of violence in Sudan has become a huge concern to us all, and the withdrawal of many aid agencies will simply drive more people to starvation. We must hope that the attention now being paid to what is happening in Sudan leads to long-term resolutions with respect to conflict and to food and nutrition systems.

In all this, gender is a critical factor. ActionAid has spoken of the importance of supporting women-headed households and the role that women play as key leaders in their communities, but they are also at risk of violence and exploitation; indeed, Tearfund referred in particular to child marriage, early pregnancy and prostitution. However, all those challenges are entirely the result of decisions and actions taken by individuals or Governments. There is nothing inevitable about the food crisis, and the stories we have heard, as well as the ones we are likely to hear during the debate, will demonstrate that. The crisis was entirely preventable, and it is eminently resolvable. Future crises are equally avoidable.

The UK Government and the international community need to take urgent action to respond to the acute emergency and to build resilience against further emergencies. First, the UK Government must simply up their game. The risks and dangers that were warned about when the Department for International Development was abolished and the aid budget cut are becoming a reality. As the right hon. Member for East Ham said, in 2017 the UK Government were able to provide more than £800 million to east Africa, which helped to stave off many of the worst impacts of looming famine and saved thousands of lives. There have been warnings about this crisis since 2020, but in the last financial year the UK’s contribution was just £156 million—a cut of 80% from what was made available last time round. That is completely disproportionate with respect to the overall cut in the aid budget.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I, too, visited Kenya earlier this year with Oxfam and the Coalition for Global Prosperity, and we could see the effects of famine. On the point about the finance and support for aid, does the hon. Member agree that it is about not just the amount of aid, but where it goes and how important it is that UK aid is channelled to local providers on the ground to provide emergency relief? Local organisations will have a better idea and a clearer system when it comes to where the funds should go and who actually needs them, whereas a multinational or even national organisation will not necessarily send them to the people who need them.

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That becomes even more important when the budget is squeezed. A local response and grassroots knowledge are absolutely critical in responding and building infrastructure. We heard that from the agencies, and I will reflect a little on that before the end of my contribution.

I think we will all welcome the announcement by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of a high-level pledging conference in New York on 24 May and the role the UK Government will play as a co-host. If the Government want to be taken seriously, they must lead by example. We will need not just announcements, but disbursements of scaled-up aid that will encourage other countries to do the same. There are already questions about exactly when and how the UK will disburse the pledge of £1.5 billion to the Nutrition for Growth fund. I know that Lord Oates, in another place, is paying particular attention to that through his United Against Hunger and Malnutrition initiative.

As the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) said, how aid funds are spent makes a big difference to both immediate response and resilience building. We will all have heard from non-governmental organisations on the ground about the importance of locally led interventions and that grassroots, community-based organisations are almost always best placed to know exactly what support is needed to help people in their area.

Aid in the form of cash transfers and social security empowers and dignifies individuals, even in the most difficult circumstances. Ensuring that children can continue to go to school and receive a meal while they are at school is perhaps one of the best examples of both meeting immediate need and investing in the future. Refugees International highlighted a study by the United States Agency for International Development that demonstrates that

“a more proactive response to avert humanitarian crises could reduce the cost to international donors by 30%, whilst also protecting billions of dollars of income and assets for those most affected.”

I am delighted to see that the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), is with us today. The Committee’s report on food security is tagged to the debate on the Order Paper, and it recommends that the Government work to

“empower the Global Alliance for Food Security to develop international solutions to regional food security challenges.”

The report spoke particularly about the pivotal role of sustainable, smallholder farming and agriculture, undoubtedly based on exactly the kind of excellent evidence from organisations on the ground that have provided background briefing for today’s debate.

Given what is happening in Sudan, it is understandable that the Minister for Development cannot be here in person. He has taken a strong interest in this issue, and he and other Ministers have spoken about how they need and want to make the reduced aid budget as effective as possible. I think he feels the pain of many of us in Parliament and beyond who know and understand the importance of international development at the damage done to the aid budget, to the painstaking cross-party consensus built up around it and to the reputation the UK earned as a result. He might even look a little enviously at the vision outlined by the SNP for an independent Scotland, where 0.7% of GNI is a floor, not a ceiling, for aid spending. As Ministers say and we know, for now the reduced funds must be made to work smarter and harder.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Alexander Stafford and Patrick Grady

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

I echo the words of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith); there is a small amount of consensus on the concession the Government have made today towards members of the Chagossian community. However, if the Government are at long last willing to listen to the House of Lords to correct that historical injustice, why are they not willing to listen to it on all the other points? It appears to be the exception that proves the rule.

We in the SNP hold no torch for their lordships’ House, but for those who are defenders of the Lords and stand up for the check it is supposed to provide on the decisions of the elected Chamber, why is everything else being dismissed out of hand? Why are the Government not willing to accept Lords amendment 5 and put the 1951 refugee convention into the Bill? They say they accept the convention and always act in accordance with—although of course the reality is very different. There is a gap between their rhetoric about respecting the convention and the reality that they want to turn arriving in the UK from a war zone into a crime.

That is why the House should also support Lords amendments 6 and 11. Ministers have yet to explain, despite having been asked several times in this debate, how the UK, which is surrounded by water, could ever possibly be the first safe country of arrival for someone seeking asylum without proper paperwork. Political human rights defenders from Eritrea are not provided with exit visas and passports by their Government. They have to run across the border at night in case they get shot, and then hope to God that they can get to a safe country such as the United Kingdom, where there is already an expat community. But then this freedom-loving, democracy-defending, global-Britain-is-great Tory Government want to turn them into criminals, which is exactly what they were fleeing in the first place. Exactly how putting asylum seekers into the prison system represents value for money for taxpayers is completely beyond me.

That is why the House should vote to retain Lords amendment 7 extending the right to work to asylum seekers. As if the current system is not dehumanising enough for individual asylum seekers, being denied the right to work actively harms wider society. Let them pay tax. Let them contribute to our economy and industries that are crying out for staff. Let them use their skills and talents to benefit everyone. I believe that even some Tory Back Benchers have finally been persuaded of this. I pay particular tribute to the Maryhill Integration Network, based in Glasgow North, for championing this amendment and becoming not just a provider of vital services to the local migrant population but an authoritative national voice on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

The House should also support the amendment tabled by Lord Alton, one of the finest minds and voices in the upper Chamber, that seeks to ensure that applicants for asylum who are at risk of being killed in a genocide can claim asylum in the UK. It provides exactly the kind of safe and legal route the Government say they want to see, and it was supported by former Tory Cabinet Ministers in the House of Lords. Yet once again the Government want to reject it. It is clear that this Government are determined to strip away from the Bill any vestige of compassion or recognition of vulnerability on the part of asylum seekers that the Lords have managed to shoehorn into it. Well, I hope the Government are made to work for it. I hope we divide on every single amendment before us and that when they have to cancel their dinners, receptions and all their other engagements this evening, they think about what it must be like to travel on a small boat and to be in the hands of people-traffickers. No one chooses that. No one is so desperate to come to the Tories’ land of milk and honey. People are forced into this kind of thing.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

rose—

[Patrick Grady]

I will not give way because I am out of time, and this Government are out of ideas and out of compassion, as they have shown in recent weeks in response to the current situation. People in Scotland and people across the United Kingdom do not want to put up barriers to people fleeing war, famine and disasters caused by a climate emergency that we in the west created. They want to show solidarity and compassion. They want to say it loud and say it clear—that refugees are welcome here.