Alison Thewliss
Main Page: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I would like to put on the record yet again that the SNP wholeheartedly opposes the principle of the Rwanda plan, of offshoring people as if they were some kind of tiresome trash that the UK does not want to deal with—a plan that amounts simply to state-sponsored people trafficking. It is not just about the money, as Labour set out in its motion today, as egregious and obscene a waste of money as this is; it is about how we treat our fellow human beings. These are people who have experienced torture, have seen their families murdered and are running from horrors that we are fortunate never to have known. They deserve much better than being yeeted to Rwanda, a country that the Supreme Court has found is both unsafe and without the administrative capacity to take on the sensitive role the UK Government are putting on it.
According to the latest UNHCR data, the majority of those who flee—69%—stay in neighbouring countries. Low and middle-income countries host 75% of the world’s refugees and other people in need of international protection. Those who do make it to our shores more often than not already have ties to the UK—of family, language or the long legacy of war and empire. UK Ministers often make the wild assertion that the 110 million displaced people around the world are somehow all making their way to Dover and that the Rwanda plan is some kind of deterrent. That is not an assertion based in reality.
Alison Thewliss
I would like to make some progress because, as Mr Deputy Speaker said, we are quite short of time.
To take Afghanistan as example, 6 million Afghans have been classed by UNHCR as refugees, of whom 91% have stayed in neighbouring countries, with 3.5 million in Iran and just over 2 million in Pakistan. There are 239,600 in Germany, 71,200 in France and just 12,200 in the UK—a mere 0.2% of the total.
Alison Thewliss
I have just made the point that, of those 110 million people, a very tiny proportion actually come here. I also point out to the hon. Member that putting a specific numbered cap on things has not worked either. I remember the Government saying they were going to get net migration down to the tens of thousands, and that has not worked out. So numbers are not worth speaking about in this debate in the way he thinks they are. That is a spurious argument and he should learn to look much harder at the issue, rather than putting a very basic interpretation on it.
The hon. Gentleman ought to know that Afghans have consistently made up a very high proportion of the people coming across the channel in small boats. As I have pointed out repeatedly in this place to various Ministers at various times, that is a sign of the failure of the supposed safe and legal routes they have set up. For every Afghan who has arrived on a resettlement scheme, around 90 have arrived by small boat. Just imagine if the UK Government schemes were not so riddled with incompetence. No Afghan would need to risk setting foot on a dinghy, and no one would need to sell everything they own, be exploited, beg, borrow and steal, and be bonded in debt to people smugglers if the Government had schemes that worked.
It bears repeating that the only way for people to claim asylum is to get themselves to the UK. They cannot claim in an embassy overseas, and airlines and ferries will not board them if they do not have the requisite visa to get here. Small boats are very much a last resort, not an easy option, and their use has increased as the routes via lorries and other means have become more difficult.
Ministers talk about the expense of the asylum system, but that has come about largely as a result of their own incompetent administration. They have downgraded roles in asylum casework and created a work culture so toxic that employees do not stay, with a lack of expertise and unmanageable caseloads. The issues with the backlog are entirely of their own making, and they deserve no brownie points at all for attempting to fix what they broke. We know that the Home Office’s new asylum backlog stands just shy of 100,000 people who still require to have their cases processed. I see those folk at my surgeries every week, and they certainly do not perceive much of an improvement from the Home Office, despite the Minister’s spin.
Ministers appear to have massaged the figures to make the legacy backlog reduce from 92,000 to just under 5,000, but a cynic might wonder why around a third of those backlog cases are not actually decisions made, but withdrawals. Free Movement has said:
“The heavy use of withdrawals to reduce the number of pending applications does make it look as though the backlog clearance was an exercise in number management more than anything else.”
Ministers cannot tell us where those 30,000 people are within the system, and it is also worth noting that the first-tier immigration tribunal has seen a 20% increase in outstanding appeals, which now stand at 31,000.
I also note the further cost to other parts of the immigration system due to the political focus on dealing with the backlog. For example, I have heard increasing instances of international student visas not being processed in time for the start of term, with people having to defer their studies because they have missed so much of their course that they cannot turn up and study as they had planned to.
For those who recall my mention in the previous debate of a Sudanese constituent whose wife has been shot in the leg while waiting a year and a half for a family reunion application, I wrote to the Home Secretary on the subject and finally received a letter from a civil servant saying there are
“considerable delays in family reunion decision making at this time”
and that
“applications are being considered outside of the 60 working day service standard”.
In fact, 60 working days would have been quite good for that woman, because had her application been processed in time at the time, she would have been out of Sudan before the current conflict broke out. Now she waits in a very unsafe situation for a Minister to make progress on this matter. How long must she and others wait?
The former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), even admitted on TV in August that processing asylum claims quickly
“just encourages more people to come”.
Of course he has never presented evidence to back up that assertion. If delays of several years are a feature, not a bug, Home Office Ministers are on shaky ground when they girn about the cost of keeping asylum seekers in hotels. They have set the system up to work in this way.
Quite aside from the eye-watering £8 million a day—over £3 billion a year—that it costs to house asylum seekers in inadequate hotel accommodation, there is a human cost to keeping people in limbo. The asylum seekers I listen to want to be able to work, contribute and rebuild their lives. They are skilled and talented people with a lot to give to their communities, and they are grateful for the opportunity, but as long as they are kept out of the labour market and prevented from working, they lose their skills and confidence, and their mental health deteriorates. I have seen far too many people at my advice surgeries who cannot understand a system that treats them with such disdain.
A recent Scottish Government paper draws on analysis from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which suggests that granting people who are seeking asylum in Scotland the right to work would add £30 million per year on average to the Scottish economy if it were granted immediately on arrival, or £16 million per year if it were granted after a six-month waiting period—tax revenues increase and support costs are reduced. Only a Government so wedded to a toxic ideology would refuse to accept such a logical position.
It is stranger still that that persists because, as we in this place know, all policies come through the Treasury. The Prime Minister himself apparently voiced concerns regarding the cost of the Rwanda policy during his time as Chancellor. It was reported that he wished
“to pursue smaller volumes initially, 500 instead of 1,500”
in the first year of the scheme, and
“3,000 instead of 5,000 in years two and three”.
The papers, seen by the BBC, also suggested that he was
“reluctant to fund so-called ‘Greek-style reception centres’, sites where migrants could be housed, rather than being put up in hotels which were said to be costing £3.5m a day at that point, the documents suggest. They say, the ‘Chancellor is refusing to fund any non-detained accommodation, eg Greek-style reception centres, because hotels are cheaper’.”
We can see that clearly from the example of the Bibby Stockholm, which, at over £22 million, is more expensive per night than putting people in hotels. Neither the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), nor the director general for migration and borders at the Home Office could vouch for the value for money of the vessel or provide comparative figures when they came to the Home Affairs Committee in December. The private companies that provide such accommodation—Mears, Serco, Clearsprings, Corporate Travel Management and the rest—are raking it in. Misery is lucrative.
Home Office Ministers often talk up the nebulous concept of deterrence, but oddly enough, they provide little evidence to back it up. We know from those papers seen by the BBC that the then Chancellor did not believe that the deterrent would work, but now that he is Prime Minister, he will chuck any amount of money into the same vague concept. The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration, the hon. and learned Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), said that the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill was the toughest Bill ever—well, since the last one, and the one before that, neither of which have worked, and some of which has not been implemented.
Free Movement has published a useful graph indicating that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023 have not had any deterrent effect on the figures. There is no evidence to suggest that the new Rwanda legislation will be any different. No wonder the Home Secretary is reported to have called it “batshit”. It will not even work; we know that because the Home Office has earmarked at least £700 million to manage small boats until 2030, which it would not do if it expected the boats to stop coming—it is ludicrous.
As well as being illegal and immoral, the Rwanda scheme is eye-wateringly expensive. The UK Government’s own figures suggest that removing each individual to Rwanda would cost £63,000 more than keeping them in the UK. If the Government were to send every asylum seeker who arrived last year, it would cost £7.7 billion. Do Conservative Members truly believe that that is a price worth paying, particularly when people are struggling to feed themselves during a cost of living crisis?
Given the absurd costs, the Home Office has been understandably reticent to provide more details of the scheme. Permanent secretary Sir Matthew Rycroft initially provided details of the £140 million paid—£120 million through an economic transformation and integration fund, and a separate £20 million to cover initial set-up—but told the Home Affairs Committee that he could not provide details of further payments as that was “commercially sensitive” information and would only be released in the annual report and accounts each year. He was then forced into disclosing further costs in a letter to the Public Accounts Committee, in which he outlined that a further £100 million was paid to Rwanda in April last year, with another payment of £50 million due this year.
During the debate on the Rwanda Bill, the Home Secretary confirmed that the deal with Rwanda also included further payments of £50 million in 2025 and £50 million in 2026, bringing the total cost of the scheme to nearly £400 million without a single asylum seeker having been sent there. That is a cost of about £130 million per Home Secretary who has been to Rwanda.
A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that as of last month, the UK Government have spent £2.1 million defending the scheme in the courts. With new legal challenges to the Bill and the treaty, more costs to the taxpayer are surely yet to come. All the time, while this cruel posturing continues, the number of people waiting for asylum decisions grows, safe and legal routes have not emerged and have been closed down, and Home Office staff are left without the resources they need. All in all, it is an expensive distraction from the dull and boring work of governing well.
As it is Labour’s debate, I want to focus briefly on its plans. As the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) highlighted in his question, the shadow Home Secretary did not rule out offshoring people should Labour be in government, so I ask the Labour party whether it is the cost of offshoring that it objects to, or the principle. I was particularly interested in the papers released by the National Archives over Christmas, including the paper presented by Jonathan Powell to the Blair Government entitled “Asylum: The Nuclear Option”, which suggested interning people on Mull or the Falkland Islands and deporting people to Turkey and Kenya. When officials from the Home Office warned that those measures would fall foul of the UK’s international obligations to refugees, the Prime Minister’s handwritten note read
“Just return them. This is precisely the point. We must not allow the ECHR to stop us dealing with it.”
Twenty years on, that is chillingly reminiscent of the current Conservative Government.
Back in 2003-4, Labour was also trying to find a way of offshoring people to Tanzania, and it has been reported that it has recently been consulting with the architects of that plan. If Labour still plans to offshore people, I ask how many, on what terms, and at what cost? How can it possibly be cost-effective to send people halfway around the world, only to bring them back if their case is successful? When Full Fact asked Lord Blunkett about those historic plans, he said that he had
“looked at a system for processing appeals for failed asylum seekers in other safe countries but rejected it as impractical”,
so is Labour for or against offshoring, and is that in principle, or on the basis of cost? Will it categorically rule out offshoring, or is it prepared to sell out the world’s most vulnerable just to get Labour over the threshold of No. 10?
It does not need to be this way—everything that has happened has been a political choice. This is about our duties and obligations in the world; about the European convention on human rights, which protects all of our rights; and about the refugee convention, which treats others as we would expect to be treated if a catastrophe happened on our own doorstep. Scotland wants none of these cruel, inhumane plans. The Scottish Government have published papers setting out our direction of travel on this issue, which I commend to all those who are listening. The Scotland we seek would take her duties to the world seriously: the spirit of Kenmure Street tells us that these are our neighbours and our friends, and we must do our part to see that they are safe.
The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)
Oh, how much I enjoyed the smile on the shadow Minister’s face as he wound up. I am delighted to have the opportunity to wind up this debate. My only disappointment, perhaps even slight sadness, is that this motion is more about process than it is about substance. On the substance, what we have not heard from those on the Opposition Benches is the cost of not acting. There is the financial cost: the illegal migration costs to the British taxpayer, amounting to billions of pounds a year, including £8 million a day for emergency housing, pressures on public services and more. There is also the human cost, the moral case for our Rwanda policy—I will turn to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) in a few moments—and the compassionate case for our Rwanda policy. How many more lives must be lost in the channel before Opposition parties join us in our mission to end those dangerous journeys?
The Rwanda policy is one part of an intensive and focused strategy for tackling illegal migration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) pointed out, the plan is delivering. Small boat crossings are down by 36%—a reduction that has been achieved even as numbers rise elsewhere in Europe. We know that there is more to do, and the Rwanda policy will give us a powerful tool to complete this mission.
I will turn to some of the Back-Bench contributions, but I will start with the SNP Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). I did not disagree with everything she said.
Michael Tomlinson
The hon. Lady threatens to resign, even as I say that. I knew she would be disappointed because I agreed with her on this point: she rightly challenged Labour on what its plan was. She is right to ask those questions, which have been repeated across the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was absolutely right to set out that this is a complex and challenging issue. There is no lack of robust scrutiny from him, not least during the course of Home Affairs Committee sittings. He rightly pointed out the lack of credibility from Labour—that there is no plan or alternative put forward. I look forward to further scrutiny from him, and he rightly said that the motion is a Labour gimmick and con.
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) addressed the substance of the motion and was credited for that by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland). What she did not set out was what Labour’s plan was in the alternative. My right hon. and learned Friend reminded us that this was a process debate, not a debate of substance. He rightly said that when one does not have much of a policy, one relies on process debates and Humble Addresses—how right he was. This is a global issue, and Labour’s one policy is that even if Rwanda works, it would scrap it. My hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) set out his experience, and I treat it very seriously not only because he is my neighbour, but because he is an MP with a port in his constituency. He put it well when he said that the motion is a substitute for having a policy, and how right he was.
I do not have time to delve into each and every one of the interventions by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly). He rightly commented that the debate is a gimmick, but he also set out quite seriously the deterrent effect that is part of our Rwanda scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble set out the fact that some of the most vulnerable people we are talking about are being coerced by criminal gangs. She was right to state both that and the moral case for our policy.
The Government have a plan—this Rwanda plan—for deterring those dangerous journeys, but what again is the Opposition’s plan? They do not have one. Their only reported plan is one that would increase the number of asylum seekers to this country, by allowing them to make claims from other countries. We do not accept that proposition. It would mean taking people from safe countries where they can already seek refuge from persecution, and there is no way that we could accommodate each and every one of those claims. What is the Opposition’s plan?
As we have heard during the course of this debate, Labour has voted against our measures 86 times, but we will not be deterred. We will do right by the decent, law-abiding people of this country, who want and expect secure borders and an effective immigration system. When people with no right to be here know that they will not be able to stay, they will stop coming.
We know the deterrent effect because we have seen it with Albania. A year ago the Prime Minister secured the deal with Albania. Planes took off and more than 5,000 people have been returned to Albania. The deterrent effect has worked and arrivals are down by more than 90%. It has worked with Albania; it will work with Rwanda. Illegal migration costs lives. It costs billions of pounds a year. We need to end it, we will end it and we will stop the boats.
Question put.