Illegal Migration Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Listening to the hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall), it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that somehow or other we have gone back in time. In much the same way as people in the 19th century spoke about the deserving and the undeserving poor, today we have landed in a place where we have the deserving and the undeserving desperate.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the number of men who crossed the channel, but he may not be aware that 7,177 of those who crossed the channel last year were children. The characterisation that he and others have made today is not borne out by the statistics provided by the Home Secretary and the Home Office itself.

There are many different reasons why hon. Members should vote against the Bill this evening. We may choose to vote against it because of concerns about legality, both in respect of our domestic legislation and our international obligations under treaties. It is difficult for those on the Treasury Bench to deliver lectures to those in Beijing in relation to adherence to international law if we do not live up to the same standards ourselves. As the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, we can choose to reject the Bill on the basis of the impact it will have on our world-leading modern-day slavery legislation. We can even reject it because it lacks a basic sense of British compassion. I was a Minister in the Government that abandoned detention for children for immigration purposes, and I am horrified to see the Conservative party seeking to restore it today.

If compassion and concern for the rule of law are not enough to speak to the values of hon. Members, I can offer them one further reason, which is simply that it will not work. It will not achieve the deterrent effect that it seeks to claim. We have been told this before. We were told that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was going to be the Act that would solve the problem, but what has happened since that came into force? The numbers have gone up and up.

The truth is that many people who deserve and are entitled to asylum at present will not get it if the Bill passes. And what will be the consequence of that? They will be sent away and many of them will die. That is why this House should reject the Bill tonight.

Illegal Migration Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

I rise to speak to amendment 182 in my name and the names of other hon. and right hon. Members. It makes a simple point, which I hope the Minister can accept.

The Bill focuses on those who arrive in the United Kingdom in the circumstances described in clause 2 of the Bill. Essentially, it is those who arrive in the UK after 7 May this year without leave to do so and who have passed through safe countries on the way. The Bill not only provides for their removal and detention, but imposes lifelong consequences on those who enter in this way, including permanent exclusion from the granting in future of various types of short-term entry into the UK, of indefinite leave to remain and of citizenship—all set out in clauses 29 to 34.

Despite the Bill’s clear and important deterrence objective, its effect is not as simple as, “break the rules and you’re banned for life”. It recognises, rightly in my view, that exceptions have to be made for exceptional cases. In relation to all the future applications that I have mentioned, the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to be able to grant the application, if it is necessary to do so, to comply with the UK’s obligations under the European convention on human rights, or under other international agreements to which the UK is a party.

Given the focus of yesterday’s discussions on removing the ECHR from decision making in other parts of the Bill, I will not dwell on the significance of the ECHR in this part of it. However, I will perhaps say in passing that the Government may want to reflect on how attitudes to ECHR obligations in different parts of the Bill now fit together.

My focus though is on the other ground for allowing, in exceptional cases, the granting of a shorter-term entry clearance to those otherwise excluded from that because they had previously entered the UK under the terms of this Bill. That is when the Secretary of State considers that

“there are compelling circumstances which apply in relation to the person which mean that it is appropriate to do so.”

That is in proposed new section 8AA of the Immigration Act 1971 introduced through clause 29(3)(3).

In relation to circumstances and applications for some entry clearances, the Government think that it is reasonable, beyond what is necessary to meet their international obligations, to allow some applications in “compelling circumstances” from those who would otherwise be refused. I think that that is very sensible. However, such provision for granting applications in “compelling circumstances” does not exist in relation to applications for citizenship, and it seems to me that that is not sensible.

Incidentally, I must confess that I have noticed too late that the “compelling circumstances” exception is also not in the Bill in relation to applications for indefinite leave to remain, and I should really have tabled an amendment to the same effect regarding them at clause 29(3)(5). I hope the Minister will indulge me and consider that point, too.

My amendment 182 would add the ability for the Secretary of State to grant, exceptionally, an application for citizenship where there are “compelling circumstances”. So, what might such “compelling circumstances” be? As I say, the consequences of an entry into the UK under the terms of the Bill are lifelong. The entry in question may take place at any age, which means that someone brought into the UK on a small boat within the terms of the Bill as a baby—something over which, of course, they would have had no say—would be excluded from entering and remaining in the UK, including as a citizen, at any age thereafter, except in the exceptional circumstances as defined in the Bill.

For example, that person who arrived first as a baby could not, 20 or 30 years later, become a naturalised UK citizen as a result of marriage to a UK national. Such a scenario would, I think, be likely to constitute compelling circumstances and the Secretary of State should have the power to grant citizenship in such cases.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is making an interesting and worthwhile point, but in practical terms, knowing as we do the ruthless efficiency of the Home Office, how likely does he think it is that it would ever marry up that baby coming to this country without papers with the person seeking to come 20 years later?

[Sir Jeremy Wright]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point, but I think we have to pass legislation in this place that assumes a degree of competence on the part of all Government Departments, and we must do that with straight faces throughout. In any event, it is important that Secretaries of State, as I know he would recognise, have the powers they need to do the right thing in the right circumstances. That is what I am seeking to provide the Secretary of State with here.

Of course it is right to say that such cases would be rare, but I believe the discretion should exist to deal with them when citizenship is applied for, or indeed when indefinite leave to remain is applied for, as it is when shorter-term leave to enter is sought. That is what my amendment will achieve, and I hope the Government will be able to accept the force of it.

Finally, let me say this: if this Bill is to succeed in its objectives, it must have both political and legal credibility. I agree with those who said yesterday that such credibility depends on having clearly available, safe and legal routes for entry to the UK in parallel with the sanctions this Bill imposes on those who do not use them. I look forward to what the Government will bring back on this point on Report, but the Bill’s sanctions will only have credibility if they allow for the fair treatment of exceptional cases. I hope my amendment will improve the Bill in that regard.

[Mr Carmichael]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright). To pick up on his last point, the truth of the matter is that we do not need legislation for safe and legal routes. If I thought for one second that the Government were acting in good faith when they made references to safe and legal routes, I would have a lot more time for the contents of this Bill, but I see no evidence of that good faith. He and his right hon. and hon. Friends may have to reflect on that when they consider their position at later stages of the Bill. Everything in this Bill is all about electioneering and politics; it has nothing to do with the creation of a safe and legal route or a workable system of migration, or indeed with stopping the small boats coming across the channel, as we all want to do.

I particularly enjoyed the contributions from the right hon. Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I served in government with the right hon. Lady for five years, and I do not think we need to wait for the 30-year release of papers to learn that relations between her and some in my party were not always easy in that time. Having said that, equally we do not need to wait for the 30-year release of papers to know that relations between her and some in her own party, possibly in the Treasury and No. 10, were not always easy in those years.

Of course, relationships in Government are not always easy. However, listening to the right hon. Lady’s speech today and her forensic dissection of those parts of this Bill that impact on the Modern Slavery Act that she brought through, I found myself almost weeping with nostalgia for her time in the Home Office—for the intellectual rigour, the political substance and the determination to do what was right by some of the most vulnerable people living among us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

And the evidence.

[Mr Carmichael]

And the evidence. The lack of evidence and impact assessments runs like a silver thread through the Bill. Have the impact assessments been done? Will they ever be done? If they have been done, will they be published? The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) made much of that in his speech, and he was absolutely right to do so. I was tempted to intervene on him to say, “Hold on a second here, man. You shouldn’t be going so fast; you should allow the Minister to get to his feet and tell us the position.” But the Minister did not do so then, and I suspect that he will not do so now, either. There have been times when I have seen Ministers on the Treasury Bench look more uncomfortable than the Minister for Immigration did when listening to the speeches of his right hon. Friends, but I am struggling to think of when that might have been.

The points that I will focus on relate to the question of detention and, in particular, the detention of children. The detention of children is something that I thought we had seen the back of. Although that initiative was driven by my former colleague, Sarah Teather, when she was the Minister with responsibility for young people, I again pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who did so much to support it in the Home Office. It was an absolute stain on our country that we kept children locked up in immigration removal centres such as Dungavel in Scotland.

I remember visiting Dungavel—it must have been in 2007 or 2008. I also remember, I have to say, successive Home Office and Immigration Ministers in the then Labour Government standing up at the Dispatch Box and saying that I was a bleeding-heart liberal, and that this was just something that we had to live with and nothing could be done. Of course, as we know, there were things that could be done, and they ultimately were done—we did them five years later.

I think it tells us quite a lot about the journey that the Conservative party has been on since those years in 2011 and 2012 that the Government feel it necessary to reintroduce detention for children. We have had 10 years without it now, and what have the bad consequences of that been? I do not see any. Nobody is saying that it has caused a massive increase or spike in any particular problems, but now, for the sake of sheer political positioning, we are going to return to a situation in which children will be placed behind razor wire in places such as Dungavel.

[Robert Jenrick]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister is sitting there shaking his head. If he wants to intervene and tell me I am wrong about this, I am more than happy to take his intervention.

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to do so, or to answer more fully later when I make my remarks. It is undoubtedly true that we face a serious situation today where the number of unaccompanied minors coming into the country over the channel has increased fourfold since 2019. That places a great strain on our system, and we need ways to ensure that where those people are age-assessed and may ultimately be decided not to be minors, they are held in appropriate detained accommodation. That is one of the issues we are seeking to tackle with this part of the Bill.

[Mr Carmichael]

I hope that the Minister gets a hold of Hansard tomorrow, reads what he has just said and, as my mother used to say to me, takes a long, hard look at himself, because the idea that that is a justification for locking up children is absolutely disgraceful. For him to try to draw and to invent a causal link where none exists is a consistent line of the way this Government act. It is the same way that they tried to draw a causal link between the Modern Slavery Act and those coming in small boats—it just does not exist.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. The current proposal in the Bill is that unaccompanied minors coming here to claim asylum will spend the balance of their childhood here knowing that the day they become 18, the Home Secretary will have an obligation to remove them from the country. Is that not an unconscionable way for any Government to treat children?

[Mr Carmichael]

“Unconscionable” is one of the more polite and measured terms that we could use about it. I reflect on the fact that when I visited Dungavel in 2007 or 2008, my own children were about six and 10 years old. The staff in Dungavel did a phenomenal job to mitigate the horrors of what they were dealing with, but at the end of the day, we were keeping children behind a razor wire, lockdown institution, and that was downright inappropriate and unacceptable. Nobody will ever persuade me that we should treat any child differently from the way in which we would want to treat our own.

[Stella Creasy]

The fact that the Minister has just said on the record that it is okay to incarcerate minors—another word being “children”—because we think some of them may not be children reflects why we need to clarify the safeguarding and welfare responsibilities of all public agencies that deal with these children. Everybody is a child until the age of 18 in international law. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he supports new clause 18, to ensure parity in those responsibilities and put beyond doubt the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State and Ministers to look after every child equally well in this country?

[Mr Carmichael]

It will come as no great surprise to the hon. Lady that I do. That brings me to thinking about what we do here. There is a danger that those of us who follow the evidence and actually care about what will happen if this dreadful piece of legislation is ever implemented disappear down the rabbit hole of trying to improve, amend and mitigate it. We have all tabled dozens—hundreds, some of us—of amendments, but this piece of the Bill has simply to be excised. I will be seeking to divide the House on clause 11 stand apart, because, frankly, there is no mitigation and no polishing of this—I avoid the vulgarity, but everyone knows what I am talking about. There is no way we can polish and improve on something that is so fundamentally removed from the way we would tolerate our own children being treated.

Earlier, we were talking about returning people. I was privileged yesterday to meet a group of Hongkongers, who are among that privileged group of people who came here by a safe and legal route. They still have their problems, of course: their journey did not end when they arrived at Heathrow, and they still have to deal with the trauma of leaving friends, family and others behind in circumstances where they would ordinarily have chosen not to do so. However, I heard a quite remarkable story from one person who did not come through the safe and legal route because her arrival predated that visa scheme being opened up. She told me that her twin sister had been here, but had left the country, and now she was being told that she would need to leave because the Home Office had confused her biometrics with those of her twin sister. That is the sort of ruthless efficiency of which the Home Office is capable. Are we seriously hearing now that we are going to start sending people back to Hong Kong because they happen to have come here before the start of the British national overseas visa scheme?

Dame Rosie, I feel that I have detained the House for long enough—that is probably a matter of consensus among Members—but when it comes to Divisions, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches will do everything that we can to improve the Bill. However, ultimately, there are pieces of it that simply cannot be left to stand.

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

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for coming to a conclusion. I am going to try to call people who did not get called yesterday, as well as those who have tabled amendments, but that will require a certain amount of brevity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this is so important. There are so few of us now who remember what it was like. When children come here, they are thrown into association with some of the worst people imaginable. Some of the people I saw in Dungavel absolutely needed to be in detention, but the idea of holding them in the same facility as children just took that inhumanity to another level.

[John McDonnell]

Exactly. In the children’s home where I was a house father, we dealt with some of the children who had been coming from detention. We understood the traumas they had gone through.

Before 2010, just to remind the House, many of us, on a cross-party basis—Conservative, Labour, Liberals and others—campaigned to end child detention because the numbers were increasing year on year. Once a principle is established, it is interesting how the numbers increase. At one point, there was an estimated 1,000 children and families in Yarl’s Wood. The campaigns made it an issue in the run-up to the 2010 general election and many of us signed a commitment to make this country a place of sanctuary. Thank God, what happened was that the people of this country woke up to what we were doing to children and the way children were being treated. Children’s Society reports evidenced the individual experiences of children, as well as the research. We made the sanctuary pledge. Citizens UK, religious bodies, community groups and trade unions came together in one mass campaign.

We had a huge breakthrough after the election. David Cameron was convinced and was supported by, yes, Nick Clegg and—she is no longer in her place—the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). Over a decade ago, we ended, with unanimity in this House, the routine detention of children. No more children were imprisoned in Harmondsworth in my constituency, or in any other detention centre or prison-like facility. We took that pledge and we enacted it in legislation with cross-party support in 2014. There were some exceptions, obviously. I regretted some of them, but I could understand some reasons why. There were a small number where pre-departure accommodation was provided, but no child was left in a detention centre.

The Bill, whatever the Minister says, removes the protections we, cross-party, arrived at unanimously over a decade ago. My plea to this House is this: please do not take us back to those barbaric days. The lives of children are devastated. The estimate is that 8,000 children face detention under the proposals in the Bill. It will create lasting, almost irrecoverable damage to those children. I just appeal, in all humanity, for the House to reject the proposals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. I have great respect for him, but I promised you that I would be brief, Dame Rosie, and I know that if I take interventions that will not be true, and I will break my promise. You would never forgive me for that and, worse still, you would not call me again.

I shall speak to some of the amendments that stand in my name, which I hope will help the Government in that endeavour. My amendments, along with those tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stone (Sir William Cash), among others, are designed to improve the Bill rather than to frustrate the Government’s efforts. Indeed, they are framed in order to make the Bill work—for the Bill must work.

The British people are at the end of their tether, tired of a liberal establishment blinded by its own prejudices which seems oblivious to the needs of working-class Britons but ever more indulgent towards economic migrants and anyone else who comes from abroad, for that matter. The British people demand and deserve something better than that. They deserve a Government who take their concerns seriously.

Just in case there is any doubt about those concerns, I refer Members to the work of Professor Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has studied these matters. He has revealed the opinions of an immense number of voters in so-called red wall constituencies. You will remember, Dame Rosie, that those are the seats that Labour hopes to win back, but it will not, because they are in the hands of very able Conservative Members of Parliament, many of whom take a view of the Bill that is similar to mine, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. Interestingly, 59% of people in those constituencies think that we

“should withdraw the right of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants who cross the Channel illegally in small boats to appeal against their deportation.”

That number

“jumps to more than three-quarters”

of 2019 Conservative voters and 39% of Labour voters. A large majority, six in 10, support

“stopping migrants in small boats from illegally crossing the Channel using any means necessary”.

Benjamin Disraeli said that

“justice is truth in action.”

My amendment 283 is designed to restore justice to our asylum system by affirming the truth. Little epitomises the anger felt by my constituents and many others about the unfairness of the system more than those economic migrants with no legal right to be here who arrive in Dover claiming to be younger than they are in order to game our asylum rules. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) pointed out when she was Home Secretary, in two thirds of age dispute cases, it has been found that an individual claiming to be a child is over—sometimes considerably over—the age of 18. This is a widespread problem.

Amendment 283 would introduce a scientific age assessment to ensure that those under 18 who need to seek shelter here can do so, as well as to find out those over 18 who lie to cheat our rules. The amendment is in keeping with the practices used in Europe by countries that verify the ages of those crossing their borders. The scientific age assessments used in many European countries for these purposes include dental and wrist X-rays in France, Finland and Norway, and CT or MRI scans in Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere.

I would be amazed if anyone who believed in the integrity of our asylum system opposed such an amendment, and I hope the Minister will confirm when he sums up that the Government intend to adopt it. Without such a change, we cannot properly break the business model of the people smugglers. These vile traffickers will simply tell the people whose lives they are risking to lie about their age to prevent them from being removed.

My amendments 129 and 130 would strengthen the Bill by ensuring that those who have no right to be here are swiftly removed. At present, the language in the Bill promises to “deport”. However, deportation is a distinct legal process from removal. Deportation is reserved for those who are a “risk to the public good”—typically foreign national offenders. By contrast, removal is a legal term for a process by which certain people may be removed from the UK, usually because they have breached immigration rules by remaining here illegally, but who do not necessarily pose a public risk or danger by so doing. Again, I hope that the Minister will enter into a discussion with me about how we can improve the Bill in that way and make it more effective.

I know, too, that the Minister will look at the amendments that aim to toughen the Bill further in terms of its language. Amendment 135, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, is vital as it will block courts from ordering that individuals who have been removed be return to the UK. If those removed to Rwanda were allowed to return to the UK following legal challenges, the deterrent gained from successfully sending them there would be diluted or lost altogether, so it is essential that those who want to join the small boats and the smugglers who organise their dangerous journeys know that the deterrent is credible.

Amendment 132 would ensure that other provisions of the Human Rights Act were disapplied. Right hon. and hon. Members know my view on the Human Rights Act: I would repeal it. And they know my view on the convention: I would leave it. But that is not what we are debating today, and it is not what these amendments seek to do. They simply aim to ensure that the Government’s policy, which has found form in this Bill which I hope is soon to be an Act, is not once again mired in appeals to foreign potentates and powers who will frustrate the will of the Government, this House and, more fundamentally, the British people.

I will not comment on amendments 139 and 140 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), except to say that they are arguably well-intentioned, but not necessarily so. A report last year, as my hon. Friend must know, showed that nearly two thirds of asylum seekers suspected of lying when they were unaccompanied children were found to be over 18. Of course care and sentiment matter, but we must exercise sense to avoid being naive about this subject.

For the sake of brevity, Dame Rosie, I will not say much more, except to conclude in this way: the British people want to deal with the boats. They want to restore order to our borders. They believe in the integrity of a system that determines whether someone is a genuine seeker of asylum in fear of persecution and in profound need or an economic migrant gaming the system in respect of their age. That is what the British people want, and that is what this Bill will do. By the way, just a quick word about judicial activism: it is a well-established concept and I would advise the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) to read about it in more detail, as he does not seem to have heard of it.

I say to the Minister that we must avoid listening to the bleats and cries of a bourgeois liberal establishment who will go out of their way to stop the Government doing what is just and right. I look forward to further engagement with him and, assuming that he says something sufficiently generous—indeed, slightly more than that; I would like to feel flattery—I will not press the amendments that stand in my name.

Illegal Migration Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

On behalf of the Home Office, I pay tribute to those Border Force officers who nobly volunteered to serve in Sudan this week, to support British nationals and others as they are processed and swiftly returned to the United Kingdom. The Home Secretary and I praise their professionalism and their sense of service and duty.

Before I address the key Government amendments, it is worth reminding the House of why the Government introduced this vital Bill. A sovereign state must have control of its borders. Quite properly, we have an immigration system that determines who can come to the UK lawfully, whether to visit, to study, to work or for other legitimate reasons. Our immigration and asylum system also makes generous provision in providing sanctuary for people seeking protection. Indeed, we have offered such protection, in different ways, to nearly half a million people since 2015.

But the people of this country are rightly frustrated if a self-selected group of individuals can circumvent those controls by paying people smugglers to ferry them across the channel on a small boat. Why would someone apply to come to this country for employment if they can instead arrive on a small boat, claim asylum and then, as one amendment suggests, acquire the right to work here after 12 months?

Illegal migration undermines the integrity of our immigration system. It puts unsustainable pressure on our housing, health, education and welfare services, and it undermines public confidence in our democratic processes and the rule of law. That is why we want to stop the boats and secure our borders, and this Bill is dedicated to that goal. It will send a clear message that people who enter the United Kingdom illegally will not be able to build a life here. Instead, they are liable to be detained, and they will be removed either back to their home country, if it is safe to do so, or to a safe third country, such as Rwanda.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Is the Minister really asking the House to believe that such an amendment would act as a pull factor? Is he saying that people will come here because of the possibility that we might pass an amendment giving asylum seekers the right to work? If that is his case, it is particularly poor even by his standards.

[Robert Jenrick]

It is a pull factor to the UK that individuals can work in our grey economy, which is a cause of serious concern. If we were to add an additional pull factor, by enabling people to work sooner, it would be yet another reason for people to choose to come to this country. I will return to that point in responding to other questions before the House today.

--- Later in debate ---

I raised that point with the Minister for Immigration. It is very important that we look at this issue carefully. It may well be necessary for the other place to rectify that because it sends a terrible signal to anybody who is being exploited. They will be told by the traffickers, “Don’t worry, they’re going to kick you out regardless. What’s the point of even helping to give evidence, because we’ll get you on the other side if you finger us?” That is what will happen.

[Mr Carmichael]

Despite the right hon. Gentleman’s best efforts, and he is a model of clarity on this, it is still like trying to knit fog. Does not the fact that we are dealing here with an amendment he has tabled that has subsequently been affected by a Government amendment to the original Bill illustrate the total inadequacy of trying to deal with a Bill like this in this way?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is a concern because we have clashing amendments. We know that. The point of this debate is to rectify that. We do not have a lot of time, so the right hon. Member will forgive me if I tentatively nod in his direction but at the same time pursue my own purposes. I will try to keep my remarks narrow. I do not want to go wide because other people wish to speak.

Amendment 4 is needed because victims of modern slavery experience inhumane torture and abuse. They are deprived of their liberty and their dignity. They are exploited and abused on British soil. Whether a UK citizen or a foreign national, they deserve care to recover and we cannot leave them subject to that exploitation. The point I keep coming back to is that victims in this category hold the key to the prosecution of the very traffickers we are after. We should not lose sight of that. If the inadvertent result of these changes to the Bill and the Bill itself is that victims are fearful of coming forward to give evidence, partly because the presumption is that they will leave the country, and partly because they do not have enough time to feel settled and protected to be able to give evidence—I think the police know this and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead has quoted from a police statement—it will reduce the number of prosecutions, damage our case and act as an opponent, as it were, of the idea of sending a message to traffickers that their game is up.

All the evidence shows that, with appropriate consistent support, more victims engage with investigations and prosecutions, providing the vital information that brings criminals to justice. Support needs to come first to create that stability, otherwise they will not feel safe. If we put ourselves in their situation, we would not give evidence either if we thought that the next stage would be to go out of the country, where the traffickers would catch us and our families and others being abused. So it will get harder to get convictions.

I am pleased my right hon. Friend the Minister accepted there may be consequences, although we need to go further than “may”. There will be consequences as a result of the legislation. I do not believe that the Government want victims of modern slavery to be trafficked. I do not think they want the Modern Slavery Act 2015 to be damaged. In the minds of those in the Home Office, I think there is a genuine dislike of that legislation and a wish to blame it for excesses, but there is no evidence of that. Only 6% of those who claim to be victims of modern slavery have come across on boats.

First and foremost, there is not a huge, great swell. Secondly, the Nationality and Borders Act that preceded this Bill has tightened up on all the elements that claimants have to provide to show that that is the case. The rules are already tighter, and I suspect that will lead to fewer cases already. The question is, what is the point of putting these elements into the Bill, because they are in the previous Act, and we have still not seen the effects? We are putting at risk the prosecution of all those traffickers and bringing them to justice, for something that almost certainly will not happen. If it did happen, there is plenty of scope for that evidence to come forward through statutory instruments if necessary, but I do not believe that will be the case.

I am told endlessly that people will come and give false claims, but let me remind Members that referrals can be made only by official first responders who suspect that the person is a victim. In 2022, 49% of referrals were made by Government agencies— it is ironic that the Government themselves decided who were the victims. The idea that any person could come forward and suddenly say, “I’m a victim,” and therefore get lots of time, is not the case. The test of evidence is tough.

We should remember that our amendment is about those who are trafficked and abused here in the UK. That means that the evidence base will almost certainly be incredibly strong, because it is based around what we know to exist here in the UK. I understand that it is difficult when people are trafficked from abroad, but we are talking about people in the UK and their evidence is clear to all of us. Under the changes made to the national referral mechanism statutory guidance on 30 January 2023—which, again, we have yet to see the full effects of—the threshold for a positive reasonable grounds decision has been raised to require objective evidence of exploitation. This is an unnecessary element of the Bill because we have yet to see the effect of the previous Act, which I believe is already having an impact, as do the police.

Other Members want to speak, so I will conclude my comments by saying that we should proceed with caution when it comes to modern day slavery. I am deeply proud of what we did and what my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead brought through, because it deals with victims, who cannot speak for themselves and are being used and abused by others. We were the first country in the world to do so, and others have followed suit. We need to send the right signals. The problem with the Bill is that it unnecessarily targets a group of people who are not the problem. They will suffer and, ironically, we will fail as a Government in home affairs because the police simply will not be able to get those prosecutions. On every ground, it is wrong.

Government amendment 95 is a disastrous attempt to make it almost impossible for anyone in the country to feel confident before they give evidence. I ask the Government to make it clear at the end of the debate that they will take this issue away, genuinely look at the unintended consequences and make that case to us, before we vote on their amendment.

Illegal Migration Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not give way because I wish to finish promptly, as you would expect me to do, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The great Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said:

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”

This Minister and the Home Secretary have been constant in their purpose of controlling our borders. Let us have less sanctimony and more common sense; less self-righteousness and more selfless commitment to the people’s will; less soul-searching and more heartfelt advocacy of the interests of hard-working, law-abiding, decent, patriotic Britons who support this Bill and oppose the Lords amendments.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I regard the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) as a friend in the true sense of the word, but I say that it is a pleasure to follow him this evening—not least because it means that he has stopped talking.

There is a real sense of déjà vu about this debate, and not just because of the proceedings in relation to this Bill. We have heard all these arguments before, almost word for word. Everything that the Minister said at the Dispatch Box this afternoon had been heard in relation to what is now the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—and what progress has been made as a consequence of that? None.

I followed closely your exchange with the shadow Immigration Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker, in relation to the question of the Minister being misleading. I should say that I do not think for one second that the Minister was in any way misleading. I cannot speak for his intention, of course—only he knows about that—but I certainly was not misled. To any reasonable-minded person, it must surely be obvious what the Government are about today.