Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Would everyone please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode? We now continue line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The grouping and selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room, as well as on the parliamentary website. I remind Members about the rules on the declaration of interests, as set out in the code of conduct.

Clause 37

Repeal of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

It is a pleasure once more to be in this delightful room doing line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill.

The clause repeals in full the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The Act, which requires that decision makers treat Rwanda as a safe third country for the purposes of removing individuals there, and disapplies sections of the Human Rights Act 1998, was passed by the previous Government in an attempt to facilitate removals to Rwanda under the migration and economic development partnership. Despite that, the Act has served no practical purpose since it became law: no decisions were made that were affected by its provisions, and, as we have stated repeatedly, only four individuals were ever relocated voluntarily. No enforced removals to Rwanda ever took place under the partnership.

The Government have been clear from the outset that we will not proceed with the partnership. There is no evidence that it was successful in deterring small boat arrivals, nor has it delivered value for money for the British taxpayer. On the contrary, nearly 84,000 people arrived on small boats between 14 April 2022, which was the date the partnership was announced by the former Government, and 5 July 2024, which was the day after this Government were elected.

The Government have been clear that we will not make further payments to Rwanda, saving £100 million in upcoming annual economic transformation and integration fund payments, and a further £120 million that the UK would otherwise have been liable to pay once 300 individuals had been relocated to Rwanda. That is without even considering the additional staffing and operational costs, which would have been substantial. We will also exit the UK-Rwanda treaty as part of ending the partnership. It is therefore appropriate for the Government to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act so that the legislation, which relies on the provisions of the treaty, will no longer be on the statute book. That is what clause 37 achieves.

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

Clause 37 repeals the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. In doing so, the Government are removing the only deterrent, and indeed the only place where we can send people who have arrived from a safe third country. It is well established that it is extremely difficult to return people to some countries. In addition, the lack of documentation can frustrate the process of removal to someone’s home country. That is why a third country deterrent is needed: if people cannot be removed to their home country, they can and will be removed to a third country.

The logical consequence of repealing the Safety of Rwanda Act is that a greater number of migrants will arrive from countries that are harder to return them to. Without some form of agreement to send the migrants to a safe country, they will continue to come and to stay. Section 80AA of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 contains a list of safe countries, but the list is limited to countries that contribute very few illegal migrants, save for Albania. The last Conservative Government cut the number of Albanian illegal migrants coming to the UK by small boat crossings by over 90%, showing that our returns agreement with Albania worked. As the former director general of Border Force said:

“If we cannot send them back, we could send them to another safe country—ergo, Rwanda—where they could be resettled safely without adding to the continuing flow of arrivals by small boat from France.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 41, Q43.]

Channel boat crossings are up 28% since the election, with more than 1,300 people crossing in the week commencing 1 March 2025. This Labour Government have smashed farmers, small business owners and pensioners, but it seems that the people-smuggling gangs are the only ones who are safe. The only thing that will stop the gangs is a strong deterrent that means that people do not board small boats because they know that they will be deported if they reach the UK, and they will not be allowed to stay.

The additional offences and powers in this Bill are welcome as far as they go, but, with the scrapping of the Conservatives’ deterrent—that if someone has no right to be in this country, they will not be able to stay—this Bill is just window dressing. It will not, and cannot, stop people crossing the channel in small boats. The Government know that, because their own impact assessment shows that only a handful of people each year would be imprisoned because of the new offences created by this Bill.

Since the announcement that our deterrent would be scrapped, there are almost 8,500 more people in asylum hotels. That is the Government’s failure.

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[Matt Vickers]

In terms of the political arguments, what people out there want to see is the number of people arriving illegally in this country going down. They are not seeing that; it is up 28%. They want to see the number of hotels in communities across the country going down. It is not, although it was. The number of people arriving was also going down, but it is now up 28%, and there are 8,500 more people in hotels. That is the reality of the situation.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Of course, that is what Committee debates are meant to be about; it is easier to have a bit more to and fro in Committee than it often is on the Floor of the House, when we have two and a half minutes and we have had to rewrite our speech and discard most of what we were going to say.

Will the hon. Gentleman admit that the way in which the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act meant that nobody could be processed at all; they were just stuck, and there was a build-up in hotels of small boat arrivals and other asylum claimants who could not be processed? That meant that there was a big backlog, and we have had to restart decision making. That inevitably means that there will be a slowdown in sending back people who have arrived by small boat until we can get on top of the backlog that the Conservative Government created.

[Matt Vickers]

The principle at stake is that if someone arrives in this country illegally, they will be removed. We were not processing people who had arrived illegally and were meant to be removed, but we were returning more of them before the election than we are now. However, I will get through my comments, and there will be plenty of time then for debate—we have a full morning ahead of us.

Does the Minister think that allowing 96% of illegal migrants who arrive by small boat to stay in the UK is a deterrent? At the moment, people know that if they come here on a small boat, they are 96% likely to be allowed to stay. That is a strong pull factor. The only way to remove that pull factor is to reinstate a strong deterrent. People need to know that if they arrive here on a small boat, they will not be able to stay. Can the Minister explain how she will increase the number of removals without a third country to which migrants can be sent? If it is not Rwanda, where will they go? Will it be Redcar? Will it be Romford? Will it be Richmond? Where will these people who cannot be removed to a safe country go?

As Alp Mehmet said,

“repealing the Rwanda Act will encourage illegal immigration… 240,000 people were declared to have entered”

the EU “illegally last year” and will likely end up coming to the UK. The Government have confirmed with this Bill and the repeal of the Safety of Rwanda Act that there is no deterrence, because once people arrive here, the likelihood is that they will be able to stay. Mehmet also echoed the comments from the National Crime Agency, saying,

“the only deterrent is to restrict arrivals, and to contain and remove quickly. That will send the right message.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 39-40, Q43.]

As he pointed out, there is not “anything in the Bill” that would suggest that people will be removed quickly. Why has a removals agreement not been included in the Bill? The EU is now looking at offshore processing and deportation centres. There is also a growing consensus in the EU that the 1951 refugee convention is not fit for purpose. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of these changes on the UK? Why have the Government scrapped the Rwanda plan, leaving the UK as an outlier? We wish to oppose the repeal of the Act by way of a Division.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend realise that the detention estate was used by the Conservative party to empty some prison places and try to relieve pressure there? I think it highly unlikely that there would be even 400 spaces.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important reminder that when the Labour Government took office after our historic win, we inherited an awful mess in our prison system, which was described by independent experts and organisations as near to collapse—so near that there were just a few hundred spaces left at a time when the country was rioting.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

Elegant.

[Tom Hayes]

I thought I would to and find a moment of humour in the dispiriting debate on this topic.

The Conservatives may progress to blaming successful legal and judicial challenges to the policy. The Rwanda policy was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal said, unlawful and deemed to be so by the courts. If they do, His Majesty’s Opposition should confirm whether they respect the independence of our judiciary in adjudicating such challenges on the one hand, and respect the international human rights laws, under which challenges were made and were successful, on the other. That is important, because one of the hallmarks of the new Government is to be lawful and to respect our judiciary. We need to embrace that change. The Opposition could also reflect on the probability of further legal challenges being undertaken because of the human rights concerns about Rwanda, which my hon. Friend highlighted so effectively.

Last, the Conservatives may want to blame political challenges for undermining the credibility of their Rwanda asylum policy. In a democracy, it is of course right that Members of Parliament raise concerns on behalf of their constituents—indeed, that is what we have been doing—but the Conservatives overcame those political constraints by passing the Safety of Rwanda Act to address judicial concerns, and they signed a legally binding agreement with Rwanda. So the idea that the deterrent was not able to function because of legal or political challenges is actually farcical, because the previous Government held the cards in their hands.

I have heard it said that the Conservatives could have followed the Australian asylum policy, which has been described as a successful model—perhaps it even inspired the Rwanda asylum policy—but there is good reason to believe that UK could not have achieved the deterrent effects of the Australian offshore asylum processing model. Indeed, Professor Brian Bill, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, said in oral evidence that it was inappropriate to draw comparisons between the Rwanda scheme and the Australian policies.

Were we to be generous and accept the view of the hon. Member for Weald of Kent that the Australian policy stood out in the world as being successful, there would be challenges to assessing the efficacy of that policy. As the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, an expert and independent institution, has said, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the Australian offshoring policy was the reason for a drop in numbers of people going to Australia. Put bluntly, if migrants were paying attention to the last Government’s policy, they had no reason to believe that they would be barred from staying in the UK.

That takes me to my third and final definition of what would make an effective deterrent. Yes, the state must be understood to be highly resolved to deter, detain and remove, and capable of doing so, but it takes two to tango. Britain can only be understood if asylum seekers are able to understand, which in turn depends on several key factors. It means migrants being able to do at least three things: to pay close attention to the last Government’s actions—I struggled to do that, so I cannot see how asylum seekers would—to stay fully informed about the many twists and turns in the Safety of Rwanda Act asylum policy, which again I struggled to stay abreast of, and to behave as rational actors who weigh up the costs and benefits of action.

We have heard in testimony and oral evidence that migrants are typically unaware of Government policy and actions, because they are too busy being asylum seekers and migrants. Moreover, it can be said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the chaotic and difficult circumstances that they are forced to inhabit prevent them from being the rational actors that they would otherwise be, calmly and objectively assessing the trade-offs between the perceived costs of illegal entry, the probability of those being incurred, and whether those are outweighed by the potential benefits of migration.

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[Chris Murray]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart, especially after we have had such an interesting debate with some very thoughtful contributions. I will respond to some of the issues that have been raised.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East mentioned that I keep quoting Peter Walsh, and I am going to again, because the point he made in the evidence sessions was one of the most critical points on immigration policy in Britain overall. He said that demand for Channel crossings is “fairly inelastic”. The demand will not wax and wane hugely in response to Government policy, which tells us that deterrence will have only limited use. That is the conceptual flaw at the heart of the Rwanda plan. It put all the country’s cards and money on a deterrence-only approach. Deterrence has to be real and believable, which the scheme clearly was not.

I listen closely to what the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire says about the role of deterrence in migration policy. The exchanges we are having are helping to clarify the thinking. It is clear from the Bill that deterrence can only ever be a component. We must focus on the supply—the ability for people to cross the Channel—and not just the demand. That requires the measures in the Bill, but also diplomatic work and upstream work.

The repeal of the Rwanda legislation was inevitable and written in the stars from the very beginning of that hare-brained scheme. Before it passed, the European Council on Foreign Relations said that the scheme was doomed to failure and a “floundering disaster”, because it was unlikely to deter illicit migration, it would damage the UK’s standing in international law, it would endanger refugee lives and it would come at huge financial cost. Every single one of those predictions came to pass, so it is no surprise that we are having to deal with this today. I would also say that it presaged the Conservatives going down in an historic election defeat, so it was clearly a failure politically for them as well.

On the point about removal to third countries, before we left the European Union, the UK had the capacity to remove people to safe countries in the EU that they had travelled through. The Conservatives manifestly failed to avail the country of that power we had, and then failed with the Rwanda system. Clearly, the Conservative track record on third countries is very poor. There is a component in the immigration system for people going to third countries when they have no right to stay here, which is something we need to look at further ahead.

The hon. Member for Stockton West made reference to the Albania relationship and returns increasing to Albania, as if that somehow proves that the Rwanda scheme would have worked if we had just let it take its course, but it is a completely spurious parallel. The returns to Albania happened before the communiqué was signed with Albania, so the two are not related—perhaps he was arguing that the prior readmission agreement was the variable that led to the increase, but it came after the spike, so it cannot be held responsible. The Albania agreement was not just about illegal immigrants; it also included a huge number of foreign national offenders—a different group of people entirely. It was also about people from Albania returning to Albania, not third-country nationals. The idea that the Albania scheme is somehow an alibi for Rwanda can be completely rejected.

That is not actually the point, however, because the Rwanda scheme would never have worked at the scale required, even if it had been able to work at all. The Minister was correct when she talked in her initial remarks about the interaction between the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act. That meant that nobody was getting processed, so the country ended up with a perma-backlog of asylum seekers with nowhere to go; they could not return to the country they came from through a voluntary returns agreement or be recognised as refugees. The Rwanda scheme would never have worked at a meaningful scale, and it would never have been able to deal with the backlog. We were on track to having to take over half the hotels in the country to accommodate asylum seekers.

We can have a debate about how best to manage an asylum system—voluntary returns, swift processing, meaningful decisions and removals are clearly components of that—but we can surely say in debating this clause that the Rwanda Act was not the solution. Some £240 million of our constituents’ money was wasted on the scheme, which the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire was quite correct to call “crackpot”. Passing legislation to assert that reality is not what it is will never be an effective way to govern anything, never mind the asylum system, so I am pleased that the Act will finally be off the statute book.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We have had an interesting debate about taking the Safety of Rwanda Act off the statute book, as clause 37 does. I am distressed that the Conservative party continues to assert without evidence—in fact, contrary to most evidence—that that Act and the Illegal Migration Act were about to work. Apparently, those Acts were on the cusp of being a great success when the evil new Government came along and cancelled them.

I speculate that many Conservative Members are secretly pleased that they can assert that, because it gets them out of an embarrassing, expensive farrago; the Safety of Rwanda Act will go down in this country’s history as one of the most catastrophic pieces of legislation that Parliament has ever dealt with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham rightly pointed out, it was not ordinary or normal for Conservative ex-Prime Minister John Major to pronounce the Act to be “un-Conservative”. The Act is many things, unconservative being one of them.

Government Members, and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, assert that the Act was not a deterrent. This is the current discourse: we are saying that it was not a deterrent and that we can prove it, and the Conservative party, which was responsible for the Act, is left asserting that it was a deterrent, despite there being absolutely no evidence for that despite all the years since the policy was announced and all the years the Act was on the statute book.

That reminds me of discussions I used to have as a student—a very long time ago—about whether communism in its pure sense had actually ever existed. It was obviously a failure, but when one came across the ideologues, they simply asserted that the communism that had been tried to date just was not pure enough, and it was therefore still likely to succeed if ever it was tried properly. Does that sound similar to the discussions we are having about this iteration of fantasy asylum policy as gimmick? I think it does.

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[Matt Vickers]

I have asked this question a few times and never quite got to the bottom of it. We were sending people to Rwanda who could not be returned to their home country because it was not safe. Where will those people go now, if not Rwanda? Does the Minister fear that, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said, the Government might end up coming back to this issue in a few years when they realise that things are continuing to go the wrong way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

First things first: the hon. Gentleman was not going to send to Rwanda only those whom we could not return to their own country; in theory, he was going to deport to Rwanda absolutely everybody who arrived to claim asylum after March 2023—that was what we were told. In reality, those people all ended up in hotels, unable to be processed and growing in number, while the Conservative party indulged in its expensive gimmicks and fantasies of how the world should be.

As many Committee members have pointed out, the day job was not being done while that parallel universe policy was being developed. It took all the attention away from running what is a complex enough system as it is. Many resources were diverted to try to create that new reality, resulting in the neglect of the system, and huge backlogs were built into the system because of how the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act. That made it impossible to run the current system or to move to a new system that was remotely workable, thereby landing this country with a huge, dysfunctional series of backlogs, and a system that we have had to literally start up again from scratch to try to get working coherently.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister may have been coming on to the second part of the question asked by the hon. Member for Stockton West, but will she be brave enough to tell the Committee that this Labour Government will never consider sending asylum seekers and refugees to a third country?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The Home Secretary has said that she does not rule out third country processing; that is not the same as the Rwanda scheme, which was deportation to a third country permanently. I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about third country returns, such as reviving the Dublin system. When the previous Government negotiated the EU withdrawal agreement, they perhaps should have included something about returns to Europe. Had they done so, perhaps we would be in a different situation, but those would also have been third country returns. He asked a wide-ranging question, and I have been as honest as I can in answering it at this point.

We could spend all day, and probably many more days, talking about the failure encompassed in the interaction of the Safety of Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act. Our job today, though, is to tidy it up. Clause 37 will take the Safety of Rwanda Act off the statute book and put it in the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2—Repeal of the Illegal Migration Act 2023—

“The Illegal Migration Act 2023 is repealed.”

This new clause would repeal the Illegal Migration Act in full. In combination with Amendment 8 to leave out clause 38, it would replace the selective repeal in the Bill with a full repeal.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

As always, the Lib Dems are keeping us on our toes. I hope there is a benign reason why they are not in attendance today—perhaps my horrible cold made its way over to them and they are not well.

Clause 38 repeals the vast majority—not all—of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. We decided not to take a blanket approach to repealing it all, and we will have that debate when the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire speaks to new clause 2. He has given us the choice whether to repeal the Illegal Migration Act as a whole. Our view, which I will explain in response to his speech, is that there are a few useful clauses in the Act that we have decided to keep on the statute book.

In general, we all know that the Illegal Migration Act was a flawed piece of legislation that made it impossible for us to process and run asylum claims. It was on the statute book in the context of the Safety of Rwanda Act, which assumed that anyone who arrived after March 2023 would not be allowed to become part of an asylum claim in this country. It contained the so-called duty to remove, which placed a statutory duty on the Home Secretary to remove everyone who came to this country after that time. It was flawed in many ways, but it made it impossible for us to run asylum claims in this country lawfully. Therefore, it is important that the vast majority of this flawed legislation should be removed from the statute book, and that is what clause 38 does.

I will set out in detail why we have decided to keep six clauses of the Act. I will try to explain to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and the rest of the Committee our thinking behind each case, but I will do so when the new clause has been spoken to.

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[Pete Wishart]

I must say to the hon. Member for Stockton West that he really does not want to know my views on British citizenship, because they are likely to blow his head—but we will leave that one at that.

It is disappointing to note the absence of our Liberal colleagues. Back in the day—the good old days, Mr Stuart —when we had an effective, efficient, diligent and conscientious third party, there would always be someone present to ensure that the views of the third party were represented. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats have good excuses, but I hope they start to take a bit of interest in this important Bill, because it has been disappointing thus far.

I say to the Minister, “‘Useful clauses?’ Come on!” We are talking about sections 29, 12, 59, 60 and 62, some of the nastiest and most pernicious parts and aspects of the Illegal Migration Act. I cannot believe that this Government want to continue that horrible and heinous Tory set of proposals and clauses in this Bill. This was their great opportunity to wipe the slate clean of the previous Government’s hopeless and useless crackpot Rwanda scheme and their heinous and horrible Illegal Migration Act.

I will give the Minister a few quotes from some of her colleagues, some of which I wish I had come up with myself. The now Prime Minister said at the time that the Illegal Migration Bill would drive “a coach and horses” through protections for women trafficked to the UK as victims of modern slavery. The now Home Secretary said that that IMA does the “total opposite” of providing support for those who have been trafficked, and that it was nothing other than “a traffickers’ charter”. There are other prize quotes from the Home Secretary and various Ministers within the Home Office—absolutely and totally correct, right and true—about the horrible Illegal Migration Act. Now we have a Labour Government inconceivably standing by large swathes of an Act that they so rightly and widely rubbished and wanted rid of only a short while ago.

It would be different if the Government were maintaining some benign, useful or helpful parts of that Tory Act, but they are maintaining some real, pernicious nasties. Provisions that were damaging, dangerous and contrary to human rights under the Tories are just as damaging, dangerous and contrary to human rights under this new Labour Government. I remind the Minister what the then Home Secretary said on that Bill when introducing it:

“I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”

The previous Government could not care less about our obligations under international law or about human rights, and they were quite happy to set them aside. Now we have a Home Secretary who stands by certain provisions of that Act, with all its difficulties concerning its relationship with convention rights.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman will have noted on the front of the Bill that we are debating the statement from the Home Secretary on the European convention on human rights:

“In my view the provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”

[Pete Wishart]

I am glad that the Home Secretary stated that, as she always does when it comes to our relationship with, and compatibility with, human rights. I want to raise a couple of issues and ask a couple of questions about just how very loosely this Bill is connected with the Government’s obligations and about some of our real concerns on human rights. I will come to that in the course of what I hope will be a short contribution.

It is completely incomprehensible that the Government have chosen to repeal only some aspects of the IMA rather than the whole Act, particularly since so many members of this Government have been so vocally opposed to the IMA in the past. Can we please just have a look at some of the stuff that they want to retain? The one that concerns me most, and the one that concerns the range of organisations, groups and charities associated with refugees and asylum seekers, is the retention of section 29.

Let us remind the Committee what section 29 does. It extends the public order disqualification originally introduced by section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and mandates that victims of trafficking and modern slavery who have criminal convictions or are considered a threat to public order be disqualified from support and protection. To me, that provision is deeply concerning, as it means that victims of trafficking, many of whom have been coerced into committing crimes as part of their exploitation, could face detention, deportation or removal rather than the support and recovery that they need.

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[Tom Hayes]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, who, in an outstanding speech, set out the major challenges with the Illegal Migration Act, part of which will be repealed.

I want to knock on the head four things that were said by the hon. Member for Stockton West. The first was in reference to section 23 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. That provision, which the Opposition have talked about, was never implemented by the last Government, so in effect he is opposing a repeal of something that his last Government never started. That feels to me like the worst kind of politics. Between the Royal Assent given to that legislation and the Dissolution of Parliament, 315 days passed, yet no effort was made to implement that provision.

Secondly, sections 9 and 10 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 were, as we have heard, unworkable. They allow people to arrive, claim asylum in the UK, get support, and be put up in a hotel, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh described, will often be in the some of the most dire conditions that somebody can go through after fleeing some of the worst experiences that people can have, be it trauma, famine, disease or poverty—the list goes on. Applications were not processed, so people were not able to leave their hotel. The consequence of that is not just an expensive asylum backlog, but people living with serious psychological scarring for a significant amount of time.

That brings me to my third point. I will talk more about this when we reach new clause 26, which relates to scientific age assessments, but I really do not know how the Conservative party can talk about the welfare and protection of children when we heard oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner about children who were subject to, and vulnerable to, organ harvesting, rape, sexual assault and disappearance from hotels and into wider society, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, they are likely to continue to be abused, exploited and victimised. I will make those points when we reach that debate.

Lastly, on the point about France, I wish the Conservative party would stop throwing stones at one of nearest neighbours and most important strategic allies, particularly when we are in such a volatile international climate. It is really important that we properly scrutinise legislation, but do not indulge in the petty politics that defined the last Conservative Government, disrupted so many of our international relations, and actually made us less secure.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

This has been a small but perfectly formed debate on clause 38, which repeals all but six sections of the Illegal Migration Act. As Government Members have pointed out, despite the amount of time that has lapsed since the Act got on the statute book, the vast majority of its provisions have never been commenced. In fact, we had to commence one tiny bit of it so that we could restart asylum processing; that is probably the most it ever had any effect.

Let us be clear: the Illegal Migration Act meant that thousands of asylum claims were put on hold, because of the duty to remove, increasing the backlog, putting incredible pressure on the asylum accommodation system and creating what has been called the “perma-backlog”. We all know what that was, and how big it was when we came into Government. The Act has largely not been commenced, nor will it be under this Government. We need to sort out the chaos created by the unworkable and contradictory provisions in the Act. Despite the bravado of the hon. Member for Stockton West in his earlier contribution, I suspect that most Conservative Ministers knew that the Act was unworkable, because it was not commenced when they had the ministerial capacity and power to do so for all the time between when it was put on the statute book and when we formed a new Government a year later.

The system had been left in chaos but, were the Government to accept new clause 2 and simply repeal the entire Act, it would lead to a missed opportunity to improve our immigration system. I will go through some of that with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. Clause 38 will repeal section 2 of the 2023 Act, which provides for the duty to remove. The Government are committed to ending the migration and economic partnership with Rwanda, so section 2 will be repealed to deliver that by repealing the duty to remove and associated provisions.

On sections 22 to 28 of the Illegal Migration Act, we are not retaining the vast majority of modern slavery provisions in the Act because they are connected to the duty to remove irregular migrants. These sections were never commenced and provided that where a duty to remove was applied for an individual, that individual should be disqualified from the national referral mechanism unless certain limited exemptions applied. We are removing sections 30 to 37 relating to permanent bans on entry, settlement and citizenship, which, while held up as a success by others, were unenforced and unworkable. Sections 57 and 58 of the Act are also repealed. They relate to age assessments, but both sections are unworkable and irrelevant without the duty to remove.

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[Matt Vickers]

Is there any reason we cannot introduce provisions in this area as part of the Bill, and when can we expect to see them?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Work is going on in the Department to assess the accuracy of the various methods of age assessment, which ministerial predecessors from the hon. Gentleman’s party commenced, but which has not yet been finished. As soon as we have more idea about how reliable scientific age assessment can be, how expensive it is and all those things, I will either come to Parliament or make a statement about how we intend to proceed. The hon. Gentleman must not assume that because these sections have been repealed we are not interested in scientific age assessments and their potential per se. They were simply unworkable because they were attached to the duty to remove, which was such a feature of the Illegal Migration Act.

The six measures that the Government intend to retain, including where provisions are in force, have been identified as having operational utility and benefit. These powers are all ones that the Government see as important tools to allow for the proper operation of the immigration system and to achieve wider priorities alongside the powerful measures set out in the Bill.

The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire talked about section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act. The public order disqualification under the Nationality and Borders Act is currently in operation. It enables decisions to disqualify certain individuals from support and protections afforded by the national referral mechanisms on grounds of public order and bad faith. Public order grounds include serious criminality and threats to national security. Such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, considering the individual’s vulnerabilities. That is the sole modern slavery measure in the Illegal Migration Act that is being retained. It would, if commenced, amend the public order disqualification to allow more foreign national offenders to be considered for disqualification from modern slavery protections on public order grounds. Disqualification will continue to be assessed on an individual basis.

[Pete Wishart]

I am glad that the Minister got to that last sentence, because it is quite clear from section 29 that victims of modern slavery only have to be considered a threat to public order. It is quite likely that many victims of modern slavery will get caught up in this; in fact, they already have. Is the Minister happy that those who were probably coerced into criminal activity will now almost be blanket-banned from any opportunity to go through the asylum process in the United Kingdom?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

There will not be a blanket ban. Individuals who have been subject to public order disqualification will have been disqualified for things such as multiple drug offences, possessing a firearm and ammunition, multiple counts of sexual assault and assault by beating, grooming and engaging in sexual communication with a child. Those are the kind of things that currently lead to public order disqualifications. Nothing in the retention of section 29 will mean that individual circumstances on a case-by-case basis cannot be taken into account. It is important to understand that that will still happen. If it were commenced—it has not yet been—section 29 would introduce a duty to apply the public order disqualification, unless there are compelling circumstances that the disqualification should not apply. That still ensures case-by-case consideration.

The citizenship ban is removed from the Bill because it was unworkable and unenforced; that is, again, attached to the duties to remove. We have updated the good character guidance to prevent people from gaining citizenship if they arrived illegally by dangerous journeys. The idea is to emphasise that citizenship is not a right, but a privilege. We will continue to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis.

The other sections that we have retained are thought to be useful. The six measures in section 12 emphasise the right of the Secretary of State to determine what constitutes a reasonable time period to detain a person for the specific statutory purpose of effecting removal from the UK. Section 52 allows flexibility in our judiciary by making first-tier tribunal judges eligible to sit in the upper-tier tribunal. I cannot imagine anyone in the Committee would worry about that.

Section 59, if commenced, would extend the inadmissibility provisions to asylum and human rights claims from nationals in a list of generally safe states. Section 60 requires an annual cap to be set on the number of individuals admitted to the UK by safe and legal routes. Section 62 adds failing to provide information, such as a passcode to an electronic device, to the behaviours that could be considered damaging to the credibility of an asylum and human rights claim. All those issues are thought to provide utility, but outside the context of the duty to remove.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.