Illegal Immigration

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lee Anderson

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) on securing the debate—he made it here with 30 seconds to go, after taking part in several very important votes. We were wondering whether the debate would be able to start on time, but he managed to make it, although somewhat out of breath.

Listening to the debate—I am sure it will be the first of many we will have in this place and other places—it struck me that there are some things we agree on across all parties. First, we have to stop irregular immigration and deal with the appalling gangs behind the small boat crossings. Those gangs care only about the profits they make, which fuel other criminal activity, and are careless, to say the least, of the lives they put at risk in these dangerous crossings. In the recent past these gangs have grown increasingly violent; they have attacked the police and those on the beaches in France whom they have promised to transport to safety. It is therefore vital that we dismantle the gangs and strengthen our border security—I think all of us can agree on that.

The crossings have increased hugely in recent years, and the boats are becoming more and more crowded, unseaworthy and dangerous—a point made by several hon. Members.

[Lee Anderson]

The Minister is making some good points, but does she agree that while the Prime Minister is smashing the gangs, it will be more difficult for boats to get into the sea, so more people will clamber on to the boats and we will have more deaths in the channel?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We have to do what we can to disrupt this trade. We have already seen that the boats are becoming more unseaworthy and that more people are getting on them. Just because that is happening, it does not mean we should do nothing to get in the way of the supply of boats and engines that criminals use to facilitate this trade. Even though they have not agreed on the wherewithal, all Members in the debate have agreed that we should be doing our best to stop this trade. No Government would not want to be in control of their external borders—I think we all agree on that. It is therefore important that we take a much more sophisticated and integrated approach to dealing with these increasingly integrated cross-border gangs.

We must not leave the gangs to flourish or organise, reaching even deeper back into places such as Vietnam, but instead harass and disrupt them and their financing. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mike Tapp) was spot on to say that this has been done before in different contexts, particularly drugs and international crime, and it can certainly be done with this trade. We should try to be a bit more optimistic about the potential for concerted, cross-border action among states to deal with the issue.

A different approach must be workable. We believe it must respect international law, which is why the Government scrapped the partnership with Rwanda. The Opposition, and particularly their Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), have been acting as if the Rwanda deal was somehow a deterrent, but from the day it was agreed to to the day it was scrapped, more than 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats. That does not sound like a deterrent. Since it was scrapped, the number of small boat arrivals has gone down 24% compared to the same period last year, and down 40% compared to the same period in 2022. If it was a deterrent, it worked in an extremely odd way.