Illegal Immigration
Debate between Angela Eagle and Nick Timothy(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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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.
Nick Timothy
Can the Minister explain why, in calculating the figure the Home Secretary presented to the House of Commons—as part of the claim that scrapping the retrospective element of the duty to remove would save £700 million a year for 10 years—the impact assessment assumes absolutely no deportations to Rwanda at all? In a letter to me, the Home Office permanent secretary said that the cost of removing people to Rwanda is included in the number.
Dame Angela Eagle
I have not seen the letter to the hon. Gentleman, but I am happy to write to him if he wants a further explanation. We must remember that in its three years in existence, the Rwanda scheme cost hundreds of millions of pounds. We were going to pay £150,000 per person deported to Rwanda; that was part of the agreement. In those three years, only four people were sent to Kigali, and they went voluntarily, so I do not think the Conservatives’ view that the Rwanda scheme was an answer to all their problems and prayers was borne out by the experience of it. Scrapping it has not made a blind bit of difference to some people’s desire to get into this country.