Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Anna Turley and Joe Robertson

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Anna Turley]

Q I would like to focus on the measures in the Bill—you made some reference to the ones on modern slavery. Could you expand on how those provisions might make it harder for individuals who have fictitious claims to stop themselves being removed?

Tony Smith: The Bill is really about the asylum process, rather than law enforcement. I think the Bill last year was more about the law enforcement; this is about the asylum process. There are some good things in here. As I say, I applaud the article 8 reforms, because article 8 is often used as a lever quite late in the process. After someone has been here for quite a while and has been through the process, you suddenly get an article 8 claim because they have developed a connection in the UK. So I think that that reform is right and will help to reduce the pull factor.

I like the idea of the tighter protection arrangements—the 30 months at a time. My only counsel against that is that the Home Office, in my experience, tends to automatically grant and grant and grant, because it is a lot easier than refusing, and that might just become an automatic turnover of grants for however long you allow people to stay.

I think you ought to look at who is going home. If people go back to their own country on holiday when they have a claim for refugee status, we can establish that. We have the passenger information and can cross-match that to their asylum records. If people go back to their own country once they have been given some kind of protection status here, they should not be allowed back in, because they are clearly not in fear of persecution.

The faster appeals process is absolutely essential. The problem with the appeals process is that it went over to the Ministry of Justice years ago, when the Home Office and MOJ were split up. The MOJ does not seem to have been really bothered about it—it has other things on its plate. The backlog is over a year now, so you have to try and get a grip of that. I do not know how you get that in the Home Office and how you persuade them, but I think it is a good idea. You really have to get that end-to-end process going right.

I like the idea of recouping public funds from people, a bit like in the student loan scheme. If people have come here and been a draw on public funds, and they then get into the workplace, why would you not claw back some of that money into the public purse?

I think that all those things might reduce pull factors. They are really good reforms. I am not saying they are not good measures; what I am saying is that, in my opinion, they are not good enough to stop the boats.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q As we have just heard, you were director general of Border Force. You talk about the importance of stopping people coming in the first place. But Border Force has only five ocean-going cutters and six coastal patrol vessels. Is there a fundamental issue here of not having the assets for agencies of the state to do their job? Is that something that is not addressed in the Bill, but that would make a meaningful difference?

Tony Smith: The Border Force will enact whatever its operational instructions are, and its operational instructions are drawn from legislation, powers and authorities, so it does not matter how many boats you have out there in the channel. Currently, if someone comes within the 12-mile zone, under the law of the sea you are obliged—quite rightly, because saving lives is paramount—to bring them on board your vessel. The problem is that once they are within the jurisdiction, they accrue all of these rights to asylum applications, ECHR and modern slavery applications. I do not think it is a question of resource. I am a bit worried about resources, given what we saw in Portsmouth last week, because I do not think we have the bandwidth to cover the entire coastline any more. We have been focusing what resources we have on the short straits. Clearly, the smugglers are moving along the coast, so we need to be adaptable to be able to deal with that.

They would always take more resources if they were on offer, but for me it is more about how you get the people coming off the boats properly screened, not cleared within 24 or 48 hours—that is not long enough. Whatever your views on immigration, you have to properly and thoroughly screen people. A passport tells a story—it will tell you all sorts of things. We do not know their dates of birth or their nationalities; the biometric checks are pretty useless. All I am saying is that I think we need to be detaining people for at least longer than 24 hours at Manston if we are going to reduce the risk in any case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley]

Q My point was, would it not be better to go to an intermediate tier, rather than take up the time of the courts? That is where we are seeing the backlog—the delay—because of the lack of available judges we have—

Jacqui McKenzie: We have that; we have a review mechanism. The Home Office is meant to review; once you load something up on the tribunal portal, the Home Office is meant to review the decision. That is why we are getting costs in these cases, which is almost unheard of. I have been doing this work as a lawyer for 18 years—it is two years for training—and I have never seen anything like it. We are getting costs in these cases because of the poor decision making at the Home Office, even when there is a built-in review mechanism. A formal part of the process is that things go back to the Home Office for it to review.

Professor Singer: I would add that if the problem this new mechanism is seeking to address is the lack of sufficient capacity among decision makers, the way that that could be most expediently addressed is simply by expanding the eligibility criteria for the existing tribunal system, to increase the pool of decision makers, rather than by having to staff an entirely new body, which the impact assessment itself says would be incredibly challenging.

[Joe Robertson]

Q I will address my question to Professor Singer. We heard in previous evidence about some of the novel or unusual drafting and wording in the Bill. For example clause 19(4) says:

“No weight should be given to a private or family life”,

rather than that those issues should be “disregarded”, which I think is the normal phrase you would find in law, rather than “no weight”—it is hard to understand what “no weight” means. Also, the ouster provision in clause 1(8) seeking to try to oust the jurisdiction of the court in certain circumstances is drafted in a very loose way, when we know from case law that courts want very specific ousters if they are going to accept them. Does that not run the risk that this entire Bill is actually going to increase litigation just so that the courts can try to define and understand what some of this novel and peculiar wording actually means?

Professor Singer: I have to say that I have questions about the drafting of the Bill in its entirety. I do not think that the Committee can appropriately scrutinise the Bill, because there is a significant lack of detail in so many of the provisions, in addition to very odd drafting. With due respect, a lot of it is back-of-the-envelope-type stuff, which has clearly been rushed through the legislative drafting process.

For example, in the previous panel, I heard the Committee questioning the clause on the introduction of a core protection status. The clause does not actually set out the eligibility or content, in terms of what a core protection status is; it gives the Secretary of State significant powers to make regulations in respect of what eligibility for a protection status would be and what the content of that status would be.

Similarly, in the provision on asylum support, we do not have any details about the actual operation or functioning of that system. The provision gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations in respect of this scheme. In relation to the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority, we do not have the rules of procedure to scrutinise, to be able to ascertain whether there will be due process, which will be appropriately followed, and fairness.

I agree with you that there are strange inconsistencies in the drafting, but, additionally, I think the whole content of the Bill is quite lacking in many respects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Turley and Joe Robertson

Thursday 23rd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Minister without Portfolio (Anna Turley)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

This Government’s aim is to recruit the brightest and best talent into the civil service—brilliant people from across the UK with the skills to deliver the priorities of the British people. We have already taken steps to improve recruitment, with the first ever cross-Government standardised recruitment processes and benchmarks, to strengthen accountability and bring faster, higher-quality and more inclusive recruitment. Fast, fair, inclusive: that is our recruitment vision.

[Joe Robertson]

The Government are restricting applications to the civil service fast stream summer internship programme in favour of those kids who they deem to be from working-class backgrounds. What does the Minister have to say to the children of hard-working nurses, police officers and teachers who will now not get the same opportunities because of decisions made by this Government?

[Anna Turley]

The fast stream programme, of which I am proud to be a graduate, is the No. 1 graduate employee scheme in the country. We are proud that we have had over 70,000 applicants for just 754 appointments. We know that we have done very well in increasing diversity, with applications from ethnic minority candidates, women and people with disabilities, but we are falling short in applications from those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. I make no apologies about taking proactive decisions to ensure that people who do not necessarily have the same social capital or relationship strength as those from other higher social backgrounds can take internships. The number of working-class people in the civil service is three times smaller than the broader UK workforce, and we are taking action on that.