Nationality and Borders Bill

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

Where to start, Madam Deputy Speaker? Thank you for calling me to speak—I think.

As many Members have noted throughout these proceedings, it is the 70th anniversary next week of the refugee convention—a convention built on article 14 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognises the rights of persons to seek asylum from persecution in other countries. That was the building block: the right to seek asylum from persecution. I know that the current Government are keen to distance themselves from our international treaty obligations. I have been expressly told that those obligations hold no weight in their opinion, but we simply cannot let that be the narrative. That is a concern shared by the Law Society of England and Wales, which sees it as vital that the UK applies, and is seen to apply, a convention that it willingly became a party to.

[Aaron Bell]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

No!

Our legal standing on the international stage relies on this concept. Are we not in the strangest position when the Prime Minister, who seemingly holds Churchill in the highest esteem, is willing to undermine and redefine the post-war legacy that his political hero left behind?

The Government are trailing the Bill as a chance to streamline the immigration system and to cut down on so-called unmeritorious claims and time-wasting appeals. They have even introduced a wasted cost order that will ensure that those attempting to pursue their legal rights to a fair hearing are liable to pick up the tab for certain types of conduct that they consider improper, unreasonable or negligent. What about the wasted costs that the Government will run up if this Bill goes through unamended? I am sure that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), who is so keen to help the most vulnerable in our society, will be interested to know that the cost of imprisoning so-called illegal asylum seekers could be as much as £412 million a year. If we do the maths, as the Refuge Council in England has done, the proposed plan to lock asylum seekers up for four years—yes, four years; there are some people in this House who clearly do not understand that refugees could be locked up as well simply for trying to come here—comes to an eye-watering £1.65 billion. Parts of the UK already have a prison system groaning under the strain of over-population. How can the Government justify moves that increase the number of people crammed into the prison estate?

When I prepared this speech earlier, I wrote that the hardest bit about speaking in this debate is having to leave out so much but that I was grateful to be on the Bill Committee because nothing would be left unsaid. Then, Madam Deputy Speaker, I experienced something that I have never experienced here before: the minutes went up and up, and now I am completely confused and have no idea how long this will take me.

[Alexander Stafford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Anne McLaughlin]

Well, okay, if it gives me extra time, I will take an intervention.

[Alexander Stafford]

The hon. Lady is talking about costs and the costs of, as she says, locking up asylum seekers, but what are the costs of housing these tens of thousands of asylum seekers? What are the costs in terms of GP services? What are the costs in terms of housing for my constituents. My constituents are struggling to get access to the GP services. They are struggling to get houses—

[Anne McLaughlin]

Is it not funny, Madam Deputy Speaker, that all afternoon Government Members have been saying, “Why are more council areas in Scotland not taking more asylum seekers?” We want to do that, but the Government do not fund it. If the Government funded it properly, we absolutely, certainly would take more. Sometimes it is not just about the money, but about people’s human rights.

I want to concentrate a little on congregated living—I do not know the term, but Members will know what I mean. Today, the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) mentioned Ireland. Yesterday, at the all-party group on refugees, we heard from the Irish Refugee Council, whose chief executive, Nick Henderson, described this as a “Sliding Doors” moment. Just as Ireland changes its immigration system, after a 19-year campaign, and sets out on a path to end congregated living for asylum seekers, we are embarking on the opposite journey, closing down community dispersal for those deemed to have arrived unlawfully by slinging them into degrading and inhumane detention centres—“Sliding Doors” indeed. I will say a bit more in a minute about the Irish experience, but at that same meeting we also heard a Belarusian politician describe his experience of living as an asylum seeker in congregated settings in London. He was at pains to point out how grateful he was that the UK had taken in him and his wife, and he was very clear that, had it not done so, he would have been murdered. He is now settled, but he is worried about others. He knows the impact of congregated living for asylum seekers. None of us knows it, but he does, and he wants to warn the Government against going further down that route. He talked about the powder keg that is created when a melting pot of multiple cultures and languages lives in one space with always just one thing in common: trauma. The constant stress of that and the indignity of communal living left him feeling suicidal. Yes, I agree with those Conservative Members who say that we have a broken asylum system: we certainly do, but they are trying to fix it in the wrong way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) talked about the inquiry that the APPG on immigration detention has been doing. I attended some of those sessions and I was as sickened as she was when I heard people talking about the outbreak of scabies. How is that giving people dignity? She and I have both worked hard to try to close down the so-called mother and baby unit in Glasgow. There is a fantastic campaign called Freedom to Crawl. It is called that because in that mother and baby unit the rooms are so tiny that the babies and toddlers cannot crawl; they cannot move. That is inhumane.

I am sick to the back teeth of hearing about people who come here by very dangerous routes characterised as wealthy and selfish and just coming here for their own benefit because they want to make money.

[Duncan Baker]

There is an awful lot of talk about refugees. First, would the hon. Lady like to comment on the fact that this country has taken the highest number of refugees of any other European country? [Hon. Members: “Not true!”] Let me finish. Secondly, is there not a part of her that recognises that if we are to house refugees, as we should, and meet our international obligations, giving them a safe route to come here—not making them risk life and limb through coming on boats, as we are hearing—is a sensible and practical way to try to move the legislation forward?

[Anne McLaughlin]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, that is not true. We have just heard—he was clearly not listening—about a number of other countries that, per head of population, take far more than us. He might also be interested to know that 82% of the world’s refugees are in displacement camps in developing countries, and that the poorest countries are taking the most asylum seekers.

As I said, the gentleman who came to the APPG on refugees acknowledged that he would be dead if it had not been for the United Kingdom taking him in. Nobody here is saying that it is not a positive thing to have a system, but what the hon. Gentleman’s Government is doing to the system is vile. On safe and legal routes, yes, there is not a single person alive that would not want people to use safe and legal routes, but I must have missed something because I have not seen anything in the Bill that tells me how the Government will beef up those safe and legal routes so that people do not need to desperately cross the channel on those boats.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The most important thing is to have a sense of perspective. Everyone supports safe, legal routes, but even in a good year, pre-covid—I think the figure was about 25,000 last year—the total number of resettlements globally from UN-mandated camps was in the region of 50,000. We are talking about 25 million or 30 million refugees. We would be here for centuries before resettlement provided a complete solution. We will have resettlement but we must also have an asylum system alongside that. All we are asking is for the United Kingdom to offer a relatively small, by European standards, number of asylum seekers a place of sanctuary.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I completely agree, as I always do, with everything that my hon. Friend says.

I ask Conservative Members: just imagine it was you. I talked about a Belarusian MP, but imagine it was you. Imagine that for some reason—lucky us; we do not have to—you ended up in that situation where you had to flee. Is there anything Conservative Members would not do to keep their families safe? If there is anything they would not do to keep their families safe, maybe they should be thinking about their moral code.

Ireland has been through attempts to reform the system. It argued at the time, as Conservative Members do, that its system was a deterrent. Those at the Ministry of Justice in Ireland wanted to build misery into the accommodation system. It was not a train of thought imagined by critics; it was their actual policy. But they realised it was wrong and there is now cross-party consensus that it must stop. They reached that consensus not just because it did not work, but because they have recognised the inhumanity of that system.

[Angela Crawley]

Will my hon. Friend give away?

[Anne McLaughlin]

I want to come on to my last point, and I do not get an extra minute.

The Home Secretary set the tone for this debate by immediately, in the first paragraph of her speech, talking about people having “had enough”. She used the words “uncontrolled” “failed asylum system”, “illegal”—that was used three times—“foreign”, “crime gangs”, “pretending to be genuine” “pretending to be children”, “criminals”, “murderers” “rapists” and abusers. Yes, I am sure Conservative Members loved it. That was the first paragraph and it set the tone. It was calculated and it was irresponsible. She knew exactly what she was doing. We will be doing everything to make sure that the people know the truth out there .The Home Secretary should be ashamed of that speech yesterday, and all Conservative Members should be ashamed of this Bill.