Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Jerome Mayhew

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for those excellent points. They highlight one reason why the merging of the Department for International Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to form the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has the potential to link those two areas of policy. The challenge with push factors is substantial and it is that they have only just started. He is right to refer to malign actors such as Russia in the short and medium terms, but there is a much bigger factor that this House needs to consider over the next 20 to 50 years: climate change. The likelihood is that there will be very significant mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa when large areas of countries, perhaps entire countries, may become functionally uninhabitable through water scarcity and heat. What we have seen currently in push factors will be nothing compared with what we see in the future, so it behoves us, as a responsible Government, to design and implement an immigration policy that is fit for purpose, not just for now, but for the future.

[Bob Seely]

I find it frustrating when people, especially Opposition Members, talk about the need for safe and legal routes. As a statement of fact, there were 10 such routes into the UK in the past decade—there are currently nine—which have been responsible for 50,000 refugees coming to this country since 2015. Overall, the number of refugees or people granted asylum in this country from 2015-16 is approaching the population of Manchester; we are talking about a number in the upper 400,000s—that is twice the size of the city of Portsmouth. When Opposition Members talk about the need for safe and legal routes, I assume that none of them has any clue what they are talking about; would my hon. Friend care to comment?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am pretty settled with that last sentence. We have been a place of safety for about 80,000 from Ukraine; we have opened our arms to some 250,000 British nationals of Hong Kong descent; we have had the Syria programme, which I believe involved about 20,000; and we have had the Afghan resettlement programme, which involved about 18,000 to 20,000. All those have been safe and legal routes. The big difference is that the British Government, representing the British people, decided that those were the people we wanted to help. They were the most vulnerable, and we took the decision, not criminal gangs from abroad.