Illegal Migration Bill

Brendan Clarke-Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con)]

I will continue the trend of highlights without commentary. Of the 45,000 people who crossed the channel illegally in 2022, we know that 27% were Albanian and 74% were males under 40, as the Home Secretary highlighted earlier. That is on top of the hotels that have been costing us up to £6 million per day, putting our public services and our NHS under great strain.

Today’s debate is actually about fairness. We are a fair country and a welcoming country, as we have shown with Ukraine, with Syria, with Afghanistan and with Hong Kong—with the 89,000 people from Ukraine and 18,900 from Afghanistan. This is a humane policy, tackling the people smuggling gangs responsible for the deaths in the channel, which cannot continue. We must make processing times shorter and we must clear the backlog for the genuine refugees. That is what today’s Bill is about, so I welcome the plans to tackle it and I welcome the wider package of measures—not just the Bill, but everything else we are introducing.

Some people want to make this about the ECHR and whether we stay or leave. That is a debate for another time, but I think all hon. Members will agree that that is a better reason to make this legislation work. Show that we can control our borders—that is my challenge to the Opposition. Vote with us today and show that it can be done. But this is an Opposition who have shown patronising views of countries such as Rwanda, who have campaigned to drag murderers off flights and who want open borders, blanket approvals and amnesties for those who are cheating our system. I support this legislation 100%.