Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Sarah Pochin]

I will make a bit of progress. The immediate action needs to be that all these hotels are closed to illegal migrants, and that they are moved out of the community into holding centres to be processed and sent home. The conditions in which they are held in these processing centres will be humane but not luxurious. There will be no free tickets to theme parks and no free trips out into the community.

I had an asylum hotel—the Daresbury hotel—in my constituency. My campaign in the recent by-election saw the hotel eventually shut down, but the implications of shutting the hotels are that these illegal migrants are dispersed in houses of multiple occupancy in our communities. In Runcorn, we have approximately 900 illegal migrants in 80 HMOs that we know about. Once in those HMOs, they are lost to the authorities, yet still live free at the taxpayers’ expense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I must congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on an excellent, compelling and evidence-based opening speech of the debate. I declare my membership, alongside him, of the all-party parliamentary group on refugees.

The petitions call for three main things. They call for asylum hotels to be shut immediately, for people in hotels to be deported, and for all support—including food, shelter and medical assistance—to be denied.

Migration is a basic human thing to do. People move. Our earliest ancestors did it, and most of us have moved at some point during our lives, in search of work or a better life, or for love. Most of us, though, are lucky enough to have had to flee for our lives, as many of those in asylum hotels have done. Whether we have travelled from Leicester to London or from Afghanistan to Aberdeen, moving is a part of life. Refugees, a small proportion of the total migration into this country, are forced to move. The chance for them to seek asylum is a lifeline at the heart of British values and democracy.

Asylum hotels work for no one. The Government want to end their use, as they are hugely expensive. They are also completely unsuitable for men, women and children who have endured and fled unimaginable trauma. However, hotels are being used in the immediate term because the last Government deliberately created a massive backlog of destitute people when they stopped assessing asylum claims.

Successive Governments—sadly, including this one—have sought to make life needlessly difficult for people seeking sanctuary. Hotel accommodation for destitute asylum seekers is given on a no-choice basis. Rooms in hotels are often shared and cramped, with nowhere to cook and no privacy, and often leave vulnerable people isolated and depressed. Asylum seekers have no recourse to public funds, meaning that they are not eligible for mainstream benefits and, in most cases, are banned from working. They are trapped by a malfunctioning Home Office—a bloated institution that should be broken up, as recommended in a report that I commissioned a few months ago called “No Way Home”.

Turning to the proposal to deport those seeking asylum: that is immoral. We have provided sanctuary for decades under international conventions, because protecting people from torture and death reflects core British values of generosity, compassion and care—values that our grandparents fought and died for in world war two. They are values that are upheld every day in my Bristol Central constituency, where we are proud to be a city of sanctuary, where our wonderful schools welcome everyone as equal and valued members of their school communities, and where the Bristol Refugee Festival and amazing organisations such as the Bristol Hospitality Network, Moveable Feast, Aid Box Community and the Dovetail Orchestra—to name but a few—work to connect, share and celebrate together. Far-right groups do not like it, but Bristol stands firmly for dignity, inclusion and hope.

The real problem is inequality, not immigration. In billionaire Britain, 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty. Meanwhile, the top 50 richest families in the UK now hold more wealth than the poorest half of the population, which is over 34 million people. There are now over 172,000 children living in temporary accommodation, while wealth from property and inheritance has soared. It is patently not those destitute people who have fled for their lives, and who are now stuffed into inappropriate accommodation and forced to live on £9.95 a week, who are to blame for any of that.

We need fairer taxation. We need wealth taxes so that those with the broadest shoulders can pay their fair share. We need a plan to make migration actually work for all of us. I urge the Government to act on the Refugee Council’s proposal that would allow Ministers to close asylum hotels within a year. It recommends a one-off scheme to give time-limited permission to stay, subject to suitably rigorous security checks, to people from countries that make them almost certain to be recognised as refugees. The system should also provide safe and legal routes for people to seek sanctuary, so that they are not pushed into the hands of people smugglers, and we must end the ban on asylum seekers working. Let them contribute. Those are the real ways to undermine the black economy and create integrated communities.

Ending the scandal of poverty and inequality is critical, starting—please—with scrapping the awful two-child benefit cap and taxing billionaires properly. It is time to share out the great wealth that we have in this country to provide reliable and accessible public services that are run for the public good and that we can all benefit from. We must reject the politics of division and hate, and make hope normal again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s heroism in asking for regards and laurels for housing merely 30,000 people in hotels as opposed to 56,000, but I do not think that will wash. The reality is that we will be the ones who end hotel use.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned deterrence. Conservative colleagues cannot really believe that a scheme that sent four volunteers for £700 million formed a meaningful deterrent. We want to have a deterrent, and returns agreements are good deterrents, which is why we innovated one with France. Indeed, the shadow Home Secretary was very keen on them, but was unable to deliver. We delivered it. That is exactly why we proceeded in that way.

The hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) talked about how hotels and the housing waiting lists are dreadful. He talked about how dreadful homelessness is and the pressure on public services. He is going to be very angry when he meets the people who did that. The sad thing is that they are on his Front Bench, not ours. He talked about a future Tory Government, which will remain a long way off until the Conservatives come properly to terms with their legacy in this area and across public services, the economy and beyond.

The hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) talked about how fed up her constituents are. That is a point of agreement with me, but perhaps the end of such agreement. Many people who signed this petition, who may have voted Reform in the previous county council elections or who are thinking about voting Reform in a general election, will be watching this debate. I say to them that I believe her contribution is exactly why they cannot and should not vote for Reform. She said that she agreed with the petitioners. She said that no money should be spent on this cohort of people, and within the next sentence she spent tens of billions of pounds on her solution to the problem. Those are not serious answers.

Similarly, the hon. Lady said that the past offered no solutions. Within 10 minutes, the former leader, and now deputy leader, of her party, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), who is not in his place, contradicted that by asking why we could not just go back to how things were 20 years ago. The reality is that Reform will argue each end of any argument if it thinks that doing so will receive political support. The last thing Reform wants is for the Government of the day to solve this problem. I am afraid that we will disappoint Reform on that, because we are very much going to do so.

The right to work was a major feature of the debate. A number of colleagues talked about that, including my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), and the hon. Members for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan), for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer), for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) and for Woking (Mr Forster)—I would be a good train announcer, and I suspect it would be quite a journey. I appreciate why there is a degree of enthusiasm for the right to work. As a member of the Labour party, I believe that work gives people dignity and purpose, and it should always make people better off. It is certainly better than being on welfare or, as in this case, in asylum accommodation.

The reality is that this country is already attractive. People take the breathtaking risk, which should never happen, of entering the channel in a precarious small boat because this is an attractive country. The right to work would create greater attraction and greater reason to take that risk, and I cannot support that.

[Carla Denyer]

I have previously asked Home Office Ministers, and staff supporting them, whether they have any evidence for the claim that allowing asylum seekers to work while waiting for a decision would act as a pull factor. That evidence was not provided to me. Can the Minister provide it?

[Alex Norris]

Counterfactual cases can be challenging, but we see that already: it is well reported, well documented and well evidenced that work in the illicit economy already acts as a significant pull factor. That is why, through provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, we are seeking to make that work harder, particularly in the gig economy. We know that the ability merely to work illegally is already attractive; imagine what it would be like if that was a condoned and supported approach. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Woking, talked about timeliness. We do have the backstop that if someone’s claim has been delayed for 12 months and it is not their fault, they will be allowed to work. I have to say I would never want that to be used, because we do not want claims to last that long, but there is at least that backstop.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe and my hon. Friends the Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) and for York Outer (Mr Charters) made important points about local authorities. There is absolutely no doubt that the Home Office under the previous Government did not treat local authorities as equal partners, or even as partners at all, in this process. Hon. Members will know that my previous role in the Government was in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The reality is that local authorities know their communities —they have the most intimate connection to them—and we are committed to better information, better engagement and better work with local authorities. We have made up to £500 million available as a pilot to do as colleagues have suggested: allow local authorities to buy up the stock themselves and keep it. When the demand is not there in the future, that stock could be part of tackling ongoing housing challenges.

That is an important upcoming piece of work, but I want to give a note of caution on dispersed accommodation. Dispersed accommodation will always be part of the solution. It is something that all local authorities provide to some degree, whether for people fleeing domestic abuse, people with substance abuse issues or people with homelessness issues. Dispersed accommodation is a part of all communities, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) said, when certain communities see vast swathes of their streets bought up, it ceases to be dispersed accommodation. I urge colleagues to be very cautious of thinking that that alone could be the panacea. That is why we are looking at bigger sites alongside dispersed accommodation; otherwise, we will merely test the public’s confidence on that point as well, and I do not think that is the right thing to do.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) also talked about local authorities in the context of exit strategies. Again, I am committed to full engagement and full transparency. It will be done in an orderly way, but it may not be done simultaneously, and of course confidence needs to be built into the process. I can give that assurance.

The hon. Member for Wimbledon and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), who serve, as I used to, on the Home Affairs Committee, have a very important report coming out. I commit to them that I will look at it very closely. We are concerned about quality, and about profiteering in the sector. As they said, we inherited a 2019 contract that has a break point in 2026 and ends in 2029. We are looking to get the best value. I hope that the work we are doing with local government shows our interest in alternative models. We want to get the very best. I think of the horror stories that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer talked about—we are very conscious of those. However, Ministers will not hide behind criticism of third parties, if they are acting in delivery of Government policy. It is for us to make sure that those providers are operating in the right way and that, when they are not, the issues are tackled swiftly. That is my commitment.

The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) asked why there is so much focus on this group, and I will use that as a bridge into a more general point. First, this issue is important because the public are aghast when they see people entering the channel and coming to the country in that way; they lose all confidence the system is orderly. We have to address that if we are going to build any public confidence in the system. I do not refer to the hon. Gentleman in particular in saying this, but for colleagues who believe in the system and want to improve it or make it even more generous, there is a danger in defending a broken status quo. They ought not do so.

Borders and Asylum

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Our communities are divided, and they are scared. We—all of us—want to be with our families, and communities are at their strongest when family life is protected and supported. If the Secretary of State lifted the ban on asylum seekers working, she would be giving those who subsequently achieve refugee status a stronger footing to support their families and be ready to join our communities, and they would not need to seek the homelessness relief she mentioned. Instead of keeping children and their families apart, why does she not help families to support themselves?

[Yvette Cooper]

I know that the hon. Member will be as concerned as I am about the lives at risk in small boat crossings, and we have to do everything we can to prevent those dangerous boat crossings, including when families are on them. However, part of what the criminal gangs do—it is part of their sell—is to claim that it will be really easy to work, and that is to work illegally, in the UK. It is part of their pitch, and that is one of the reasons why it is so important to tackle illegal working. That promise of being able to work easily and get income is one of the things the criminal gangs exploit to get a lot of people to part with their money and get involved in the criminal gangs’ vile trade.

UK-France Migration: Co-operation

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the stories that still haunts me is of a little girl who was crushed to death in one of the small boats because of the scale of overcrowding and the way these boats are, frankly, dangerous. As well as the risk of drowning, we have seen people crushed as a result of overcrowding. That is why we must do everything we can to prevent these dangerous crossings and ensure that across the world there are systems of sanctuary for those who have fled persecution. The criminal gangs exploit people’s desperation and they should not be allowed to do so.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Will the Secretary of State explain to us what happens if one in, one out works? If the goal is to stop small boat crossings and it is successful, the outside of the equation drops to zero, which means the inside of the equation also needs to drop to zero and the UK will have got rid of the small sliver of a safe and regulated route scheme that it has just created. Does the Secretary of State not think that, if we did that, it would be more likely to push people back to the small boats and people smugglers?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am not fully sure about the logic of the hon. Member’s argument. She seems to be arguing that if the scheme works, it will not work.

[Carla Denyer]

indicated assent.

[Yvette Cooper]

That is what she seems to be arguing.

Look, I think we should be doing everything to prevent these dangerous boat crossings. We will continue, as we have done through the Ukraine scheme and through the support for Hong Kong, to ensure that the UK does its bit to help those fleeing persecution. For example, we made reference in the immigration White Paper to refugee study opportunities at our universities. These dangerous boat crossings are so damaging; they really undermine our border security and the credibility of the whole system, so we must ensure we take action to prevent them.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dan Jarvis]

I will make a bit of progress, which I do not think is unreasonable.

The proscription of those three organisations will reaffirm the UK’s zero-tolerance approach to terrorism, regardless of its form or underlying ideology.

It may be helpful to set out some background to the proscription power. To proscribe an organisation, the Home Secretary must reasonably believe that it is concerned in terrorism. That means that the organisation commits or participates in terrorism, it prepares for terrorism, it promotes or encourages terrorism, or it is otherwise concerned in terrorism. Some 80 terrorist organisations are currently proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Proscription is, rightly, ideologically neutral: it judges an organisation on its actions and the actions it is willing to deploy in pursuit of its cause. The UK’s definition of terrorism was established in law a quarter of a century ago, and it has stood the test of time and extensive scrutiny since.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman listened to what I said—I just explained to him the process that is in place.

I am grateful to all of those who have considered this matter. This order is a necessary and proportionate step to protect the public and defend our values. That is, after all, the first duty of the state, and under this Government, nothing will matter more. With that, I commend this order to the House.

[Carla Denyer]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

This is not a time for a point of order.

Question put.

--- Later in debate ---

That the draft Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025, which was laid before this House on 30 June, be approved.

[Carla Denyer]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you know, every single person who just voted no on the statutory instrument wanted to vote yes on the proscription of the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, but we were prevented from doing so by the cynical way in which the Government lumped together those two clearly terrorist organisations with Palestine Action, which we could not support. Can you please advise me and the other MPs who just voted no if there is any way that, in future, proscription orders for unrelated organisations could be voted on separately, so that each MP can apply their own critical assessment of whether each group has met the tests of proportionality and necessity that are required for a terrorism proscription?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving notice of her point of order. The Chair does not have the power to separate out decisions on the contents of a statutory instrument. In making her point of order, she has put her concerns on the record.

Oral Answers to Questions

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 2nd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips]

Yes, of course. As my hon. Friend knows, I have had a strong bond with Doreen for many years. Of course I would be delighted to meet him and her.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Research undertaken by Women for Refugee Women has found that banning work for women seeking asylum leads many women, sadly, to stay in unwanted and abusive relationships. Will the Minister consider lifting the ban on asylum seekers working, and will she specifically include women seeking asylum in the Government’s upcoming strategy to tackle violence against women and girls?

[Jess Phillips]

It is well beyond my remit as safeguarding Minister to make asylum policy, but I can absolutely guarantee the hon. Lady that migrant women and their experiences will be part of the violence against women and girls strategy; this issue has received some of the money from the recent uplift in victim services. Working together with by-and-for services across the country, we will always take account of the experiences of all women and girls in our country.

Immigration

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I will talk a bit in a moment about the record of the last Government, but I have already said that for decades, under successive Governments—including the last one, but previous ones, too—immigration has been far too high. That is a failure by Governments over a period of decades, and it is now time to listen to the British people and put that right.

High levels of immigration, especially when there is not proper integration, undermine social cohesion. A nation state and a society cannot function properly when there are fractures in social cohesion.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

Yes, of course I would. A number of people have tragically lost their lives crossing the channel, and that is precisely why we need to stop these crossings entirely, as Australia did about 10 years ago. If we can stop the crossings entirely, lives will not be put needlessly at risk and we can avoid tragedy.

[Carla Denyer]

I have to say that I am disgusted by the narrative coming from Conservative Members, who are continuing, even in opposition and in using this Opposition day debate, to scapegoat migrants for their own 14 years of failure to deliver proper public services, tackle inequality and tackle poverty in this country, which led to many of the problems the right hon. Member has listed. Now that he has moved on to tackling small boats, will he not acknowledge that, without providing safe and regulated routes for people to claim asylum, they are pushed into the hands of people smugglers, and that the most rational as well as the most compassionate thing to do would be to provide those safe and managed routes?

[Chris Philp]

No, I do not accept that. First, every single person getting on one of those boats is able to claim asylum in France, and they do not need to get into one of those boats to claim asylum in the UK. Secondly, unless every single person that wants to come to the UK is given a safe and legal route, those people who are not given a place on what would presumably be a capped scheme would none the less try to cross by small boat. So the idea that that is a solution to small boat crossings is manifestly absurd.

There are of course safe and legal routes. Some were set up for specific purposes, such as the Ukrainian scheme, the British national overseas scheme, the UK resettlement scheme that saw 25,000 people from Syria resettled here, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme and the Afghan relocations and assistance policy for Afghanistan, and the refugee family reunion route. There are plenty of safe and legal routes, and as I say, unless every single person who wants to come here is given a safe and legal route, there will still be illegal crossings, which are anyway unnecessary because France is safe and people are able to claim asylum there.

Immigration System

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

In the space of just four years, we saw a huge increase in overseas recruitment at exactly the same time that training in the UK fell. It is a real problem in the UK labour market to have such steep increases in overseas recruitment at the same time as we have such deep problems with training. That is why it is so important to ensure that for the first time, we link the immigration system with training and skills. That has not happened before; we have had the wrong approach to the labour market, and it is right that we bring in these reforms. Of course, my hon. Friend is right that we should also recognise the huge contribution that people make as part of our country. Respecting people for the contribution they make should be embedded in our system, but we have to change this broken approach to the labour market.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

The Prime Minister’s “island of strangers” speech sounded like something straight out of the Reform-Trump playbook. Rather than alienating and devaluing migrants, and recognising the need to increase the number of Brits who want to work in our health and care sectors, would the Home Secretary not prefer to support Unison’s campaign for a certificate of common sponsorship? Such a certificate would protect the working rights of migrant workers who are working in unacceptable situations of exploitation that border on slavery and who are at threat of deportation. As a Labour Member, would she not prefer to support that campaign?

[Yvette Cooper]

In the White Paper, we highlight the importance of tackling exploitation, which is deeply damaging for those who have come to the UK in good faith, as well as for other employers. We want to explore how we can make it easier for people to not be held to a single employer when there are problems with the sponsorship arrangements. We want to make that system more effective so that it can tackle exploitation.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow that eloquent and impassioned maiden speech by our new colleague, the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin). I can tell that we will be hearing a lot more from her in this House, and while I am sure that her colleagues are pleased to have their number back up to five, I think we can all understand that her lucky number is six.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the support provided to my office by the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. I would like to make a couple of points about the amendments, drawing on the evidence we heard in Committee.

The purpose of this legislation is to stop the small boat crossings in the channel. They are too dangerous and too many vulnerable people die in the attempt. They represent a lack of grip on the immigration system, because it should be the Government who decide who comes into this country, not people smugglers. The previous approach manifestly failed. That is because the Rwanda scheme meant we could never reduce demand enough. As Dr Walsh from the Migration Observatory told us in our evidence sessions, demand for crossing the channel is essentially inelastic and we will never get it down enough. Deterrence alone therefore will not work. If we want proof, we should consider that of all the asylum seekers in the system, those who went to Rwanda represent one 4,000th of 1%. Rather than tackle demand, we should tackle supply. We need to make it harder to get in boats and to organise crossings, and we need to disrupt the supply chain that drives this multimillion-pound industry and seize the phones of those making the crossing.

On new clause 3 on safe routes, let us be clear that there is absolutely a wider case to be made for safe routes and there is a national obligation to help where we can, but let us also be clear that safe routes already exist at significant scale. Some 500,000 people sought sanctuary in the UK through them over the last few years. We must be clear, too, that given the vast numbers of people in the asylum system just now, no one can argue that Britain does not have enough refugees. Most importantly, safe routes fall into the same logical trap as the Rwanda scheme, in that they aim to reduce demand rather than to tackle supply. Rwanda said, “Don’t come because there’s a tiny chance you’ll be sent to Rwanda instead.” Safe routes say, “Don’t come because there’s a tiny chance you can come through safe routes instead.”

The purpose of the Bill is to reduce channel crossings. There are good arguments for safe routes on many levels, but having worked on migration policy for 15 years before coming here, I know we have to recognise that they will not play a role in reducing this cross-channel travel.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

The Government’s repeal of the vile and illegal Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 and large parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 are welcome, but they must do more to repeal the underlying legal framework, which continues to undermine the UK’s ability to uphold the rule of law and human rights. The Illegal Migration Act simply does not belong on the statute book, and my preference would be to scrap the lot of it. My amendment 35 at least seeks to restore judicial oversight of decisions about detention. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association points out that without my amendment 35, a software engineer who overstayed her visa could be detained for longer than a suspected terrorist, and with far less judicial oversight.

Turning to my new clause 38, I am disappointed that the Government have not used the Bill to repeal the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, when Labour rightly opposed that legislation in its entirety on its Second Reading. That Act marked the UK’s move away from upholding the 1951 refugee convention and instead denies the right to territorial asylum, yet this Labour Government have chosen to leave the Act on the statute book, untouched by this Bill. My new clause 38 focuses on undoing the provisions that penalise and criminalise people who make unsafe journeys to the UK to seek sanctuary. It scraps the parts that create an unfair two-tier asylum system with differential treatment for different groups of people—a proposal so unworkable that the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) had to pause it when in government. Crucially, it scraps the law that criminalises people arriving in the UK without permission or the right paperwork with a penalty of up to four years in prison. This law is clearly contrary to article 31.1 of the 1951 refugee convention, which provides immunity from penalties in recognition of the fact that refugees are often compelled to arrive without appropriate documents in order to access their human rights under that convention. Lastly, my new clause 38 would scrap sections 30 to 38 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which sought to—I will put it charitably—poorly reinterpret the refugee convention.

I wish to highlight the fact that the Government are leaving on the statute book measures that unjustly penalise and criminalise refugees for arriving irregularly when there are no safe and managed routes to travel here to claim asylum for the vast majority of people who might need and be eligible to do so. In the words of Warsan Shire:

“no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land”.

This Government are clearly focused on appearing tough on immigration, and to do so they have brought in some of the previous Government’s cruel policies and introduced some of their own—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. I call Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

I am grateful to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I usually say how pleased I am to speak in a debate, but I have to admit that I am conflicted about being here today because I could not disagree more strongly with the petition’s demands. And yet, the thousands who have signed it have rightly identified that we face deep challenges in this country, and that people are being badly let down and are struggling. Those who have signed the petition want answers. They want politicians like us to take bold, decisive action that will genuinely change people’s lives for the better. Let me be very clear: stopping migration is not the answer to that problem—in fact, it is the opposite. But we do nobody any favours by pretending that the problems are not there.

The petition captures a view of migration that I fundamentally disagree with, but the view is clearly widespread, so I want to directly address the many people who have signed the petition and all those who feel frustrated, left behind and ignored. I want to give another view of the problems that we face as a country and give people another way forward—one that is determined to change things for the better, that is positive in the face of negativity, and that resolutely stands up to those spreading misinformation and prejudice from wherever it comes.

I will start with the positive. I am proud to represent Bristol Central, which is apparently the most pro-immigration constituency in the country. I know that that feeling is not universal across the UK, so I want to explain why I and so many of my constituents feel that way. The truth is that migration is good for this country. People come from across the world because they want to be part of our communities. They do vital work, as has been discussed, in our hospitals, schools and GP surgeries. They care for our children and our grandparents. They start businesses and create jobs. They pay tax and give to charity.

If we look at Spain, we see that, last year, its economy grew by five times the eurozone average and more than the US. Why? Because by welcoming immigration, its Government boosted demand in the economy and filled their labour shortages. Economic growth is not the best measure of the benefit to citizens, and I will come to that in a moment, but to pretend that migration is a problem and not an opportunity does a disservice to people who have grown up here and people who have chosen to make the UK their home.

The Government’s economics watchdog tells us that higher migration leads to lower Government deficits and debt. Instead of grasping the huge opportunity presented by people moving here to be part of our communities and contribute to our economy, the Government are subjecting immigrants to harsh arbitrary visa restrictions, forcing many to leave their families behind—one man’s economic dependence is another man’s children—and pushing many into jobs, such as in the care sector, where they are at risk of very poor treatment because they are under threat of deportation at any time.

A lot of people feel very protective of this country, and so do I. We should want to protect this country, our home, and a place where so many incredible things have been invented and created. We have such a strong culture, with inventions from the electric motor and penicillin to the first ever website—although arguably that has had some cons as well as pros. The UK is a wonderfully creative culture and economy. It has the most beautiful countryside and the most talented people. We should be proud and protective of this country, and I want to be, but who are we protecting this country against? Who does it need protecting from?

I agree with the petitioners when they say that

“we can’t even look after the people we have here at the moment”,

but why is that? It is absolutely true that people and powers in this country are making life harder for a lot of Brits—they are making it harder for families to feed their children, pay the bills, get a doctor’s appointment, get on the housing ladder, or even get a council house. But that is not the people who have moved to the UK from elsewhere; it is big corporations paying poverty wages and then taking their profits out of the country. It is energy companies hiking their bills time and again while polluting our environment, and water companies making us pay for the privilege of having sewage pumped into our waterways.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Carla Denyer]

I will make a little more progress. It is the landlords who own hundreds of properties putting up the rent every few months, out of all proportion to incomes, so that people pay more and more of their wage packet each month. It is the big developers prioritising profit by building luxury developments rather than the affordable homes that we need. It is years and years of deliberate underfunding by Governments that have brought our public services to their knees.

None of this is inevitable. If the Government choose, they could raise the minimum wage so that it is genuinely enough to live on. They could take action on spiralling bills, put an end to rip-off rents and build the affordable housing we so desperately need. But some rich and powerful people have an interest in keeping rents high, or allowing public services to be sold off to the highest bidder, or letting the rich get richer while the rest of us struggle. Rather than answering difficult questions about why this economy has been designed in a way that benefits them, it is easier for them to point the finger at migrants.

It is not always easy to stand up and tell the truth when we are swimming against the tide of what people across the country are being told day in, day out by public figures, newspaper headlines and posts on X. It is not easy to challenge the perceptions that have become the mainstream, but we have to, because as long as we chase false solutions to our problems and ignore the real sources of those problems, the things we care about—how much money we have in our pocket, whether we have a safe, warm, secure home, a roof over our head, and public services—will not improve.

I am going to have to turn to the negative for a moment. There is a serious problem of racism in this country, and especially in debates around immigration. That is not to say that everyone who has concerns about immigration is racist, though I fully expect that I may have my speech characterised as such. But we need to be honest about the fact that racism is thriving in this country. Like a hideous parasite, it feeds off people’s fear and suffering and is nurtured by politicians and media outlets that benefit from finding someone else to blame.

Last summer in Southport, we saw a horrific attack against children that scared us all. Such horrors make us angry, and rightfully so. But just as unacceptable and scary is what happened next and how that anger was deliberately misdirected towards totally innocent people: towards black and brown families minding their own business, who are no more responsible for the behaviour of one young man who happens to be the son of immigrants than I am responsible for the behaviour of all other left-handers. The despicable scenes we saw in the riots are a chilling snapshot and reminder of what is happening in this country and of what I am here to speak against: a spiral of misdirected blame, anger and fear that fixes nothing, helps nobody and harms many.

When the Minister responds, I ask him not to focus only on the perhaps easier, but not entirely honest, answer of being tough on migration, but to meet the petitioners with sincerity about the challenges we face and how we can really tackle them. To quote the petitioners one last time:

“We believe we can’t even look after the people we have here at the moment.”

They are right. Successive Governments have failed the people in this country. They have failed to provide jobs with fair wages, affordable housing, affordable energy, access to healthcare—I could go on. Rather than solutions, millionaire politicians and millionaire media moguls have inundated our phones, TVs and newspapers with images and messages depicting immigrants as the source of all our problems.

People are struggling. They are worried about not being able to pay their bills, about not getting paid enough and about their safety. An overwhelming tide of loud voices is telling them who to blame. That does not ease their worry or stop their struggling; it capitalises on their anger for political gain at the expense of some of the most hard-working and, sometimes, vulnerable people in this country.

It is a story as old as time to blame the stranger, the newcomer, the one who looks different. No one ever beat that story by accepting the narrative or overcame it by validating it. People’s feelings about being let down are valid, but the direction in which they are being pointed is not. It is the responsibility of all of us in this House, and especially of the Government, to be truthful, confront the real issues and not let people’s pain be channelled into hatred.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice]

The point is that life expectancy has grown and the pension age is growing because we are healthier. That is a great thing. People enjoy work—work is a great thing. However, the real point is that there are some 5 million-plus people not of retirement age who we need to get back into the workplace. We want a world-leading benefit system that looks after the genuinely vulnerable and sick as well as the genuinely unemployed who are looking for work. I would have thought that we could all agree on that.

Let us look at what really did work well: back in the ’80s and early ’90s, net inward migration was about 30,000 to 50,000 a year on average—in some years, there was a little bit of net emigration. It was working well. People came to work and integrated—and guess what? Our economy was growing at 2.5% to 3.5% a year. Everybody was getting better off. We had real per-person wage growth, above the rate of inflation, of some 2.5% per annum in the 1990s.

We now have no GDP growth but significant population growth through inward migration, so we are all getting poorer per person. That is one of the challenges that we all face. If we know that the system worked back then, maybe we should be willing to learn the lessons of history. That was a time when there was no immigration debate, interestingly. Until about the early 2000s, immigration was not an issue because it was working well, with numbers that could be sensibly absorbed. People were getting richer—and that is a good thing.

My view is that we are not short of people, and the anxiety of those who signed the petition is that population growth is too great. We cannot cope with our existing population, and there is a need for pause—perhaps a policy of net zero immigration: one in, one out. About 400,000 people leave the UK every year; we could welcome a similar number in—that will ebb and flow—as long as they are highly skilled and highly qualified where we have shortages, while we train our own people.

Back in the ’80s, the interesting thing was that our healthcare system, the NHS, was working very well—

[Carla Denyer]

It was funded very well as well.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. Through the Chair, please.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Carla Denyer Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

The Government deserve credit for swiftly scrapping the disgusting, immoral and illegal Rwanda plan, but we need to scrap the attitudes that underpinned it too. The demonising of vulnerable people and of anyone who is different—pandering to the nasty, dog-whistling of Reform and the Tories—is divisive and dangerous. It is shocking, then, to witness the Government trying to mimic the Tories and Reform with migrant raid videos and adverts boasting about deportations. Do they not understand that that just serves to reinforce Reform’s scapegoating rhetoric? Let us not forget that last summer we saw mobs, driven by hate, trying to burn refugees alive in hotels. The Government should be challenging those narratives head-on and helping communities to heal from divisions, not publishing videos that risk encouraging further animosity towards migrants and anyone perceived as being one.

Let me turn to the Bill. I share the Refugee Council’s concerns about the potential for clauses 13 to 16 and 18 to lead to the unintentional criminalisation of refugees who are forced to make decisions under coercion when their survival is at stake—by being forced to steer a small boat under threat of death, for example. Although I am pleased to see the repeal of child detention powers, 1,300 children were wrongly assessed to be adults over an 18-month period, so how do the Government plan to address that? I welcome the repeal of much of the Illegal Migration Act 2024, but I am concerned that some aspects that should have been scrapped will remain, including, for example, the automatic inadmissibility of asylum and human rights claims from certain countries, which is particularly dangerous for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers.

Let me come to my central point. Focusing solely on enforcement simply is not saving lives. The number of deaths in the channel remains horrifying. Enforcement against criminal gangs is of course needed, but that is not going to work on its own when refugees have no other choice. Instead, if people have a choice not to go with gangs, not to put their children in a deathly dinghy and not to risk their lives, the gangs lose their power.

I hope that Ministers have seen the report on safe routes published by the APPG on refugees, of which I am a member. It contains three recommendations, all of which are already tried and tested in other countries and should, in my view, be totally uncontroversial. First, we must urgently fix family reunion. Refugee children are being intentionally kept apart from their parents by the UK’s asylum laws. That is unconscionably cruel. We must move in line with the majority of European nations by bringing parents and children together, which would likely reduce the number of parents making dangerous journeys across the channel to be reunited with their children.

Secondly, Ministers must improve the UK resettlement scheme, which has a lot of potential but has consistently failed to help enough people—only 435 people were resettled last year. My inbox—like those of many Members, I am sure—is full of heartbreaking pleas from people caught up in delays and huge backlogs, and that step could help to fix the system. Thirdly, I would like the Government to pilot a humanitarian visa, to provide a safe option for refugees with strong asylum claims to travel here and make their claim. It is based on successful schemes in the US and Switzerland that have helped to reduce people smuggling.

In conclusion, bits of the Bill are important and hugely welcome, but let us be clear: scrapping something illegal, immoral and unworkable is the bare minimum, and now we need Ministers to build something better that helps this country to rise above the far-right narrative that demonises all migrants. Before I end my remarks, I invite everyone in the Chamber to join me in a very short thought experiment. “The political environment in your home country has become extremely dangerous for anyone with your political views. People in your movement have been murdered. Last month, your children got followed home by an unmarked car, and you have received threatening calls. You have a family member in the UK who successfully claimed asylum a few years ago and is very worried about you. He implores you to join him. Your options are to stay in your home country, risk being murdered and leaving your children orphaned, or to flee to the UK.” Who among us could say with 100% certainty that we would stay?

I will abstain on Second Reading, because although I support the scrapping of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act and the Illegal Migration Act, if the Government truly want to modernise the asylum system, they must be honest about the need for safe routes and respect for human rights.