Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Stephen Kinnock

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Chris Bryant]

If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) does not mind me mentioning her, I remember that when she was Prime Minister the first letter that she wrote to the European Union in trying to trigger article 50 said that we wanted a security treaty with the EU. That is what I would dearly love us to have. One of the great flaws of how we have left the European Union is that we have not ended up with that. Surely this measure should be part of that security treaty, so that we have better relations with Interpol, Europol and Frontex and proper sharing of information, so that we know all the details of anyone arriving in the UK. Is that not where we need to go?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know from our long period of being in the European Union that, in order to get a deal with the EU, there has to be a quid pro quo. There has to be a negotiation based on a grown-up conversation about how to tackle the challenge we face, and an all-encompassing security agreement could be a very good way of opening that door, because of course the EU knows that the United Kingdom is a very important security partner for all sorts of reasons. I agree with my hon. Friend entirely on the very strategic point he has made. Although we support the Government’s new clause 8 on safe and legal routes, we believe it should be linked to securing a returns deal with the European Union. As I said, our approach is based on hard graft, common sense and quiet diplomacy, and we urge the Government to start thinking and acting in the same vein.

Our third commitment is that Labour will fix the problems with current resettlement programmes. This includes the broken Afghan schemes, and our new clause 21 instructs the Government to report every three months on progress—or lack thereof—in meeting their own targets in supporting those loyal-to-Britain Afghans who sacrificed so much to protect our servicepeople and to stand up for our liberal values in Afghanistan. All resettlement routes need to be properly controlled and managed, of course, and they therefore cannot be unlimited, but they do also need to work.

Fourthly, Labour’s long-term international development strategy will include tackling the root causes of migration upstream through increased humanitarian assistance and greater emphasis on conflict prevention and resolution programmes. This is slightly beyond the focus of the Bill, but an important aspect of migration policy—and a lesson that needs to be learned from Afghanistan in relation to Sudan, of course, which was mentioned earlier—is that if we cut aid and cut the right kind of aid, we will end up increasing the challenges around the dangerous channel crossings and hurt British values and interests.

Our comprehensive plan will also fix what is perhaps the Conservatives’ most astonishing failure of basic governance: the failure to clear the backlog. It is truly staggering that just 13% of small boat asylum claims are being processed within five years, and it is deeply troubling that, while around half of the huge 166,000 backlog is down to small boat crossings, another 80,000 has built up organically under the Conservatives since 2010.

This is no coincidence. Home Office decision making has collapsed. In 2013 the Conservatives downgraded asylum decision makers to junior staff, hired by literally going from a Saturday job one minute to making life or death decisions the next. No wonder this resulted in worse decisions, often overturned on appeal, and it is deeply troubling that the staff attrition rate in 2022 in these teams stood at an astonishing 46%. There is little prospect of improvement, given that Home Office statistics published on Monday show that this year the number of decision makers has decreased.

So let us be clear: the incompetence and indifference of consecutive Home Secretaries since 2010 have brought the basic functions of government to a grinding halt, and during this cost of living crisis the British taxpayer is paying the price. Our new clause 10 therefore sets out how the Government should get on with expediting asylum processing for the countries listed in the schedule to this Bill. If an applicant has no right to asylum in the UK, they should be removed, safely and swiftly, to the safe country from which they have come, such as Albania.

Further to new clause 10, our new clause 13 instructs the Home Secretary to publish a report every three months on the progress she is making on clearing the backlog.

Foreign Lobbying

Debate between Chris Bryant and Stephen Kinnock

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kinnock]

I absolutely welcome, as my hon. Friend does, the Government’s decision to stop the golden visas scheme. Does he not think it would be incredibly helpful for the Government to publish their review into the scheme, which Parliament has been waiting for for more than a year?

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I am absolutely confident that the Minister will tell us later when it is going to be published, because the Home Secretary has repeatedly said, in answer to questions from me in the Chamber, that it will be published soon. “Soon” in ministerial language means pretty much anything the Minister feels like it means, but we are beginning to lose patience with the soon-ness, or the lack of soon-ness. The Minister is looking wry and quizzical, but I am sure she will help us out later.

I want to refer to one specific issue. On 8 March I wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary following her appearance the previous day before the Foreign Affairs Committee. I published the letter on my Twitter feed. I wrote to her to address her allegation that I had obstructed the progress of sanctions legislation through Parliament. In the letter I quoted from various speeches made in Parliament, one of which included allegations made in 2018 against Mr Christopher Chandler. It was not my intention to repeat those allegations, which I accept have subsequently been disproved. I am happy to set the record straight today in Parliament and regret any distress caused to Mr Chandler.

Wales: Regional Development Funding

Debate between Chris Bryant and Stephen Kinnock

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree with every word. As I will come on to, the key point is that we must not receive a penny less; there must not be any sleight of hand in the shift from EU structural funding to the shared prosperity fund.

EU structural funds are distributed to regions throughout the European Union based on their relative GDP. Areas where GDP per capita falls below 75% of EU GDP are placed in the first tier, and therefore receive the maximum funding. The poorer the region, the higher its priority and the more funding it receives. West Wales and the valleys is ranked as a region of the highest priority, and therefore received £2 billion for the 2014-20 cohort. No other area of the UK received more than £750 million, showing the scale of the challenge for the economy in that area of Wales. We are talking about a serious amount of funding here.

Like much of Wales, my Aberavon constituency has benefited hugely from European money, and from the strong vision and partnership working formed between the Welsh Government and our local Neath Port Talbot Council. Take, for instance, the new integrated transport hub—a Neath Port Talbot Council project in partnership with the Welsh Government, using EU money—or the sunken gardens and toddlers’ play area on Aberavon beach, which is a Neath Port Talbot Council project using EU funding granted by the Welsh Government.

There are more, from the bay campus, as my hon. Friend mentioned, to the Croeserw community enterprise centre, to the Cognation mountain bike trails in the Afan valley, to the Port Talbot magistrates court regeneration project. Those projects would not have been possible without European funding and strong political leadership of a type we see consistently from the Welsh Government and our local councils, but too rarely from Westminster. That is why Brexit raises a number of concerns regarding the future of regional development funding.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Government have previously guaranteed that every penny from Europe that Wales lost would be matched by Westminster funding. That still has not happened. Has he noticed that, in the meantime, the Government have guaranteed that the British overseas territories will now receive from Westminster every single penny that they received from the European Union? Is it not a bit of an irony that the British Government are prepared to guarantee money to our overseas territories but not to our territories at home?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Indeed. That is a quite shocking example of the failure to prioritise what is happening right on our doorstep. It is absolutely vital that we see the funding in Wales that we need if we are to deliver. We all know how much support is required to deal with the huge changes in our economy over recent decades. We currently have a system that, while not perfect, works relatively well: EU funding is targeted at less prosperous areas and delivered by devolved Administrations who know the needs of their areas better than anyone else.

Now, we can debate Brexit until the cows come home—I am sure that we would love to—but I am sure that we can all agree that it is crucial that Wales does not lose a single penny of the funding that we would have received had the British public voted to remain instead of to leave the EU on 23 June 2016. The UK Government have agreed to replace those European funds, yet nearly everything about the shared prosperity fund is still to be worked out. We still do not know how much funding will be available. We need £1.7 billion per year UK-wide to keep up with what the EU is set to contribute from 2020 to 2026.