Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes]

Q If I reframe the question, then, have you seen any evidence to suggest that it may be a pull factor?

Sarah Dineley: There is nothing that I have read in any interview provided by a migrant to suggest that that is a pull factor.

Jim Pearce: I have a personal view, but I am speaking on behalf of the national police chiefs, and I am not sure that I am in a position to do that. That is probably a question for either Immigration Enforcement or the Home Office.

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

Q Thank you for the really interesting testimonies that you have brought today; we really appreciate it. I have two questions. We heard from the Migration Observatory earlier that one of the challenges in this world is that demand is essentially inelastic: they could double the price of the crossings and there would still be a market of people who would pay it, even for very flimsy boats. Picking up Tom’s question, it strikes me that the Rwanda scheme, which this legislation repeals, was ostensibly focused on deterrence and therefore trying to tackle demand—but, because demand is inelastic, it was not having the effect. It sounds like you are saying that this legislation is focusing on the supply and just making it impossible for people to cross the channel, no matter how much demand there is for it. Is that right? Have I understood that correctly?

My second question is for Sarah. I should probably declare an interest because I was previously the home affairs attaché at the embassy in Paris. You talked about international co-operation and mentioned things like JITs and Eurojust and the challenges we face there. We heard from a previous witness about how the UK no longer being in Dublin is being cited by migrants as one of the reasons that they are going in. Can you say more about the challenges that the UK is facing post Brexit? How do we build relations with key allies to overcome them?

Sarah Dineley: I will start with how we rebuild relations with key allies. I have talked about our network of liaison prosecutors. We regularly engage and hold engagement events with our overseas prosecutors: this year alone, we have had engagement events in Ireland, Spain and, two weeks ago, Italy. That is about building those relationships and finding out what their challenges are, as well as finding out about their legal systems and what barriers there are to the co-operation that we are seeking. I think we do have to recognise that different countries have a different legal framework, and we cannot simply impose our framework on another country; we have to be able to work around their framework to try to get what we need from them.

[The Chair]

I want to get Mike Tapp’s question in quickly so that you can summarise. We have got just two minutes left.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

Following on from what the Minister asked you about how we have to be mean or have open borders, I looked at your written evidence, in which you have put as your ninth point, “Make Britain unattractive again”, and then you refer to the Rwanda policy. You say that you do not really know, but we had the National Crime Agency in before you and they were quite optimistic about the deterrent aspects of the Bill. Are you saying that you are not at all?

David Coleman: I am not, but at the moment it is to some extent a matter of opinion. The sorts of measures being proposed in the Bill are a development and accentuation of what has been done already. After all, the Government are not doing nothing to try to moderate asylum seeking; they have already, like the previous Government, been involved in discussions with our neighbours to try to come to an agreement on all sorts of aspects of migrant trafficking. The Bill is trying to ratchet that up, perfectly reasonably.

So far those measures, although admittedly not as intense as this Bill wants to impose, have not been notably successful. I drew a parallel with the war against drugs, which has an effect. It reduces the volume of drugs in circulation and puts drug pushers in prison, but it also puts up the price of drugs. There is a rather depressing parallel there.

[Chris Murray]

Q In 2018, the Government was spending £18,000 per asylum seeker, per year. Then they brought in the Illegal Migration Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, and the Safety of Rwanda Act. By 2024, they were spending £47,000 per asylum seeker, per year. If you have any respect for public money at all, is it not self-evident that this legislation has failed and that we should try a different approach on immigration?

David Coleman: That, I suppose, is the reason why the previous Government wanted to try to do something very different indeed in the Rwanda policy.

[Chris Murray]

But they passed the Act.

David Coleman: It was never tried. It might well have failed, but it was certainly a different avenue. It was not the one you had in mind, I am sure, but it was none the less a different way of doing it. It was attacking the problem from a different angle—from the question of demand rather than control.

[The Chair]

I had Tom Hayes to ask a question, but we have literally 20 seconds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Forster]

Q We have heard a lot today about supply and demand factors for migration, which you do understand. Data sharing is meant to be one of the examples of, “This is our way as a country of clamping down on immigration.” In your experience, does it have a de minimis impact?

Professor Brian Bell: Data sharing overall can be phenomenally valuable in thinking about immigration more broadly. The Migration Advisory Committee has been very clear that we need to improve the data. We have access to data from HMRC that we find very useful on the legal migration side. Fundamentally, the question is: what data does HMRC hold that will provide useful information to border security in terms of stopping organised immigration gangs? Presumably, the Government think that there are some useful points. My view is, “Why wouldn’t you try it and see if it helps?” If it does not, you are no worse off.

[Chris Murray]

Q Thank you for coming today. We heard some evidence this morning about the Illegal Migration and Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Acts. Witnesses have called them a disaster, a meltdown, and a fundamental system breakdown. What is your assessment of those Acts on the functioning of the Home Office systems and on the cost to the public purse? How effective have they been in reducing migrant numbers?

Professor Brian Bell: I will take those questions in reverse order. I do not think they were very effective. Again, I would caution that there is always this problem that you see a piece of legislation passing and then look at the numbers and try to guess whether it was the legislation that caused the change that you see. Other things are going on, so it is always difficult to do that.

More broadly, the evidence that we have from people seeking asylum is that the exact nature of the rules that exist in the country they are going to are not big drivers of their decision to go there. People have asked asylum seekers to list the reasons they want to come to the UK, and very rarely are they things like the legal system in operation for dealing with asylum claims. It is all about the fact that English is the most common language in the world and often the second language of these people. There is often a diaspora in the country, or labour market opportunities are potentially better than in some of the other countries. Those things are generally much more important than whether your asylum claim will be dealt with in Rwanda. I do not think that many people concern themselves with that.

The numbers are certainly not consistent with a story of a very significant deterrent effect from the Rwanda Act. Of course, asylum seekers might have been really clever and spotted that it was probably going to be declared illegal by the Supreme Court—perhaps they were prejudging the legality of the measures. The cost was staggering for a policy that was very unlikely to have a significant deterrent effect. The previous Government’s difficulty was that they could never actually tell you how many people they thought would be sent to Rwanda. It is not a deterrent if you are sending a few thousand people every year.

[Chris Murray]

Q Or four.

Professor Brian Bell: Well, four went voluntarily, but if the policy had been implemented in full, there were never any guarantees. We certainly would not have been able to send 100,000 a year to Rwanda; Rwanda was never going to accept that. The cost was astounding, given the likely deterrence effect. It illustrates a problem in the Home Office at the time: there was little rational thinking about what the costs and benefits of different policies were. My personal view is that getting asylum claims dealt with more quickly would have been a much more effective use of public resources. That is in the interests of not only the British public but asylum seekers, as most of their claims are accepted. If we could have got them through the system faster, got them approved if they were approved, got them into work and integrating within their communities and, if they were rejected, actually deported them, that would have been a much better use of public resources.

[Pete Wishart]

Q You are an expert in immigration and crime—you have been doing some work on that. The clauses concerning criminalisation are main features of the Bill. How many more asylum seekers do you think will be put through the criminal courts as a result of this legislation, and how many members of gangs, and those that do the people smuggling? What, roughly, will be the proportion of each of those groups?

Professor Brian Bell: I think the numbers will be quite small. In some senses, a good piece of legislation makes a criminal offence so serious, and a penalty so severe, that no one commits the crime. There is a risk that you think you have failed because no one is convicted, but actually if you deterred the behaviour then it succeeded. The reality is that if there are any convictions, it will be almost entirely asylum seekers who are convicted. I do not see how the gangs will be convicted because, as I understand it, they are not on the boats.