Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Chris Murray Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart.

My hon. Friend is making a really important point: these cross-channel operations and strategies are more diplomatic than they are legislative. Does he agree that, because the UK is unusual in that our Border Force is not a police force, whereas the French police aux frontières, the Belgian police and all other European border agencies are police forces, we have very different kinds of operations and structures, and this work needs to be done gently, through diplomacy and not through amendments to legislation?

[Mike Tapp]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He makes the powerful point that the French need to be engaged with diplomatically rather than being bashed on social media, which damages our relationship with them. The way forward here is to continue with that gentle diplomacy to bring about the changes in their laws that may well benefit the United Kingdom. We have already seen results on that front in Germany. The Germans have changed laws around the facilitation of the kit to be used for these crossings, so diplomacy is already yielding positive results, and I expect we will see more of that.

My second point is that this amendment is fantasy land from the Opposition. We inherited a justice system that was completely broken and on its knees, with just 2% of prison places still available. Do the Opposition propose sticking all these people in prison? If so, where are those prison places going to come from, given what we have inherited?

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[Chris Murray]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I will make a couple of points about the amendments to the clause, and the clause overall.

I have always been frustrated that people from both left and right make the same mistake on immigration policy—we forget that immigrants and asylum seekers are people. That means that, just like any group of people, they vary: some are entirely innocent and exploited, and some seek to exploit others and are criminals. We need to make the distinction between those groups.

Amendment 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, makes some important points, and my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd East is right about the passion and compassion that drive the amendment. I absolutely recognise, support and understand that passion and compassion, but we must be clear-eyed about the reality of what is happening in the channel.

Yes, people are in great danger, and they are the most exploited, most vulnerable people, but they are not there by accident. They are not panicking because they have stumbled by accident into the boat. There is a large, extremely organised, extremely well-financed criminal enterprise putting them in that position and it does not care one bit whether they live or die. We need to be able to draw a distinction between the vulnerable people who are in that situation and the people who are putting them there.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we have to make that distinction between those who have organised, orchestrated and profited from such activities and those at the sharp end of it: the asylum seekers and immigrants themselves. We need to be laser-focused on the gangs, the people who put together and design this vile trade, not on the ordinary asylum seekers, whom these criminalisation clauses exclusively focus on.

[Chris Murray]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am afraid I completely disagree with him on what this Bill is doing. Being an asylum seeker is a self-declaration. It is anticipatory. Someone just declares themselves as one; the system later ascertains whether that is correct and whether they are a refugee. He mentioned earlier that the refugee convention does not penalise people for the mechanism by which they enter; he is quite correct, but that is not a blanket immunity from any criminal act committed in the process.

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[Pete Wishart]

I thank the Minister for her full response to the amendments before the Committee. I totally agree with her on amendment 17, and I hope the Committee rejects it. It is a ridiculous and unworkable proposition that everybody who comes to our shores should be criminalised almost immediately upon arrival.

A couple of things have been said in this debate that I want to challenge and take head on, including the idea that everything is black and white, that people are either the exploited or the exploiters. Everybody accepts that there is a grey area. I think every member of this Committee believes that those who behave in a reprehensible, appalling and awful way, whether on the small boats or in getting people on to the small boats, should rightly face the full force of the law.

The Minister is right to highlight all those examples of the dangerous behaviour that happens during some of these journeys. None of us would want people to get away with that behaviour, but the Bill does not refer to such activity, and there is nothing in the guidance or the explanatory notes. Nothing in the Bill specifies this type of behaviour. As the Bill progresses, the Minister will have to make sure it mentions such behaviour.

The other challenge with the type of activity the Minister describes is how to get the evidence. This activity is happening in the most chaotic circumstances, on small boats coming across the channel. We know these things are reported, and we know that people are arrested and face the full force of the law, but the Minister still has to convince the Committee that a new offence is needed, and that certain categories of migrant will not be caught up.

[Chris Murray]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, if his amendment 5 were accepted, someone could orchestrate a boat crossing the channel, throw a child off—which this measure is trying to prevent—and then, when they arrive on the shores of the UK, just say, “I am an asylum seeker”? That would be an obstacle to any prosecution.

The only way we could get over that obstacle—even if the person were French—would be for them to go through the entire asylum process. They would be placed in a hotel in one of our constituencies and, given the huge backlog we have, it would be almost two years before we are able to prosecute them.

[Pete Wishart]

It must be how I am presenting this but, again, I am not being understood. I am sorry that I have not explained the intention clearly enough, but I have no intention of that scenario happening. [Interruption.] Can I say to the hon. Gentleman—and to the Whip, the hon. Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West, who is trying to intervene from a sedentary position—that existing offences are in place to deal with the activity being described. I have cited the example of Ibrahima Bah, who was done for gross negligence manslaughter. Where that happens, of course people should face the full force of the law. And that happens, because we have existing laws in place.

I listened very carefully to the Minister’s description of the new types of activity that she feels clause 18 is necessary to address, but those activities have to be specified and defined. If she moved new clauses to address such activity, I am sure she would get a fair hearing—she would get a fair hearing from me—but, because clause 18 is so broad, other behaviour and activity will inadvertently be drawn into these offences. People who are possibly acting in self-protection, or who are trying to save people but inadvertently put others at risk, will be caught by this clause.

We need to apply common sense to what the Minister is trying to do, and we need to make sure common sense is reflected in the Bill because, at this stage, it is not.

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I will not press my amendment to a vote, but I will say one more thing. I am making this point as Pete Wishart of the Scottish National party. Nearly all the evidence I have presented to the Committee on this and previous amendments has been supplied by the organisations that the hon. Member for Stockton West refers to, all of which work with asylum seekers in the UK, promoting their best interests and serving them. They have given me that material because they are so concerned about the broad nature of so many of these criminalising clauses, and they want us to look at them. I tabled amendment 5 just to raise the issue, and I hope that as we go through the Bill, we will have an opportunity for debate.

[Chris Murray]

I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I can assure him that no one has higher respect than I do for the organisations that have supplied such evidence. I have been in conversations with them myself. The issue at hand here, however—I know this from having worked in the sector—is that they are not set up to stop the gangs or take through criminal prosecutions. That is not their objective. Their job is purely, and properly, to protect migrants. They will lean towards a broad definition, and that is why I think he has inadvertently fallen into a trap. In excluding everyone from the provisions, we avoid the traffickers, but it is not the job of those organisations to target them.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is spot on. The job of those organisations is to be concerned for the welfare and conditions of people who come to our shores, and to ensure that they are supported on their journey through the asylum process. The organisations have identified that the Bill does little to target the gangs that the hon. Gentleman is referring to; in fact, they do little at all. They are all about ordinary asylum seekers. The new criminalisation clauses that we have debated over the past couple of days are all exclusively devoted to the activity of asylum seekers coming here, and none more so than this clause.

I hope that, as the Bill proceeds through its remaining stages—particularly when it goes through the other place, although that greatly concerns me for a number of reasons—we will be able to improve it, and get to a place where it reflects what the Minister said in her fine contribution.