Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Chris Murray Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

Well, here we go again—another Government with the same old, tired, failed approach to asylum and immigration. Other than getting rid of the truly bizarre Rwanda Bill, this Bill just picks up where the Tories left off, with the added extra of further criminalising asylum seekers.

I cannot help feeling that a lot of the activities and debates around this Bill have quite a lot to do with Reform’s rise in the opinion polls. Its Members usually sit behind me but, bizarrely, they have not turned up to debate this immigration Bill. The bizarre videos of the Home Secretary going to deportation centres and the posters celebrating the Government’s success in deporting and kicking people out play right into Reform’s territory. I say to Labour Members that they will never out-Reform Reform—they are masters of the art of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Regardless of how hard Labour Members try, they are mere amateurs by comparison. All Labour is doing by going on to Reform’s territory is legitimising it. You do not pander to the populists and the likes of Reform; you take them on.

The Bill does nothing to address the real issues we will confront in the middle-to-late part of this century. The Bill is totally fixated on the small numbers of people who come across the channel in small boats, but it does nothing to tackle the massive structural problems that are about to come our way because of population stagnation and population decline.

If anything, this Bill is designed for the early part of the century, not for the part of the century we are about to enter. Nations across the industrialised world, including Italy, Spain and France, are taking action to increase their population. South Korea has pumped $200 billion into what it calls the demography crisis. Japan has historically been resistant to immigration, and with a birth rate of one child for every three women, its population is predicted to fall by 25% by 2050. Japan will fall from third in the GDP league to eighth—that is what is coming our way.

Even the Bill’s purpose of defeating the gangs is doomed to failure. This Bill does nothing to address the root causes of irregular immigration, and it does not even start to get curious about why there is a problem with immigration in the first place. All it will do is make immigrants take even greater risks. It will have very little impact on the gangs the Government are targeting, as the gangs will adapt their business models accordingly.

The Government might inadvertently make the gangs’ obnoxious trade even more lucrative. The smuggling gangs are successful because they have exclusive rights and a monopoly on the irregular immigration market. There is nowhere else for people to go other than to the illegal gangs, as there are no safe routes to get into the UK.

We have particular problems in Scotland. Our population is currently around 5.43 million, and it has grown modestly over the past few years because of the Conservative Government’s immigration debacle, but Scotland will be one of the first parts of the UK to experience population decline, and it could come as early as 2030. That is why we have been so resolute and persistent in calling for a Scottish visa, and all sectors in Scotland now support that call.

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

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I think Scottish Labour also supports it, as the hon. Gentleman will probably clarify.

[Chris Murray]

Of course, the issue is that Scotland is not the same everywhere. My community in Edinburgh and East Lothian is seeing its population grow, while other parts are seeing their population decline. The reason is Scotland’s labour market and economy. Even when we had access to 300 million people as an EU member, with net migration of 900,000, there were still parts of Scotland that were unable to attract migrants. The problem was not the immigration system; the problem was our labour market.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I am pleased we are having this debate today, as the measures proposed in the Bill are long, long overdue. Anyone can see that confidence in the immigration and border security system broke down under the previous Government, when hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was wasted on hare-brained schemes, tens of thousands were crossing the channel every year, and 69 people died in the waters off our shores while trying to cross the channel last year. We do not need more gimmicks and headline grabbing; instead, we need serious measures and hard graft.

There are three key components to the Bill that I think will have the most impact. The first is the counter-terror-style powers on immigration enforcement. These important measures will make immigration enforcement properly intelligence-led. There is no point in arresting someone when they step off the boat if we do not disrupt the network that funnelled them to the shore in the first place. The new powers on seizing electronic devices, biometric testing and intelligence gathering and the serious crime prevention orders are exactly what is needed. For four years before I was elected I served as the justice and home affairs attaché at the British embassy in Paris, where I saw at first hand the kind of interventions that make a difference in securing the channel border. These measures are exactly what we need. We are talking about large, well-funded organised crime networks, and we need to treat them as such.

Secondly, I strongly welcome the new offence of endangering a life at sea. We have to change the risk calculation of the people getting on those boats, which the Rwanda plan clearly failed to do. It should shame us all that we have somehow contrived a situation where innocent people drown off our shores, and it is right that we treat the people who endanger their lives like terrorists.

Finally, I cannot welcome enough the emphasis on working with other countries. Immigration is, by its very definition, a cross-border phenomenon, so immigration crime is a cross-border crime. Countries such as France, Germany and the rest of the Calais group will be central to helping Britain tackle our challenges, and intelligence sharing, access to databases and joint operations are the bread and butter of fixing immigration challenges.

Immigration is obviously a challenging topic politically, but as with the economy and public services, public trust is conditional on the Government having a firm grip on the immigration system. Folk understand that we live in a complex world and that people cross borders. They want to be compassionate to save those fleeing for their lives. They do not want to see people drown. Most of all, they want to see the system managed. It has to be firm and fair—it has to be both.

The measures in the Bill should have been on the statute book long ago. Rather than just standing on our shores and shouting, we are seeing the Government get down to doing the hard graft of what it takes to secure our borders.