Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Chris Murray Excerpts(6 days, 10 hours ago)
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Matt Vickers
Well, hot air is required in this room this afternoon, and I intend to provide it.
We fought back with the Nationality and Borders Act third-country removals, which helped the Government to deter crossings by 36% in 2023 from 45,000 to under 29,000—not by chance, but by design, sending a message to traffickers and migrants alike that Britain is no soft touch or guaranteed prize. Now, the Liberal Democrats barge in with new clause 27, desperate to repeal section 29 to shred that deterrent and plunge us back into chaos, flinging the channel wide open not just to the weary but to every chancer or criminal. That is not tweaking policy; it is torching a firewall, inviting all those to Dover’s cliffs and Deal’s shores and erasing every inch of progress that we have clawed from the crisis. The Lib Dems owe us hard answers. How many boats—50,000 or 60,000?
The Albania deal delivered a masterstroke of border control. That pragmatic triumph has turned a torrent of illegal crossings into a trickle through sheer diplomatic grit. Back in 2022, Albanians dominated the small boats surge. A 12,000-strong, relentless wave of young men were lured by traffickers with promises of easy UK entry for £3,000, clogging Dover’s processing centres and fuelling tabloid headlines of chaos. Then came our 2023 pact with Tirana—a no-nonsense agreement that flipped the script with fast-track returns, joint police operations and a clear signal: Albania is safe and you are going back.
By 2024, the results were staggering. Weekly flights were whisking deportees home, with each jet a nail in the coffin of the smuggling networks that once thrived on our porous borders. That was not luck or loud threats but cold, hard execution, bolstered by UK-funded cameras on the Albania-Kosovo frontier and Albanian officers embedded in Dover.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
I think that the hon. Gentleman is somewhat overstating the impact of the Albania policy. After the initial agreement was signed, we saw a massive spike in numbers coming from Albania, and the numbers had already started to fall before the communiqué was signed. The correlation and causation arguments that he is making on the Albania scheme do not add up at all.
Matt Vickers
What is effective? The deal reduced the number of people coming from Albania by more than 90%. If we could get a few more agreements like that, we would be on the way—that would be huge progress. The Albania deal represented huge progress; to suggest otherwise is wrong. It choked off routes before boats had even launched and had a real impact.
Chris Murray
Would the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the Albania returns were largely due to large numbers of foreign national offenders, who are a completely different category of people from those we are talking about in either this clause or this Bill?
Matt Vickers
We would want to return foreign national offenders; that is really positive. But the number of people choosing to cross because of that deterrent effect went down by not 10% or 20%, but by more than 90%. More than 90% fewer people arrived from Albania in small boats. That is huge progress. If we can replicate that elsewhere, I will be a very happy boy because we would see a huge impact on those crossings across the piece.
New clause 27 is hellbent on repealing that backbone, oblivious to how crossings from Albanians were successfully slashed, while the Rwanda threat kept smugglers guessing. If the Liberal Democrats prevail, every bilateral deal will be on the chopping block. Imagine Albanian numbers roaring back to 12,000, with other current surges unchecked. That is not progress; it is sabotage—a reckless bid to unravel a system that is finally biting back at the chaos. Do the Liberal Democrats not want to be able to remove people from this country who have entered illegally? Do they believe that any national of a safe country should be able to seek asylum in the UK? Can Liberal Democrat Members explain why that would not create a massive pull factor and encourage people to cross the channel in small boats?
The Liberal Democrats are also seeking to repeal sections 15 to 17 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which specify that the Secretary of State must declare an asylum claim made by a person who is a national of an EU member state inadmissible. Why would the Liberal Democrats believe that anyone from the EU needs to claim asylum here? Picture this scene, which is so utterly ridiculous that it strains the bounds of credulity: an EU citizen, perhaps some laid-back Amsterdamer, pedalling along the city’s picturesque canals one sunny afternoon, tulips nodding in the breeze, then suddenly deciding to chuck it all, hop on a ferry and pitch up on Dover’s pebbled shores, requesting asylum, as if the Netherlands’ orderly bike lanes and windmill-dotted horizons had morphed into a scene from—
Matt Vickers
I would suggest that that is quite a creative interpretation of last week’s events. This debate is about what people contribute when they are legally able to, rather than creating anything that would draw more people to make that crossing and to turn up in this country.
New clause 32 would revoke indefinite leave to remain in certain circumstances: that a person
“is defined as a ‘foreign criminal’ under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007”;
that the person
“was granted indefinite leave to remain after the coming into force of this Act,”
but has not spent 10 years resident in the UK;
that the person or their dependants
“have been in receipt of any form of ‘social protection’…from HM Government or a local authority”;
or that the person’s
“annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period, or subsequent to receiving indefinite leave to remain.”
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing, because it is a cornerstone of this proposal and speaks volumes about who we are as a nation and what we stand for when the chips are down: anyone who has entered this country under the carefully crafted, well-designed and wholly principled safe and legal routes—those lifelines that we have extended through the Ukraine scheme, the British nationals overseas scheme or the Afghan schemes—would find themselves entirely exempt from the rigours of new clause 32, and rightly so. Those schemes are not just policies, but promises; they are solemn commitments that speak to our national character, and we stand by those we have pledged to protect.
Let us think of the more than 200,000 Ukrainians welcomed since 2022, fleeing Putin’s bombs—families clutching what they had, offered sanctuary through the Ukraine family scheme and Homes for Ukraine.
Chris Murray
Looking at the proposals set out in this new clause, how exactly is the hon. Gentleman proposing to calculate the £38,700? Is software available in the Home Office or in His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? What if someone was found to have overpaid taxes after they were found not to meet the amount? Would the Home Office go and find them overseas and bring them back? This proposal sounds absurdly unworkable.
Matt Vickers
Lots of processes are in place, but we are putting down a principle. It is the same as the skilled worker visa threshold of £38,700. We have to set a line that requires people to be self-sufficient and not a drain on resources. This is the line that we are setting.
There are also Hongkongers. By 2025, nearly 180,000 British national overseas visa holders had escaped Beijing’s iron grip—huge British talent. More than 20,000 Afghans have been resettled since the Kabul airlift. Those were the right things to do, and we would exempt them from this proposal. These are not random arrivals; they are people we invited, whose stories of sacrifice and loyalty resonate with the values that we hold dear, from duty to decency. We would not renege on those commitments and tarnish the trust that we have built.
Let us cast our eyes across the globe, because other nations are not just theorising about this; they are proving that it works, day in, day out, with systems that do not just talk a good game but deliver tangible, measurable results that we would be foolish to overlook. Take Australia, a land of vast horizons and sharper borders, whose points-based residency system does not mess around. If someone is pulling in less than 53,900 Australian dollars—£28,000—and they are dipping into welfare, Australia will show them the door, an approach that is saving taxpayers billions.
These are not quirky outliers or flukes; they are lessons carved in policy stone and shining examples that tying status to contribution is not some pie-in-the-sky dream but a practical, proven playbook that delivers real savings and sharper borders, and stands up to scrutiny. New clause 32 lifts straight from that script, making £38,700 the line in the sand, with no benefits to lean on and no criminal record to tarnish the deal. It is not radical; it is road-tested, and echoes what works elsewhere on the globe.
Critics might cry, “Unworkable!” but the conditions in new clause 32 are trackable. HMRC already logs income for tax. The Home Office flags criminals under the UK Borders Act 2007, and the Department for Work and Pensions tracks benefits down to the penny. We are not reinventing the wheel—just syncing data to enforce the rules, with £38,700 as a clear line, 10 years as a fair test, and exemptions for the Ukraine, Afghan and British national overseas schemes, showing that we can tailor it.
This is a framework that says, “If you’re here for the long haul, you’ve got to bring something to the table, not just pull up a seat.” Australia and Canada have shown us the path with lower costs and tighter controls; we would be stupid not to take it. I would like to know why the Government would disagree with the principles behind the new clause. Why do the Government want foreign criminals to remain in the UK with indefinite leave to remain? If the Government believe in the £38,700 amount for skilled workers to obtain a visa, why would that not apply to people remaining in the UK indefinitely?
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 33 aims to help the Government by providing a way to put securing our borders above spurious human rights claims to frustrate removal. It would disapply the entire Human Rights Act 1998, as well as any interim measures of the Strasbourg court that prevent the effective operation of legislation relating to immigration and deportation. The result would be that those seeking to appeal deportation or other immigration decisions would not be able to make human rights claims under the Human Rights Act in British courts.
The new clause would apply that new power to all aspects of immigration control, including enforcement, deportation, the granting or removal of immigration and asylum status, and any other immigration entitlements. We would expect Parliament to legislate and the Home Office to decide immigration cases based on their reasonable interpretation of the European convention on human rights, but UK judges would be able to use only UK law passed by Parliament to decide appeals, and no longer make expansive and common-sense-defying interpretations of what they claim the ECHR means.
The Human Rights Act would still apply to non-immigration matters, so UK judges could continue to apply the ECHR directly to them. We would still be under the ECHR, so applicants would still be able to go to the Strasbourg court, but the new clause would stop UK judges expanding the definitions. In that scenario, it would be possible to deport people pending a Strasbourg appeal, and it would repeat the measure in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 to give Ministers the power to ignore an ECHR rule 39 interim order. We are not saying that the new clause provides the full answer to controlling our borders. Wider questions such as ECHR membership and wider immigration system reforms are to be addressed in longer-term pieces of work, but the new clause would be a step in the right direction.
The reason the new clause is necessary can be seen in recent decisions about immigration appeals. For example, an Iraqi drug dealer was saved from deportation from the UK after a judge ruled that he was too westernised to be returned to his home country. That man, who was jailed for more than five years after a conviction for dealing cocaine, had lived in Britain for 24 years and has a British-born daughter. Home Office officials attempted to have him deported, but a specialist judge in the asylum tribunal ruled that returning the man to Iraq would violate his human rights as he would be viewed with suspicion. The judge said that the man, who cannot be named, would face persecution in Iraq because he would be seen as westernised.
As we have already mentioned, an Albanian criminal was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son would not eat foreign chicken nuggets. An immigration tribunal ruled that it would be unduly harsh for the 10-year-old boy to be forced to move to Albania with his father, owing to his sensitivity around food. The sole example provided to the court was his distaste for the type of chicken nuggets available abroad.
Chris Murray
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could just assume that we are familiar with those two cases by now and either not bother citing them or think of some new examples to support his arguments.
Matt Vickers
I think they are relevant; they are things that both the public and I are bothered about. They show the failings of the system and why people are so concerned about the way that it is going.
As a result, the judge allowed the father’s appeal against deportation as a breach of his right to family life under the European convention on human rights, citing the impact that his removal might have on his son. An attempt to deport a Sri Lankan paedophile, who was convicted of assaulting three teenage boys, was delayed over claims that deportation would breach his human rights.
Katie Lam
The hon. Member asks a good question. I am not sure whether that would be explicitly decided on the face of the Bill; that could be something that the Home Office decided subsequently—whether it wished to set out future years or just the following one. In my initial response to the hon. Member, the point that I was trying to clarify was that that cap can, of course, be changed. Once it is set, it does not need to be set in stone for ever, but it is important that it exists and that the conversation about what it should be is had in front of the British public.
Chris Murray
It was interesting to hear the hon. Member for Weald of Kent setting out her argument articulately, and it was good to hear her say that she recognises that the last Government made a lot of mistakes on immigration, and that the evidence shows that. Sadly, although it is good to have that recognition, it does not seem as though very much has been learned from the Conservatives’ experience in office, based on each of the new clauses that they have set out.
First, on the spousal visas, quite a lot of what is in new clause 35 actually exists already. There are already salary thresholds and things like that. It is unlike me to praise the previous Conservative Government on immigration, but, actually, across previous Administrations, both Labour and Conservative, very good work has been done on issues such as sham and forced marriages. What is new in new clause 35, which is a very strange and horrible power to give Ministers, is the ability to either restrict the nationalities that British people can marry or set thresholds on them. I have huge respect for my ministerial colleagues in the Home Office, but I do not think that they should be able to choose what nationalities I am allowed to marry. We got rid of anti-miscegenation laws in the 20th century; we do not want returning through the back door, through measures such as this. Most of all, this arbitrary figure of 7% is very strange; if I were to marry, say, an Australian or an American, I would have to hope that I was not in the 8th percentile of people to do that. That would be a very strange way for us to ask British citizens to live their lives and fall in love with people.
Opposition Members also made the point about how the legislation needs to look backwards and make sure that migrants are net fiscal contributors over their lifetimes. I would say, again, that that is not a realistic thing to ask Governments to do. We will only know whether we have been net fiscal contributors when we die, so we cannot really ask people to make those projections.
Finally, there is the numerical visa cap in new clause 40. Again, that is a gimmick that is not addressing the actual structural problems in the immigration system. First, it treats all migrants the same, as one big monolithic whole, yet we know that the impact of migrants on communities is different, whether they are spouses, students, doctors, lorry drivers or refugees.
If we are going to have this kind of cap, how do we prioritise? Will it apply throughout the whole of the year? How will businesses plan if they want to recruit from overseas? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said, what if emergencies mean that there are more people coming in? The last Conservative Government set a cap for tier 2 visas, then, of course, ended up hitting it and just exempting doctors and nurses from it anyway. Is it not inevitable that we will just be condemned to repeat history if we do that here? We have talked a lot about public trust in the immigration system and how that has been so deeply sapped by failures on immigration policy. The Conservatives had a net migration target of 100,000 a year, which they consistently failed to meet and had to revise. This proposal is just advocating that we repeat that exact mistake, but hoping for a different outcome, which seems bonkers to me.
Seema Malhotra
A number of the issues raised regarding these new clauses have already been debated in relation to other measures, so I will keep my remarks fairly brief on some of the additional issues.
Matt Vickers
We have had many alternative means of accommodation, including hotels. Accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels is through the roof—it is up 29%, with 8,500 more people staying in them—but the situation I am describing applies more widely than any accommodation centre or hotel.
The £4.7 billion tab for 2023-24 covered beds, meals and NHS visits while the backlog ballooned.
Chris Murray
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that number has “ballooned”—or gone up highly—not just in the aggregate but per asylum seeker? The hon. Gentleman wants to try to charge people, but his party let the system get completely out of control. Maybe it was the backlog that let it get out of control, rather than the kind of hotels that people were staying in.
Matt Vickers
The reality is that somebody is getting charged for it and paying for it, and at the moment that is the Great British public. There are ballooning costs. There are increasing numbers: illegal arrivals are up 28% since the election, there are 29% more people in hotels, and fewer of the people who arrive illegally are being removed. The number goes up, the cost continues to go up, and somebody has to pick up the tab. Making the person repay those costs once they are working—with, say, £10,000 over a decade—could claw back hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is not small change: it is classrooms built, potholes filled and nurses hired. Why are the Government content to let this sinkhole drain us dry when we could balance the books with a system that asks those who are successful to pay back some of these costs?
In his evidence, Tony Smith highlighted the knowledge that such support is available as a pull factor that encourages people to cross the channel. We share Tony Smith’s view that making it clear that the costs of asylum support and accommodation will be recovered once the applicant is economically active could help to disincentivise future crossings. That is why we have tabled new clause 37.
The proposed new clause would enable the Government to treat asylum support like a student loan, with asylum seekers able to pay back the cost of support when they are in paid employment. We believe that if someone’s asylum appeal is granted and they are allowed to remain in this country and they are able to work, they should be required to pay back to the state the costs of their maintenance, as and when they are able. State support is not a right.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsTuesday 18th March 2025
(6 days, 10 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 March 2025 - (18 Mar 2025)
Matt Vickers
No, I will not give him the name of the report.
Applying the 10-year rule, rather than the five-year rule as now, would prove commitment. As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said:
“A British passport is a privilege, one that has been debased by benefit tourism for too long. Our plan gets it right, making sure that those who pay their way get to stay.”
The Prime Minister, bizarrely, does appears to think that British citizenship is not a pull factor, so much so that the Government are seeking to repeal swathes of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 passed under the previous Conservative Government. In doing so, this Government will scrap rules that meant that almost all those who entered the United Kingdom illegally would not be entitled to British citizenship, and that asylum seekers who failed to take age tests would be treated as adults. Those were common-sense policies. We are calling on all parties, and especially the Government, to support this new clause. We need to ensure that everyone who comes to this country is willing to contribute and to integrate into our society.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, was first a refugee in the UK, and she said that, in Britain, people would say to refugees, “You’re welcome here…and when are you going home?” whereas, in America, they said, “You’re welcome here…and when will you become a citizen?” Does the hon. Member not think that the problem the last Government created was that they moved to a high-churn model of migration, with huge numbers of people coming in, working in low-paid jobs, not integrating and then leaving, and more people coming in? We want to incentivise people to learn the language, engage with our institutions and follow our rules, which means that pathways such as this are really important, not the model that we have seen for the past 14 years.
Matt Vickers
The principle here is that we are saying, “You will get indefinite leave to remain, not after five years but after 10 years.” We have already had the debate about British citizenship and what that means—all the benefits that come with it and all the costs to the taxpayer that are attached to it. I therefore I think that this principle is right: if someone is going to stay here, they have to have been here longer, earned their keep, contributed and integrated properly. I think that 10 years allows that. I think that this is the way forward, and I stand by it.
Katie Lam
On 23 January 2023, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai was sentenced to life imprisonment at Salisbury Crown court. Nearly a year earlier, Abdulrahimzai had murdered 21-year-old Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth town centre by stabbing him to death in the street following a dispute over an e-scooter.
Abdulrahimzai was an Afghan asylum seeker who came to this country in December 2019. He entered the UK illegally, claiming to be an unaccompanied 14-year-old. He was placed in school and in foster care, but he was in fact already an adult when he came here. Not only was he an adult, but he was also a murderer, having killed two men in Serbia before coming to the UK. He should never have been allowed to come to this country and he should certainly not have been allowed to masquerade as a child.
Assessing a person’s age is surprisingly difficult, but we have a range of tools to do so—the Home Office is just not using them. If we had acted sooner, using the full suite of tools at our disposal to assess Abdulrahimzai’s age, Thomas Roberts might still be alive today. The case of Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai is particularly shocking, but it is unfortunately far from unique.
Chris Murray
I wonder whether there have been any new scientific discoveries in the last seven months for identifying someone’s age that the Home Office would not have been aware of over the last 14 years. Is it not the case that the methodologies used are very imprecise and do not often actually lead us, in the liminal cases, to draw the distinction that the hon. Lady is advocating for?
Katie Lam
I will come on to precision and the ways of determining age slightly later in my remarks.
Ahmed Hassan, an Iraqi asylum seeker, claimed to be a 16-year-old when he arrived in the UK. In 2017, he set off a bomb at Parsons Green tube station, injuring 23 people. His real age is still not a matter of public record. In 2018, a Home Office probe found that Siavash Shah, an Iranian asylum seeker, spent six weeks as a year 11 pupil in Ipswich despite being 25—the list goes on. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, the Home Office identified almost 4,000 cases of adult migrants claiming to be children—45% of those who originally claimed to be children when they arrived here—and every other person of that cohort was in fact an adult. Some were at least 30 years old. That puts British children at risk, puts genuine child asylum seekers at risk and takes valuable school and care places away from the young people who genuinely need them.
I feel this particularly keenly as a Member of Parliament for Kent, the county into which all small boats arrive. Our laws mandate that the people who come to this country illegally and claim to be under 18 must be prioritised for care equally with Kentish children. That puts enormous pressure on the system and makes it harder for our children to be cared for. That is madness when we know that half of those arrivals are in fact adults, and we must put a stop to it.
It is completely rational, albeit morally wrong, for adult migrants to claim to be children. Under-18s who come here have a greater entitlement to care and support, do not have to live in accommodation with adults, and are not subject to the same rules as adults—or the rules are applied less strictly. Of course, there are people who cross the channel without their parents who are under 18; most, though not all, are male 17 and 16-year-olds, and some are younger children. No one disputes that, and children should be treated as children, but we must be realistic about the scandalous degree to which our system is exploited by the cynical and the sinister.
We have to protect actual children, and we should use every tool in the box to do so, including scientific testing. Where people refuse such tests, the Government should be able to override that refusal. We are acting in the interests of public safety and to protect the security of our children. Labour Members have asked for exact details of the scientific methods. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, there are many methods and several different ways of doing it. The ones that can be implemented in short order are the dental and skeletal tests.
Other methods are currently at an earlier stage of development, such as facial age estimation and DNA methylation, which is a process by which people much cleverer than me can assess how a person’s genes are read by their body, which changes with age. In 2022, the interim Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee stated that the
“teeth, clavicle, and hand/wrist or knee… have been shown to have a significant research and publication credibility and provide a consistent age range over which changes occur.”
Later, the same report states:
“The committee has relied on areas and methods that have been repeatedly tried and tested and shown to have consistency.”
As the report makes clear, and as Government Members have said, scientific age assessment is not perfectly precise and is not magic, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West also correctly says, our proposal is that scientific age assessments should be used not to replace other methods and judgments, but to supplement them.
The situations that my hon. Friend and I have set out are horrifying. We can see no reason why the Government would not want to have the widest possible set of tools available to them to stop such things happening, including the option in future to bring in scientific methods that are currently at a nascent stage.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsTuesday 11th March 2025
(1 week, 6 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 March 2025 - (11 Mar 2025)
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
These are difficult problems and challenging questions. Practically every country in the western world is struggling with this and, with the notable exception of Australia, effectively none has solved it. The basic logic of the situation is that, if someone comes here illegally from a place to which it would be dangerous to return them, there are only four options.
First, they could be sent back to the country they came from. That is not legal in our current framework—even before getting to the morality of doing such a thing. Secondly, they could be put in immigration detention indefinitely. That is also not legal; a person can be held in immigration detention only if there is a realistic prospect of removal, which there would not be in this case. Thirdly, they could stay here indefinitely. That is not fair, and it is not what the public want. Finally, they could go somewhere else—a safe third country. Such an agreement was very difficult to broker; indeed, until the Rwandans agreed, many considered it to be impossible.
Clearly, the Government have little time for the Rwanda scheme and destroying it was one of the first things they did in office, but the basic logic problem remains. The last Conservative Government did not get everything right—that is for sure—but the Rwanda scheme was a genuine attempt to solve this truly hard problem, and it remains the only solution that we can see.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady accept that there is a fifth option? Just because someone does not have the right to be in the UK, it does not mean that they do not have the right to go to any other country in the world. The programme of voluntary returns, which massively went down under the Conservatives but has gone up massively under this Government, is part of the solution to that.
Katie Lam
But they do not. There will always be people who come to this country illegally from dangerous places. They are human beings responding to obvious incentives. Could the Minister please tell us which of the four options she thinks is the right one? Is it sending someone back to a dangerous country, which will entail a change in the law and probably leaving the European convention on human rights? Is it holding someone in immigration detention indefinitely, which has the same conditions? Is it allowing people to stay here, or is it sending them to a third country?
Tom Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for that important reminder that when the Labour Government took office after our historic win, we inherited an awful mess in our prison system, which was described by independent experts and organisations as near to collapse—so near that there were just a few hundred spaces left at a time when the country was rioting.
Chris Murray
Is my hon. Friend also aware that under the previous Government, the Home Office tried to secure additional detention estate for asylum seekers but catastrophically failed to do so? For example, at Northeye, they spent hundreds of millions of pounds to secure the site—far more than the previous owners had paid—yet found that it had contaminated ground and could not be used, and the Bibby Stockholm in Dover closed very swiftly after opening.
Tom Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for those important points. In fact, the Bibby Stockholm was moored just off a place near my constituency in Dorset. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for campaigning so quickly and efficiently to have the Bibby Stockholm closed, and I thank the Government for responding so constructively to that request. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh about how we have seen significant challenges to the state’s ability to detain. As a consequence, in one of the two conditions set out by the hon. Member for Stockton West for an effective deterrent, it is clear that the Conservative Government failed.
For the next component of an effective deterrent—removal—we need only look at the ultimate proof: who went to Rwanda? What deportations actually happened? I can anticipate some of the ways that the Conservatives may challenge that, so I would like to take them on. First, they may blame this Labour Government for cancelling the policy, without also saying that the Conservative party controlled the timing of a general election that they seemed certain to lose. That they believed they were certain to lose is perhaps why they called the election before they could begin deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. In fact, the first flight was set to take off on 24 July. If the Conservatives had delayed the Dissolution of Parliament by just 20 days, to 19 June rather than 30 May, the first planes could have taken off.
The last Prime Minister could have waited out those 20 days, if he did not have anything else to do. With a zombie Government that were not showing any ambition, if he had wanted to show ambition, he could have spent a nice 20 days watching all 90 hours of the TV show “Lost”. If he wanted to go at a more leisurely pace—and the Conservatives were excelling at going at a leisurely pace—rather than binge watching something, he could have watched all 30 hours of the TV show “Stranger Things”. Instead—and this is where the “ba-dum” comes in—the Government manifested signs of being lost, and the last Conservative Cabinet just comprised stranger things.
Chris Murray
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart, especially after we have had such an interesting debate with some very thoughtful contributions. I will respond to some of the issues that have been raised.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East mentioned that I keep quoting Peter Walsh, and I am going to again, because the point he made in the evidence sessions was one of the most critical points on immigration policy in Britain overall. He said that demand for Channel crossings is “fairly inelastic”. The demand will not wax and wane hugely in response to Government policy, which tells us that deterrence will have only limited use. That is the conceptual flaw at the heart of the Rwanda plan. It put all the country’s cards and money on a deterrence-only approach. Deterrence has to be real and believable, which the scheme clearly was not.
I listen closely to what the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire says about the role of deterrence in migration policy. The exchanges we are having are helping to clarify the thinking. It is clear from the Bill that deterrence can only ever be a component. We must focus on the supply—the ability for people to cross the Channel—and not just the demand. That requires the measures in the Bill, but also diplomatic work and upstream work.
The repeal of the Rwanda legislation was inevitable and written in the stars from the very beginning of that hare-brained scheme. Before it passed, the European Council on Foreign Relations said that the scheme was doomed to failure and a “floundering disaster”, because it was unlikely to deter illicit migration, it would damage the UK’s standing in international law, it would endanger refugee lives and it would come at huge financial cost. Every single one of those predictions came to pass, so it is no surprise that we are having to deal with this today. I would also say that it presaged the Conservatives going down in an historic election defeat, so it was clearly a failure politically for them as well.
On the point about removal to third countries, before we left the European Union, the UK had the capacity to remove people to safe countries in the EU that they had travelled through. The Conservatives manifestly failed to avail the country of that power we had, and then failed with the Rwanda system. Clearly, the Conservative track record on third countries is very poor. There is a component in the immigration system for people going to third countries when they have no right to stay here, which is something we need to look at further ahead.
The hon. Member for Stockton West made reference to the Albania relationship and returns increasing to Albania, as if that somehow proves that the Rwanda scheme would have worked if we had just let it take its course, but it is a completely spurious parallel. The returns to Albania happened before the communiqué was signed with Albania, so the two are not related—perhaps he was arguing that the prior readmission agreement was the variable that led to the increase, but it came after the spike, so it cannot be held responsible. The Albania agreement was not just about illegal immigrants; it also included a huge number of foreign national offenders—a different group of people entirely. It was also about people from Albania returning to Albania, not third-country nationals. The idea that the Albania scheme is somehow an alibi for Rwanda can be completely rejected.
That is not actually the point, however, because the Rwanda scheme would never have worked at the scale required, even if it had been able to work at all. The Minister was correct when she talked in her initial remarks about the interaction between the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act. That meant that nobody was getting processed, so the country ended up with a perma-backlog of asylum seekers with nowhere to go; they could not return to the country they came from through a voluntary returns agreement or be recognised as refugees. The Rwanda scheme would never have worked at a meaningful scale, and it would never have been able to deal with the backlog. We were on track to having to take over half the hotels in the country to accommodate asylum seekers.
We can have a debate about how best to manage an asylum system—voluntary returns, swift processing, meaningful decisions and removals are clearly components of that—but we can surely say in debating this clause that the Rwanda Act was not the solution. Some £240 million of our constituents’ money was wasted on the scheme, which the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire was quite correct to call “crackpot”. Passing legislation to assert that reality is not what it is will never be an effective way to govern anything, never mind the asylum system, so I am pleased that the Act will finally be off the statute book.
Dame Angela Eagle
We have had an interesting debate about taking the Safety of Rwanda Act off the statute book, as clause 37 does. I am distressed that the Conservative party continues to assert without evidence—in fact, contrary to most evidence—that that Act and the Illegal Migration Act were about to work. Apparently, those Acts were on the cusp of being a great success when the evil new Government came along and cancelled them.
I speculate that many Conservative Members are secretly pleased that they can assert that, because it gets them out of an embarrassing, expensive farrago; the Safety of Rwanda Act will go down in this country’s history as one of the most catastrophic pieces of legislation that Parliament has ever dealt with. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham rightly pointed out, it was not ordinary or normal for Conservative ex-Prime Minister John Major to pronounce the Act to be “un-Conservative”. The Act is many things, unconservative being one of them.
Government Members, and the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, assert that the Act was not a deterrent. This is the current discourse: we are saying that it was not a deterrent and that we can prove it, and the Conservative party, which was responsible for the Act, is left asserting that it was a deterrent, despite there being absolutely no evidence for that despite all the years since the policy was announced and all the years the Act was on the statute book.
That reminds me of discussions I used to have as a student—a very long time ago—about whether communism in its pure sense had actually ever existed. It was obviously a failure, but when one came across the ideologues, they simply asserted that the communism that had been tried to date just was not pure enough, and it was therefore still likely to succeed if ever it was tried properly. Does that sound similar to the discussions we are having about this iteration of fantasy asylum policy as gimmick? I think it does.
Chris Murray
Like the Safety of Rwanda Act clause, this clause is an inevitability, because it was clear from the outset that these sections of the Illegal Migration Act were never going to work. I know that the Conservatives tend to think that everybody who works in the migration sector set out to thwart their plans at every turn, but that is not the case. I was working for the strategic migration partnership in Scotland when the Illegal Migration Bill was introduced two years ago. I remember sitting down with local authorities, the police and other key stakeholders to look at the legislation, and all of us collectively said, “How is this going to work? This is never going to be feasible in reality.”
I draw people’s attention to one component of the Act that is being repealed, which brings its failure to the fore. The IMA placed on the Home Secretary a duty to remove that applied to all asylum seekers regardless of their case. For anyone under 18, the duty to remove kicked in at the age of 18, but when we were working with local authorities, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children came across and sought asylum in this country. These children are among the most vulnerable people in the world. They have lost their loved ones, they are on their own and they are in a strange country. In the UK, we have a national transfer scheme to disperse them around different local authorities. I worked with the officers who were trying to help those children to get themselves together after a really traumatic experience.
The Illegal Migration Act meant that, at the age of 18, in theory those people would be eligible for immediate removal. What does the Committee think that did to those children in terms of their attempts to secure any services, learn English or get any education? It made it impossible for them and it had a direct impact: they did not leave the country, but they disappeared. Some of them are probably out there being exploited right now, as a direct consequence of clauses in the Illegal Migration Act. The Act did not just put those children at risk; it put incredible pressure on overstretched local services around the country. For the previous Government to set out to use immigration legislation to put further pressure on overstretched local services was only going to have negative consequences in communities, and it should never have happened.
More broadly, the duty to remove, which this clause repeals, essentially shut down the asylum system and created what IPPR has called a “perma-backlog”. We have talked about deterrents and incentives, but I do not see any greater incentive for someone seeking to exploit the asylum system in this country than shutting it down overall, which is what that duty to remove did. It created a vicious circle, which frankly was bad for asylum seekers themselves, because genuine refugees had to spend years in hotel accommodation, which is not a particularly nice thing to do, and for the taxpayer in the UK, because costs soared from £18,000 per asylum seeker per year in 2019 to £47,000 in 2024. It was also bad for communities, because people could not be moved through that process, which clearly put pressure on an already febrile immigration situation. It is good that we are repealing this duty; as I said, it was inevitable, because it was never going to work.
Finally, I understand the points that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire made about human trafficking. It is really important that we offer the victims of modern slavery proper protections, especially when they are forced to commit crimes in the course of being trafficked. This legislation does not completely take that power away, but again, I have to draw on my experience of the last couple of years. There was an increase in the number of exploiters—those who were perpetrators of trafficking—using the trafficking system to evade prosecution. I worked closely with Police Scotland and the Crown Office, including in the Perth and Kinross council area. We saw, particularly in the Vietnamese community, the growth of that development.
We must not see the world in black and white. I am by no means saying that every victim of trafficking is somehow an imposter and we must stop them getting any protection, but it is happening, so it is proper that we keep the clauses in place so that we can tackle that. If we do not have that component, the system will break down. Just as we saw with the asylum system, if we do not have clauses to make the system functional, it will break down and everybody loses.
Tom Hayes
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, who, in an outstanding speech, set out the major challenges with the Illegal Migration Act, part of which will be repealed.
I want to knock on the head four things that were said by the hon. Member for Stockton West. The first was in reference to section 23 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. That provision, which the Opposition have talked about, was never implemented by the last Government, so in effect he is opposing a repeal of something that his last Government never started. That feels to me like the worst kind of politics. Between the Royal Assent given to that legislation and the Dissolution of Parliament, 315 days passed, yet no effort was made to implement that provision.
Secondly, sections 9 and 10 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 were, as we have heard, unworkable. They allow people to arrive, claim asylum in the UK, get support, and be put up in a hotel, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh described, will often be in the some of the most dire conditions that somebody can go through after fleeing some of the worst experiences that people can have, be it trauma, famine, disease or poverty—the list goes on. Applications were not processed, so people were not able to leave their hotel. The consequence of that is not just an expensive asylum backlog, but people living with serious psychological scarring for a significant amount of time.
That brings me to my third point. I will talk more about this when we reach new clause 26, which relates to scientific age assessments, but I really do not know how the Conservative party can talk about the welfare and protection of children when we heard oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner about children who were subject to, and vulnerable to, organ harvesting, rape, sexual assault and disappearance from hotels and into wider society, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, they are likely to continue to be abused, exploited and victimised. I will make those points when we reach that debate.
Lastly, on the point about France, I wish the Conservative party would stop throwing stones at one of nearest neighbours and most important strategic allies, particularly when we are in such a volatile international climate. It is really important that we properly scrutinise legislation, but do not indulge in the petty politics that defined the last Conservative Government, disrupted so many of our international relations, and actually made us less secure.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsThursday 6th March 2025
(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I very much welcome this element of the Bill on electronic devices. While clause 22 will give officers powers to seize digital devices that are believed to be used for the purpose of people smuggling, clause 23 gives suitably trained and accredited criminal investigators the powers to access the information on mobile devices, phones and laptops that will build the evidence base, history, connections and understanding of the routes of the criminal gangs.
Seizing and extracting data from mobile devices is a powerful tool already used by our security services. There are already established Home Office guidelines on this, and these clauses extend those powers and will help enable intelligence-led profiling of irregular arrivals. That key change will lead to greater opportunities to disrupt the trade of these awful gangs.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
I want to make just a couple of points on the seizure of phones. We have to be incredibly realistic about the threat that the country faces and how these things are organised. We have seen people-smuggling networks and trafficking networks developing in complexity and scale. It does not start in France; it goes all the way through European countries—our allies—and then through countries that are very difficult for us to engage with, including some countries that are at war and some that are hostile states.
The evidence from the National Crime Agency is very clear that the networks are organised by phone, and that that is the primary means by which these criminals orchestrate them. We know that they are evolving, so it is really important that we give officials the power to seize those phones not only to understand where these smuggling networks are coming from, which is the only way to intercede and save people in unsafe vessels, but to disrupt those networks later.
We heard a whole set of arguments earlier about the insufficiency of deterrents in stopping sea crossings. Professor Walsh from the Migration Observatory was really clear that the demand is inelastic. No matter how many deterrents we introduce, there will still be some demand rising to meet them. That is why disruption is so important, which we can only happen if we have the ability to seize those phones. There is a really important distinction between targeting the demand and targeting the supply of the ability to cross the channel.
On the point about whether the powers are applied on a blanket basis, they are not. The Home Office is clear that there will be statutory guidance. The people who seize these phones will be subject to the same rules that are already in place on the handling of material seized from any individual, and they need those powers. The point about family life and private life is absolutely fair, and it applies whenever someone’s phone is stolen, which is a wider debate that we have in society. The truth is, there is no capacity to only seize part of someone’s phone. We cannot seize only some data and not detect, for example, private text messages or family photographs. It is proper that the Home Office officials who seize such data are subject to the rules that we have in this country about protecting the data and returning it when it is decided that it is not required, but we cannot separate out different types of data, and we would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we did not allow the powers to seize it.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsThursday 6th March 2025
(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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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?
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.
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.
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.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Third sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsTuesday 4th March 2025
(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Dame Angela Eagle
I was just checking that I had my hon. Friend’s entire constituency name. They have all changed, Dr Murrison, which can be a bit disorientating because I am used to the old names.
My hon. Friend is exactly right. He demonstrates, through the evidence we heard—particularly from the NCA, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police chiefs last Thursday—that there is and was a strategic gap. Everybody is doing fantastic work in the NCA, the police, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the security services, but nobody had taken a focused look at how border security could be delivered most effectively. From the meetings I have had since Martin Hewitt took up his post, it seems there is almost relief that somebody is convening a board that can look at analytics on where the threats are, how they are developing and how we can best deal with them, and do the legwork to come up with a strategy focused on border security. That is the whole point of creating the command.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I would like to make a couple of points about the amendment.
As the Minister set out, clause 1 does not mean that someone who is not a civil servant cannot apply for the role. We have to be careful not to have an old-fashioned view of how the civil service operates. External candidates are increasingly common nowadays as outside specialisms are required by the Government, even for roles that are not particularly senior.
Even if an external candidate applies, they will get the support of the civil service. The role compares to Home Office roles such as the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration and the commissioner on modern slavery, who are separate from the Home Office apparatus and often report—especially at the Home Affairs Committee—that they do not get the support and structural backing they need. Clause 1 would obviate that. The commander will also be subject to the civil service code, which is important given the high levels of public expectation for the role.
The one difference between this and other directors general, and other senior figures in the Home Office, is that the role is set out in primary legislation. We will thereby create a distinction for the role by passing the Bill. The shadow Minister suggested that we should discuss the suitable qualifications for the role, but the role is very operational so we should be wary of setting out in legislation or in this debate the exact specifications of every task.
Finally, we must be careful of the pendulum swinging in one direction with one Government and then, with a change of Government, straight back in the other direction, meaning we repeat the mistakes of the past. When the coalition Government came into office in 2010, Home Secretary Theresa May—now Baroness May—restructured the UK Border Agency, as it was under the Labour Administration. She commented at the time that the UKBA had been structured in such a way as to be so independent that it would
“keep its work at an arm’s length from Ministers—that was wrong. It created a closed, secretive and defensive culture. So I can tell the House that the new entities will not have agency status and will sit in the Home Office, reporting to Ministers.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1500.]
Although we are trying to correct what has clearly gone wrong over the previous 14 years of Conservative government of Border Force, it is important that we do not overcorrect and go back to the situation we were in before, which Baroness May pointed out did not work then.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the Minister for that. I would hate to think of our combined number of years in this House, but certainly we have almost spanned half a century.
The first 12 clauses are totally dedicated to putting the Border Security Commander into statute, and the first three list his functions, and outline and define some of his responsibilities. The Bill states that the Border Security Commander must be appointed by the Home Secretary and will be obliged to prepare annual reports. A board will be appointed
“to assist the Commander in the exercise of the Commander’s functions.”
I do not know about other hon. Members, but the last time I looked there already was a Border Security Commander, who is doing the job as outlined in the Bill effectively, pretty much as the Home Secretary has been directing him, without needing to have been put into statute. If my mind does not deceive me, I remember Martin Hewitt being appointed as the commander and doing all these things, but here he is, 12 clauses of a Bill better off, and secure in the knowledge that he is now in statute.
All that makes me think of the BBC Scotland series “The Chief”, which as Scottish members of the Committee will know is the fantastic new spin-off of “Scot Squad”. It features the mythical and fantastic character Chief Commissioner Miekelson. He is a complex character. A bit self-aggrandising, he is always getting himself on the wrong side of various issues around the culture wars, which he is pretty uncomfortable with; he always manages to upset or offend somebody. I am sure that he is the exact opposite of Commander Hewitt, who I believe is modest, nice and easy to get on with—I have not had the pleasure of meeting him so far. However, they have a couple of things in common, which I want to explore as we look at the functions of the commander.
It strikes me that Commander Miekelson would love to be in statute; 12 clauses of a Bill—he would look at this as some great calling card. They face similar threats: for Commander Miekelson, it is the bams who make his life a misery and whom he needs a whole load of new powers to deter; for Commander Hewitt, it is the illegals. As we go through the Bill, let us wish Commander Hewitt and Chief Commissioner Miekelson all the best as they tackle these threats.
Chris Murray
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that although Commissioner Miekelson is a fictional character, the role was created by statute—by the SNP Scottish Government when they created Police Scotland?
Matt Vickers
If we are to have such a position, we want it to be effective and have the relevant powers, but we also want it to be aligned with the other priorities of the Home Office and the work going on there. I think that is clear.
Amendment 11 would remove the requirement for the Border Security Commander to obtain the consent of the Secretary of State before issuing the strategic priority document. We would like to understand the operational benefits of the Secretary of State having to sign off the strategic priority document, which again highlights the lack of a meaningful role for the Border Security Commander. Although the strategic policy document should set out what are, in the commander’s view, the principal threats to border security and the strategic priorities to which partner authorities should have regard, in reality the document is a diktat from the Secretary of State about the Secretary of State’s views, and that arguably exposes a lack of influence and gravitas in the Border Security Commander’s role.
Allowing the commander to issue a strategic priority document without seeking prior permission from the Secretary of State would provide a welcome level of independence for the role. The oversight and consultation of the board would ensure confidence in the Border Security Commander’s ability to take all necessary steps to stop the crossings. There may be occasions when the commander believes it is necessary to act swiftly and to implement changes without delay. Removing the requirement to have ministerial consent would allow them to act decisively. That approach, I am sure, could subsequently be supported by the Secretary of State.
Chris Murray
What, then, is the hon. Gentleman’s view of how UKBA functioned? In her testimony, Theresa May said that, where it had that kind of independence, it became “closed, secretive and defensive”, and she had to completely restructure UK border defence because the independence that the hon. Gentleman is talking about actually made it difficult for Ministers to have proper oversight.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The Liberal Democrats would like to introduce new clause 7, because we want to strengthen cross-border co-operation and Britain’s role in that process. We also believe that we need to reverse some of the last Government’s roll-back of provisions to tackle gangs involved in modern slavery. The new clause would require the border commander to meet the executive director of Europol every three months, which would help to achieve those goals.
Chris Murray
Before I was elected and before Brexit, I was the justice and home affairs attaché at the British embassy in Paris. I helped to co-ordinate engagement between the Home Office, the French Government and Europol. I do not know how much the hon. Lady knows about how Europol functions, but it has a lot of operations and is a very busy organisation. It would frequently take us more than three months to arrange a meeting. Would the new clause not put civil servants at risk of breaching the law just because they could not set up a meeting fast enough?
Susan Murray
That is a really important point. If the new clause were accepted, civil servants would perhaps have to look at ways to schedule meetings in advance so that they were not done on an ad hoc basis.
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Gentleman can be assured that everything the commander does must be compatible with our obligations under the Human Rights Act and the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings. Those things are implicit with every public office holder in the UK, in all the contexts in which they work. The fact that those things are implicit, and not explicitly in the Bill, does not undermine the commitment of any Government who want to act within the rule of law. One of the first things our current Prime Minister said when he walked through the door at Downing Street was that we would be a Government who respected the rule of law and the Human Rights Act.
Chris Murray
The most comparable piece of legislation on this topic in a devolved context is the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015. That Act does not require a clause that specifies the obligation to respect international law. Those things are implicit in legislation passed by the Scottish Government, even on this topic.
Dame Angela Eagle
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Under section 6 of the Human Rights Act, all office holders implicitly have to follow the rules of the European convention on human rights. One issue, if we decide to move away from the current approach and start to include an explicit provision in particular Bills—as the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would—is that it might look like the implicit duty to adhere to these agreements does not apply if it is not stated explicitly. That would actually lead to a lessening of protections, if judges looking at what Parliament was legislating for decided that we must take account of section 6 of the Human Rights Act only if we put that in a Bill. We would end up in a worse situation.
I ask the hon. Member to accept that the structure in the Bill is the one we have used so far. I understand why he is sceptical, after the behaviour of the last Government, but I hope he accepts, given the Prime Minister’s pronouncements right from the beginning of this Government taking office, that we are not planning on undermining the Human Rights Act or its provisions.
Dame Angela Eagle
I am not massively familiar with the Scottish statute book.
Chris Murray
On that point, the 2015 Act does refer to the Council of Europe protections and its definitions are taken from there. But there is not a clause that says that due regard has to be given—
Chris Murray
But in an implicit way, just as this Bill is. There is nothing on the face of the Act, in the way the hon. Member is proposing for this Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
I feel I ought to intervene and separate the combatants. I reassure the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire—especially given the pronouncements from some in the previous Government—that this Government are absolutely committed to the provisions of the Human Rights Act and the convention on action against trafficking in human beings. I hope he accepts that and will withdraw his amendment.
Amendment 12 seeks to ensure that the strategic priority document produced by the Border Security Commander is supportive of the Home Office’s UK border strategy. Border security is a fundamental part of the strategic approach to the wider border, and the strategic priorities for border security will help to drive the wider UK approach. They are part of the approach—they are not a threat or a counter to it. The strategic priority document will be consulted on at the board—which the Committee will discuss when we reach clause 6—which has representatives from across the border security system, to ensure alignment with wider strategic approaches to the border. The whole point of the Bill is to cohere and convene and to ensure that there is co-operation across complex systems; it is not to disintegrate systems. Therefore, it would be fairly astonishing if the border security strategy was somehow completely at odds with what the Border Security Commander and the wider system were planning.
Amendment 13 seeks to give the Border Security Commander the power to direct the specified law enforcement bodies and personnel in the delivery of his objectives and strategic priorities. The power to direct—what the hon. Member for Stockton West called “empowerment”—is not required. During last week’s oral evidence, we heard from representatives of the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council that they welcome and value the collaboration to date with the Border Security Commander. The arrangements as provided for in the Bill will reflect and respect the operational requirements of the various board members. They are a balancing act between convening, collaborating and co-operating, and a way of ensuring that those who have some independence written into what they have to do in other areas feel not that they are being made “subject to” but that they are “collaborating with”. The most effective commanding is exactly that: it is done with co-operation; it is not done with dictatorial powers or attempts to undermine the independence of other organisations.
Under clause 5, partner authorities already have a duty to co-operate with the commander, in so far as it is reasonably practicable for them to do so. Under clause 3, partner authorities must have regard to the strategic priorities on which the board will be consulted and which will be endorsed by the Secretary of State, as set out in clause 4(b). Amendment 11 would remove the requirement for the Border Security Commander to obtain the consent of the Secretary of State to issue a strategic priority document.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh has already pointed out that an obsession with complete independence can actually fragment a system and make it harder for us to achieve outcomes by working together. He rightly mentioned that, where there is operational independence and we are trying to make a system work in co-operation, that can sometimes lead to cultures of secrecy and non-co-operation, rather than co-operation that focuses on objectives.
In the Bill, we wish to foster co-operation that focuses on very defined objectives and strategies. The Government believe that that is the best balance. Allowing the Border Security Commander to publish documents behind the back of the Home Secretary, for whatever reason he or she may think fit, is not exactly fostering a co-operative working environment or an environment that is likely to be successful. We believe that the way in which these things are expressed in the existing clauses is more likely to foster agreement.
As already discussed, the strategic priority document provided for in clause 3(2) will set out the principal threats to border security when the document is issued, as well as the strategic priorities to which partner authorities should have regard in exercising their functions in relation to any of the identified threats. The role of the Border Security Commander is to support the Government of the day, and it is therefore only right that Ministers and the Secretary of State endorse the strategic direction and collective response of this public authority in relation to border security.
The hon. Member for Stockton West seemed to want to give the Border Security Commander powers to do things and to remove the requirement for ministerial consent for whatever they wanted to do. That seems to set up the Border Security Commander in a more powerful position than Ministers, which seems an odd thing for a Member of Parliament and a shadow Minister to wish to do. We think that the right way of ensuring accountability for the way these things are done is to have ministerial involvement, rather than set up operational structures that are so independent of Ministers that people want to do things behind Ministers’ backs.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsTuesday 4th March 2025
(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 4 March 2025 - (4 Mar 2025)
Dame Angela Eagle
The Opposition have asked which bits of the commander’s functions may be delegated and to what level. In theory, it can be any of them. We are trying to ensure that there are no issues in primary legislation that would mean something is prevented from being delegated that would have been effective.
I do not think that the hon. Member for Stockton West would expect me to go into great detail about what might happen with delegation in the future, but I can give an example. If there was to be a high-level visit to Iraq to conclude a memorandum of understanding on returns and activity against organised immigration crime, and the commander was detained elsewhere, it would be possible to delegate that function to somebody who would then go in his place.
We are trying to get to the stage in legislation where we create the commander and give flexibility as to how the job can be put into effect in scenarios that may crop up, without being too prescriptive. I hope that the hon. Member for Stockton West will accept that example of the sort of thing that may crop up.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
It is quite interesting to hear the points that the Minister is making, considering the conversation we had this morning about the commander being functionally a civil servant. Although I was never officially a civil servant in the proper sense, from my experience it is really important that senior leaders within the civil service are able to avail themselves of delegation capacities as needed.
It can be done for many reasons. It could be a bandwidth issue, where someone has multiple priorities and needs to delegate to someone else because they are not able to be in two places at once—and looking at the responsibilities of the commander as set out in the legislation, there are a lot. It could also be a resourcing issue or because of a conflict of interest. That brings me to the point I was making about this being a civil service role; there need to be proper conflict of interest considerations. That is what we are taking account of here.
Dame Angela Eagle
My hon. Friend is right that circumstances often crop up that require this kind of provision. All clause 7 does is allow it, so I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Designation of an Interim Border Security Commander
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Pete Wishart
I do not think anyone would assert, contend or propose that. Everybody is subject to the laws. Clauses 13 and 14 are designed to create new ways to criminalise people. I have listened carefully to the Government’s rhetoric, and I believe the focus and ambit of these new laws is to smash the gangs and disrupt their business, but they will not do that. The only people who will be ensnared, entrapped and put on the wrong side of these laws are asylum seekers. I say candidly to the hon. Lady that we are creating new ways to further criminalise the most wretched people in the world, and that is a grotesque ambition for this Government.
I tried to find out from the senior law officers who gave evidence how many members of gangs would be apprehended and brought to justice as a result of these new clauses. The law officers could not tell me. I do not blame them for that; they probably did not know. I suspect it would be really difficult even to make some sort of guess about how many criminals would be brought to justice as a result.
I also asked what would be the ratio of ordinary asylum seekers to gang members—the ones who secure this vile trade—but the law officers could not tell me. However, I know and suspect, as I am sure they do, that nearly everybody who falls foul of the clauses will be an asylum seeker. I suspect they know—I do, and probably everybody else does—that very few gang members will be brought in front of any of our judiciary as a result of the provisions.
Chris Murray
There is an issue around taxonomy and categorisation here. Anyone is entitled to claim asylum. It is a universal human right. Anyone from any nationality and background, whatever their criminal history, is entitled to make a claim to be an asylum seeker. It is possible to be a member of a criminal gang and plan on claiming asylum. From my 15 years of working in the asylum and immigration service, I know it is an undeniable point of fact that some people exploit that to delay or get around the system, and we must act on such abuse.
Does the hon. Member agree that we have to be careful in our classifications? There is a distinction between an asylum seeker who has a genuine claim to refugee status but who might not be eligible, and someone exploiting the system.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
As hon. Members will have read, clause 13 creates a new offence of
“Supplying articles for use in immigration crime”.
The offence has two limbs. First, that the person supplies or offers to supply those articles to another person, and secondly that, when they do so, they know or suspect that the item will be used in connection with any offence under sections 24 or 25 of the Immigration Act 1971—illegal entry and assisting unlawful immigration, respectively. I have a question for the Minister on the reasonable excuse elements of the clause. It is a defence for a person charged with this offence to show that they had a reasonable excuse. Subsection (3) defines a reasonable excuse as explicitly including that,
“(a) their action was for the purposes of carrying out a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”,
which seems reasonable, or,
“(b) they were acting on behalf of an organisation which—
(i) aims to assist asylum-seekers, and
(ii) does not charge for its services.”
That second defence seems to the Opposition to create a large loophole in the law. Does the Minister accept that these defences will have the effect of exempting non-governmental organisations from criminal charges for helping asylum seekers to cross the channel? Why would the Government seek to do that?
The defence categorises organisations that aim to assist asylum seekers into those that do not charge for their services and those that do. Surely this criminal offence is a criminal offence regardless of who is responsible; why would it be any less criminal if someone does it voluntarily? Why is making money from something the determinant of whether it is a crime? As we heard in evidence, charities can be “mischievous”—I think that was the word used—in their activities and in how close they come to facilitating illegal crossings to the UK. Does the Minister accept that the activities of some charities can veer close to the line of facilitating illegal entry? If so, what do the Government intend to do about it?
The threshold for the defence is low. The accused simply needs to provide sufficient evidence to raise an issue, and the contrary must not be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Might that be why the Home Office impact assessment considers that between four and six prison places—I believe the central estimate is five—will be required per year once this steady state is reached? The Home Office has lauded the new powers and offences in the Bill as being key to smashing the criminal smuggling gangs, but it does not appear to consider that many people will be convicted under the new offences. How can both those things be the case?
Clause 14 creates the new criminal offence of handling articles for use in immigration crime. The person has to receive or arrange to receive a relevant article, remove or dispose of an article for the benefit of another person, or assist another person to remove or dispose of a relevant article. Again, the clause provides the same defence to the offence as clause 13 does—namely, that the action of the accused was
“for the purposes of carrying out a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”,
or that they were acting
“on behalf of an organisation which—
(i) aims to assist asylum-seekers, and
(ii) does not charge for its services.”
I therefore have the same questions for the Minister about this defence as I did for the defence in clause 13.
Clause 15 provides a definition of “relevant article” for the purposes of the new offences in clauses 13 and 14. There are exemptions for food and drink, medicines, clothing, bedding, tents or other temporary shelters, and anything to preserve the life of a person in distress at sea or to enable such a person to signal for help. Will the Minister set out the kinds of articles that she therefore expects to be captured by the offences in clauses 13 and 14? It would be useful to know what items the Home Office, Border Force and the police specifically wish to disrupt. There is also a power in clause 15 for the Secretary of State to amend the list of relevant articles. Will the Minister explain what purpose that power serves? The list of what counts as a relevant article is almost limitless, so does she envisage that the power will be used primarily to create exemptions?
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire has tabled amendment 3 to specify that if a person is an asylum seeker, they cannot commit the offence in clause 13: supplying articles for use in immigration crime. It would be good to understand why the Scottish National party does not think it is possible for asylum seekers to commit that offence. How are law enforcement officers supposed to know that a person is genuinely an asylum seeker—and even if they are, what happens if their application is subsequently rejected?
The hon. Gentleman also tabled an amendment to require the commander to include in their annual report information about how they have paid due regard to the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on action against trafficking. My views are the same as those set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West on amendment 1.
Chris Murray
I apologise for my longer interventions, Mr Stuart; I will try to bundle them all into this speech.
One of the most important things that we heard during evidence was from Dr Walsh from the Migration Observatory. He said that demand for cross-channel crossings is essentially inelastic. Even if the price of a crossing doubles, there will still be demand for it; people rise to meet that price. That tells us that deterrence and disruption of the demand alone will never be enough to tackle the horrors that we are seeing in the channel at the moment. We must also disrupt the supply of ability to cross the channel. That is an important part of the Bill, and these clauses go right to the heart of it.
On the point about criminalising all asylum seekers, ahead of oral evidence, I read carefully the submissions we have had from organisations I have worked with in the past. I found the testimony of the Crown Prosecution Service very convincing. It stated clearly that in addition to the primary legislation, the CPS will produce guidance that will set out both the public interest threshold and evidential test that it would seek in order for a case to go to prosecution. It was very clear that the kind of hypothetical examples set out by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire would not meet that threshold.
On the point about decriminalising all asylum seekers, to clarify the point I was trying to make in my interventions, during a crossing anyone can declare themselves an asylum seeker. That then breaks down into different categories: someone who is genuinely eligible for asylum in the UK and will, when they go through the process, get refugee status; someone who is genuinely seeking asylum, but will not meet the threshold when they go through the process and will not get such status; and someone who knows that they are ineligible, or might be eligible on some counts, but is engaged in the criminal act of facilitating illegal entry into the UK and putting those other people’s lives in danger. At that moment, it is not possible to distinguish between those people; the asylum process is there to do that.
Were we to accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, it would be a wrecking amendment. I know it is not intended that way, but it would in reality be a wrecking amendment to any kind of intervention on a crossing at sea.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman neglects to mention one thing. He is correctly summarising what is happening with the amendments, but it is already illegal to arrive into the UK illegally—that is what is happening. That is why so many people have been arrested and are now being processed and sent back. It is illegal to come to the UK just now if you have no means to support yourself when you are here. All the Bill is doing is finding new ways to criminalise people. I do not know what the point of the new clauses is, when all that is already happening.
Chris Murray
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, but I do not accept that the proposal is creating new criminal offences for all asylum seekers or for all people; it is creating new criminal offences for those engaged in the exploitation of people and the trafficking or smuggling of them across the channel in great danger. We cannot allow that to continue if we care about those people’s lives at all.
In the constituency of every single MP in this room, there will be a cannabis factory where a probably under-age Vietnamese child is working at cultivating cannabis. If they arrived in the past two years, they came across in one of those boats. Significant, serious organised crime networks are exploiting the vulnerability of those people in order to facilitate such crossings. This proposal is how we stop them doing it, and that affects every one of our communities.
I am aware that I am testing people’s patience, but I want to make two final points. The first is about the criminalisation of organisations that help asylum seekers. That is an important point, and the distinction has to be clear. I did have concerns about this measure being in the Bill, but the evidence sessions completely reassured me. The testimony of the CPS was that asking about the weather in Dover when in Calais, and those kinds of things, would not be facilitating immigration crime. The testimony that the National Crime Agency is using these measures to tackle serious and organised crime makes it clear what the purpose of the clauses is.
The hon. Member for Kent—
Chris Murray
Weald of Kent, sorry—that is quite far south for me. The hon. Lady made a point about the sector and charging for services. Some organisations out there are charitable and provide services for free, and some organisations charge enormous fees and are extremely exploitative. That is where that distinction comes from. That would be my interpretation of the legislation.
Chris Murray
That is absolutely right—but, in my experience of the channel coast and of working in the refugee sector, those do not exist. Anyone who was to do that would probably be giving immigration advice, which is a regulated component under UK legislation. That would be structured differently from someone on the coast or on a boat or vessel, in the way that this legislation sets out. I am happy to be corrected, but that would be my interpretation.
Finally, I come to the point about mobile phones and the different things listed that can be seized when a vessel is disrupted. Last week, we heard so much evidence—there is so much evidence out there—that the crossing of the channel is the final stage in a very long process involving criminal gang networks, organised crime networks and just immigration networks that stretch through Europe, including allied countries and countries very difficult for us to have relationships with. We know that those smuggling networks are all orchestrated by mobile phone, so it is important that the Bill incorporates that.
On the concerns that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire about criminalising the most wretched people in the world, the exemptions in the Bill are clearly humanitarian. They are clearly the kinds of things that people need to survive on a dangerous sea crossing or on their arrival. The only exception is their phone. It is because we know that the data taken from those phones is critical in the fight that phones are excluded. That is why it is important that that component remains in the Bill.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (First sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsThursday 27th February 2025
(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 February 2025 - (27 Feb 2025)
Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I have previously met Daniel O’Malley as well.
The Chair
Very popular. If any interests are particularly relevant to a Member’s questioning or speech, they should declare them again at the appropriate time. We will now hear oral evidence from the Refugee Council, the Scottish Refugee Council and the British Red Cross. We must stick to the timings that the Committee has agreed in the programme motion. For this panel, we have until 12.10 pm. Could the witnesses please briefly introduce themselves for the record?
Enver Solomon: Thank you very much, Chair. My name is Enver Solomon, and I am the chief executive of the Refugee Council.
Mubeen Bhutta: Good morning; I am Mubeen Bhutta, the director of policy research and advocacy at the British Red Cross. I think you have all been told that I am a hearing aid user; I am just having an issue with one of my hearing aids, so I need to step out and step back in, if that is okay.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
Q
Enver Solomon: I would say not. I will come to clause 18 in a second, but I encourage the Committee to look at clauses 13 and 14. In our submission, we proposed that they should be amended to ensure the focus of the new offence is on people smugglers and not on those seeking protection in the UK. We also said that clause 15 should be amended to include other items that are important for reducing the risk that people face when attempting to cross the channel, and that the Government should consult widely to ensure the list is as extensive as is necessary.
On endangering others, given that, as Committee members will know, many of the boats now used are barely seaworthy and overcrowded, and that the numbers crammed into them are increasing, clause 18 could cover many more people than those whom the offence is apparently targeted at—that is, the people smugglers. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary gave some useful examples of the types of behaviour that could result in people being prosecuted, including physical aggression, intimidation, the rejection of rescue attempts and so on. We think the wording should be amended to reflect specific actions to ensure that the offence is very clearly focused.
We argue overall that these new offences are an extremely blunt instrument to change behaviours, and they will not have the desired effect of changing behaviours and stopping people getting into very dangerous, flimsy vessels.
Daniel O'Malley: To add to what Enver says, yes, it is a blunt instrument. We operate a refugee support service across the whole of Scotland, and when people come to our services they do not talk about the deterrence or anything like that; they talk about what they see once they get here. The environment that is created around people seeking asylum and refugees does not deter them from coming here, but once they are here, they feel that there is a threat to their protection and that their status here is under threat.
The language in these deterrents does not deter anybody from coming here; it just causes a hostile environment. That was the situation created by the previous Bills under the previous Government. We hope that will not be continued with the new Bill and other changes the Home Office is making. At the end of the day, when people come to our services and talk about stuff like this, they talk about how it makes them feel when they are in the country, not about how it deters them from coming here.
Chris Murray
Q
Enver Solomon: In short, what happened with the system meltdown that I referred to is that processing did pretty much come to a standstill. You had a huge and ever-growing backlog, and people were stuck in limbo indefinitely in the system. The number of people in hotels—asylum contingency accommodation, as it is called—reached record numbers. Hotels were being stood up in communities without proper prior assessments with relevant agencies of the potential needs—health, the NHS, and tensions vis-à-vis the police.
We work in Rotherham, where a hotel was brutally attacked and refugees were almost burned alive in the summer. My staff were in contact with people in the hotel who were live streaming what was happening. They thought that they were going to get burned alive. That hotel in Rotherham should never have been opened. It was always going to be a flashpoint. It was located in an incredibly isolated area, there were not appropriate support services, the local services were not properly engaged with in advance and there was no appropriate planning and preparation. That story, I am afraid, was repeated across the country because of the dysfunction and the system meltdown that the previous pieces of legislation resulted in. It is absolutely critical that we learn the lessons from that and do not repeat those mistakes.
There is no need to use asylum hotels. As I understand it, there are roughly 70,000 individual places within the asylum dispersal system today. If we had timely decisions being made in a matter of months, people moving through the system, a growing backlog in the appeal system dealt with by ensuring the decisions are right first time, and people having good access to appropriate legal information and advice from representation, which is a huge problem, you would begin gradually to fix the system.
It will take time to fix the system and create efficiencies, but it is absolutely vital that plans to move away from the use of hotels are taken forward rapidly, and that the current contracts in place with the three private providers to provide dispersal accommodation are radically reformed, because they just create community tensions. They are pivoted towards placing people in parts of the country where accommodation is usually cheap and where there are going to be growing tensions, often without support in place for people in those communities.
Mubeen Bhutta: I did not fully catch your question, Chris—I apologise.
Chris Murray
It was about the impact on local communities of the dysfunction created by the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act, and how much you attribute that dysfunction—especially the growing use of hotels for asylum seekers—to those Acts, which we are proposing to repeal.
Mubeen Bhutta: I probably do not have a huge amount more to add to what Enver just said, but it goes back to what was said earlier about the speed of decision making, the time that people are left in accommodation, the suitability of that accommodation, the impact on their wellbeing—certainly in terms of what we three see through our services—and the need for a comprehensive strategy. It comes back to what we said at the beginning about what is in the Bill, and what needs to go alongside it that is not in the Bill, around integration.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Q
Mubeen Bhutta: We do not fully know what the impact of that new offence will be, because it is not enforced yet. It is helpful to see that there is provision in the drafting around charities and their role, but it is not certain how that will play out. Our concern is also that new offences could impact the overall aims around the focus on seeking protection. It could influence behaviour or the ways that people offer support if there is concern that they might be caught.
Daniel O'Malley: On the point about the new offences and the deterrent aspect on human traffickers and smuggling gangs, there are aspects of the Illegal Migration Act that have not been repealed that apply to human trafficking. For example, a provision about disqualification from human trafficking protection in section 29 of the IMA has been kept. We would like to see that removed because an individual who has been in a nail bar and might have been human trafficked, as tends to be the case, might not come to any services due to fear of being disqualified from human trafficking protection because they may have engaged in criminal activity. If you have been human trafficked, you are likely to have engaged in criminal activity by virtue of that. That is the problem with the aspects of the Illegal Migration and Nationality and Borders Acts that have been left in.
The Nationality and Borders Act still contains section 60, which raised the threshold for referral to the national referral mechanism. Someone from a legal organisation in Scotland said that before the Nationality and Borders Act—he had been a lawyer for a couple of years by then—he had done one judicial review on the national referral mechanism. Since the Nationality and Borders and Illegal Migration Acts, he has done more than 50 judicial reviews. That keeps in the Act a freezing factor. Gangs and human traffickers can scare people who have been human trafficked by saying, “You might not get this protection because these offences could be applied or your protection could be taken away.” That is the aspect we would like to see removed to make sure that any offences are not disproportionately affecting victims of human trafficking.
Mr Forster
Q
Zoe Bantleman: The offences are drafted in quite broad terms and the defences are quite narrow. There is a real concern, particularly on behalf of the legal professions, as to what would constitute a defence. For example, one of the defences is where a person was
“acting on behalf of an organisation which—
(i) aims to assist asylum-seekers, and
(ii) does not charge for its services.”
Would a legal aid firm charging the legal aid fund for services come within the scope of this defence? That is a real question.
We could also imagine the much more practical question of someone who is, for example, in Calais with their family member, and their family member wants to get on to a small boat and they are saying, “No, don’t get on to the small boat. Look here—this is what the weather is going to be today” and they show them on their phone what the weather is going to be. That could be useful to that person in helping them to prepare for their journey to the UK, and it would be the collection, recording and viewing of that information. It is not clear that such a person would have a defence if they were to reach the UK by a safe route, if a safe route was available to them. Even though that was done in France rather than the UK, they could potentially be prosecuted once here because of the extraterritorial scope of the offences, subject of course to prosecutorial discretion.
There is a very large scope to the offences and the defences are potentially not sufficient and holistic enough to account for all situations in which persons should not be prosecuted and should not be criminalised for their behaviour.
Chris Murray
Q
Dr Peter Walsh: The Dublin system provided a mechanism for asylum seekers to be transferred between EU member states and prioritised the idea that people should have their claim processed in the first state in which they arrived. There are other things that the decision can be based on—one might be having family members in the country; that could also be the basis for a transfer.
There is emerging evidence from when researchers have spoken with migrants in and around Calais. They ask them, “Why have you taken this dangerous journey to the UK?” They talk about family, the English language and perceptions of the UK as being safer. Often they have experienced harsh treatment at the hands of the French police. Increasingly, they specifically mention Dublin.
What we can infer from that is that these people have an outstanding or rejected claim—or claims, potentially in a number of EU member states, even though there are rules and processes to prevent that. They have exhausted what they view as the opportunity to receive a successful asylum claim in the EU. That leaves the UK. They understand that because the UK is no longer a part of Dublin, we are effectively not able to return them to the continent. That is fairly recent evidence we have found.
On the smuggling networks and how they work, one of the big challenges is that they operate transnationally, so they are beyond the jurisdiction of any single authority. That, by its very nature, makes enforcement more difficult because it requires quite close international co-operation, so the UK would be co-operating with agencies that operate under different legal frameworks, professional standards and norms and maybe even speak a different language. That challenge applies with particular force to the senior figures, who are often operating not only beyond the UK’s and EU’s jurisdictions but in countries where there is very limited international law enforcement co-operation with both the UK and the EU. I am thinking of countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.
More generally, the smuggling gangs have become more professionalised. They are very well resourced and are highly adaptable. There is a sense that law enforcement is constantly having to play catch-up. The gangs are decentralised, and there are quite small groups of, say, eight to 12 individuals, spread out across the continent, who are responsible for logistics—for example, storing equipment like motors and engines in Germany that are imported to Turkey from China and then transported in trucks to France. Those networks stretch out across the continent. That is why it is so hard for law enforcement to fight them.
Pete Wishart
Q
Unless we tackle the demand, surely there will not be anything we can effectively do to tackle the illegal gangs, particularly if we are going to be cutting international aid budgets, which will exacerbate the problem and drive more people into the hands of the gangs. Ms Bantleman, you have written to the Government urging them to amend the good character guidance to ensure compliance with the UK’s international obligations. Could you expand on that and elaborate on what you are intending from the Government? You are right to remind the Government of the range of their commitments and international obligations. I will come to you first, Dr Walsh.
Dr Peter Walsh: It is true that there is a real lack of evidence on what the likely impact of specific policies to disrupt smuggling networks will be, but the policies could assist in disrupting smuggling activities. If you invest more resources in enforcement and agencies have greater power of seizure, search, arrest and investigation, then you would expect that more smugglers would be brought to justice. The bigger question for me is: will that reduce people travelling in small boats? There is the separate question of whether this will eliminate the market for smuggling.
What we do know is that a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money for the services that smugglers provide. If the effect of the policies is to disrupt smuggling operations, that could conceivably raise the cost of smuggling—a cost that would be passed on to migrants. It may be the case that some are priced out at the margins, but I suspect that demand is fairly inelastic. Even with an increase in price, people will still be willing to pay.
Another challenge is the people most directly involved in smuggling operations on the ground—the people who are tasked with getting the migrants to shore, the boats into the water and the migrants into the boats. It does not require substantial skill, training or investment to do that job. You can apprehend those individuals, and that requires substantial resource, but they can quickly be replaced. That is why it has been described as being like whack-a-mole. I think that is one of the real challenges.
Zoe Bantleman: I would like to add to that point, before I address the second question. I completely agree with what Peter says about how the most fundamental challenge in breaking the business model of smugglers is that, simply, smuggling will exist for as long as there is demand. There will be demand for it as long as there are people seeking safety. For as long as we fail to have accessible, safe, complementary routes for people to arrive here, and for as long as carriers are too fearful to allow people on to safe trains, ferries and planes to the UK, people will feel that they have no choice but to risk their lives, their savings and their families’ savings on dangerous journeys.
The focus of the Bill is not on tackling trafficking or the traffickers, or on protecting the victims of trafficking; it casts its net much wider. It is really about tackling those who assist others in arriving here, as well as those who arrive here themselves.
That leads me on to the second point, which is in relation to the good character guidance. There was a recent change, on the day of Second Reading, that also resulted in a change to the good character guidance, which is a statutory requirement that individuals must meet in order to become British citizens. The guidance says that anyone who enters irregularly—it actually uses the word “illegal”, which I have substituted with “irregularly”—shall “normally” not have their application for British citizenship accepted, no matter how much time has passed.
Fundamentally, article 31 of the refugee convention says that individuals should be immune from penalties. It is a protective clause. It is aimed at ensuring that exactly the kind of person who does not have the time or is not able to acquire the appropriate documentation, who has a very short-term stopover in another country on the way to the UK, and who is allowed to choose their country of safety can come here and is immune from penalties. There is also an obligation under the refugee convention to facilitate the naturalisation of refugees.
We also mentioned many other conventions, including the convention on the elimination of discrimination against women, and the convention on the rights of the child. Children have a right to obtain citizenship, so stateless children should not be barred from obtaining British citizenship. In addition, they should not be held accountable for things that were outside their control. Children placed on small boats may have had no control or understanding of their journey to the UK, so arriving here in a way outside their control, in a way that the Government consider to be illegal but is not illegal under international law, is not a reason for them to be barred from citizenship. That is the substance of what we have said.
Mr Forster
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Because I see so many of these children and work with them directly, I am often thinking practically about what their lives are like and how to ensure that they are okay, so I tend to come at your questions from that approach. One of the things that I am worried about is the potential for getting the scientific age assessment wrong.
There was a fantastic debate in the other House, where Lord Winston and others talked about the British Dental Association and the lack of clarity and slight vagueness around age assessment procedures. What I will say is that the social work team down at the Kent intake unit are fantastic and they have developed a strong approach to and knowledge about how to get those age assessment decisions right, with an understanding of school systems and other things about young people. I think we need to be really careful on the age assessment side.
You know that I am also going to be worried about safe and legal routes. Let me give you two examples two young ambassadors out of my large group. One is from Ukraine. She came under the Ukraine scheme, managed to complete her Ukrainian education and her UK education at the same time, and is going to King’s College. She has had nothing but support. The other is from South Sudan and, with no safe and legal route, came as an illegal immigrant. Female genital mutilation was an issue; there were some really serious issues. She found it hard to find somewhere to live and hard to get a job. She is now at Oxford University, because we have supported her and she is brilliant. Those are just two completely contrasting cases.
I stood and welcomed off the boat the first child who came from Afghanistan, who spent his nights weeping because he did not know whether his parents were alive. There is that safe and legal routes issue, particularly for children we know are coming from war-torn areas—we know that they are coming. We really need to think about that and think about support for them. That perhaps answers your tone question as well.
Chris Murray
Q
Dame Rachel de Souza: Down in Kent, because needs must, hotels were set up, so I visited the hotels that children were in. The situation was wholly inappropriate. Many children were languishing there for months, without English teaching. Kent county council was doing its best. Some of the best provision that I saw for children who were just arriving was put on by Kent, which had managed to get school going and get interpreters in, but it was overwhelmed.
What I will say, to pay tribute to local authorities around the country, is that whenever there was a very young child or a disabled child, they would step up and help. But it was hard to get the national transfer scheme going and the children were confused by it as well. The Hghland council offered a range of places to some of the children, and they were like, “Where is the highlands and what are we going to do there?” It felt discombobulated at best. It was really tricky.
Of course, let us not forget that a lot of those children were older teenagers, and a lot of the provision that they were going to was not care, but a room in a house with all sorts of other people—teenagers and older people. They were left to fend for themselves, which was incredibly disorientating. We have a problem with 16 and 17-year-olds in the care system. There was a massive stretch on social care. Every director of children’s social care who I spoke to said that it is a massive stretch on their budgets, and that they do not know what to do with those children.
I think we could be more innovative. Again, there is massive good will out there in the country. We should be looking at specialist foster care, and not sticking 17-year-olds in rooms in houses on their own. There are so many things we could be doing to try to make this better, such as settling children in communities with proper language teaching.
The No.1 thing that children tell me that they want, given that they are here, is to learn—to be educated—so that they can function well. For me, particularly with some of the children who I have seen, they do not in any way mirror the stuff that we read in the media about freeloading—coming here for whatever. Most of them are really serious cases, and given that they are here, they want to try to learn and be good productive members of our communities. There is much that we can do.
Pete Wishart
Q
We are keeping parts of NABA, so that will be a feature of the Bill. There are concerns about modern slavery and the impact on children with that. Are there any amendments that we could bring to the Bill that would help to deal with that and meet some of those concerns, so that we can get to a much better place with how we deal with children in our asylum system?
Dame Rachel de Souza: Obviously, both of those issues are concerns of mine—age assessment and the modern slavery provisions not being allowed to be applied. On age assessment, it is important that we know how old children are. I have seen 14-year-olds in hostels with 25-year-olds, which is totally inappropriate. I have seen girls who say that they are not 18 be age assessed as 18 and put in adult institutions with adult men. We do not want people masquerading as children to be put in with younger children. We need to do everything we can to determine age.
The technology around scientific age assessment is going to be difficult, not least because when you are dealing with an international population—as Lord Winston talked about—it is really difficult to be precise. Being precise matters. When children arrive in Kent, they get their new clothes, then if they are sick, they are put into a shipping container until they are not sick any more. They maybe then have to sleep a bit on a bench, and then they are age assessed. That age assessment is the most important thing about the rest of their journey here. If that goes wrong, that is it; if you get that wrong, they are an adult. It is a really important and tricky thing, and it is often not supported.
There are things we can do—I always look for solutions. Maybe we ought to be saying, “This is obviously a child. This is obviously an adult.” But there is a group where there are questions and perhaps we should be thinking about housing people in that group and spending a bit more time to work out how old they are and try to get the evidence, rather than making these cut-and-dry decisions that will change people’s lives. As I said, I found a 14-year-old boy in Luton who was there for years with 25-year-olds and was really upset.
On the modern slavery provisions, all I would say—I hope this is helpful—is that I have seen with my own eyes a 16-year-old Eritrean girl arriving at Kent with an older man who was her boyfriend. She obviously said, “It’s fine—I’m 16. We can come in.” She had lost her parents. It was obviously going to be trafficking. We need parts of the Bill to pick that up. That is real, so we need to be really careful about these things.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)
Chris Murray ExcerptsThursday 27th February 2025
(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Tom Hayes
Q
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
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.
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
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.
Mr Forster
Q
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
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
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
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.
Prevent: Learning Review
Chris Murray Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Dan Jarvis
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I always am. Both he and Sir David were and are true champions of this place. I know that the House is grateful to him for the important and constructive contributions he always makes. His interest in, and experience of, terrorism is well known and long standing. He makes a very important point about accessibility. All of us, as constituency MPs, rightly want to get out and meet our constituents, and make sure that they feel as if we are accessible to them. There is, on occasion, a balance to be struck to ensure we are able to perform our functions and duties at a local level without fear or favour, while at the same time ensuring that activity that takes place locally and nationally is as safe and secure as possible. I give him an absolute assurance that these are matters to which we attach the most profound importance. We are working very closely with Mr Speaker on the work he is doing on the Speaker’s Conference. I can give the hon. Gentleman an assurance about the priority we attach to that important work.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
As a new Member, I sadly never knew Sir David Amess, but from what people have said about his dedication to his constituents and his good humour across the House, he is a model for all new Members to follow.
At the Home Affairs Committee last week, we heard from the permanent secretary about how Prevent is changing and how the terror threat is changing. As we can see from the learning review, there are clearly gaps and there are lessons that still need to be learned. That requires independent scrutiny and independent oversight. Will the Minister tell us how the new Prevent commissioner will be able to provide the scrutiny we need?
Dan Jarvis
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and I completely agree with his characterisation of Sir David as a model for all Members—he is absolutely right about that. He raises a very important point, and I completely agree with his assessment of the learning review. It did identify a number of gaps, and those are gaps that will have to be closed. He will understand what I mean by this, but I need to be careful not to seek to provide too much direction and guidance to the independent Prevent commissioner, not least because, knowing Lord Anderson, I do not think he would take too kindly to it. What I am completely confident in is that Lord Anderson has all the requisite skills, experience and credibility to provide that function. He is an outstanding appointment. The Home Secretary and I look forward to working very closely with him. Further to the work he will be seeking to do, I can give my hon. Friend and the House an assurance that we will leave no stone unturned in doing what needs to be done to ensure that Prevent is fit for purpose and provides the confidence that people rightly want.