Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Mike Tapp

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

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

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

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

[Mike Tapp]

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

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