Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Murray]

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

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

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

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

[Pete Wishart]

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

[Chris Murray]

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

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[Pete Wishart]

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

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

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

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

[Chris Murray]

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

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

[Pete Wishart]

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

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

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

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[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)

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[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?

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[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—

[Pete Wishart]

It is completely and utterly compliant.

[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.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[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.

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[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—

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

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

Q Welcome; thank you for coming along and giving your evidence, and for your written evidence. I think you are absolutely right to focus on the new criminal clauses that are included in the Bill, and to comment on how invidious they may be in how they might be broadly applied to asylum seekers. Do you agree that, if we could find some provision or series of amendments that removed asylum seekers from the focus of these new criminal laws, that might be a useful development? One of the clauses I would like you to comment on is the one that introduces an offence of endangering another person during sea crossings. You are experienced in working with asylum seekers and refugees—do they have any cognisance of the hardening of immigration and asylum laws in the UK when they are trying to get their family to safety from a war-torn region?

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 I should probably declare that I used to work on refugee and asylum issues in Scotland, including with the Scottish Refugee Council. Enver, you talked a bit about the fundamental system meltdown, and the disfunction that the IMA and the Rwanda Act caused. I want to ask you a bit more about that. Would I be right in saying that those Acts basically caused a complete stop, or a complete slowdown, in any processing of asylum applications? What impact does that have on the communities where asylum seekers are placed, and on the people who serve those communities—the councils and charities? Does it make it hard for them to do their job? Does it cause local tensions? If we are repealing those components of the IMA and the Rwanda Act, would that address some of the challenges those communities are facing as a result of migration?

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.

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[Chris Murray]

Q Dr Walsh, you said something fascinating that the Minister picked up on about the Dublin system and the driver of people getting on small boats. Could you say a little bit more about that? First, what is the evidence for that? Secondly, we know that people getting on to a small boat on the French side of the channel are part of a long stream of networks, illegal organisations and people fleeing. They are travelling through multiple countries. Could you give us a bit more detail on how those networks are functioning now, how they have evolved over the last couple of years in response to various conflicts and drivers, and the routes that people are taking?

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 I would like to pick up on that point, because it is very important. I think I saw somewhere that you commented that there is a lack of evidence about the long-term effects of prosecuting people smugglers, because they will just be displaced. It strikes me that given that there are no other means or safe routes to get to the UK and the people-smuggling gangs effectively have a monopoly on the irregular migration business, surely all they are going to do with all the legislation that the Government are bringing forward is adapt the models to accommodate what the Government are introducing. It always seems that they are a few steps ahead of Government.

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.

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[Chris Murray]

Q We heard from the previous panels about how the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act caused wholesale dysfunction in the immigration system and especially in asylum. I want to ask you about the impact that that dysfunction had on children. As we were moving unaccompanied asylum-seeking children from Kent around the rest of the UK, how dysfunctional was that system? What was it like for local authorities that were trying to support them and the local communities? They have statutory obligations about child protection.

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 I commend you for the work you do. I think what you do is amazing, and I pay tribute to that. You are absolutely right to raise some of the issues about the age assessment procedures, and their almost quasi-scientific applications. You are right to reference the debate in the House of Lords, because I think it captured that quite well. Why do you think there is an increasing trend to try to label quite obvious children or teenagers as adults?

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)

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Murray]

Q Or four.

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

[Pete Wishart]

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

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

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Chris Murray and Pete Wishart

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

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

[Chris Murray]

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