Immigration and Asylum Bill

Chris Philp Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I have already answered the point about proposals around indefinite leave to remain; I remind the right hon. and learned Lady, and the House, that it has been settled Government policy to increase the qualifying period from five years to 10 years since last summer—since before I was Home Secretary. In our earned settlement consultation, we have set out a series of proposals that we are consulting on. We are seeking views on the appropriate transitional arrangements that should be applied to that cohort. That is not what we are debating today, but if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that those arrangements will be the subject of intense debate in the weeks and months to come.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

For the benefit of the House and for clarification, does the Home Secretary intend to implement her proposed ILR changes via amendments to the Bill, or via the immigration rules in the autumn?

[Shabana Mahmood]

As the right hon. Gentleman well knows, the Bill is specifically about the changes we are making to our asylum system, to human rights laws, and to the approach that the Government want to take to asylum appeals. This is not a Bill about indefinite leave to remain. When we have settled policy later this year, those changes will be subject to the usual procedure for changes to immigration rules, which always take place with the scrutiny of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Immigration and Asylum Bill, while welcoming some of its provisions, because the Bill does not ensure all foreign criminals and illegal immigrants will be deported; does not end asylum for illegal immigrants; does not stop modern slavery claims suspending removal; does not stop illegal immigrants getting citizenship; does not make the changes the Government promised to reduce the numbers of people eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain; because the Bill will allow sponsor human rights claims, which will enable people outside the UK to enter under human rights grounds; because measures in the Bill such as narrowing the ability to make Article 8 and modern slavery claims will not be effective while the UK remains in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 remains in force; and because the provisions in the Bill are not capable of eliminating illegal immigration.”

The reasoned amendment, which stands in the names of the Leader of the Opposition, myself and my right hon. and hon. Friends, is to decline to give a Second Reading to the Bill on the grounds that it does not go far enough to combat illegal immigration or to ensure that all foreign criminals are deported.

First, I cannot help but notice the absence of the hon. Member for Dover and Deal (Mike Tapp), the immigration Minister, whom I was expecting to see in his place. Perhaps the Home Secretary has not yet forgiven him for openly defying her a few weeks ago, leading to her rather extraordinary public campaign to get him fired. No wonder she has so much trouble deporting illegal immigrants—she cannot even deport her own junior Minister from Marsham Street. [Interruption.] Does the Home Secretary deny that she tried to get him fired a couple of weeks ago, unsuccessfully? I notice that she makes no such denial.

At the beginning of her speech, the Home Secretary made a number of claims about statistics, one or two of which I would like to gently take issue with. She referred to small boat crossings. Since the election, 76,000 people have dangerously and illegally crossed the channel by small boat. That is more than under any other Prime Minister. Let us keep in mind that those crossings were undertaken mainly by young men, all of whom were leaving a safe country, France. Nobody needs to flee danger in France.

The Home Secretary also referred to removal numbers. Some 85% of those removals are voluntary, and only a tiny fraction are of people who arrived by small boat. In fact, since the election, removals of people illegally entering by small boat have amounted to only about 5% to 7% of small boat arrivals. Given that someone entering this country by small boat has a 95% chance of staying, and gets put up in taxpayer-funded accommodation, it is no wonder that crossings have occurred in record numbers. The only way of deterring these crossings is if almost everybody arriving gets deported when they arrive.

I observe that of the 80,000 people whose asylum claims were rejected at first instance in 2025, only 12,000 left or were removed. It is true that FNO removals are somewhat up, which I welcome, but if we look at the breakdown by nationality, it tells a rather different story. The numbers of foreign criminals deported to countries such as Albania, Romania, Lithuania and Poland are high when we compare them against the offender population. When we look at countries outside of Europe, the numbers are much lower. For example, Jamaica, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia together have 1,150 offenders in prison—and many more out in the community—yet last year, only 110, or less than 10%, were removed. Yes, the removal of FNOs to countries in eastern Europe is going well, and I commend the Government on that, but when it comes to removing foreign criminals to countries outside Europe, such as Jamaica, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia, the figures are very low. The reasons for that are some of the ones that the Home Secretary touched on earlier.

[Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I am reluctant to interrupt the shadow Home Secretary when he is in full flow, but he listed countries to which we are successfully deporting people; does he think that our membership of the ECHR has any impact on our ability to deport people to those countries?

[Chris Philp]

Our membership of the ECHR has less effect on deportations to Europe, because it is hard to make an ECHR-based claim if the receiving country is in Europe. However, when it comes to deporting foreign criminals to countries outside of Europe, such as those I listed, there are frequent ECHR-based claims, as the Home Secretary said earlier. I will expand on that point later, but there is no question in my mind that ECHR-based claims are one of the reasons why it is difficult to deport foreign criminals to those countries I just listed. Human rights claims, combined with asylum claims and modern slavery claims, mean that dangerous criminals remain in this country.

I will give the hon. Gentleman a number. Under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, the Home Secretary is under a legal duty to deport a foreign national sentenced to more than a year in prison, yet 20,000 people who meet that criterion are at large in the community, and many of them continue to offend. They are still at large in the community because they make claims under the ECHR, modern slavery and asylum routes. Those 20,000 people are a risk to my constituents and to his, and I take exception to some of the Home Secretary’s high-fiving at the beginning of her speech.

Let me touch on the proposal for so-called safe and legal routes, or refugee sponsorship. The numbers that we are talking about would be in addition to the number of asylum claims that we are already processing. Last year saw the highest number of asylum claims in history. From memory, it was somewhere in the region of 109,000. This year, the number will only be a little lower. Adding to that when we already have record numbers of asylum claims strikes me as irresponsible. The Home Secretary said that there would be a cap, but she did not specify what it would be; I would be interested to hear that. She also asserted that the people coming in by these routes would not be a burden on the general taxpayer, because their sponsor would look after them. She neglected to mention that that support has to last only for the first year. Thereafter, the taxpayer could have to pick up the tab. I must say that I do not support the creation of these schemes until we have illegal immigration and asylum claims down essentially to zero.

The argument that the creation of safe and legal routes will somehow stop small boats is absurd, because unless we give access to this country to everybody who wants to come—to everybody congregating in northern France, waiting to get on a dinghy—the ones who do not come in on that scheme will still try to cross on small boats. The idea that safe and legal routes will stop the boats on their own is absurd.

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

Does the shadow Minister agree that rising numbers of asylum claims, and rising numbers of approvals of said asylum claims, are essentially acting as a magnet for others? Essentially, that amounts to an amnesty for asylum claimants.

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. For many nationalities that cross the English channel by small boat—Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Eritrean and Sudanese, to name just six or seven—the asylum grant rate is well over 90%. In some cases, it is very close to 100%, which means that crossing by small boat is tantamount to an automatic right to stay here, even though those illegal immigrants—and they are illegal immigrants—are leaving a safe country. They are not fleeing danger; they were in France already. I agree that that creates a massive pull factor.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Your Party)]

I know the shadow Minister is an intelligent man who thinks a lot about these things. Has he considered for a moment why there are so many refugees globally, and why there are 70 million people without a home to call their own? Has he considered the effects of wars, environmental disaster and human rights abuses on populations around the world? Should there not be an international effort to try to help those people, as well as to deal with the problems at home? Does putting up barbed wire all around the world solve the problem, or create an even worse situation globally?

[Chris Philp]

I agree that the situation in countries such as Afghanistan creates large movements of people—that is correct—and fixing problems at source is clearly the best thing to do. However, I do not think transferring potentially tens of millions of people—he gave the number just then of 60 million or 70 million—into the west is the right solution to this problem. Those people who are displaced are probably better helped close to their country of origin. Transporting people en masse into this country is not the solution. When we have illegal migration under control, by which I mean at zero, there is a case for a limited safe and legal route, but until such time as we do that, I do not think such a transfer is reasonable.

By the way, the people who are crossing by small boat are not the most vulnerable. They are not typically women and children, or people who are sick and vulnerable. They are mostly young men who are paying people smugglers. If we were going to choose who to help, it would not be them.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Chris Philp]

I will give way again, but I want to make a bit of progress first. There will be plenty of other opportunities later.

I will briefly touch on indefinite leave to remain, which is conspicuous by its absence from the Bill. We heard the policy proposal when it was announced last November, but we still do not have any of the details laid out. I agree with the thrust of the Home Secretary’s proposal to increase the period to 10 years, because otherwise a large number of people—about 2 million—who entered in the past four or five years will get a permanent right to stay, including a full right to benefits. That includes people who came in on skilled worker visas sponsored by, among others, kebab shops and fried chicken shops.

I am keen to make sure that the Home Secretary sticks to her previous pledge that these rules would apply to people who are in the country already, and does not give in to pressure from her Back Benchers. I remind the House that the Home Secretary said to the Institute for Public Policy Research on 5 March this year that the change to a 10-year qualification period means

“applying any rule changes to those who are in the UK today, but have not yet received settled status.”

I hope she stands by her commitment. If she does, we Opposition Members will vote for it. She has our support on that.

While we are speaking about legal migration, let me urge the Home Secretary to reconsider her plan to introduce remote language tests, which are open to enormous fraud and abuse. Australia and Canada rejected them for that reason, and some domestic professional bodies, including the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, have stopped carrying them out because they are so open to fraud. I know that this testing is more efficient and I know that it will save money, but it is massively open to fraud.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is quite something to listen to a shadow Secretary of State whose party oversaw a net migration increase of 2.5 million in four years, and who has the brass neck to lecture the party in government on how to clear up his mess. Does he think he has any credibility at all on this matter, or is this just about the Facebook clip that he will undoubtedly be pumping out on his social media this evening?

[Chris Philp]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows nothing about Facebook clips, but let me be honest: mistakes were made in the past, and the policies that we have now developed, under new leadership, will fix those issues. In fact, this indefinite leave to remain policy was first proposed by us about a year ago, and then, very wisely, the Home Secretary adopted it.

Let me come to the commitment that the Home Secretary made on Shabir Ahmed, the vile gang rapist who should be deported back to Pakistan. We support the amendment to section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971, although section 33 of the UK Borders Act 2007—I think it is subsection (1)(b)—might need some attention as well. I would only ask the Home Secretary not to do that by amending this Bill, which will probably take a year or so to reach the statute book. I hope that she will consider doing it instead through emergency legislation in September, which could be completed in a couple of weeks; we took the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020 through Parliament in, I believe, 15 days in February of that year. There is not a moment to lose, and this can be fixed quite quickly.

As for the substance of the Bill, I agree with some of the Home Secretary’s analyses of where the problems lie. She is right to say that the immigration appeal system, modern slavery laws and human rights laws are being abused on an industrial scale by foreign criminals, and also by people with no legal right to be here, including people who came here illegally in small boats. These illegal immigrants and foreign criminals do make repeated claims, time after time.

The Home Secretary gave the example of a foreign criminal whom it took four years to deport. I was aware of the case of a Somali man who entered the country illegally and participated in the violent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl. On his release from prison, it took eight years to deport that man back to Somalia, because he made two or three different claims on sometimes contradictory grounds. I think that he made two modern slavery claims, and a number of human rights claims as well. There have been other cases in which foreign criminals have avoided being deported. For example, an armed robber avoided being deported back to Nigeria on the grounds that his mental health needs would not be taken care of perfectly there. Another man, a drug dealer, was not sent back to Iraq on ECHR grounds because, apparently, he had become too westernised. There was not a single thought for the safety of British children and the need for them to be protected from paedophiles. A Zimbabwean paedophile was not deported to Zimbabwe because he might get treated with hostility there. The judge gave no thought to protecting British children, and no thought to protecting our citizens from criminals.

In another case, a man was taken off a charter flight to Jamaica, again on human rights grounds—I think it was article 8—and about six months after being removed from that flight, he murdered someone on the streets of south London. That happened because of the supposed human rights of a criminal who went on to commit murder. I agree with the analysis that our immigration legal system, our modern slavery system and the human rights system are being abused on an industrial scale, and that has to end.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that practitioners of the legal system seem to believe that there are such things as absolute human rights, whereas most human rights are relative, and can be trumped by other people’s human rights, and in fact, can be abrogated? When you infringe other people’s human rights, you surely cannot expect your own to have priority over theirs, in a sensible system.

[Chris Philp]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. When it comes to foreign criminals, and people who enter this country illegally, having exited a safe place, namely France, I do not think that they should be given all the protections that we have been discussing this afternoon.

Let me turn to some of the specifics that the Home Secretary has put in the Bill. The changes to the immigration tribunal system, and the measures dealing with modern slavery and trying to better define article 8 constitute small steps in the right direction, but on their own, they are not going to work. Past Governments have attempted to make such measures work, but they have essentially failed, and I think that they will fail again. For example, better defining article 8 in domestic law was attempted in—I think, from memory—section 19 of the Immigration Act 2014, which I believe created section 117 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. That was an attempt to do, broadly speaking, what the Home Secretary is trying to do now, and it did not work, because judges—not just those in Strasbourg, but our domestic judges, empowered by the Human Rights Act—simply continued interpreting family rights very expansively and allowing foreign criminals to stay. I admire the Home Secretary’s effort to do this, but it has been tried before and it did not work.

Excluding modern slavery claims by foreign criminals has also been attempted before. The Bill essentially seeks to amend section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which was an attempt by a previous Government to fix this problem four or five years ago, and it has been repeatedly struck down by the courts. Because of the ECHR and the way in which it is incorporated by the Human Rights Act, it does not matter how we legislate. As with section 63 a few years ago, following the Home Secretary’s most recent attempt today judges will use the European convention on human rights, empowered by the HRA, to circumvent laws passed by this Parliament. The Home Secretary experienced that herself just last week, when her “one in, one out” scheme was upset by vexatious modern slavery claims. She tried valiantly to fix the loophole in guidance, and last week a court struck it down. The conclusion that I have reached—having suffered in the Home Office in the past as she is suffering now, trying to fix these issues within the construct of the ECHR and modern slavery legislation, and the examples that the Home Secretary gave only support this—is that the only way to fix this issue is to come out of these institutions entirely. We cannot do it by tinkering, which is what the Bill seeks to do. The previous Government tried it, I have tried it personally, the Home Secretary’s predecessor tried it, and she is now trying it again. The truth is—

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

Let me finish the point. The truth is that tinkering like this does not work when we have very expansive rights-based conventions. The only way of fixing this properly is to exit the ECHR entirely, repeal the Human Rights Act entirely, exit the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings—the modern slavery treaty—and say that people entering the country illegally, particularly from a safe place such as France, simply cannot claim asylum. That would enable us to legislate in this House without courts’ effectively circumventing our legislation, as they do on a near-daily basis. It would enable us to deport not just some foreign criminals but all foreign criminals, and it would enable us to deport, within a week of arrival, anyone entering the country illegally by small boat, either to their country of origin or to a safe third country if we could not deport them to their country of origin. That would be a genuine deterrent to prevent these unnecessary crossings, and would give us back control of our borders. While I share many of the diagnoses in the Home Secretary’s speech, I honestly do not think that these measures, which are incremental and an attempt to work within the existing framework, will work. Only radical solutions will actually work.

I see that the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) is twitching with excitement, so I think I had better give way.

[Clive Lewis]

I do not know whether I am alone in this, but I am hearing the shadow Secretary of State glibly throw away 80 years of legislation on human rights—human rights that were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, of concentration camps, of the horrors of fascism. He stands there and talks glibly about throwing them out when they have protected hundreds of millions of people around the world. There is a clue. The reason they are called “human” rights is that this is the universal condition—we are all human beings—and the day we forget that in this place is the day we open a dark chapter in our country’s history.

[Chris Philp]

When the ECHR was first conceived and entered into as a treaty in 1950, it was developed for very good reasons. It was designed to avoid a repetition of the horrors of the second world war, which the hon. Gentleman refers to, but over the years judges in Strasbourg and domestically, using the living instrument doctrine, have expanded and expanded and expanded the definitions of the articles, which are necessarily very vaguely worded.

For example, article 3 of the ECHR is on

“freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

When it was written, that meant “Don’t send people to concentration camps.” On the face of it, the words are very reasonable; if we were to sit down today and come up with a convention, it would have those words in it. But the way it is applied by judges today means that we cannot send foreign criminals back to other countries, like Zimbabwe, in case they face hostility there as foreign criminals. We cannot run our border system because of the way the articles are interpreted. The balance has now shifted so far that it is preventing border control and a number of other things as well, and that is why we have to leave the ECHR.

I do not accept the proposition that the only thing standing between us and barbarism is the ECHR or the Human Rights Act. This country has led the world in human rights, not just for decades but for centuries. If there are any gaps in our protection of rights that this Parliament feels are exposed by leaving the ECHR, the proper remedy is for this sovereign, democratically elected Parliament to legislate to fill them. If there is a gap in our domestic statute or our common law, and this House feels that the gap needs to be filled, the right way to do so is not by having judges make up expansive case law; it is by having this democratically elected parliament debate the issue, as we are doing now, and take a vote on it. That is the way in which democracy should function.

I think that one of the reasons mainstream politics is coming under pressure, if I can put it euphemistically, is that pledges made at elections, by successive Governments, on issues like immigration do not get delivered. One of the reasons why is that the human rights legal framework prevents them from being delivered. The Home Secretary gave examples of that, and it is essentially a democratic deficit; this Parliament, not judges, should decide how our borders are run. While I welcome these measures as small steps in the right direction, I do not think that they will work. I do not think that the measures in this Bill go far enough, because they do not address the fundamental problem.

[Ms Creasy]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Philp]

I will take one last intervention before finishing.

[Ms Creasy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving us his experience. Governments of all colours have always been angry about the European Court of Human Rights, because they are kept honest by having a court of human rights that can act to protect citizens when Governments make incorrect decisions about people’s basic fundamental liberties. If he wants a good example of why upholding international treaties matters, I suggest that he talk to our colleagues from Northern Ireland about the Good Friday agreement, which is rooted in the European Court of Human Rights. Before he argues that we should remove those protections in such a cavalier fashion, perhaps he might reflect on why people like Winston Churchill wanted to protect citizens from Governments who might make incorrect decisions, whether in the immigration system or about their fundamental human rights.

[Chris Philp]

First of all, I do not think that Winston Churchill would ever have envisaged that the ECHR, which he helped create, would lead us to being unable to control our borders. Secondly, on the Good Friday agreement, I urge the hon. Lady to read the 175-page report by Lord David Wolfson KC, which explains how our Good Friday agreement obligations could be upheld after leaving the ECHR. Thirdly, on her point about protecting rights, the ultimate guarantor and protector of the rights of people in this country should be this democratically elected Parliament, not judges handing down expansive definitions of vaguely-worded clauses that have acted as a charter for illegal immigrants and foreign criminals.

I ask the House to support our reasoned amendment. While these are small steps in the right direction—

[Suella Braverman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Philp]

I need to finish.

While I agree with the diagnoses that the Home Secretary eloquently set out in her speech, the measures that she proposes simply will not work. I know that because I have tried to introduce such measures in the past, including by amending section 63, and the courts do not let them stand. Until we come out of the ECHR and the ECAT treaty, stop illegal immigrants claiming asylum and end judicial review of most immigration cases, we will not get control of our borders and the public will continue to lose trust in mainstream politics. That is why I moved the Opposition’s reasoned amendment.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

There is now a seven-minute time limit.