Nationality and Borders Bill

Craig Williams Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

It is great to see you in your new place today, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I am not against immigration at all. In fact, I have signed the forms for many friends who have decided to make the UK their permanent home after entering it legally and working here for many years. People who want to come to the UK and work legally can do so under the Bill, and I think that that is exactly the position that my constituents want to see. They want to see those people entering the UK legally, along with others who, in desperate straits, are fleeing persecution from abroad. Britain has welcomed such people for centuries.

The UK Government has proudly welcomed many tens of thousands of people—25,000 under the resettlement scheme—who were fleeing persecution: not those who were able to travel halfway across the world, not those who were prepared to pay illegal traffickers, but people in genuine need, coming from refugee camps that were at the heart of the worst action in recent wars. My constituents are proud to have taken those people in. Several asylum seeker families have settled in my constituency recently, and I look forward to their playing a real part in our local community, as others have done before them. However, my constituents are fed up—

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Will he also reflect on the fact that 25,000 is more than any other European country has taken in? We should be very proud of what we are doing, and should reinforce the legal routes into this country.

[Mr Holden]

I could not agree more. What I keep noticing today is that Opposition Members seem to be pushing the illegal routes more than the legal routes. We have legal routes into this country, and people can take them. I cannot understand why anyone who actually had the interests of people fleeing persecution at heart would promote people travelling in the backs of lorries or fleeing in boats across the channel, sometimes across the Mediterranean sea to get to France or Italy, and then having to travel all the way here. It is deeply irresponsible of Opposition Members to constantly try to promote these routes and to paint Conservative Members as though they are not trying to act in the best interests of those across the world who are facing incredibly difficult circumstances.

Although my constituents are happy to welcome economic migrants who come through the legal channels and want to play their part in our country, especially those who want to settle and permanently make the UK their home, they are fed up of seeing illegal migrants from across the world taking whatever opportunity they can. They are particularly fed up of seeing people being used and abused by illegal gangs, and being forced into this country. That is what really grinds their gears, and I cannot understand why Opposition Members cannot understand my constituents.

My constituency voted Labour ever since its creation. This was an issue that came up time after time on the doorstep, not only at the last general election but at the previous election. The Labour party has totally lost touch with the reality of the communities it has traditionally represented.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kenny MacAskill]

If people have to be detained we have measures for detaining them, but in the main we do not have to detain people. I will again digress, with a story not from my period as Justice Secretary, but from when I was a defence agent. I once represented a young woman who had been detained as an asylum seeker. The crime was working in a restaurant in Orkney. She was detained in Her Majesty’s Prison Aberdeen. There was no Chinese translator. It was an overwhelmingly male prison. She was frightened witless. Those of us who know Orkney will know that someone cannot get off the island without boarding either a ferry or a plane. There was no way for her to escape, and to lock her up when she was no danger was frankly shameful. That was more than 25 years ago and things, sadly, are much worse now.

I always remember an old friend of mine, who was a prison governor and indeed a penologist, saying that if we want to look at who the most vulnerable and weakest members of a society are, we have only to look at who is in prison. In America, it is the black population. In Britain, it is the ethnic minorities. In Australia, it is the aborigines. In Scotland, it is the poor. Equally, we can take the corollary to that in this case, and ask who is coming and from what lands.

[Craig Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kenny MacAskill]

No, not at the moment.

That tells us where the areas of conflagration are and where the areas of natural disaster are, because people are coming from Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Iraq, where there has been war and carnage. That is what they are fleeing, and that is why we have a duty to support them.

[Craig Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kenny MacAskill]

No, I have to make some progress.

We have to make progress, because it goes against the values that, I believe, not only do we hold in Scotland but are replicated across Great Britain and Northern Ireland. People have come to this country—the Huguenot French, the Jews fleeing the pogroms, Basque children escaping Franco’s atrocities. They have come here, they have been welcomed and we are proud of that. It is something England and Wales are right to be proud of. Scotland has its own immigration, and I will deal with that in a minute, but that is something in which those who have come to this country and those from south of the border are right to take pride.

In Scotland, we have similarly seen people having to flee here. In fact, I say to Members from Northern Ireland that the first of those fleeing in were probably those fleeing the north of Ireland in the 1798 rebellion, who had to get out after the defeat of the rebellion and the conflagration that took place.

[Craig Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Kenny MacAskill]

No, not at the moment.

That was followed by those who fled Ireland during the famine and, similar to south of the border, by those fleeing the Jewish pogroms or war. Scotland has benefited from these people coming: they have made us a better country. As others have said, we are losing population and we require people to come here—not simply retirees who wish to go and buy a nice house on the basis of their pension or the property they have sold, but people of younger age who are willing and able to come here and work, many of them those are asylum seekers and refugees. We need to have them coming because Scotland has a need for them.

Equally, this is about representing our universal values. Every day I see people lining up here for Prayers, and why do we do that if it is not because those in this Chamber are supposed to act according to values, whether Augustinian or whatever else? Within those values, and certainly within the Christian faith, the church was viewed as a sanctuary, yet the terms of the Bill remove sanctuary not from a church building, but from this entire country. It is entirely wrong. It goes against the values of the people not simply of England and Wales, but of Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole, and those Conservative Members who are fuelling racism should be ashamed.