Nationality and Borders Bill

Damian Green Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are supporting every one of these amendments, almost all of which contain practical suggestions. That is the policy of the Labour Front Bench. On the broader point, one thing we would do is not have a party leader who regularly and consistently insults our democratic partners and allies. On that basis, we would negotiate a successor to Dublin and get constructive engagement with the French on security in relation to people smugglers. This is about grown-up politics, as I am sure the hon. Member would agree.

I would like to end by paying tribute to the noble Lords and Baronesses Coaker, Stroud, Lister, D’Souza, Rosser, Judge, Pannick, Kerr, Kirkhope, Dubs, Alton, Neuburger and Ritchie for working cross-party in such a constructive and effective way to win so many votes in the other place. Let me be clear: this Bill reflects and represents a catalogue of failure on immigration policy and a combination of incompetence and indifference from a Government who are presiding over a system that is neither fair, compassionate nor orderly. It is a desperate attempt to distract from the Home Secretary’s failings, and it solves none of the challenges our immigration system faces. We know that many Members on the Government Benches are deeply uncomfortable with the content of this legislation. The British people want and deserve an asylum and immigration system that is fair, compassionate and orderly. Today, Members on the Government Benches can stand up for decency by joining us in the Division Lobby later this afternoon. Let us hope that they will do so.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I rise to support Lords amendment 11, but I want to start by thanking Ministers for their flexibility in accepting the logic of the amendment I moved at an earlier stage to extend the benefits of the British national overseas scheme to younger Hong Kong residents born after 1997. I thank all those on both sides of this House who supported it, and those in the other place who did so, notably Lord Alton, Lord Patten of Barnes, Lord Falconer and the Bishop of St Albans, as well as the non-governmental organisation Hong Kong Watch. Most of all, I thank the Ministers who have taken it on board and acted on it. That is a good result, so in the same spirit of pragmatic and sensible co-operation, let me try again with the Lords amendment that would set up a permanent safe route that crucially, from the Government’s own perspective, would remove a significant driver of the traffic in small boats across the channel.

I absolutely get that one of the Government’s key aims is to minimise and hopefully stop altogether this dangerous route of illegal immigration. I support them wholeheartedly in that aim. Been there, done that, when the traffic was in the backs of lorries, which was equally dangerous and also led to the deaths of innocent people fleeing trouble. It can be done; we can stop these routes. So why Lords amendment 11? The Government, and indeed the Minister in his opening remarks, have correctly asserted that people in need of protection must come to the UK via safe and lawful routes rather than making an illegal journey. However, those routes need to be available to people, and for far too many people, they are simply not available under the current system.

The Minister went through the details of the resettlement pathway, and in the explanatory notes to the Bill the Government assert that they intend

“to enhance resettlement routes to continue to provide pathways for refugees to be granted protection in the UK”.

But this resettlement route can be an effective response to the challenge of the channel crossings, of which there were about 28,000 last year, and break the model of the criminal people smugglers, only if it achieves two things. First, it must be accessible to meaningful numbers of people. Secondly, it must not be restricted to one geographic area. However, the Home Office data confirms that 87% of those arriving by small boats in 2021 comprised nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, for whom there is currently no alternative legal and safe route by which they can apply to get to the UK, so it is pointless the Minister saying that he believes in accessible routes. The people coming across the channel—he and I, and I suspect everyone in this House, want them to stop putting themselves at risk—do not have those routes available to them, and that is why we need this Lords amendment and a change to the Government’s proposals.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a good point. I wanted to highlight the difficulty for Syrian Kurds, who often flee over the Turkish border. This Government believe that Turkey is a safe place for them, but many Kurds legitimately do not believe that it is a safe place for them to wait for resettlement, and they therefore continue their journey through Europe and eventually arrive in Britain. The Government’s proposals would make that harder. They need to provide decent routes, particularly for Kurds and other minorities that might find neighbouring countries hostile to them rather than receptive of them.

[Damian Green]

I find myself in rare, perhaps unique agreement with the hon. Gentleman on that point. I am sure that he and I will not want to see that happen too often.

Returning to the Government’s wider plan, the new plan for immigration states:

“The UK’s commitment to resettling refugees will continue to be a multi-year commitment with numbers subject to ongoing review guided by circumstances and capacity at any given time.”

If nothing else, Lords amendment 11 invites the Government to take a small step forward—I agree with the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) that it is a small step, but it is a significant step and I hope we will vote on it later—to strengthen their objectives with a concrete and predictable floor of 10,000 places. That would provide local authorities and civil society more widely with the certainty, time and space to plan and to deliver the capacity so that resettlement can be successful. I should pause and pay tribute to my own local authority in Ashford, which was very active in coming forward early for the Syrian resettlement scheme and has done the same with the Afghans. I also pay tribute to the civil society NGOs in my constituency that are doing the same with Ukraine. I suspect that that is reflected all around the country. There are lots of people out there who want to be generous.

[Richard Graham]

It seems to me that the Homes for Ukraine scheme offers a model that could be used for all sorts of other nationalities as well. There is no reason why we should have one lot of refugees who are being housed and able to work from day one while others are in hotels decided on by the Home Office and often planted on councils that are trying to do their best but do not have much accommodation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a real opportunity for us to rethink how we accept refugees in our country now?

[Damian Green]

I do; my hon. Friend makes an extremely profound point. We are facing a crisis of a type we have not faced before, and we should use this opportunity to look at ourselves and our systems and ask whether we can do things differently. We should use the entirely justifiable outpouring that we have seen over Ukraine to set up a permanent system so that if we get something like this again—God forbid, but sadly it will probably happen—we will have the systems in place to make it is easier for people, particularly those who are fleeing persecution and death. The Syrian refugee scheme saw 275 local authorities—two thirds of the local authorities in this country—volunteering to resettle refugees. I think that proves the point that an ambitious and intelligently designed programme can meet the appetite of people in their own areas to help those who are fleeing persecution.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall that, following the 2003 Hillingdon judgment that clarified the responsibilities of local authorities in respect of refugee children, Bev Hughes, the then Minister at the Home Office, wrote to every local authority to inform them that the cost of supporting refugee children would be met in full? A year later, however, when the invoices were submitted to the Home Office, the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who had taken on that ministerial responsibility, refused to meet those costs, thus undermining the confidence of local authorities to step up to the plate in that respect.

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend, a former leader of Hillingdon Council, will be more expert on this matter than I am. In various phases, I have been on either side of the argument between the Home Office and local authorities, so I shall declare a position of neutrality on that, but he makes a valid point.

Lords amendment 11 is modest in its ambitions. It sets a number, which I have heard Ministers claim is a limit, but the amendment actually states:

“The Secretary of State must arrange for the resettlement in the United Kingdom of at least 10,000 refugees each year.”

So if the arrangements are there, the Secretary of State has met the terms. It is conceivable that in some years there will not be the need to resettle 10,000 refugees, but, sadly, looking around the world at the moment, I do not think that figure is at all unrealistic. This approach will have huge practical advantages because, as we have discussed, it will allow local authorities and others to plan ahead. As we see at the moment, this country is good at scrambling together a plan at the last moment, but for once let us do some proper forward planning.