Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

David Morris Excerpts

Friday 4th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

It is hard to establish the exact basis on which those people left voluntarily. I know that the figures given by my hon. Friend have been cited before, and the number does seem to have risen, but I think that the people about whom we are concerned are those who are staying here deliberately, in breach of the law, as illegal migrants. I shall give some examples shortly. People who leave voluntarily are often those who have overstayed and want an opportunity to make a fresh application from overseas without being caught out. They tend—in my constituency case experience, at least—to be good people who have been caught out by the existing rules and who want, as soon as possible, to rectify their legal position, and to be able to return to the country and remain here legally. What concerns me, and what the Bill aims to address, is the very large number of people—there are probably well over a million now—who are here illegally, are intent on staying here illegally, and every now and again ask for some sort of amnesty which would enable them to be legitimised.

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Do I understand that my hon. Friend would like to see a fast-track process to extradite people who are staying here illegally?

[Mr Chope]

I would indeed like to see such a process, but for deportation rather than extradition. The Bill specifically states that if illegal migrants are convicted, the courts should recommend deportation as a matter of course, but that is, at present, very much the exception. As a consequence, as soon as people arrive in this country—although they may have come here by means of subterfuge, with false documents and so on—they think that if they are caught, they will effectively never be deported.

We know that, currently, a mass—tens of thousands—of what are described as failed asylum seekers are in this country, and have not been deported. The figures, which I have somewhere, suggest that the number of deportations of failed asylum seekers is at a 10-year low, yet we know that the number of people seeking asylum last year was at a record high. Why are so few of those people being deported? I think that it is because the Government are not taking seriously the need to deter, and to enforce the existing law in the 1971 Act. Given those figures relating to failed asylum seekers, how can the Government say that their focus is on “removal…rather than prosecution”, because removal is less quick and less costly? The facts do not seem to bear that out.

So what are the facts? We know that of those who have come here illegally, fewer were subjected to enforced removal last year than in any of the previous 12 years for which we have statistics. In 2004, 21,425 people were subjected to enforced removal, under a Labour Government. My hon. Friends often say that during that period, the Labour Government were a soft touch when it came to illegal migrants. I see that the Minister is nodding. Last year only 12,056 people were subjected to enforced removal, the lowest number for 12 years. The Government sometimes arrange what are known as “assisted voluntary returns”, which often means the provision of an air fare to enable people to leave. The number of assisted voluntary returns last year was also at its lowest level for 12 years, at just 1,635. That information comes from the most recently published Home Office immigration statistics, relating to 2015.

Public anxiety about illegal immigration is at an all-time high, but the Government’s effectiveness in tackling it is, in my submission, at an all-time low. There are scarcely any prosecutions and the number of enforced removals has been substantially reduced. In the face of these facts, what are the Government doing? As recently as Monday this week, the noble Lord Bates, the Home Office Minister of State—

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is the question that the public ask again and again in the letters and emails we receive. Why is the Dublin convention not being used? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was a very distinguished chairman of the migration committee in the Council of Europe, and he is probably one of the House’s leading experts on the whole migration issue. He has spent many hours not just sitting in committees in Strasbourg, but making the effort to go to Lampedusa and all these places to talk about the Dublin convention. That convention basically states, quite rightly, that a person should get asylum or be returned to the first country they enter, so this is what people in this country do not understand: is France unsafe? I quite understand—in the language of compassion—why a person would want to be an economic migrant, but are they an asylum seeker? When they are taken out of the back of a lorry in Lincoln or found at the first service station on the M3, they do not say to the English gendarmerie that they want to get benefits or a job; they say that they are an asylum seeker. The question that the British people are asking is this: if that person is a genuine asylum seeker, given that France is a completely safe and civilized country, with a very generous benefits system, why do they not claim asylum there? It all boils down to why this Bill is needed. I know that this is only a private Member’s Bill, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the Government do not take action on this.

[David Morris]

I pay homage to my hon. Friend for his prowess in this field. I would like to clarify the fact that people come from all over the world to Calais, where there is a bottleneck, in the hope of getting across the channel and claiming asylum, and they do so for one reason only: they perceive that life will be better here for themselves and their families. To be frank, I do not think anybody on the face of the planet, if they were in distress, would not do the same thing. They come to this country—I hope that my hon. Friend agrees with this—because, as has been said in this debate, the UK is a soft touch. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister has brought forward reforms to deflect people away from this country by cutting down the benefits and the perceived advantages?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That may be a fair point. I do not think that Mr Deputy Speaker would want me to get into a whole debate about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of benefits for Poles—people who have an absolute right to come here anyway. I briefly make the point that the overwhelming majority of Poles come here to work, not for benefits, but let us leave that to one side.

The people sitting in Calais are not Polish, Lithuanian or Hungarian—those people can all come in anyway. I am afraid that the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) is completely irrelevant. By definition, the people whom we are discussing are not allowed here. They come from outside the EU.

It is true that our benefit system is a draw. I am told that in the “jungle”, England is viewed as a kind of El Dorado—having lived here for 65 years, I have never thought of it as that. Apparently, it is the place where all one’s dreams come true—there are unlimited work and benefits, and all the rest of it. These people come from outside the EU, so I am afraid that my hon. Friend’s intervention was not relevant. The issue is entirely in the hands of the Government. We hear about the staggering level of net migration, at 300,000 a year. The whole of London and the south-east is groaning under the number of people, and that is a particular issue for native working class people.

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[David Morris]

If I remember correctly, the previous Labour Government gave two amnesties to illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who should not be here. Will my hon. Friend clarify whether the 2005 figures that my hon. Friend quoted since been superseded, or are they now completely irrelevant?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is precisely what I am asking. We now want an up-to-date study from the Home Office, but because we have such weak exit controls, the Government seem to have very little idea of what is going on.

Questions have been asked about this. On 18 January 2016, my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) asked

“the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what procedures are in place to ensure that illegal migrants to the UK are returned to their country of origin; and whether people deemed by her Department to be illegal migrants are only able to appeal that decision from their country of origin.”

That seems to be a very fair question. To be fair to the Home Office, I will give the answer provided by the Minister for Immigration:

“The Home Office continues to take action at every opportunity to prevent immigration abuse, pursue immigration offenders and increase compliance with immigration law including arresting and returning illegal migrants to their country of origin.”

Yet another Immigration Bill is making its way through the House, but I do not think there is any point in passing more Immigration Acts if we are not enforcing the existing ones. The Minister’s answer continues:

“The Immigration Act 2014 simplified the appeals system so that an appeal right only arises where a claim raising fundamental rights is refused, namely asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights claims. The Home Office has the power to require an appeal to be brought only once an individual has left the UK where the claim is clearly unfounded and where a person liable to deportation makes a human rights claim and it would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights to require them to appeal from overseas.

The Immigration Bill seeks to extend the power to require an appeal to be brought from overseas to all human rights claims where an appeal from overseas would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights. Similar provisions are set out in the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006”.

Will the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees explain the deficiencies of the existing Immigration Act 2014 in processing illegal migrants, and how would the new Immigration Bill make any difference?

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[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

It is an honour and a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who has set out with his usual clarity and wisdom why this Bill is so sensible. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on promoting it, and I am privileged to be one of its sponsors.

The House should be made aware of my hon. Friend’s determination in this matter. Members will recall that a very similar, though not identical, Bill was debated in this Chamber a little over two years ago. The situation that we find ourselves in today is much worse than it was then. Public opinion has certainly not improved since January 2014. It is worth reminding ourselves that that earlier Bill was tested among the public by Lord Ashcroft. He polled 2,013 individuals about what they thought of the measures, and 86% said that they agreed with them.

[David Morris]

I have to take exception with that, because the Ashcroft polls are not exactly accurate, as the last general election showed.

[Mr Nuttall]

I do not want to get into a debate about polling, but polls, as Lord Ashcroft frequently says, are not meant to be a prediction of the future. They ask people what they think of something at a particular time. The poll in question asked people not for a prediction, but for their thoughts on the measures. To that extent, it must be accurate to say that 86% of those who were asked said, “Yes, we think that the measures are sensible.”

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[Mr Nuttall]

I did mention that briefly, but I may not have stressed it enough. The number was 2,013 and, if I remember correctly, without checking the notes, only 9% said that they did not agree with the measures, while the rest did not know. The positive figure of those who agreed was 86%.

[David Morris]

On the poll’s accuracy, how many people did not take part? It has been found that more than 25% did not take part in previous Ashcroft polls, and that skewed the results considerably.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that some people declined to take part in the poll, but even if we assume, which would be an erroneous thing to do, that everyone who refused to take part did so because they did not agree with the Bill, there would still be a substantial majority in favour of the measures. That is my point.

The subject of illegal immigration is pertinent largely because of the great play that was made by the Prime Minister and others before the 2010 election that the aim of the forthcoming Conservative Government—as we now know, the outcome was a coalition Government—was to reduce the amount of net migration from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. We heard that claim many times, and I very much support such an ambition and such an aim.

When one looks at the figures, one clearly sees why such an aim and ambition was necessary. The average annual net migration during the 2005 Parliament was about 247,000 or roughly a quarter of a million every year. The figures reached a high of 287,000 in the year ending June 2007, and fell to a low of 205,000 in the year ending June 2009. Was there a reduction in net migration following the 2010 election? Sadly, there was not. In the first year of the 2010 Parliament, net migration increased to 263,000 in the year ending June 2011. It fell a little for the following five quarters, falling as low as 154,000 in the year ending September 2012—the lowest estimated net migration in any 12-month period since the year ending December 1998.

Since 2012, net migration has risen again, reaching 336,000 in the year ending March 2015. That was about 89,000 higher than the annual average net migration during the 2005 Parliament, and it was the highest estimate of net migration in any 12-month period. Before the year ending March 2015, the highest estimated net migration was 320,000 in the year ending June 2005. The most recent estimate of net migration is 323,000 in the year ending September 2015. We have gone from having an annual average of about 247,000 during the 2005 Parliament to the latest figure of 323,000 for the year ending September 2015.

The figures for legal migration are not going in the right direction, so it is understandable, against that background, that there is even more focus on those who have arrived in this country illegally. As my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Gainsborough have already explained, we must ask ourselves why these desperate people in what the tabloids have called the “jungle” in Calais—I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that they will, I am sure, all have desperate stories of fleeing persecution—have not claimed asylum in France or, if they have come up through Spain, in Spain. Those people do not do so partly because of the pull factors, as they are so often called, such as our way of life in this country.

There is a whole range of reasons why people may want to come and live in this country. Our benefits system or our national health system may well bring them here. One reason why they may wish to enter the country illegally is that they know there is very little chance of their being arrested, imprisoned and deported. That is the key point. It is extremely worrying that we have no official estimates later than those for 2005, in the study which has been mentioned, for the number of people who are in this country illegally.