Nationality and Borders Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous]

This Bill is a sham. It does nothing to create safe routes for resettlement, nothing to garner international support for breaking people-smuggling gangs, and nothing to support victims of modern-day slavery. Instead, the Nationality and Borders Bill creates unworkable policies, lets down victims who have been trafficked, and breaks our international obligations. The Bill is a smoke-and-mirrors trick, designed to deflect attention from the Government’s failings and incompetence in the area of asylum and refugee protection.

It is shameful that since the abandonment of the Dubs amendment, the UK has turned its back on unaccompanied child refugees and young people in need of protection. Young people are having to turn to people-smuggling gangs. We need to make sure that the model is broken. People have died during dangerous crossings, and it is important that we tackle the criminal people-smuggling gangs. To do that, we need international co-operation and greater security, and that is why Labour Members have tabled new clause 50, which would make advertising people-smuggling routes via social media an offence. If the Government are serious about tackling the gangs, we cannot see why they would have any problem supporting the new clause.

Smugglers and trafficking gangs are putting people’s lives at risk, and they use social media to promote, encourage, advertise and organise these dangerous crossings. Too often, when the National Crime Agency asks Facebook, TikTok and others to take down dangerous material, they refuse. We have to strike at the heart of this illegal and dangerous operation. That is why we propose a new, additional criminal offence; it would not replace existing offences. The new offence would make it clear beyond doubt that such material is illegal and dangerous, that we will prosecute those responsible for it, and that we expect social media companies to take it down.

It is well known that people-smugglers promote dangerous routes on social media platforms including Facebook and TikTok. They often promise easy journeys at an extremely high cost. Those who are interested may be told to send private direct messages to the smugglers, because they know that private conversations are encrypted and much more difficult for police and intelligence agencies to access. If the Government are serious about tackling the criminal gangs profiting from people’s desperation, they must take urgent action to tackle the problem online. At the moment, they talk tough, but the policing and intelligence response is failing to keep up. The Government should back Labour’s new clause 50 today. Those seeking to profit online from people’s desperation must be made to feel the full force of the law.

As everyone in the Chamber knows, the Dubs amendment was passed in May 2016 by David Cameron’s Government in the wake of an increase in refugees arriving from Europe. It required Ministers to relocate and support asylum-seeking children from the continent. It was initially envisaged that the Dubs scheme would offer settlement to 3,000 children, but the number of places was capped at 480. In May 2020, it emerged that the smaller quota had been filled, and the scheme was abandoned. Ever since, Members from across the political spectrum have warned that this bad decision would force hundreds of vulnerable children to turn to people-smuggling gangs for assistance in travelling to Britain, placing them at greater risk of trafficking.

The Government’s inaction has been deeply depressing. Ministers have shown a callous disregard for the plight of children. When debating these issues, Ministers have made the shameful claim that so-called pull factors for refugees are a reason not to help unaccompanied children to safety.

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

Does the hon. Member recognise that since 2015, the number of unaccompanied children arriving in the UK and going into the care of local authorities has doubled from an average annual run-rate of just over to 2,000 to significantly over 4,000, and that the Syrian resettlement scheme included an element of specifically identifying vulnerable children and bringing them to the UK as a place of safety? Does he therefore accept that it is simply not true that the Government have turned their back on refugee children?

[Bambos Charalambous]

At the moment, there are no safe routes for children to come to the UK. That is why there has been an increase in crossings and more unaccompanied children crossing.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds]

The UK has a long-standing reputation as a beacon of human rights, but we in the House must recognise that we have enormous discretion under international law, and indeed under domestic law, regarding how we exercise our responsibilities. Many of the controversies around the Bill are about the operations, rather than the legislation itself. Having sat on the Joint Committee on Human Rights as we took evidence on a number of these issues, it is clear that there are matters of opinion about whether pushbacks, for example, which are freely used by Frontex, the European Union border agency in the Mediterranean, are for or against and within international law.

I share the concerns expressed about the methods currently available to science, and I agree we would not wish to see those used at present. I agree, however, that it should be open to the Home Office, should effective scientific methods be developed, to use such methods for the purposes of age assessments. I welcome the engagement of the Minister, and other Ministers, on those issues.

I will conclude with two points. First, I agree strongly with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) on the point about needing a new COP26 on the issue of global migration. The world is changing, and the challenges faced by asylum seekers and the numbers on the move mean we must update the way we respond, in partnership with our allies. Finally, I will comment on some of those international obligations, which are often heavily criticised. The UK is rarely referred to the European Court of Human Rights for any breach of our laws, and we are rarely criticised. Indeed, the findings of that Court are not binding on the United Kingdom. As a champion of human rights we should be proud of the UK’s record in that respect, and we should renew our dedication to being a beacon of human rights in the future.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

The asylum system certainly is broken, and this is not the Bill to fix it. On the Afghan resettlement scheme, where is it? How can we trust the Government to deliver any of these programmes, or anything to fix our asylum scheme, if we cannot even come up with that scheme, after many months, and after all of us in the House having received desperate emails from people in Afghanistan who were under threat? I agree with new clause 52, which would waiver visa fees for Commonwealth veterans. We ask them to put their life on the line as members of our country, yet we do not pay their pensions, and we do not allow them and their families visas to say that they are citizens of this country. What more can we ask?

I really want to focus on family reunion. I have stood in the camps of Calais and seen people smugglers wandering around, very maliciously. I have seen the people smugglers about whom so much is made, but it will not be measures in this Bill that sort them out. One missing area is that of family reunion. One of those 27 men, women and children who tragically died in the channel was Harem Pirot. He was fleeing for his life from Iraq, to reach his brother, Anwar, a Sheffield graduate living in Cambridge, who then had to go to Calais to identify his brother’s body. We could cut so many smuggling routes if we were to allow family reunion, yet there is nothing in the Bill about that. Such a measure was promised after the EU Withdrawal Bill, and I talked about it in my maiden speech. It was promised when we discussed the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020, and it was promised in the new plan for immigration that there would be a safe and legal route for refugees, and for people fleeing for their lives to whom we can offer safe harbour. Family reunion needs to be put back into the Bill for it to work in the way it is intended.