Illegal Migration Bill

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Dame Diana Johnson.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I start by agreeing with the Minister on the vital role that the other place plays as a revising Chamber—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Sorry, Dame Diana. You are the next one to speak from your party, and I have made a faux pas. I should call Stuart C. McDonald.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind Members that the debate has to finish at 5 o’clock, so please bear that in mind when making speeches. I call Dame Diana Johnson.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will try again.

I want to start by agreeing with the Minister about the vital role that the other place plays as a revising Chamber in asking us to look again, particularly when we have not had pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill and when, as I think most Members would agree, this legislation has been rushed through Parliament. I echo the comments of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) about how complicated the Bill has got and the fact that we have not had much time to consider the amendments tabled by the Government late last night.

I also want to say at the outset that, in our report on small boats last year, the Home Affairs Committee made it very clear that it was not the number of people coming across in small boats that has overwhelmed the asylum system but the failure to process the asylum applications that have been made over a number of years. The Home Office has allowed the backlog to grow—it is now over 170,000—which has the effect of gumming up the system, and that is why we are spending £7 million a day on hotels. I know that the Home Office has in train plans to deal with the backlog, and the Prime Minister has said that the legacy backlog will be cleared by the end of the year. We all want to see that happen; it is in no one’s interest to see that backlog grow even more.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Lady is right about processing being a key part of dealing with the backlog, but Lords amendments 7, 90 and 93 would allow for further legal challenges, create more delays and, in her words, gum up the system to an even greater degree than it is now. Surely she does not support that attempt to undermine the principles of the Bill and add to the very problem that she is articulating.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

What I want, and what the Home Affairs Committee has been very clear about, is an efficient, speedy asylum claim process that is fair but timely. Germany, for example, has far more asylum claimants than we have and manages to process its claims within seven months. Many of the people who claim asylum in this country are waiting for years. That is why we have got ourselves into the problem that we are trying to address through the Bill.

[Paul Bristow]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I will, but I am conscious of time.

[Paul Bristow]

I wonder whether the right hon. Lady can explain how doing nothing about thousands of undocumented people landing on our shores week in, week out will help speed up the Home Office system.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I say to the hon. Member with the greatest respect that he might want to look at the Home Affairs Committee report on small boats, published last summer, in which we made a number of key recommendations for how the Government could start to address the small boat problem, one of which was, as I started off by saying, addressing the backlog. We know that people can come to this country, disappear and feel that their claims will not be heard for years. That is not in anyone’s interest. If he takes the time to read the report, he might get some idea of the recommendations that we have put forward cross-party, including a pilot to allow processing in France, to stop people making that perilous journey across the channel.

I turn to the Lords amendments. First, I want to deal with the removal of retrospective application under Lord Carlile’s amendment. I am really glad to see that the Government have agreed to remove the retrospective element of the Bill, with Royal Assent as the start date, which means that there will not be an immediate backlog of people waiting to be deported. However, this could provide a false sense of security about the Bill’s implications.

It seems to me that when the Bill becomes an Act, a new backlog will be quickly growing, with thousands of people detained if we see the same numbers coming across in small boats that we have seen in the last few weeks and months, and we have no third country to send them to. With the Court of Appeal judgment now being appealed in the Supreme Court, we do not know whether the Rwanda plan will be lawful. So far this year, over 12,500 people have made that dangerous channel crossing to the UK. There may well be hundreds more arriving each month once the Bill is enacted, and I am concerned about what happens to them.