Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have put that question to the Home Secretary, because he appears to disagree with his own Conservative Government’s policy and to be off on another bit of freelancing for himself, further undermining any possibility of getting international agreements, whether on returns or on anything else. He is planning to make it even harder to get the kinds of returns agreements we need and to get the kind of international co-operation we need as well.

Ministers say that they plan to lock everyone up before they are returned, and the Bill says that everyone is included. Children, unaccompanied teenagers, pregnant women, torture victims, trafficking victims, and people such as the Afghan interpreters and young Hongkongers we promised to help—all locked up because they arrive without the right papers. The Home Secretary has not said where, or how long for. It might possibly be at RAF Scampton, but the Tory right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) does not want that. It might possibly be at MDP Wethersfield, but the Tory right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly)—the Home Secretary’s Cabinet colleague, the Foreign Secretary —does not want that either. In other circumstances, there might be pressure on the Home Secretary to put the site in her own constituency, except for the fact that she does not actually have one right now.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

A responsible Opposition must have a plan. We all agree that we have to stop these boats, but the Opposition’s plan appears to be to process asylum applications even more quickly, so that more people will come; to process them in France, where an unlimited number will want to come; or to have this ridiculous idea of a cross-border police force. Everybody knows that on average, people get caught once on the beaches by the French police, they are not detained and they come back the very next night—they all get there. The right hon. Lady knows perfectly well that the only way that we are going to stop these boats is the Government plan: to detain them and deport them to Rwanda.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Member is just kidding himself if he thinks that any of the Government’s plan is actually going to happen, or if he thinks it is actually going to work.

Clause 9 deals with what happens to all of the people who cannot be returned—the tens of thousands of people who, according to the Government, are expected to arrive after 7 March. It says that the Home Office will provide those people with accommodation and support: in other words, they will go back into asylum accommodation and hotels, but they will never get an asylum decision. Tens of thousands of people will be added to the Home Office backlog every year, only it is going to be a permanent backlog that the Home Office is never even going to try to clear. Those who would have been returned after their asylum claim was refused now will not be, and those who would have been granted sanctuary will be stuck in limbo instead. That is tens of thousands of people just added to the asylum backlog, costing billions of pounds more—up to £25 billion over the next five years.

As for the backlog the Prime Minister promised to clear, it is going to get worse, not better. Effectively, the Government have concluded that the Tory Home Office is so rubbish at taking any asylum decisions on time that they have decided to just stop doing them altogether, and they are hoping that no one will notice. Last week, I said that the Government might have decided not to call this an asylum system any more, but everyone is still going to be in the system nevertheless. Well, I got that wrong, because I have read the Bill’s explanatory notes again, and they say that:

“Subsection (2) amends section 94 of the 1999 Act…so that the term ‘asylum-seeker’ covers those whose asylum claims are inadmissible by virtue of Clause 4 of the Bill.”

In other words, the Government are amending the law so that all the people who they are going to exclude from the asylum system are still going to be called asylum seekers after all, and are still going to be in the asylum system.

You could not make it up: more chaos, more people in the asylum system, even fewer decisions taken, more people detained with nowhere to detain them and more people stuck in limbo, with no one credibly believing that anything in the Bill is going to act as any kind of deterrent to any of the criminal gangs. The Government are chasing headlines, but it is all a huge con.

What is the price of that con? What is the price of those empty headlines—of cancelling asylum decisions, rather than getting a grip? The Government are damaging our international standing, our chance of getting new co-operation agreements to tackle the problems, and our commitments to the rule of law. They are saying that Britain, uniquely, will not take asylum decisions, yet are expecting other countries to keep doing so. They are saying that Britain, uniquely, will not follow the refugee convention, the trafficking convention or the European convention on human rights, yet are urging other countries to follow those conventions. Think, too, of the price for the people we promised to help—for the Afghan interpreters who worked for our armed forces but who missed the last flight out of Kabul, and who the Government told to find an alternative route. If those people arrive in the UK now, the Conservatives plan to lock them up, keep them in limbo, and treat them as forever illegal in the country they made huge sacrifices to help.

Think of the Ukrainian family who travelled here via Ireland, as I know some people did in the early days of the conflict, without the right papers. They could have been the family staying with me, or the family staying with the Immigration Minister. I have listened to teenagers talking about how they had 20 minutes to pack before they fled their homes, not knowing whether they would ever return or see friends and family again. Under this law, those teenagers who arrived with the wrong papers would be locked up, denied any chance to ever live or work here lawfully in the future. That is the Tories’ position: in the interests of a plan that is actually a con and will not even work. It will not work to deter the criminal gangs; it will not work to remove people, because the Government do not have the returns agreements in place, and it will make it harder to get those returns agreements. In exchange for that con that makes nothing any better, they believe that no one who arrives in Britain without the right papers in their hands should ever be able to seek protection here or live here, no matter their personal circumstances.

Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The important point here is that Ministers have a responsibility for public safety, security and meeting and upholding standards. Part of the reason we are seeking this information and these facts about the decisions that were made is to find out whether any of these issues and concerns that have been raised in the Home Office were raised with the Prime Minister at the time, or whether the way in which the Home Secretary had behaved was raising concerns within the Cabinet Office and with the Cabinet Secretary.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On what occasions during the previous Labour Government did the Government release legal advice they were given? In particular, did Tony Blair release the advice given to him on the Iraq war?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is rewinding 12 years. We have had 12 years with a Conservative Government in place, and we have been very clear that this is about exceptional circumstances. He will know that a similar motion was supported by this House about Members of the other place, similarly in exceptional circumstances. We have also been clear that if there are any security concerns around the advice or information given to the Prime Minister, that should be shared instead with the Intelligence and Security Committee—that is the responsible way to do it.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I agree that no country can do this alone. When we have a crisis that involves people fleeing across borders, of course no country can deal with it alone. I am like my hon. Friend in that the pressures in Greece are what I am most troubled about in Europe now. They provide the strongest argument for Britain to respond within Europe and not simply to help those from the camps near Syria.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

No one doubts the right hon. Lady’s humane instincts, and of course we should not be hard-hearted, but we have to be hard-headed. Given that millions are displaced in Syria and there is, quite understandably, no limit to how many want to come here, will she say exactly how many migrants Labour wants to admit to this country?

Criminal Law

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Mrs May]

Yes, I did say I would give way to my hon. Friend, and then I will give way to the right hon. Lady.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

This is not actually the moment; the Government have moved on from control orders, but that is another issue. I would say that if there has been a trial and that person has been found not guilty, fair enough. There may, however, be reasonable suspicion that somebody poses a real danger to the public. This whole debate has been skewed because the Labour party has attacked the Government from the right, but I am more interested in what the public think. When the public look at the appalling outrages that have taken place, and when they consider the plots to blow up hundreds of innocent people for no reason at all, I do not think that most of them think that the sorts of measures that the Labour Government brought in, and that our Government are enforcing, are such a dramatic infringement on our traditional way of life. In that sense I support the former Labour Government; I think they had to act as they wanted, although we know there was a problem with the courts.

It does not seem to me that TPIMs are so very different from what we had before. They are instigated by the Home Secretary with the permission of the High Court, and they are granted on the basis of a reasonable belief in the subject’s involvement in terrorism—that all sounds quite sensible. That is, I agree, a higher threshold than the one for control orders, which required “reasonable suspicion”, but as far as the public are concerned, is there a great deal of difference between the “reasonable suspicion” that was required under the former Labour Government, or a reasonable belief in the subject’s involvement in terrorism? I do not think so; that is not a great difference between control orders and TPIMs. The Home Office memorandum on the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 states that the Home Secretary must reasonably—again, “reasonably”, and all this is subject to judicial review—consider

“that it is necessary, for purposes connected with protecting members of the public”.

Let us always focus on members of the public. That is what we are here for, not to debate party political issues. I wish those on our two Front Benches could get together on this issue; it is a matter of national security.

[Yvette Cooper]

indicated assent.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am sure that on a Privy Counsellor basis, the Home Secretary would be happy to brief the right hon. Lady. I am speaking as a Back Bencher, but it seems that when the public are concerned, and when there are people who hold such dangerous views, it is not unreasonable for us as members of the public to ask our two parties of state to work together on this.

The memorandum says that the Home Secretary must reasonably consider

“that it is necessary, for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism,”

and with preventing or restricting the individual’s involvement in terrorism-related activity,

“for TPIMs to be imposed on an individual.”

That is not unreasonable.

There are two points to consider and I understand the attack from the Labour party. I also understand that the High Court had a problem with relocation, but I would have thought we could find a way through that. If relocation was absolutely necessary from the point of view of protecting the public, I do not think it unreasonable —I have been listening to the shadow Home Secretary—for there to be some requirement for relocation.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Debate between Edward Leigh and Yvette Cooper

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leigh]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way, but I say to hon. Members that this issue will be covered in Committee.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am aware of the points the DPP has made, but I simply ask, because this is important, that the Government undertake an equality impact assessment on the impact on different groups, in order to be sure that they are doing the right thing before this matter reaches Committee.

[Mr Leigh]

It is not clear what the Labour party’s official position is. This consultation has gone on for more than a year, and everybody knows the arguments one way and the other. The Labour party opposed clause 38 in the other place, so what is it going to do in Committee?

[Yvette Cooper]

As did the Government in the other place, and we look forward to their evidence on this measure’s impact on different minority groups.

The problem with the Bill is that it will not deal with the wider difficulties facing policing and the perfect storm of the Home Secretary’s making that we now face. At a national level, she has abolished the NPIA without any clue about what to do with its functions. We now have the National Crime Agency, the College of Policing, NewCo—the new IT company—police and crime commissioners and police and crime panels, but we have no clear view of how any of them will work together. The Bill does not set out how that clarity should be provided.

At the same time, the Home Secretary is cutting 15,000 police officers—the very people who need to do the job of fighting serious and organised crime in every community. The number of young police officers as new entrants has dropped by 50%, yet the most experienced officers are going too. Half of all police forces do not have a permanent chief constable and the officers left in the middle are facing a crisis of morale, with 95% saying that they believe that the Government and this Home Secretary do not support them.

Fewer criminals are being arrested and fewer are being prosecuted, international co-operation is being undermined and counter-terror powers are being weakened; now there is confusion over these reforms. I hope that the Home Secretary will make further improvements to the Bill, but, more importantly, I hope that she will rethink her wider policy on policing and crime before it is too late.