Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Esther McVey Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jo White]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker.

“People started dying. People were screaming. It is very painful when someone is dying inside the water. The way they die—they cannot breathe...it is very difficult. I never thought I would experience such a thing… It is a harrowing experience I do not want to remember. I was holding on to what remained of the boat and people were screaming. It is something I will not forget.”

This is the witness testimony of Mohammed Omar when he spoke at the Cranston inquiry, which is investigating the UK’s worst small boat disaster. On 27 November 2021, it is believed that 31 people lost their lives. Mohammed said that he was told that 33 people would be aboard the dinghy, but more were added, including children.

Those gang members whose sole focus is on the billions of pounds that their horrific trade generates, who overload boats that are not fit to go into the ocean, who treat human life as having no value, willing to put lives at risk for huge profits must experience the full force of the law. This Bill gives Border Command the powers to pursue, arrest and prosecute those people. Breaking and destroying the gangs is critical to bringing an end to the small boat crossings. Mohammed’s witness evidence underlines how important it is to achieve that.

The Bill not only gives the power and authority to work with our international partners to track down and break up the gangs, with the powers to seize and interrogate mobile phones and laptops to collect data and evidence, but the new amendment will introduce enhanced illegal working checks, putting a stop to those delivery drivers bringing meals or parcels to our doorsteps who cannot speak a word of English, potentially using IDs that have been borrowed or purchased from legitimate employees.

I welcome the raids on the businesses, such as the nail bars, barbers and restaurants employing illegal workers, potentially in slave labour conditions. In January there were 131 raids in my area of the midlands, with 106 arrests. The amendment will mean that those arrested will now face fines of up to £60,000 per worker and prison sentences of up to five years. The French have said that people want to come to the UK because it is all too easy to be swept into the black economy and work illegally. The heavy disincentives of fines and prison sentences have the power to put a brake on the demand for the illegal trafficking of people.

I welcome this Bill. As I said in February,

“crack on with the job, give us a running commentary of every success, publicise the return flights and the jailing of criminals, clear up the Conservatives’ mess, secure our borders, close down the use of hotels and stop the small boats.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 124.]

Today is the next step forward.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 14. This Government came into power on the promise to “smash the gangs” and cut immigration numbers—what an empty, cynical slogan that turned out to be. The exact opposite happened: the gangs were emboldened and the Government lost control of illegal immigration, which is up 31% since the election and 35% in this year.

After the failure to smash the gangs and the poor showing at the recent elections, the Government’s response is another gimmick: the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. It is hollow, its five core principles are a word salad of empty phrases and it is a rehash of old ideas and contradictions. It lacks a deterrent. In fact, the biggest mistake that this Prime Minister has made, in a strong field of contenders, was cancelling the Rwanda scheme. Even the National Crime Agency described that as a deterrent, and it was already starting to work; we saw those coming in by dinghy from France starting to head to Ireland and other countries. Without Rwanda or another third country, there is no way to remove any illegal immigrants who destroy their documents as they come to this country.

As a result of cancelling that deterrent, we have seen illegal migration soar. Some of the levels of illegal immigration will come down, but that will be as a result of what the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), did with his restrictions to stop dependants entering the country and the bilateral deals he made, such as the one with Albania to deport criminals. This Government say that they will now create a new legal framework for immigration judges to prevent illegal migrants and foreign criminals avoiding deportation by exploiting article 8 of the ECHR. That will never happen under the human rights lawyer who leads the Labour party, or a Labour party that champions the ECHR and the Human Rights Act.

The reality is that until this Government get ahead of the curve, get a spine, take the UK out of the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act—a law that Labour introduced to cement the ECHR in British law—reinstate the Rwanda scheme and radically clamp down on housing and benefits, I am afraid that immigrants will continue to come to the UK. The British people expect security and prosperity, not platitudes and broken promises. We in this House must act accordingly and vote in favour of new clause 14, which would disapply the Human Rights Act.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Vulnerable people are dying in the channel and in our asylum system in record, horrifying numbers. Today, yet another person tragically died trying to reach our shores. The exact figures are murky, but from what we know, last year was the deadliest year ever for people seeking asylum in the UK. The UN estimates that 82 people, including at least 14 children, lost their lives in the channel, but French frontline charities believe the fatality rate to be significantly higher. Meanwhile, freedom of information requests reveal that 51 people died in asylum accommodation, and among them were a 15-year-old boy and two babies.

People are drowning while trying to reach safety. Once they arrive, they are dying by suicide, from infectious diseases and from unknown causes in poverty, in low-quality accommodation or on the streets, like the teenage victim of modern slavery who took his own life while terrified of deportation, the father of one who died of diphtheria after being held in a Government processing centre, or the seven-year-old girl who was crushed to death on an overcrowded boat. In several cases of deaths in asylum accommodation, there have been alleged lapses of safeguarding codes. These deaths are utterly unacceptable and often preventable, yet the Home Office keeps no official record. As such, we do not know how many lives are being lost.

The Government rightly want to reduce deaths in the channel, and the starting point must be to know the numbers. My new clause 1, which is supported by 24 MPs, is a call for truth and transparency. It would mandate that the Home Office records and reports statistics and information on the deaths of people in our asylum system who are meant to be in its care and people at our borders. It would provide opportunities for scrutiny and accountability, because no matter where they come from or how they got here, people deserve dignity. We must not allow them to die in silence, ignored and uncared for, so I urge the Government to act. We need a new approach to refugees and asylum. We need to stand up to Conservative Members scapegoating desperate people for the problems that our communities are experiencing after 14 years of Conservative austerity, instead of parroting them.