Borders and Asylum

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to welcome the Foreign Secretary’s introduction of sanctions for criminal smuggler gangs, and this is the first time that has been done. We also have extensive co-operation through the National Crime Agency. For example, we have massively strengthened the co-operation with Iraq, because we know that Iraqi Kurdish gangs are operating in northern France. We have recently signed a new agreement with Iraq, as well as with Turkey, Bulgaria, Belgium, France and, crucially, with Germany, which is going to change its law to help us go after the criminal gangs and their supply chains. The work that is being done to disrupt supply chains is having an impact. It is significant, too, that we are seeing not only disruptions and arrests internationally as well as in the UK; we are also seeing fewer boats physically crossing, although the criminal gangs are resorting to overcrowding those boats instead.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (North Cotswolds) (Con)]

I note that the Appeal Court judges in last Thursday’s judgment were using article 8 of the European convention on human rights as a reason for the interim injunction on the Bell hotel to be quashed, yet the Home Secretary has argued in her statement today that she wants to alter the interpretation of that same article 8. Would not a much better, quicker and more effective route be the one proposed by the shadow Home Secretary this afternoon—namely, simply to disapply all immigration matters from the European Court of Human Rights?

[Yvette Cooper]

That is not my understanding of what those on the Opposition Front Bench were arguing for; that was about the Human Rights Act risking there being more issues with the domestic courts being unable to take decisions before things go to the European courts, but I will leave the hon. Gentleman to wrangle with his party about what its position is. We think there needs to be reform of the way article 8 is interpreted. Too many cases around family rules have been treated as exceptions, and that higher level of decision making cannot be exceptional if so many cases are being treated as exceptions. This means that we need to look at the rules themselves, and we also need much greater clarity about the way we believe those rules should be interpreted, and the way family migration should be interpreted in the courts.