Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Gregory Stafford Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

I think that everybody across the House wants to see small boat crossings diminish and hopefully conclude entirely. Likewise, I think that most people across the House feel that we need to have a fair, robust and effective way to deal with illegal immigration.

This, as I have said previously in the House, is a moral issue. We do not want to see any more women, children or men dying in the channel. When I raised that with the Home Secretary on 22 July, she seemed to agree with me, but thus far agreement does not seem to have matured into action. Indeed, when the Minister of State responded to me on a similar point on 6 November, she was much more equivocal about how the Government were going to deal with this really serious issue.

That is no surprise when we come to the Bill, which has ripped the heart out of the previous Government’s Illegal Migration Act. All the deterrence put into that Act has been pulled out. That is important for two reasons. First, this Bill will clearly not stop the small boat crossings. Secondly, it sends a message to those traffickers who want to exploit people and bring them across the channel that the Government are not serious about stopping the problem. We can see that from the Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) mentioned, the X-raying and medical checks of migrants have been ripped out. That is something that EU countries do on a routine basis.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. These points are obviously going to come from Conservative Members. Have they read the comments of the noble Lord Winston in the other place on 27 November 2023, when he outlined that while scientific equipment may be used, the analysis that comes from bone density checks or X-rays is entirely flawed? The results depend on the calcium deposits and the food that was eaten by the person being X-rayed, as well as other health reasons. Has the hon. Gentleman read those comments? If not, could he read them? If he has read them, does he disagree with what Lord Winston said and think he knows better?

[Gregory Stafford]

Far be it from me to criticise a Member of the other place, especially one with such a distinguished medical career. All I would say gently to the hon. Member is that this is not novel or unique to this country; it is being used in countries across the EU. Likewise, on the Rwanda scheme, which the Government scrapped, we can have a debate about whether it was right or wrong, but EU countries are looking at similar schemes. If the Government do not like Rwanda, why are they not looking at other sites?

It is not just me who is saying this. The National Crime Agency has said clearly that no country has ever stopped people trafficking upstream in foreign countries. While the Australians have done it, that was with a deportation scheme, but that is not being introduced by the Government. Likewise, the former chief immigration officer Kevin Saunders said that the United Kingdom needs a “big deterrent” and that everyone has told the Prime Minister that. We need a big deterrent to stop migrants. Forget about the gangs: if we stop the migrants from wanting to come to the UK, the gangs will not exist.

I come at this from a moral point of caring about ensuring that people do not die in the channel. We need a deterrent, which is sorely missing from the Bill. It should not surprise us that the Government are not robust on this, because Labour voted against every tough measure that the previous Government introduced in the Illegal Migration Act. Labour Members voted against measures to tackle illegal immigration 134 times. They voted to block, delay or weaken our plans to stop the boats 126 times in the last Parliament. It is therefore absolutely no surprise that their Bill does nothing to stop that and will lead to more dying in the channel.

We need a fair migration system. We need to support those who genuinely need our help or whom we genuinely need to fill gaps in our labour market, but we must not be taken for fools by the trafficking gangs, nor must we be taken for fools by this Labour Government.

I accept some of the analysis of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart), who said that we have a problem with our birth rates. However, the way to solve that is not through unlimited mass migration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove said, we cannot build an economy reliant on mass migration. We must build home-grown resilience. Again, this is a moral issue. If we denude developing countries of their most highly talented people, those countries will never be able to rebuild themselves and become successful, and the problem that we are dealing with will just carry on.

I have no confidence in the Government to sort this problem out. That is because, as we have already seen this evening, the Government have no answer on how many of the people who came over on small boats they have deported. Perhaps more tellingly, they have no ambitious target about when any of the measures they are proposing will start to solve the problem.

As I said, we need a fair, robust and effective immigration system, and not this insipid Bill, which will not secure our borders or deter the people traffickers, and, I am afraid, will lead to further deaths in the channel.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

There was one iota of reality and truth in the middle of that farrago of rubbish that we have just heard from the Conservative party, and I will quote it because I pricked up my ears. The hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) said that there are “no easy solutions” to this problem. You could have fooled me, Madam Deputy Speaker! Conservative Members spent most of their last few years in office telling us that there were easy solutions and passing legislation that was so unusable and useless that they never commenced it, yet they now complain about our taking it off the statue book.

Conservative Members need to explain to the people of this country why they do not want counter-terrorism-style powers to deal with organised immigration, and why they are voting against sensible extensions of powers, which have been asked for by the National Crime Agency, our Border Security Commander and the police, to help deal with this challenge on our borders. Why are they against the Bill? Almost all of them are still trying to claim that somehow their fantasy of the Rwanda scheme actually was a deterrent, when we know that it did not work—[Interruption.] The shadow Home Secretary can chunter all he likes, but 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats when the Rwanda scheme was in operation and on the statute book. Conservative Members started off by saying that all they had to do was talk about the Rwanda scheme and it would be a deterrent. Then it was, “Once we’ve put it on the statue book it will be a deterrent”, and now all of a sudden it is, “Oh well, it never worked because not a plane took off.”

[Gregory Stafford]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No. If they were so convinced that the Rwanda scheme was going to work, why did they hold a general election a week before the first plane was due to take off?

This crucial Bill will give law enforcement new powers to combat threats to border security and evolve our response as those threats change. Before I respond, in a slightly quieter way I hope, to some of the many excellent speeches we have heard today, I remind the House of the dire legacy left to us by the Conservatives. They left a system in chaos, where asylum claims were hardly being processed. It takes some brass neck for the shadow Home Secretary to complain that the number has gone up. It has gone up because we started to process decisions, which they had stopped. [Interruption.] Yes, it has gone up because we are processing decisions. We have a system where they did not do any processing for a year, then they wonder why there are a load of people in a backlog. We had to come into government and clean up the mess. Asylum claims were hardly being processed, and we are now processing 11,000 a month. The Conservatives were down to below 2,000 a month.

Tens of thousands of people were left in limbo. Tens of thousands more were crossing the channel in small boats because they were not deterred by the Rwanda scheme. Some 84,000 people crossed while the Rwanda scheme was being pursued. The Conservatives pursued expensive and unworkable gimmicks, spending £700 million to send four volunteers to Rwanda. They allowed ruthless gangsters to operate with impunity and make a fortune exploiting desperate people. They put legislation on the statute book that was so unworkable, even they did not commence it, and now they are complaining about our having to repeal it. I like a tidy statute book; we are not going to leave the rubbish that the Conservatives put on the statute book to clutter it up.

It is time to shift the dial. That is why this Bill puts the Border Security Command on a legal footing, offering system leadership and co-ordination across borders. The Bill introduces counter-terror-style powers to disrupt and prevent organised immigration crime and the gangs from profiting from the exploitation and misery that they cause. It takes the fight to the gangs on multiple fronts, using every possible tool at our disposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am too busy cleaning up the right hon. Gentleman’s mess to consider my position.

While we have been drafting the Bill, we have been busy in other places. As we know, there are no quick and easy answers to this complex problem; we finally heard that from the shadow Minister. We have therefore struck groundbreaking new agreements with key international partners, ranging from the Calais group to Italy and Germany. The Home Secretary has been to Iraq to do some important work on dealing with the gangs. [Hon. Members: “Private jets!”] Well, at least she has not taken a private jet to Rwanda. We all know that only four volunteers ever went there at huge cost, but two Home Secretaries went too. Certainly more Conservative Home Secretaries managed to go to Rwanda than asylum seekers ever did.

We are dealing with international co-operation because it is right both for returns and for co-ordination to smash international smuggling gangs and organised immigration crime that we work co-operatively with our colleagues, not only in Europe but further afield. We have also concentrated on actually enforcing the law, and illegal working visits and arrests are up 38% since we came into government. We have ramped up returns. The latest figures show that 18,987 people with no right to be here have been deported since we came into government. There is no point in having an asylum system if we do not return those people who are found to have no right to be here.

[Gregory Stafford]

I am sure that the Minister is about to get to this, so I apologise for intervening, but as I raised in my speech, we want to be very clear about how she will measure success based on the Bill. By what metric, and by when, will we be able to judge whether the Government’s policy has worked?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jess Phillips)]

There will be more than four.