Illegal Migration Bill

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. She is describing the journey that we need to go on. We should explain to the Government that the whole issue about modern slavery is that when people feel secure, they give evidence to the police, and the police then get after the traffickers. One of the big problems here is that, because 60% of the cases are within the UK, people may suddenly feel that they are about to get kicked out and then they will stop giving evidence.

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will refer to that issue myself later on, because the Government have not thought through the implications for the numbers of traffickers and perpetrators caught as a result of this Bill.

I said that I was not going to dwell on the legal issues, but there are genuine questions of incompatibility with article 4 of the European convention on human rights, which is, of course, part of UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998, and with aspects of the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings, such as articles 13 and 10.

However, the heart of the problem is, I believe, very simple. If someone is trafficked into the UK by illegal means, coming from a country where their life and liberty were not threatened, and is taken into slavery here in the UK, they will not be able to claim modern slavery or have the protection of the Modern Slavery Act. That would cover most of the men, women and children who are trafficked into slavery in the United Kingdom.

Let me let me give an example. A woman from, say, Romania, who is persuaded that there is a great job here for her in the UK, is brought here on false papers and put to work as a prostitute in a brothel. She has come here illegally from a safe country, but she is experiencing sexual exploitation and slavery here in the UK. That is just the sort of case, in addition to British nationals who have been enslaved here, that the Modern Slavery Act was intended to cover. Let us say that she manages to escape and meets some people willing to help. She is taken to the police, but the Government say, “You came here illegally. We’re deporting you to Rwanda.” Alternatively, the traffickers may fear that she is looking to escape, so they take her to one side and explain, “It’s no good doing that, because all they’ll do is send you to Rwanda.” We could have handed the traffickers a gift—another tool in their armoury of exploitation and slavery.

The Government might say that it will be okay if the woman helps with an investigation, because the Bill contains that caveat, but that seriously misunderstands slavery and the impact of the trauma of slavery on victims. It can take some considerable time—weeks and weeks—for somebody to feel confident enough to give evidence against their slave drivers. Under this Bill, by the time they might have been able to get that confidence, they will have been removed from this country. As my right hon. Friend said, it will become harder to catch the traffickers and slave drivers.

I could give another example. Perhaps someone comes here illegally and works in the economy, which, sadly, people are able to do, but then finds themselves vulnerable on the streets and is picked up by slave drivers and taken into slavery. Again, even if they escape, perhaps after years of exploitation, the Government will shut the door on them and send them away under this Bill. I could give other examples, but the hon. Member for Glasgow Central has already given some and I think the point has been made.

There are a number of possible solutions. At the weaker end, the Government could delay the commencement of the Bill’s modern slavery provisions; I note that the official Opposition have suggested doing so until a new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner is in place and has assessed the impact of the Bill. It would be good to have a commissioner in place and to hear their views on the Bill, but I think that there is more to consider.

First, the Government should not introduce the modern slavery provisions of the Bill until they have assessed the impact of the changes that they made in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the relevant provisions of which came into force at the end of January. They are piling legislation on legislation that they have already passed, and they have no idea whether it is going to work. This approach is therefore not necessary. Secondly, they need to assess the impact of the deal with Albania, because in recent times a significant number of people coming on the small boats have come from Albania. Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green and I have both pointed out, they need to assess the Bill’s impact on people’s ability and willingness to come forward, to be identified as slaves and to give evidence against the traffickers and the slave drivers.

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The separation of powers between the Executive and the judiciary is absolutely fundamental, and those powers and those checks and balances are axiomatic to our democratic values, so I urge Conservative Members to think long and hard before they launch any further assaults on our judiciary, because we do not want to live in a Trumpian version of Britain. We want to live in a vibrant democracy that is based on upholding the independence of the judiciary, defending the separation of powers and respecting the integrity of our institutions.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am grateful for being called as early as this and I will try to be brief. I want to focus specifically on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has talked about, which is the modern slavery elements of the Bill, and keep to a reasonable amount of time. I want to draw attention to the reality of what we sometimes seem to get mixed up. There is a fundamental difference between people who are trafficked and people who pay traffickers to come here for reasons that are economic or whatever—I do not want to dwell on that; the important thing is that we mix these terms up. There is a clear definition of being trafficked. It involves people who do not want to be here and who are brought here against their will and are then used for various services that they should not be used for. They are slaves.

The Centre for Social Justice brought forward an important paper on this, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, when she was Home Secretary, picked that up and turned it into legislation. We were the first country in the world to bring such legislation through, and although it may now be a little unfashionable to say it, I am very proud of that. I think that what we did is worth celebrating and protecting, and if there are faults in it, we need to correct them.

There is a problem in the Bill, and I know that the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), has been very accommodating and talked at length about this, and I thank him for that. I will make a few comments now about the problem and how we could possibly help, because we want to help to rectify this. I understand what the Government are trying to do, but I want to protect some of the modern slavery bits.

My first point relates to commencing the modern slavery clauses only after publishing an assessment of the problems and impacts. I understand that the Opposition have put down various tools to do this in their new clauses. The Government have argued that the Bill is needed to address illegal migration and that the modern slavery clauses are needed to address and prevent abuse of the modern slavery support system by false claims from people seeking to bypass removal. So the modern slavery clauses in the Bill should be targeted at the problem of false claims with a clear assessment made of the level of false claims and the impact on wider modern slavery policy.

The Government should therefore specify in the Bill that the modern slavery clauses—clauses 21 to 28—would be commenced only when a specific threshold of the false modern slavery claims and an increase in those claims is reached, demonstrated by evidence. I think that is fair. Alongside the false claims that would trigger the modern slavery clauses, the Government could commit to publishing evidence on the current level of false modern slavery claims and any increase or decrease in that level. Section 63 of the only recently passed Nationality and Borders Act 2022 would enable the collection of that data on bad faith claims since 30 January 2023.

The modern slavery clauses should not commence until an assessment has been published of the impact of the clauses disapplying modern slavery protections on the identification of victims, including their willingness to come forward, and on the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of slavery and human trafficking offences. This is important because, at the end of it all, we need to know whether there is evidence.

I understand the Government’s fear that this will somehow be used as an alternative vehicle to escape a claim and to avoid being sent back, but we do not see any evidence of that. Only 6% to 7% of those who have come over on the boats have made a modern day slavery claim. That is a tiny number. They will know by now that they can do that, but the reality is that it has not happened. I bring that to the attention of the Government: there is no real evidence of it at the moment. I understand that the Government think we need to protect ourselves against that potential, but we need to see the evidence that that trend is being broken.

[Jess Phillips]

I agree with everything the right hon. Gentleman is saying and I look forward to working with him to get some of the things that we all want to see. Does he agree, though, that there would be no risk of modern slavery victims—or those making fake modern slavery claims, who the Government seem to be convinced exist—being held up in the system and being allowed to stay here if it did not take an average of 553 days for them to be assessed? If we went back to the 45-day system that used to exist, which might be the case if more had been put into it over the years, there would be no risk that people might use it to stay in the country longer.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Clearly the faster the claims can be assessed, the better it is for everybody, as they can be discovered either to be illegal or to be genuine victims. That is the key thing.

Clear evidence of abuse of the system needs to be published, because it is important that the figures are there to be understood. A very small number are actually claiming it, and the 73% that we were told about on Second Reading in fact refers to those who are detained for removal after arrival. That amounted to 294 people. We need to get the figures in context, then we can understand what the problem is and how we deal with it. If the evidence shows that there is an increase, we will then be able to use parts of the Bill.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have discussed the lack of an evidence base for this aspect of the Bill. When the former modern slavery commissioner, Professor Dame Sara Thornton, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights recently about this issue, she suggested that because no replacement for her had been appointed for over a year, there was a lack of a proper evidence basis for the modern slavery aspects of the Bill. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that she is right about that, and will he use his good offices with the Government to try to ensure that an anti-slavery commissioner is appointed?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I am flattered by the idea of my good offices with the Government, and I will take that at face value—thank you very much indeed. I will speak to the Government about that, and I accept that we need to get that replacement made very quickly.

The most important point is that we need to think about exempting any victims exploited in the UK from the disapplication of modern slavery protections. There is a very good reason why that is the case. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead laid out clearly, if we do not do that, those who are affected will simply dismiss any idea of coming forward to give evidence, because they will fear that they will not be accepted and that they will therefore have to go. Many of them will not yet have given evidence to the police. The Bill suggests that the Secretary of State will be able to assess whether they have given evidence to the police, but this a longish process. This accounts for more than 60% of cases, and I really wish that the Government would think carefully about protecting them. I think the police will back us on this, because they want those people to give evidence.

The irony is that the more we help those people and the more they give evidence, the more traffickers we will catch and close down, which will probably result in fewer people coming across the channel on boats. This is all part of a circle of trust, identification and final prosecution, and it is really important. We should amend clause 21 to exempt victims exploited in the UK, and the new threshold for a positive reasonable grounds decision requiring objective evidence would prevent spurious claims. The whole point of this is to find a way.

I think we can agree on this. The work the UK has done on modern slavery, the evidence and all the rest of it, is now helping to prosecute the traffickers. If we lose that delicate flower of success, we will find ourselves in a worse position, with many more people being deliberately trafficked because we have become a soft touch on trafficking.

I fully understand why the Government are trying to deter the illegal use of these boats to cross the channel, both for people’s safety and because it puts huge, unnecessary pressure on services here, but I beg my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration to accommodate these concerns about modern slavery and to make sure that we do something in the Bill to protect these people in the long run.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I support the amendments on the rights of children, because the Bill punishes children just for being refugees and puts unaccompanied children at risk. There is not enough time to go through every clause, but I will highlight some of the many cruelties.

The measures before the Committee today not only abolish the protections afforded to children but allow unaccompanied children to be routinely detained beyond the 24-hour time limit, and to be detained anywhere the Secretary of State considers appropriate. Detaining children for prolonged periods is utterly unacceptable and poses serious risks to their health, safety and protection.

Clauses 2 to 10 will create a large and permanent population of people, including children with families and unaccompanied children, living in limbo for the rest of their lives. Clause 3 could see a child who arrives alone, fleeing war and persecution, being allowed to integrate into UK society, only to be forcibly removed from the UK as soon as they turn 18.

Clauses 15 to 20 give the Secretary of State a range of astonishingly far-reaching powers, including the power to terminate a child’s looked-after care status and the key legal protections provided by local authorities.

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The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green was right to say that the legislation, if it is ever implemented—which remains to be seen given that we have only just completed the implementation of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—will push vulnerable victims of slavery back into the shadows and away from the protection that they most undoubtedly need and deserve.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

And the evidence.

[Mr Carmichael]

And the evidence. The lack of evidence and impact assessments runs like a silver thread through the Bill. Have the impact assessments been done? Will they ever be done? If they have been done, will they be published? The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) made much of that in his speech, and he was absolutely right to do so. I was tempted to intervene on him to say, “Hold on a second here, man. You shouldn’t be going so fast; you should allow the Minister to get to his feet and tell us the position.” But the Minister did not do so then, and I suspect that he will not do so now, either. There have been times when I have seen Ministers on the Treasury Bench look more uncomfortable than the Minister for Immigration did when listening to the speeches of his right hon. Friends, but I am struggling to think of when that might have been.

The points that I will focus on relate to the question of detention and, in particular, the detention of children. The detention of children is something that I thought we had seen the back of. Although that initiative was driven by my former colleague, Sarah Teather, when she was the Minister with responsibility for young people, I again pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, who did so much to support it in the Home Office. It was an absolute stain on our country that we kept children locked up in immigration removal centres such as Dungavel in Scotland.

I remember visiting Dungavel—it must have been in 2007 or 2008. I also remember, I have to say, successive Home Office and Immigration Ministers in the then Labour Government standing up at the Dispatch Box and saying that I was a bleeding-heart liberal, and that this was just something that we had to live with and nothing could be done. Of course, as we know, there were things that could be done, and they ultimately were done—we did them five years later.

I think it tells us quite a lot about the journey that the Conservative party has been on since those years in 2011 and 2012 that the Government feel it necessary to reintroduce detention for children. We have had 10 years without it now, and what have the bad consequences of that been? I do not see any. Nobody is saying that it has caused a massive increase or spike in any particular problems, but now, for the sake of sheer political positioning, we are going to return to a situation in which children will be placed behind razor wire in places such as Dungavel.

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[Robert Jenrick]

I am not going to give way. I am going to bring my remarks to a close, because I think I have spoken long enough.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

But I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

Can I gently suggest to my right hon. Friend that the whole purpose of raising this issue was not to bandy the figures? There is a real disregard for some of the real figures here. He is quite right to say that the Government are concerned that there will be an exponential rise, as an alternative to coming across illegally. We should bear in mind that these people are trafficked; that is the key difference. All we are asking the Government to do is to look carefully at this and not take the power until they can see and show the evidence. After all, we have yet to see the impact of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. All I am asking of him, gently, is please just to accept that the Government will think about that before the Bill comes back on Report.