Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Jane Stevenson Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I will not give way further on this point. We are clearly keen as a Conservative party to deliver on this problem in a way that will satisfy the British public.

The Prime Minister has said that he will do “whatever it takes”. Unfortunately, I do not believe that, as of this moment, we are set to do whatever it takes to stop the problem. I can vote for this legislation only if I believe genuinely and sincerely that it will resolve the problem and I can look my constituents—the people who send me here—in the eye and say, “This is going to fix it”, because I have done so twice before and let them down. I urge my colleagues to reflect carefully on that.

The Prime Minister has confirmed that the general election is likely to be held in the latter half of this year. I am afraid that, by that time, there will have been contact between this Bill and the reality of our court system, and I do not think the outcome will be a pretty one. There will have been time for it to be tested and, I fear, for it to fail. At best, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark observed, we are likely to see a few token flights setting off—not the automatic deterrent that will be required to change the incentives. The expectation for a young male who is in essence an economic migrant in all but name seeking a better life in the UK needs to be that he will be detained and removed. That, and that alone, is what will change the incentives driving this trade. That is not what is set to be delivered by the Bill.

In the absence of amendments being brought forward and supported by the Government, I will not be able to support the Bill. More than that, I will vote against it on Third Reading. I say that with real sadness but with total determination that we as a Conservative party should show that we are honest with the British people about the nature of the crisis we face, and that we are determined to do everything in our power to resolve it. Short of that, this legislation cannot have my support.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). Those of us in this place who are not learned Members have had interesting conversations in the past weeks and months with learned colleagues on both sides of the argument on the Bill. Some want it toughened and some want it slightly softened, but all of us are united in wanting a Bill that works and allows the Prime Minister to deliver on his promise.

I absolutely trust the Prime Minister’s commitment to ensuring that we can stop the boats. I believe that the Rwanda policy can be a deterrent to people. If their expectation is that they will not succeed and they do not have a right to remain in the United Kingdom, they will not pay their money to a person who promises they can succeed. I am grateful to my learned colleagues for putting forward their opinions. If that has shown me anything, it is that lawyers like to talk and argue, and it is in their interests to do so, so we cannot pass a Bill that enables lawyers to bat cases around indefinitely and allow appeals to be lodged—enough to make the policy ineffective.

My constituents find it ludicrous that they elect Members to come to this place and act in their interests, yet we do not seem to be able to do that. I think the small boats trade is raised with me on the doorstep more than any other issue. It is an evil practice on so many levels. These are people making money from others’ misery, and they are putting lives at risk. As I have said before, it is perverse, because a fair and just asylum system should not be reliant on a person’s ability to scramble thousands of miles—across a continent—and to pay people smugglers. It is absurd to any rational person.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady says that the asylum system has limitations, but does she accept that the only way legally to claim asylum in the United Kingdom is to put feet on these shores? There is no asylum visa, and the Government have not proposed any new safe and legal routes to allow people to come here.

[Jane Stevenson]

Another absurdity that my constituents raise with me is that Opposition parties seem to speak for the rights and interests of 8 billion in the world above the rights of the people who elect us to serve here. I invite the hon. Lady to intervene again, because I do not ever hear a sensible limit. I will come to international development later in my remarks, but undoubtedly, many more people would have the right under the current framework to claim asylum here than we could ever possibly hope to accept into the United Kingdom. Does she have a number that she thinks would be acceptable? At what point is this argument exhausted?

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady’s point is quite absurd. Nobody is saying, realistically, that 8 billion people are coming to the UK. The vast majority of people who flee their countries stay in a neighbouring country. They do not go any further because they want to return home. The UK takes a very small percentage of that number, and those who come often do so to reunite with family and for safety, because there are people already here who can look after them and support them.

[Jane Stevenson]

I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady. Scotland does not have the same issues as many English places, and I do not think that Scotland has taken its fair share of asylum seekers in recent months. Globally, we need to look at a bigger reality. Our responsibility in this place is to look forward. The Rwanda Bill will be a deterrent. If it succeeds, it will put people off making those perilous journeys and break the evil, perverse model of people smuggling.

We need to look at the wider framework as well. I had an interesting visit to Washington last year, when I met many people, including from the Word Bank. If anyone has not read its report last year on global migration trends that it anticipates over the coming decades, I invite them to read it. We also met the United States Agency for International Development. My profound belief is that the answer for the world is not to empty the less affluent bits into the stable, affluent bits. Mathematically, if nothing else, that cannot work.

Now is the moment for us to consider a much wider picture and to question the whole framework, much of it devised for a European issue 70 years ago. We live in a very different world. Twenty years ago, information was not available to people living in developing countries. The internet was not there. They had no idea how to get from point A to point B, who to pay, what to say and what to expect when they arrive. We are living in a totally different world. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to dealing with that. In December, he spoke to the Fratelli d’Italia conference in Rome, where he was quite clear, on breaking the business model of the criminal gangs, that

“if that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that. Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”

I wholeheartedly agree.

I am well known in Wolverhampton for telling my Labour council to get a move on, and on this issue I turn my fire, briefly and in a friendly way, on the Prime Minister. He should get a move on. He should be leading that global conversation. It is one that so many countries are ready to have. The United States is ready to have it, and most European countries are looking to our policy to see if it will work, They accept the mathematical and social reality, and that is what our constituents want.

I will conclude, as I do not wish to speak at great length. I thank all colleagues who are trying to strengthen the Bill. I want it to be as robust as possible, because we need it to be fit for the crisis we face. It is a crisis and my constituents certainly want to see results, so I will support the amendments. I also want to put on record my wholehearted thanks to the Prime Minister for his determination to sort this issue out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miriam Cates]

I entirely agree. The problem is that Britain has become known as a soft touch, partly because of the delays in our courts, partly because of the generosity that has led to the housing of migrants in hotels, and partly because our acceptance rate is very high compared with those in other countries. If the Bill is to serve as an effective deterrent, we must remove the limitations of the current scheme by ensuring that everyone who arrives here illegally is swiftly detained and then deported.

The amendments argue that individual migrants should not be able to make suspensive claims—they should not be able, in British courts, to claim against deportation—but should retain those rights when they arrive in Rwanda. We are not talking about removing those individual rights to claim asylum, or even to be sent back to the UK in some circumstances. However, it is essential for that process to happen offshore, in the third country of Rwanda, because it is the deportation that is the deterrent. That is why the amendments are so necessary for all individuals, except those who are unfit to fly or in respect of whom obvious mistakes have been made. Of course they should not be put on planes to Rwanda, but the amendments would make it consistent for all others to be sent there.

As I have said, the point of this is a deterrent, but there is strong opposition to the amendments—on the Opposition Benches, obviously, but also among many on these Benches. Let me draw their attention to a poll published last night in The Telegraph, which showed that in nearly every constituency swift detention and deportation is the most popular way of dealing with illegal immigration. It is the preferred option for a large proportion of the general public. While various interpretations of international law and its application may be strongly contested in Westminster, as we have heard today, the need for secure borders is not a contested idea in the country as a whole.

The British people are generous and compassionate. They support managed schemes to welcome refugees, as we have seen over the past few years. However, when they see tens of thousands of mostly able-bodied young men coming from France, which is a safe country, taking physical risks to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane in dinghies, and then being housed in hotels at great expense to taxpayers—and when they see some of those people absconding and some committing horrific crimes, and then hear Westminster commentators saying that because of international conventions we cannot deport them—they ask, “Are you serious?” Are we, indeed, serious in saying that we cannot do that?

Most ordinary people in this country do not lie awake at night worrying about our standing among elite international lawyers. They lie awake at night worrying about security, crime and the cost of housing, all the issues that are made significantly worse by the abuse of our asylum and immigration system—because, without doubt, our system is being abused, and will continue to be abused unless the Bill is strengthened to limit those suspensive claims so that all the people arriving on our shores illegally are treated in the same way, and are detained and deported.

The fact is that weaknesses are always exploited. That is a sad fact of history and human nature, and those who do not believe it are, I am afraid, naive. We must deal with the reality. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) put it very well: many of us would behave in exactly the same way in these circumstances, if we saw what was available in the UK and compared it to a life in another country, and if we knew that it was easy to come here, tie up the courts for a long time and, potentially, abscond. Many would do the same, because that is human nature. The reality is what we have to deal with.

This is a matter of responsibility. The responsibility of the British Government is the safety and welfare of the British people. It is not our responsibility to rehouse everybody in the world who would like to leave their own country and come to ours. We can absolutely sympathise with their plight as individuals, but it is simply unrealistic to say that the UK has a responsibility to any asylum seeker anywhere in the world who would like to come here. We have a responsibility for our constituents; other Governments have a responsibility for theirs. If they are not engaging with that responsibility correctly, that is not our fault.

[Jane Stevenson]

Would my hon. Friend agree that a focus on foreign aid and a united effort—[Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for shouting at me. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a united focus on helping safe developing countries to benefit from giving these people asylum? They could make good lives there, with education and good prospects for their children. That is the way forward rather than this mass influx into the UK.

[Miriam Cates]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who of course is right. One of the many solutions to this problem is to improve conditions in some of the countries from which people are fleeing, but we also have to be realistic. We cannot solve all the problems in the world. We are speaking about illegal migration, but there are also ethical issues with legal migration. Taking large numbers of well-trained, well-educated young people from developing countries into our NHS and our workforce is not helping the countries that they are leaving. The ethics of the whole immigration debate need careful scrutiny in both directions.

I shall come back to my point. Yes, we should be compassionate and yes, we need well-managed schemes for taking refugees, but it is not the responsibility of the British Government to rehouse everybody in the world who would like to come here. That does not mean that we do not have sympathy for the plight of individuals, but the definition of responsibility and accountability matters, and our responsibility is first and foremost to our constituents and the welfare of those in the UK.

I support these amendments and I will be voting for them tonight because the Bill must work. It must work to provide an effective deterrent; it must work to secure our borders; it must work to prevent people smuggling; and it must work to show the British people that their elected representatives really do take their concerns seriously.