Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Let me repeat the answer that I have just given: our immigration and asylum system applies right across the UK. I say to the hon. Member that when net migration soared under the previous Government, it did not address the labour market issues in Scotland. That is why we need a proper strategy that addresses the labour market issues, rather than always seeing migration as the answer.

The last Conservative Government completely lost control of our borders. Net migration quadrupled in the space of three years to a record high of nearly 1 million people, as overseas recruitment soared while training was cut in the UK. Immigration is important for the UK, but that is why it needs to be controlled and managed. The party that told people that it was taking back control of our borders instead just ripped up all the controls.

Six years ago, barely a handful of boats crossed the channel: 300 people arrived by small boat in 2018. Within four years that number had risen to more than 30,000—a 100-fold increase—which not only undermines our border security but puts huge numbers of lives at risks. The Conservative Government failed to act fast with France and other countries to increase enforcement and prevent the gangs from taking hold. Instead, criminals were let off and an entire criminal industry was established along our borders in just a few short years, with tragic consequences.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. Nobody in this House supports criminal gangs or people smugglers. We recognise that they are grotesque people who exploit those in very vulnerable situations. However, the people who get on those boats are desperate. Many of them are victims of war and the most grotesque human rights abuses, and they deserve to be treated with respect. Does she agree that, by way of balance, we should work out more sustainable safe routes for asylum seekers to gain a place of safety, in recognition of the massive contribution that many of them will make to our community, our country and our society?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This is a vital issue, and Labour voters feel as strongly about it as Conservative voters. Our inability as a country to control the people smugglers is utterly debilitating to the political process, and is causing tremendous unhappiness and angst in our nation. We can throw brickbats across the Chamber and blame each other, arguing about which Minister is or is not responsible, but until we solve this problem together we are simply feeding a vast populist movement that could be intensely damaging to both the Conservative and Labour parties, so we have to work together to solve it.

I know that I will not persuade Labour to support the Rwanda scheme, but experience shows that the only effective deterrent is to detain and deport. We know that from other countries, such as Australia. I will not become involved in an argument about whether Rwanda is right or not, or how many people were or were not exported, and I agree that the Government should be commended for wanting to be seen to do something, but what they are doing is ineffective because it scraps the Rwanda scheme.

The devil is in the detail, so let me deal with one detail to prove this point. Article 33 of the 1951 refugee convention forbids the return of refugees to countries where they may be at risk, but it creates a specific exception for those claiming refugee status who either pose a danger to the security of the country or have been convicted of a particularly serious crime. That exception exists regardless of the threat of being persecuted, so, under the convention, someone who is a criminal can be exported to Afghanistan. Article 3 of the European convention on human rights is a very sensible and restrained one-sentence article prohibiting torture, but the European Court has expanded its meaning to interpret it as prohibiting Governments from returning individuals to countries where they could be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment. That is a massive extension of article 3’s sensible and reasonable intention. I am sorry to go into so much detail, but it is essential to understand what is going on.

This is typical of the way in which judges have worked to undermine legitimate Government action undertaken by elected representatives. Two weeks ago, I sat in the hemicycle of the Council of Europe listening to Lord Hermer saying that he would always accept every interpretation of the convention. That, in my view, is unhealthy, and undermines our democracy as well as the public legitimacy of the system. The refugee convention was drafted in 1949, in tandem with the European convention on human rights—it is very old, even older than I am, and that is something—and it was drafted by the same people. It was never intended that the ECHR should apply to immigration at that time; it was only in the 1980s that judges in the European Court extended it. In 1996, in Chahal v. United Kingdom, it was held that there was an absolute rule to prevent the exporting of criminals. I am a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the Government should work with other members there to seek to revise the convention. All European Governments are struggling: we are all in the same mess.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights are not a pick and mix? If we are signed up to the convention, we have to abide by the decisions taken by the Court. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be taking an approach that does not accept the jurisdiction of that Court over UK law, which is implicit within the Human Rights Act 1998 in this country.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has a particular point of view, but what I am trying to explain to the House is that the convention was never intended to apply to immigration. The refugee convention applied to it, and under the refugee convention we can export criminals. It is judges who have extended the European convention on human rights. Unless we persuade the Court to change, I am afraid that if we want to solve this problem—if we want to stop people coming across the channel, and if we want to detain and deport—in the end we will have to grasp the nettle and get out of the European convention on human rights.

There is precedent for issuing a temporary derogation, given that we are facing a crisis, but if that is not heeded, we always have the option to leave the convention altogether and opt out of the Strasbourg Court’s expansive rulings. That covers the criminals claiming asylum or entering illegally. For non-criminals, we need a programme like Rwanda, although it may not be Rwanda; I know that I will not convince the Government on that. As for legal migration, the Government—any Government—must stop subsidising legal arrivals undercutting existing workers in Britain. I am very critical of my own Government for allowing this mass immigration, and I was constantly raising these points from the Back Benches, but at least, albeit too late, the Conservative Government committed themselves to raising the earnings minimum to meet the average earnings in the UK. That must be kept up to date and enforced.

Let me end by saying that it we are to solve this crisis, we need, ultimately, to get out of the convention, stop the boats, and stop importing low-paid workers legally.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We will come to these debates when we get on to debating the new clauses to which the hon. Gentleman is referring. We have been clear from the Government Benches about the balance between respecting work visas, which people have to apply for if they are coming to work here, and allowing asylum seekers who have not applied for work to come and work at that sort of length. The change that he suggests would risk undermining the system. We have a disagreement about timing. The answer to his question is that at the moment an asylum seeker can work if their case has not been heard after 12 months, if that is through no fault of their own. We are talking about time here, and the balance between not undermining our work visa system and having a pull factor for more people to come across illegally.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I thank the Minister for the remarks she just made. Would she accept that people who make an incredibly dangerous journey and are exploited in doing so are often totally desperate, are victims of human rights abuse and war, and have been through horrendous journeys to get there? One day, they will find somewhere where they will be able to live their lives and make a contribution to our society. As a world, do we not need to look at the plight of refugees as a whole and do much more to try to bring an end to the conditions that force people to seek these desperate journeys in the first place?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree that we in this place have to always think about the humanity involved and not try to label everybody who comes into our country when they are claiming asylum as some kind of threat or, even worse, as a terrorist or something, as was done by the hon. Member for Ashfield. We have to treat every case on its merits, and we have to treat every person as an individual human being, but we also have to recognise—the right hon. Member for Islington North needs to recognise this too—that not everybody who comes across on a boat is the kind of person he describes; some are the people running the people-smuggling gangs. A variety of humanity comes across on the boats, just as one can discover a variety of humanity if one comes across a pool of human beings anywhere.