Nationality and Borders Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

I am not going to give way. The hon. Member talked enough rubbish before.

I want to draw a contrast with a community event that I attended in the most ethnically diverse ward in my constituency, Gipton and Harehills, in Leeds on Friday. Young people were there reading poems about their experiences, and one poem read by a local resident was about how the community has welcomed asylum seekers and welcomed refugees. Rather than using the issue of migration as a weapon of mass distraction to distract people from the responsibility that the Tory Government and their policies have for the misery in their lives, this Government would do better to listen to the message of hope and unity from diverse communities and stop peddling this legislation of division, racism, scapegoating and hate—and I make no apologies for this speech.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I just want to put on record four things. First, this Bill is an appalling piece of legislation. It is designed to appease the most backward elements in our society and it is designed to chase headlines in the popular media. The attacks on refugees and the attacks on people who support refugees are nothing but appalling and disgusting. The idea that this country has always been a welcoming place for refugees is simply not true. Often, it has been very hostile towards refugees. If we were that welcoming, we would not have so many people who have legitimately sought asylum in Britain living in desperate poverty, because the Home Office cannot be bothered to process their applications, and they are living in penury as a result. It would not be criminalising people who are trying to save lives on our shores, or prosecuting people in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, or anything else. We should all be very proud of people who demonstrated in memory of those who died off Calais, including the 250 people who attended a demonstration at the Stade in Hastings a couple of weeks ago.

I wish to refer to three parts of the Bill. I absolutely support new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have been a member, and in the past chair, of the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) all-party group for many years, and I worked with Olivier Bancoult, and many other Chagos islanders. We did wrong to the Chagos islanders in the 1970s and ’80s when they were driven off their land, and we have done wrong by them many times since then. The reason British nationality was offered was that the late Tam Dalyell and I tabled an amendment to previous legislation, to try to get recognition of the rights of Chagos islanders. Unfortunately, the Foreign Office and the Home Office collectively got it wrong, and the new clause corrects a mistake—let us be generous and call it a mistake—that was made many years ago, and will grant security to Chagos islanders living in this country.

I strongly support new clause 8 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). Nationality fees should be based solely on the cost of processing, not on the Home Office making a vast amount of money out of that. The new clause would help to right what is an intrinsic wrong.

In my remaining 39 seconds, I strongly support amendment 12, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), about the removal of British nationality. Many of us in the House—probably everybody—has at some point been to a citizenship ceremony at our town hall. They are nice; they are moving occasions. But all that could be for naught. The Home Secretary could simply remove the right of citizenship from someone who has gained it in this country or gained it through their heritage. Such a removal requires the agreement of another country, but people will not get that, and we will end up with stateless people as a result.

[Stephen Timms]

I wish to support new clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). The “Barriers to Britishness” report was published a year ago this month, and in his foreword, the Conservative hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) pointed out that the cost of citizenship in the UK is the highest in the western world, and that

“the combined cost of applying to become a citizen in Australia, Canada, the USA and France still does not add up to the cost of a single application in Britain. The fee of £1,330 is almost four times the cost to the Home Office of processing an application.”

This is a hostile environment for hard-working, law-abiding migrant families, and that is why clause 9 provokes such anxiety.

I know many families on the so-called 10-year route to indefinite leave, which means that two and a half years’ leave to remain at a time needs to be obtained four times, before they can apply for indefinite leave. They pay extortionate fees every time. Sometimes people lose their jobs because they do not have leave to remain between one two-and-a-half-year period ending and the Home Office getting round to granting the next. No recourse to public funds applies throughout that 10-year period—that is the subject of a different amendment that we will debate later.

At the Liaison Committee last year I told the Prime Minister about a family I know. Both parents work, the mother as a teaching assistant and the father in a big international company. The mother’s job continued after lockdown, but the father was laid off. Lockdown happened in one of the gaps between two-and-a-half-year periods, and the father’s employer did not know whether it was allowed to furlough him under the new scheme, so it did not. That family had no recourse to public funds, and all they could do was turn to a foodbank to survive. At the Liaison Committee the Prime Minister said that hard-working, law-abiding families in that position should have help of one kind or another. I very much agree with him, but unfortunately they do not, and every two and a half years they have extortionate visa fees. How do people cope with massive fees? For one family I know, we are talking about £14,000 every two and a half years in order to stay in the UK. For 10 years, they get no child benefit, even if the children are British citizens; no universal credit if somebody loses a job; and, prior to the pandemic, no free school meals if the family hit hard times. That is the hostile environment for law-abiding, hard-working migrant families, which is why families are so worried about what is in this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Pursglove]

The short answer to that rather long intervention is no. It is not the first time that I find myself disagreeing with Labour politicians, and I am afraid that I disagree with the Welsh Government on this point. All parts of this United Kingdom have a proud record of welcoming to this country people from around the world who are fleeing persecution and conflict; that tradition will continue, as I am sure the hon. Lady knows.

This country has to have a system that is fair but firm, and that brings to an end the abuses in the system previously and to date. Those who are not acting in the spirit that I think all of us would like to see are actually making it more difficult for genuine asylum seekers who are seeking sanctuary, and there are inevitably considerable associated resource implications.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Would the Minister just think for a moment what it is like to get into a small dinghy and try to cross the channel, and imagine what sense of desperation people must have to risk their own lives to try to get to what they believe to be a place of safety? I am not defending people traffickers or criminal gangs. I am just saying that we have created a situation, in this country and across Europe, where we leave desperate people with no alternative but to turn to ruthless people to try to get to a place of safety and contribute to our society. I ask him: has he got any humanity?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am afraid that the intervention is a disappointing one, in the sense that I would not for a moment suggest that the right hon. Gentleman is doing anything that supports people traffickers—of course not. However, I think he is giving credence to their business model, and that is highly unacceptable and disappointing. He should reflect on his position on these matters. As I have set out, nobody needs to get into a small boat to seek to cross the channel to reach safety. The idea that anybody is in danger in France is utterly farcical. The bottom line is that France is a safe country with a fully functioning asylum system. That is a fact and he needs to reflect on it.