Jeremy Corbyn
Main Page: Jeremy Corbyn (Independent - Islington North)
Alison Thewliss
The right hon. Member is absolutely correct to point that out. From reading some of the reports of the independent chief inspector, it is very clear that that policy has all but been abandoned. People have lost the sense that they are dealing with actual human beings —with stories, with dignity, with a past and a future—and that these things have been completely lost all together. People are treated as so much less than as if they were actual human beings, and that is quite appalling from any Government. It is appalling to listen to those stories, and to hear what people had been through and what they continue to suffer in those circumstances.
Home Office officials have reportedly raised significant concerns about the cost and feasibility of housing asylum seekers at MDP Wethersfield in Essex and RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. In addition to the near £15 million to another private contractor to set it up, it is estimated that it will cost about £72 million per year to accommodate people at Wethersfield—a site about which the now former chief inspector of borders and immigration raised concerns about safety. He said that
“there was an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness caused by boredom which invariably, in my experience, leads to violence.”
That was before the site was even at full capacity. It would be useful to know from the Minister what he is doing to address the concerns about violence at the site, because the chief inspector was very clear to the Committee how worried he was about that.
A report published in December by the Helen Bamber Foundation and the Humans for Rights Network found that the asylum accommodation site at Wethersfield is causing “significant” and “irreparable” harm to residents, and recommended that it be shut down as a matter of urgency. Not only will the public cover the cost of the woeful conditions at Wethersfield, but they are also het for the Government’s court fees in any upcoming legal battles. Scampton, similarly, comes in at an estimated £109 million this year.
The detention estate has been growing arms and legs over the past few years, and the estimates provided by the Home Office suggest that the trend is only set to continue. The cost of detaining someone for one day is estimated at about £113 per person. Expanding the detention estate at Campsfield House and Haslar immigration removal centres is expected to come in at about £260 million. Ludicrously, the Home Office has made quite a deliberate choice to pursue these more expensive and more punitive options, despite having clear evidence from the pilots of alternatives to detention, which it itself commissioned, that were found to be significantly cheaper, more effective and with much better health outcomes for those in that system.
It is no secret that the SNP thinks the Rwanda scheme is irredeemably awful. It is unworkable, conspicuous punishment. The Supreme Court has found the scheme to be unlawful. On top of all that, it is of course eye- wateringly expensive. I would like to thank the National Audit Office for its report setting out the known sums so clearly. I find it quite wild that the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), came here today to criticise the ball that she herself started rolling. I guess it has not worked out the way she expected, but I could not really see what she thought would be so great about the scheme in the first place.
The UK’s Rwanda scheme has cost about £220 million so far under the UK-Rwanda partnership, not including the UK Government’s legal costs for defending the plan in the courts. The Home Affairs Committee finally received evidence in November last year that, in addition to the money already sent, additional payments will be made to the Government of Rwanda each year. Quite unbelievably, some of this was only uncovered because somebody in Rwanda let it slip to the International Monetary Fund; it was not through due diligence to our own Parliament or the parliamentary Committees that are supposed to scrutinise these things, but because of a slip in some other documentation.
There is a direct cost of £20 million to the Home Office, which the National Audit Office says is expected to rise to £28 million by the end of 2023-24. There will be £1 million a year in staff costs, £11,000 in flight costs per individual and the as yet unknown costs of escorting individuals to Rwanda. There is also the bounty to Rwanda for the delivery of the first 300 asylum seekers, which is a further one-off £120 million. Whether or not Members believe 300 will actually be sent, the fact is that this is within the documentation.
The National Audit Office report sets out a further payment schedule for each person removed to Rwanda up to a total of £150,874 each. Again, it is entirely unclear how much this will all add up to in the end, because it depends on somebody staying put once they have got to Rwanda, which nobody can guarantee. The NAO says that the numbers are “inherently uncertain”; I would say that that is putting it mildly. Of course, this does not save any money. The UK Government’s own figures estimate that moving an asylum seeker to Rwanda would cost £63,000 more than keeping them in the UK to be processed, so it is no wonder the permanent secretary would not sign it off without ministerial direction.
I do not seek to malign Rwanda or its Government, but we hear a curious dichotomy from Government Members, whereby Rwanda is safe enough that the legislation can pass, but sufficiently scary to serve as a deterrent to those desperate enough to risk their lives crossing the channel in a flimsy inflatable. It cannot be both scary and safe at the same time; it cannot be a deterrent and something that is perfectly reasonable. Those two things cannot exist together.
Bizarrely, we have heard the news just today from Lizzie Dearden at The Independent that the Home Office is so desperate to fill up these flights that it is offering those who have been unsuccessful in their asylum claims £3,000 to go to Rwanda. This is wild stuff, and again it has not been brought to this House as a proposal and has not received any further scrutiny.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Not every country in Europe behaves in the same way and tries to outsource or evade its human rights obligations by exporting refugees and asylum seekers. Does she agree that we ought to give asylum seekers the right to work much quicker so that they can join the labour force and contribute to the economy, rather than be held at great expense in totally unsatisfactory and often totally appalling conditions?
Alison Thewliss
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, and that entirely flips on its head the Government’s argument that asylum seekers are some kind of burden. Many have skills that they wish to bring to the workforce and many have things they wish to contribute; they want to say thank you for being given sanctuary. They have a lot to offer the UK, but the UK Government are not interested and do not see them as people with skills who can contribute in any meaningful way, which is desperately sad.
The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has suggested that a value for money assessment should take account of asylum seekers who are neither deterred from coming nor removed to Rwanda, because they are now left in a limbo of the Home Office’s own making. They cannot have their asylum claim processed nor in most cases be removed to their home country because of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. They are inadmissible and are unable to work, to contribute and to move on with their lives. Who exactly does this situation benefit and where on earth is the Home Office going to accommodate them? It cannot say.
None of this is sustainable. The new backlog replaced the old one, and over 12,000 people are now appealing to the first-tier tribunal due to slapdash decisions made in haste to meet the Prime Minister’s target last year. Safe and legal routes have been closed down. Money has been given hand over fist to France and Belgium, while Home Office staff are left without the resources they need to do their jobs effectively. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration noted in his report on asylum casework that staff had taken demotions rather than continue as caseworkers, and managers had tried to shield their teams from difficult messages coming from above. The Guardian has revealed this afternoon that the Atlas database flaws have left 76,000 people listed with incorrect names, photographs or immigration status and cases combined together.
What an absolute guddle this system is. The Home Office is now under investigation, I understand, by the Information Commissioner due to its utter incompetence and inability to process cases properly. The Home Office has pulled off the astonishing feat of creating an asylum system that is simultaneously slow, expensive, shoddy and in some cases unlawful besides. This wastefulness is a pattern of behaviour from a Department that appears to regard those who come to our shores as somehow less than human.
In a cost of living crisis, the Rwanda scheme is a bottomless pit for public funds. The UK Government under either the Tories or Labour cannot find the money for an essentials guarantee, to scrap the two-child limit or for cost of living support for people struggling every day, yet when it comes to dog-whistle politics there is a big blank cheque.
There are limitations on what we as MPs can do about this. The estimates and budgetary processes are entirely inadequate for the purpose, particularly in light of the fact that this is a Department prone to secrecy and misdirection. My SNP colleagues and I have tabled an amendment to reduce the resources for use for current purposes relating to immigration and asylum by £740,850,000. That pertains to our best estimate of how much the supplementary estimate would have to be reduced by to defund the Rwanda plan, the Bibby Stockholm and Wethersfield, Scampton, Campsfield and Haslar immigration removal centres. It is a small part of what the Home Office has wasted on schemes that have absolutely no merit and that cause more harm than they ever will good. I commend our amendment to the House.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I will certainly do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker. Of course, the debate might have expanded even further if any Labour Back Benchers other than the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had turned up. We SNP Members are accused of disengaging from this place, but four of us have contributed to this debate, compared with only one Member from the official Opposition.
Estimates debates should be among the most important debates each year, as this is the process by which we approve billions of pounds of Government expenditure. Before us is nearly £8 billion set aside for the Home Office. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, many SNP Members take a great interest in the estimates, both the process and the substance. Not so long ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—he should be my right hon. Friend—was called to order and had to leave the Chamber for daring to try to debate the estimates on estimates day. We had been assured by the then Leader of the House that the estimates process is the way to make sure that Scotland’s voice is heard on questions of Government expenditure and Barnett consequentials, and that the English votes for English laws procedure would not stifle the votes or voices of Scottish Members. We may have been delivered from EVEL in this House, but if there is any positive legacy from those unlamented procedures, it is that estimates days are now set aside for the discussion of estimates, and we can debate and indeed vote on detailed aspects of Government expenditure.
That does not mean that the process is not still woefully lacking in effectiveness and the ability to propose substantive changes. In other legislatures, there can be line-by-line examination of a Government’s budget and spending plans, and Members can propose detailed amendments to direct funds to their priority policies or communities. That is not an option available to us, but I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and our estimable colleagues in the SNP Whips Office on their ingenuity in bringing forward the amendment before us today.
The spending of the Home Office, particularly on asylum and immigration, certainly does warrant scrutiny and amendment. When Ministers say that the sums are vast—indeed, the sums spent on asylum accommodation are too high—they are not wrong. But their solutions, their alternatives, are wrong—very wrong. As the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, the most straightforward and simplest—and also the most practical and dignified—solution to the question of asylum accommodation, is to give asylum seekers the right to work and allow them to pay for their own accommodation. Instead of costing the taxpayer money, let them become taxpayers. Let asylum seekers contribute to the Treasury, our economy and our communities. If Conservative Members are genuinely concerned about community cohesion and integration, surely the way to build that is not to ostracise and “other” asylum seekers, but to allow them to play an active, positive role in our society and economy. There are plenty of examples where immigration in that sense has worked, as we see if we look at the contribution that the Syrian community have made to life on Scotland’s islands since that resettlement scheme was introduced, at how Ukrainians have been welcomed into homes and families and schools and workplaces across the country through those schemes. Of course, we have spoken many times about the impact that Afghans have had in Glasgow, not least through the Glasgow Afghan United organisation, headed up by my good friend, Councillor Abdul Bostani. I invite the Minister to come to Glasgow to meet refugees and asylum seekers such as those supported by Glasgow Afghan United and the Maryhill Integration Network.
Jeremy Corbyn
It was pointed out earlier that the number of asylum seekers, even those coming on small boats, would not be accommodated in Rwanda under the current plan, if that should go ahead. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many of those trying to cross from Calais—I have been there and met them—are desperate people, some of whom are victims of war, some of whom are victims of war in Afghanistan and some of whom are victims of war in Afghanistan because they have worked for the British forces there. Surely we need to have a slightly more humanitarian approach to what are desperate people.
Patrick Grady
Yes, I agree entirely on that. The safe and legal routes that do exist for Ukrainians, Syrians and some Afghans are exceptions to the rule. They are the exceptions to the hostile environment, which starts when anybody gets off a plane and has to wait in interminable queues at the UK to get through passport control. It is a hostile environment that can end with the prospect of being deported to Rwanda if the Home Secretary does not like the cut of someone’s jib.
For the past nine years or so, asylum, immigration and visa cases have been at the very top of my constituency case load. Way back in 2105, a constituent of mine, literally a rocket scientist who wanted to contribute to world-class engineering projects at our universities, came to see me because the Home Office was attempting to refuse her a visa. I have lost track of the number of academics, musicians, artists, religious ministers and sometimes even just holidaymakers whose visits to the UK have been cancelled or curtailed by Home Office hostility and inefficiency. We have seen families whose reunion has been denied, small business owners who have given up and moved away, and funerals and weddings missed because the default position of the Home Office is suspicion and hostility towards anybody who wants to come here, unless they are stinking rich, in which case they are very welcome to come straight through the door, on a gold-plated visa.
Even as other parts of the Government proclaim that Britain is great, and say that we need and want skilled and talented entrepreneurs and graduates, the Home Office says, “No, Britain is closed.” I have visited British embassies and high commissions in parts of Africa that have been festooned with bunting and adverts for Chevening scholarships, and then gone to dinner that evening with young people who could not take up their scholarship because they had been denied a visa. I have visited the visa processing centre in Lilongwe, Malawi, and I was grateful for the time they gave me and for the efficiency with which they carry out their role. They take the biometrics and process the paperwork, and they do so quickly and effectively. But then the applications get stuck at the point of decision making, not in Malawi, not with input from our excellent high commission team, but at a remote centre in Pretoria, and that causes frustration, confusion and too often disappointment among the visa applicants. All of that speaks to inefficiencies, systemic and systematic failures within the Home Office.
I want to touch briefly on the question of the Rwanda scheme, as many have. According to the National Audit Office, the scheme will cost £1.8 million per person for the first 300 potential deportees. I had a look online the other day—a year’s full board in Disneyland Paris would cost £100,000 a year. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Countering Illegal Migration have said that the reason they think Rwanda is a deterrent is because it is not the UK; well, Disneyland Paris is not the UK, so there is a quicker and cheaper way of deterring people. If that sounds absurd, it is because the whole scheme is absurd.
We have touched on the question of ODA. It would be interesting to know whether any of the funding under the UK-Rwanda migration and economic development partnership, or the treaty with Rwanda, will be classed as ODA. As I said to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, even if the UK Government have to count some of the money spent on supporting Ukrainian refugees as ODA, that should not be an excuse to minimise the amount of ODA being spent elsewhere by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The Government should never have abandoned the 0.7% target in the first place; they broke a cross-party consensus to do that.
In an independent Scotland, the 0.7% target would be a floor, not a ceiling, for our spending on supporting some of the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. But then in an independent Scotland, many things will be different and in stark contrast to the decay and decline of Westminster under successive Governments of whatever hue. The Scottish Government have printed commendable papers explaining what a humane asylum, immigration and migration policy would look like. Of course, Brexit has only added to all these costs.
For generations, people have left Scotland to make their homes elsewhere in the world because they were cleared from their land to make way for sheep, because their crops failed, because they wanted to join friends and family who had gone before them, or because they had skills and talents that they wanted to put to use in an economy or society that could benefit from them. Today many people from elsewhere in the world want to make their homes in Scotland and the rest of the UK for precisely the same reasons, but the UK Government say no. They spend vast amounts of money saying no, and they refuse to allow the devolved Administrations to do anything different. So it seems that devolution is in fact the real separatism. With independence, we will rejoin the world and play our part as an open, welcoming, good global citizen.
Michael Tomlinson
I am very grateful indeed to the right hon. Lady for that point, but there are Labour Members of Parliament other than those two—at the moment, in any event.
Once again, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow North for his points on that. Let me say directly that, yes, I would love to come to Glasgow. He teased and tempted me with football. If I could perhaps encourage him to find a cricket team, I would certainly be willing to go up—my footballing skills are not as they once were. But seriously, I take him up on that offer and look forward to being there. I disagree with him on the Rwanda scheme; he will not be surprised to hear me say so. I hope that I have the chance today—and, if not, on Monday—to set out more details on that.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North had an exchange with the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about the plea to allow illegal migrants to work in this country. I disagree fundamentally on that point. It will be interesting to see whether the Labour Front Benchers pick up on that and accept it as their policy. It is not my policy; it is not our policy.
Jeremy Corbyn
The point that I was making was that, unlike other countries, we do not encourage and rapidly allow asylum seekers and those granted asylum to work upon arrival. We lose an awful lot of skill from a great number of people who could make a huge contribution to our lives and our economy. We spend a great deal of money preventing them from working. We could change the attitude and the approach on that.
Michael Tomlinson
I understand the right hon. Member’s point; I disagree with it fundamentally. That would be not a deterrent but the opposite of a deterrent: it would be a pull factor and an encouraging factor. I would be very interested to see whether the Labour party adopts that policy—so far, it has been pretty silent on its plans, but it sounds like that may well be one of them.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for her thoughtful and considered remarks. She rightly praised the Chair of the Select Committee, but I also praise my right hon. Friend for her diligence and for being in the Chamber for such an important debate. Her expertise in Treasury matters and in Home Affairs matters has come together during the course of this debate, and the Chamber is grateful for her contribution. I agree with her about the Nationality and Borders Act, and again pay tribute to her for taking that Act through Parliament. I will reflect on her points, particularly in relation to the one-stop shop, which I know is something she has championed.
I also agree with my right hon. Friend about the overall deterrent effect. She rightly mentioned technology and borders and the Downer review. She will, I hope, be reassured to hear that progress is being made, although perhaps not as fast as she would like—she will know of my impatience on this subject as well. We will, and must, crack on with that. As for the money going to Rwanda, she is right: it is an economic, migration and development partnership, as the Home Secretary has set out. That money is going to support things like education, healthcare, agriculture and infrastructure, and I know that my right hon. Friend will welcome that.
The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) moved her amendment. I encourage hon. Members to disagree with that amendment—I do not think we should be spending less money in this area.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly posed challenges: what do we do with those who are here irregularly and have had their asylum cases rejected, but who we cannot return to Iran or Eritrea? That question has been posed time and again to Opposition Members, and answer comes there none. The third country scheme—the Rwanda scheme—is the answer to that challenge, which is why I am so determined to see it through. I am sure we will have further exchanges on that question as the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill returns to the House and goes through ping-pong next week.
I also thank and praise my hon. Friend for his diligence on the Home Affairs Committee over the past 10 years. Although he may be superficially charming, he is as challenging to Government Front Benchers as the Opposition Members are, if not more challenging; certainly when he gets his pen out and asks those detailed questions, Ministers have to make sure that they are at the ready. He has rightly challenged the French partnership, and I agree with him. I know that the Select Committee has been out to France to see the work that is taking place there. That work is increasing, more French personnel are now deployed, and that is beginning to have an effect. He will have seen the reduction in numbers from last year: crossings are down by 36%. We must reduce those numbers further and redouble our efforts.
My hon. Friend also asked challenging questions about the backlog. The direct answer is that the backlog stands at 95,252 as of the end of December and is down by 28%. We must increase that downward trajectory, and we must increase the upward trajectory in the number of caseworkers and decision makers. Over 2,500 are in place, and I pay tribute to each and every one.
I must, in due deference, give time to the Chair of the Select Committee to wind up in the final few minutes. We will return to the subject of Rwanda on Monday, but I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North for her forensic approach and for bringing this debate to the Chamber of the House of Commons. There will be further debates on Monday; it will be nice to hear more details—or a detail—of what Labour has to offer in this area, because so far it has nothing to offer at all.