Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Burgon

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.