Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (First sitting)

Jo White Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Murray]

It was about the impact on local communities of the dysfunction created by the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda Act, and how much you attribute that dysfunction—especially the growing use of hotels for asylum seekers—to those Acts, which we are proposing to repeal.

Mubeen Bhutta: I probably do not have a huge amount more to add to what Enver just said, but it goes back to what was said earlier about the speed of decision making, the time that people are left in accommodation, the suitability of that accommodation, the impact on their wellbeing—certainly in terms of what we three see through our services—and the need for a comprehensive strategy. It comes back to what we said at the beginning about what is in the Bill, and what needs to go alongside it that is not in the Bill, around integration.

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Q How might the new offences impact individuals and organisations such as charities or non-governmental organisations that provide support to migrants? For example, if a Vietnamese woman who works in a nail bar comes to one of your services, what mechanisms do you have in place to investigate and report any illegal working?

Mubeen Bhutta: We do not fully know what the impact of that new offence will be, because it is not enforced yet. It is helpful to see that there is provision in the drafting around charities and their role, but it is not certain how that will play out. Our concern is also that new offences could impact the overall aims around the focus on seeking protection. It could influence behaviour or the ways that people offer support if there is concern that they might be caught.

Daniel O'Malley: On the point about the new offences and the deterrent aspect on human traffickers and smuggling gangs, there are aspects of the Illegal Migration Act that have not been repealed that apply to human trafficking. For example, a provision about disqualification from human trafficking protection in section 29 of the IMA has been kept. We would like to see that removed because an individual who has been in a nail bar and might have been human trafficked, as tends to be the case, might not come to any services due to fear of being disqualified from human trafficking protection because they may have engaged in criminal activity. If you have been human trafficked, you are likely to have engaged in criminal activity by virtue of that. That is the problem with the aspects of the Illegal Migration and Nationality and Borders Acts that have been left in.

The Nationality and Borders Act still contains section 60, which raised the threshold for referral to the national referral mechanism. Someone from a legal organisation in Scotland said that before the Nationality and Borders Act—he had been a lawyer for a couple of years by then—he had done one judicial review on the national referral mechanism. Since the Nationality and Borders and Illegal Migration Acts, he has done more than 50 judicial reviews. That keeps in the Act a freezing factor. Gangs and human traffickers can scare people who have been human trafficked by saying, “You might not get this protection because these offences could be applied or your protection could be taken away.” That is the aspect we would like to see removed to make sure that any offences are not disproportionately affecting victims of human trafficking.

[The Chair]

The next question will be the last. Witnesses, if there is anything that you have not yet said but would like to say, please do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We have only two minutes left, and three questions to go.

[Jo White]

Q I will be quick. Thank you for the work that you do. My biggest concern is those children who come into the UK who we do not even know are coming in, because it is hidden. They are clearly victims of modern slavery or child sexual exploitation. It is important, as you said just now, that we stop the gangs that are bringing them across. How confident are you that the new Border Security Commander with his anti-terrorism powers will be able to track those gangs down and smash them?

Dame Rachel de Souza: That is the first question I asked the National Crime Agency when I came into the role. I asked, “Could you find every child in this country?” I was told that, “With enough resource, we could pretty much do it, apart from some of the Vietnamese children who are trafficked into cannabis factories and things like that.” With resource, and with this new Border Security Command, we will get a lot nearer, and we need to do that.

[Tom Hayes]

Q Thank you for all of your work. In April 2023, you wrote to the then Home Secretary requesting information about children accommodated in hotels. Seven months later, when you received the information, you then said that it was seven months past your deadline and that the quality of the information itself was deeply troubling. Can you comment on how difficult or easy it was for you to discharge your statutory duties as Children’s Commissioner when working with the last Government to safeguard children?

Dame Rachel de Souza: The Home Office was the only Department that failed to answer my data request in time and that gave me imperfect data, but I did not stop and I kept going. I have to say: it is much better now. I was able to speak to and did have access to Ministers, and I was always able to make my case. I did not get that information in a timely manner, but I did get that information in the end. I am worried about what has happened to those children.

The data we were after was safeguarding data that showed all the concerns, and the reason I asked for it was because I knew that the safeguarding in the hotels was not as it should be. We got the data on children who had been victims of attempted organ harvesting, rape and various other things, as well as the number of children who were missing. We still do not know where many of those children are, and that is not good enough. The whole tone has changed, and I hope that the Government will still want to stop the small boats, while also being much more pro-children.