Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th September 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Anna Turley]

Q I would like to focus on the measures in the Bill—you made some reference to the ones on modern slavery. Could you expand on how those provisions might make it harder for individuals who have fictitious claims to stop themselves being removed?

Tony Smith: The Bill is really about the asylum process, rather than law enforcement. I think the Bill last year was more about the law enforcement; this is about the asylum process. There are some good things in here. As I say, I applaud the article 8 reforms, because article 8 is often used as a lever quite late in the process. After someone has been here for quite a while and has been through the process, you suddenly get an article 8 claim because they have developed a connection in the UK. So I think that that reform is right and will help to reduce the pull factor.

I like the idea of the tighter protection arrangements—the 30 months at a time. My only counsel against that is that the Home Office, in my experience, tends to automatically grant and grant and grant, because it is a lot easier than refusing, and that might just become an automatic turnover of grants for however long you allow people to stay.

I think you ought to look at who is going home. If people go back to their own country on holiday when they have a claim for refugee status, we can establish that. We have the passenger information and can cross-match that to their asylum records. If people go back to their own country once they have been given some kind of protection status here, they should not be allowed back in, because they are clearly not in fear of persecution.

The faster appeals process is absolutely essential. The problem with the appeals process is that it went over to the Ministry of Justice years ago, when the Home Office and MOJ were split up. The MOJ does not seem to have been really bothered about it—it has other things on its plate. The backlog is over a year now, so you have to try and get a grip of that. I do not know how you get that in the Home Office and how you persuade them, but I think it is a good idea. You really have to get that end-to-end process going right.

I like the idea of recouping public funds from people, a bit like in the student loan scheme. If people have come here and been a draw on public funds, and they then get into the workplace, why would you not claw back some of that money into the public purse?

I think that all those things might reduce pull factors. They are really good reforms. I am not saying they are not good measures; what I am saying is that, in my opinion, they are not good enough to stop the boats.

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Q As we have just heard, you were director general of Border Force. You talk about the importance of stopping people coming in the first place. But Border Force has only five ocean-going cutters and six coastal patrol vessels. Is there a fundamental issue here of not having the assets for agencies of the state to do their job? Is that something that is not addressed in the Bill, but that would make a meaningful difference?

Tony Smith: The Border Force will enact whatever its operational instructions are, and its operational instructions are drawn from legislation, powers and authorities, so it does not matter how many boats you have out there in the channel. Currently, if someone comes within the 12-mile zone, under the law of the sea you are obliged—quite rightly, because saving lives is paramount—to bring them on board your vessel. The problem is that once they are within the jurisdiction, they accrue all of these rights to asylum applications, ECHR and modern slavery applications. I do not think it is a question of resource. I am a bit worried about resources, given what we saw in Portsmouth last week, because I do not think we have the bandwidth to cover the entire coastline any more. We have been focusing what resources we have on the short straits. Clearly, the smugglers are moving along the coast, so we need to be adaptable to be able to deal with that.

They would always take more resources if they were on offer, but for me it is more about how you get the people coming off the boats properly screened, not cleared within 24 or 48 hours—that is not long enough. Whatever your views on immigration, you have to properly and thoroughly screen people. A passport tells a story—it will tell you all sorts of things. We do not know their dates of birth or their nationalities; the biometric checks are pretty useless. All I am saying is that I think we need to be detaining people for at least longer than 24 hours at Manston if we are going to reduce the risk in any case.

[The Chair]

I remind Members to stay within the scope of the Bill. The resources of Border Force are not really within the scope of the Bill.

[Joe Robertson]

Thank you, Ms Jardine. I have taken the opportunity while the ex-director general of Border Force is in front of us. The wider point made by the Government is that the Bill has a deterrent effect, but there have been crossings without any Border Force personnel or boats being in the vicinity. A lifesaving charity, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, is being relied on to provide a quasi-policing collection service. How does the Bill help with any of that?

[The Chair]

Order. That is outwith the scope of the Bill, I am afraid.

[Joe Robertson]

I am just asking whether the Bill could help with any of that, given that the witness in front of us notes on his CV, in the formal papers, that he used to be in charge of Border Force.

[The Chair]

I appreciate that, but could you please keep your questions within the scope of the Bill, rather than asking about the resources of Border Force?

[Joe Robertson]

My wider critique is that the Bill does not do enough.

[The Chair]

That is not a question. Could you phrase that as a question, please?

[Joe Robertson]

Q Does the witness agree with me that the Bill does not do enough to tackle the fundamental issues of illegal migration and processing and deportation?

Tony Smith: Yes, I agree with you.

[Joe Robertson]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

Order. If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness for his evidence, and we will move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witness

Guy Dampier gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Turley]

Q My point was, would it not be better to go to an intermediate tier, rather than take up the time of the courts? That is where we are seeing the backlog—the delay—because of the lack of available judges we have—

Jacqui McKenzie: We have that; we have a review mechanism. The Home Office is meant to review; once you load something up on the tribunal portal, the Home Office is meant to review the decision. That is why we are getting costs in these cases, which is almost unheard of. I have been doing this work as a lawyer for 18 years—it is two years for training—and I have never seen anything like it. We are getting costs in these cases because of the poor decision making at the Home Office, even when there is a built-in review mechanism. A formal part of the process is that things go back to the Home Office for it to review.

Professor Singer: I would add that if the problem this new mechanism is seeking to address is the lack of sufficient capacity among decision makers, the way that that could be most expediently addressed is simply by expanding the eligibility criteria for the existing tribunal system, to increase the pool of decision makers, rather than by having to staff an entirely new body, which the impact assessment itself says would be incredibly challenging.

[Joe Robertson]

Q I will address my question to Professor Singer. We heard in previous evidence about some of the novel or unusual drafting and wording in the Bill. For example clause 19(4) says:

“No weight should be given to a private or family life”,

rather than that those issues should be “disregarded”, which I think is the normal phrase you would find in law, rather than “no weight”—it is hard to understand what “no weight” means. Also, the ouster provision in clause 1(8) seeking to try to oust the jurisdiction of the court in certain circumstances is drafted in a very loose way, when we know from case law that courts want very specific ousters if they are going to accept them. Does that not run the risk that this entire Bill is actually going to increase litigation just so that the courts can try to define and understand what some of this novel and peculiar wording actually means?

Professor Singer: I have to say that I have questions about the drafting of the Bill in its entirety. I do not think that the Committee can appropriately scrutinise the Bill, because there is a significant lack of detail in so many of the provisions, in addition to very odd drafting. With due respect, a lot of it is back-of-the-envelope-type stuff, which has clearly been rushed through the legislative drafting process.

For example, in the previous panel, I heard the Committee questioning the clause on the introduction of a core protection status. The clause does not actually set out the eligibility or content, in terms of what a core protection status is; it gives the Secretary of State significant powers to make regulations in respect of what eligibility for a protection status would be and what the content of that status would be.

Similarly, in the provision on asylum support, we do not have any details about the actual operation or functioning of that system. The provision gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations in respect of this scheme. In relation to the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority, we do not have the rules of procedure to scrutinise, to be able to ascertain whether there will be due process, which will be appropriately followed, and fairness.

I agree with you that there are strange inconsistencies in the drafting, but, additionally, I think the whole content of the Bill is quite lacking in many respects.

[Mr Foster]

Q You have both been heavily and quite vocally critical of the Home Office—more than any of the other witnesses today. One issue we have is that there is a lot of political pressure, and the country is not happy with the current system and with what is happening, particularly with legal migration—some would say that the lawyers are perhaps partly responsible for that, but that is a separate debate. You have also acknowledged that there is a huge backlog in the appeals process and that, a lot of the time, that is the Home Office’s fault. The Government are trying to propose an alternative process for that, which you are also criticising. We cannot continue with the status quo, so what would you both advise doing to speed up the process for both the United Kingdom Government and the individuals seeking asylum?

Professor Singer: There are a lot of much more financially effective ways to address the backlog. As was already intimated, a lot of the current tribunal backlog is caused by the fact that initial decision making was paused for a significant amount of time when the Rwanda scheme was being pursued. Once that was opened, there was a huge investment in making a large number of initial decisions on a very quick basis. That was roundly criticised on a number of counts as leading to speed over quality. A number of very poor-quality decisions then went through to the appeal system, leading to the backlog at the initial tribunal system.

That can be addressed by not having inconsistencies in the rate of initial decision making in the first place; improving the quality of initial decision making within the Home Office, hopefully leading to fewer appeals; making sure that there is legal aid provision for those who are entitled to it, so that they are not wasting time in the tribunal system; and ensuring that the Home Office uses its review mechanism appropriately. I am sure my colleague can speak to this at much more length than I can, but at the moment initial rejection decisions tend to include a large number of copy-and-paste grounds for refusal. When it gets to tribunal, the decision maker has to go through every single one of those grounds, which is incredibly lengthy. If a Home Office official reviewed that in advance and conceded the grounds that were not arguable, it would speed up the decision-making process within the tribunal system.

As I have already intimated, if there really is concern that there are not enough sitting judges in the first-tier tribunal, there is provision to expand the eligibility criteria within the initial system. Surely that would be a much more effective and speedy way to address the backlog than creating a whole new body and system, with its own mechanisms and staffing requirements. Although the stated intention of creating this new body is to address the asylum backlog, in reality, as we can see from the terms of the Bill, the true intention is to give the Home Secretary much more control over the operation of the tribunal system than she currently has.

Jacqui McKenzie: I will just add, in defence of lawyers, that we see stories every now and again of a dodgy practitioner here and there, but the vast majority of lawyers are helping. I have a small team of immigration and asylum lawyers. We do about 20 appeals a year, and 18 or 19 are won in the tribunal. None of them should have been anywhere near the tribunal. We work to a very high standard of putting in the evidence—the subjective evidence, the objective evidence, expert evidence, all that sort of thing. We do not take cases where we do not think there is a case. We are not bucking the system in any way. It is so frustrating to see those cases get refused by the Home Office, when they ought not to be. There is then the period of scrutiny called the review, and they get rejected there again. Then people spend another year or two in the asylum system before their appeals are ultimately allowed.

Lawyers are actually helping. They are trying to work with the Home Office. There is the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, which works with the Home Office. There are Windrush groups that work with the Home Office. I have been part of it. I worked with former Home Secretaries Sajid Javid and Priti Patel on trying to get things right. It is wrong to blame lawyers. We are doing our job, a job we train for many years to do, and we are trying to help the system. But it is a fact that poor decision making and structural problems around legal aid, which mean that we do not have enough practitioners, or enough high-quality practitioners, are causing a backlog.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Ahmed]

Q Minister, you heard me earlier mentioning my home city of Glasgow and my constituency of Glasgow South West, which has the highest number of asylum seekers. There is real pressure on local infrastructure and housing, compounded by some ill-advised housing policies from the Scottish Government. Can you provide some reflection on why the measures in the Bill are necessary, and what impact it will have, not only on restoring trust and public confidence in the immigration and asylum system, but on social cohesion more widely?

Anna Turley: I think you are absolutely right. This is such an important issue to all of our constituents across the country; it is one of the biggest things that comes up on the doorsteps in all the conversations we have. Everything is seen through the prism of fairness in this country, and rightly so. That is what the Bill is aiming for, through a number of measures, such as repayment of support and so on.

This is about fairness; if people come here, we want them to integrate and to settle. If they have a genuine right to be here, we will always provide that, but we also have to be conscious that, in a country where our resources are not infinite, we have to have a managed system, where we remove those who have no right to be here and ensure that we support people in a way that is compliant with our international obligations, but does not go over and above them, which perhaps in the past we have done too much.

In 2024-25, for example, the entire cost of asylum was £4 billion. At a time when our public purse is under strain, that is a challenge. We are working hard to do everything we can, all the way up to the source, to prevent the illegal movement of people across this country—the people trafficking that we have seen—and to disrupt the industrial network of gangs that exploit desperate people who wish to come to this country. We are doing that through doubling our investment in the National Crime Agency, working with the French to reduce the number of boat crossings, and processing and removing people.

The key part of the Bill is the speeding up of appeals. That is one of the most important ways that we can accelerate the process. Nobody should have to wait 72 weeks for an asylum appeal. No one should be able draw things out and exploit the system through last-minute loopholes, using provisions that are designed genuinely to protect people but that are being exploited to draw out cases.

This is a matter of fairness and due process, and of making a system that is fair and well managed so that it is fair both on the taxpayer and on those who are here genuinely fleeing persecution.

[Joe Robertson]

Q Minister, I am sure you want to tackle the immigration issues and asylum problem that we have. However, are you concerned that the provisions in the Bill, to the extent that they are beneficial at all, could be quite limited, as balanced against the potential upheaval of institutional changes in the way that asylum applications are dealt with, or that they have the potential to create all sorts of unintended consequences and issues due to the way the Bill is drafted? Given the evidence you have heard in this session, does any of that cause you concern?

Anna Turley: I think my biggest cause of concern is that things cannot go on the way that they are. We want to make sure that we introduce legislation that deals with that. Of course there will be things that we will, with the due process of Parliament, continue to work on as the Bill progresses. But the reality, particularly when it comes to the appeals process, is that the system as it stands is falling over and not serving anyone.

It is important that we build a new structure, which I believe is more flexible and swift, and which has all the right safeguards. We have not had a chance to discuss some of those safeguards. Some of the witnesses were critical of the process, but we are talking about building into the system a high degree of training and legal support, high professional standards, numerous levels of oversight, and the opportunity to go on to a tribunal appeal. We have great civil servants, who are not legally trained, but who manage the process. We want to build a body, and do it carefully and do it right, in a way that means that we no longer rely on the judicial capacity, which is falling over. We can then make those decisions swiftly, but with a properly, professionally trained body. That will enable us to make good, swift decisions on those appeals and then refer to tribunals as and when that is needed.

[Joe Robertson]

Q I get that the system we have is not good enough, but that does not mean that what you are proposing is. We have heard lots of evidence in this session that the problems lie not necessarily with the law, but with the way the Home Office deals with applications. Are you absolutely sure that this is the best Bill you can introduce? I think we can agree that the public are tired of Governments saying, “A system is not good enough; let’s have a trial and experiment with this idea.”

Anna Turley: I take the challenge about the quality of decision making in the Home Office, but I think 95% of decisions are appealed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool flagged earlier, we are in a situation where people know that by appealing they can lengthen their stay and draw out the process. Of course, we are always looking to improve the quality of initial decision making—we will look to do that—but we are in a world where we are going from the decision making to a hugely bureaucratic, expensive, slow, burdensome system that is just not working. Introducing the appeals tier is about getting a better quality of decision making at a swifter rate, although it is always incumbent on us to improve the quality of decision making at the Home Office.

We have invested a lot in the judicial capacity. We have increased the amount that we spend by 21%. The number of sitting days is up 19%. We have done a lot to try to tackle that, but the number of appeals is still going up. The outcome of appeals has stayed constant, but the number of appeals is going up. That says to me that people are recognising that this is a way to thwart and draw out the system.

Dan Hobbs: As the Minister said, we are tackling a number of issues. Some of this is groundbreaking, in terms of asylum cost recovery. We are defining article 8 and bringing it back much closer to the Strasbourg jurisprudence, in terms of qualifying family members and setting out clear stipulations for both decision makers and the courts as regards the definition around family life. Again, that is a big area of attrition. As the Minister set out, 77% of people using article 8 had either arrived illegally or overstayed. A large number of foreign national offenders use article 8 as a means to either delay or avoid removal from the country. The Bill seeks to ensure that that is interpreted in line with how ECHR article 8 is due to be interpreted.

With the appeals authority, it is about having all the safeguards—the regulatory training, the procedural training and the professional ability to deal with these cases, backed by senior adjudicators who have legal training. It is also about having a fair and efficient system, because part of the challenge we see at appeal now is that there is a long gap between someone’s initial decision by the Home Office and when that comes before a judge. During that time, a whole series of events can happen, which means the case before a judge is often different from the one the Home Office made its initial decision on.

[Joe Robertson]

Q It is right, is it not, that the Home Office has a pretty poor record of success? When its initial decisions are tested on appeal, it loses at an incredibly high rate, suggesting there is something wrong with the original decision making at the Home Office. That has nothing to do with replacing the judicial system in the Bill.

Dan Hobbs: I think the overturn rate is actually declining, so the Home Office is getting more successful overall with those decisions that go before a judge. But, to my point earlier, what the judge decides can often be very different on the facts, compared with what was presented to the Home Office at the beginning, because of the passage of time. The Minister talked about upwards of 68 weeks between someone’s appeal being lodged and concluded, which means that a whole different series of facts come before the judge. So the evidence can change in that time, but our overturn rate is broadly coming down.

[Joe Robertson]

Q From a pretty bad place. That is factually the case, isn’t it?

Dan Hobbs: Broadly, about 50% of the refusals are then overturned. That is coming down, but equally the refusal rate has gone up. As the Minister said, we are refusing more cases, but the overturn rate is broadly similar.