Nationality and Borders Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

In fact, the taxpayer will be saving money in the long run. We already spend over £1 billion a year on dealing with the failed and broken asylum system. If the hon. Gentleman has read the Bill and the new plan for immigration, which I urge him to do, he will see that there are a range of measures—

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Priti Patel]

I will.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful. Is not the truth of the matter that too often our courts exaggerate the significance of international treaties and obligations and, by so doing, frustrate the process by which we deport illegal immigrants, including large numbers of foreign criminals?

[Priti Patel]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and for his observation. There are a range of aspects, certainly through this Bill, that we are seeking to address in order to make courts and immigration tribunals more efficient. It is wrong for them to have endless appeals, where individuals frustrate the appeals process and clog up the system. It is right that we do that because otherwise there will be individuals—genuine people seeking to claim asylum—who are simply not getting their cases heard, and we want to make sure that we can give them the support.

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

My focus today in the short time available—I cannot wait for call lists to end—is a very specific element in the Bill: part 4. I co-sponsored the Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill with Lord McColl and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for meeting me and Lord McColl on a number of occasions to look for a way to improve it before it was published. I spoke on 19 October last year about the need for an immigration provision that provides confirmed victims—I stress “confirmed”—with certainty of recovery and the ability to focus on working with the criminal justice system to ensure that we increase the very low number of prosecutions for offences related to modern slavery. I want the House to hold that thought because it is critical. Our self-interest means being better on that element of the Bill.

Part 4 sets out several reforms on modern slavery. I am aware that the Home Secretary is seeking to meet varying objectives through the Bill and that she wants to reduce abuse of the system. I want to deal with clause 52, which will provide identified potential victims in England and Wales with assistance and support for a period when the person is in the national referral mechanism. Although I welcome the support for adult victims in England and Wales during that period being put on a statutory basis, as is already the case in Northern Ireland and Scotland, the support that clause 52 places on a statutory basis is actually less than is currently provided as a matter of practice in England and Wales, which is a problem. Essentially, whereas the current guidance in England and Wales affords 45 days’ support, as does the statute in Scotland and Northern Ireland, clause 52 proposes a reduction in England and Wales to just 30 days’ support for confirmed victims of modern-day slavery. I draw that to the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister, because it needs to be dealt with.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend has many faults, and I am aware of a handful of them, but one of them is not naivety. He has far more qualities, and his quality will tell him that the system is being gamed by all kinds of unscrupulous people. The risk is that modern-day slavery is one way of gaming the system.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I simply ask my right hon. Friend to notice what I said: I referred to those who already have confirmed status as a victim of modern-day slavery. This is important, because it means they have already gone through the NRM. It is a question of how we deal with them at that point. This will give time to arrive at the right conclusions.

Statutory support is provided during the national referral mechanism, so having no such support afterwards makes no sense. They go out of the NRM and are suddenly in the cold world, unable to navigate their way and fearful of retribution by those who treated them so badly in the first place. The provision of support to help these people is also in our self-interest, because it is in our national interest to ensure victims get sufficient support to allow them to help police and prosecutors with criminal investigations. In a way, by reducing such support, we are making things worse.

Clause 53, on leave to remain for victims of slavery or human trafficking, is at the heart of the Bill. I co-sponsored a Bill with Lord McColl to provide leave to remain for 12 months, along with assistance and support, for adult victims who want to remain in the UK. I gave evidence on this to the Home Office, and I am therefore disappointed that, instead of addressing the problems with discretionary leave that I highlighted last October, the Government have simply placed current practice, which is clearly not working, into a statutory framework.

Under clause 53, leave to remain will remain discretionary and the same justifications for its provision will apply: being necessary to assist the police with investigations, being necessary because of personal circumstance or being necessary to make a compensation claim.

The ability of a victim to remain in the UK is unchanged by the Bill, and one would therefore expect that the proportion of confirmed victims in receipt of leave to remain would remain low. In other words, this Bill would perpetuate rather than address the current arrangements in which the vast majority of confirmed victims are denied leave to remain in the UK to help their recovery. The police have made it very clear that they want victims to be settled in accommodation so that they know where they are and they can give evidence.

I support much of what the Bill is trying to do, and I understand the motives behind it, but part 4 deals with those from the most terrible backgrounds and facing the worst persecution, trafficked as they are. We need to give them time, and that time will help us prosecute the very people we wish to go after. Being good and decent is a payback to us at the same time.

I support this Bill, but I look for changes to part 4 during its passage.

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[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Welcome to the Chair. Edmund Burke said:

“Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

Restoring justice and order to the chaotic and confusing asylum system broadcasts that a line in the sand has been drawn that will not fade away with every new boat that arrives on the beach. The Bill is a testament to the principle that laws must be just and be seen to be; otherwise, we can hardly call them law at all.

According to poll after poll, the vast majority of the public see illegal immigration as a serious problem. Is it any wonder when there were 16,000 illegal entrants into Britain last year, with 8,500 on boats? Those are the ones we know about. This year alone, 7,000 have arrived on those boats.

[Richard Fuller]

Does my right hon. Friend not think that somehow turning the debate simply into, “Everyone who claims asylum must have a legitimate claim and everyone who is against it must be racist” does not help in trying to get to the just law that he is talking about?

[Sir John Hayes]

Absolutely, it does not, nor is it just to pillory the public and those who speak for them when they argue that we should enforce the law and that migration should be controlled. As a number of hon. Members have said, legal migration has been out of control for some time, and illegal migration, by its very nature, is both unjust and unfair because it breaks the law. It breaches that principle that people who arrive here and pursue legal routes are doing the right thing and that those who do not are simply doing the wrong thing and should be deported. That is what the public think, and that is what we should say very clearly.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Is no one on the Conservative Benches remotely concerned that the Bill would see a Uyghur fleeing persecution in China, a Syrian fleeing disastrous war crimes in that country or a persecuted Christian seeking sanctuary on this shore criminalised with an offence that could see them in prison for up to four years, stripped of their family reunion rights, offshored and whatever else? Does nobody on those Benches have any qualms about that whatsoever?

[Sir John Hayes]

Surely the hon. Gentleman must realise that while the principle of granting asylum—of giving sanctuary to people in desperate need—is a noble one, it is being gamed, day after day and month after month, with people travelling through many safe countries before claiming asylum, repeated claims on a whole range of different grounds, and even modern slavery, which we all deplore, being used as a justification to stay here when it is invented. That is to insult—to besmirch—those who are really suffering persecution and who come here in genuine need. It is being gamed, frankly, by a combination of unscrupulous civil rights and human rights activists, and people-traffickers. Although they do not work together in an organised fashion, the combination of the two is damaging public faith in our ability to control our borders. If “take back control” means anything, surely it means taking back control of our sovereign borders.

When the average Briton sees the asylum system being played, it leaves them bewildered, frustrated and angry that we should be taken for such fools. British people do not want to pull up the drawbridge to the world’s needy. What they want is a consistent system that helps the right people in the right way: one that will remove those with no right to stay in Britain just as it protects those we ought to be protecting, not one that grants favour to those who manage to successfully break our laws when they first arrive here.

[Sara Britcliffe]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, contrary to what the Opposition are saying, the Government are not changing their approach to maritime law and those organisations and individuals will still be able to rescue anybody who is in distress at sea?

[Sir John Hayes]

As my hon. Friend may know, I am a former maritime Minister, and it absolutely right to say that the agreement that we have with the International Maritime Organisation to rescue people at sea is also being exploited by unscrupulous people, and we need to be mindful of that fact.

This Bill goes some way to addressing the huge gulf that exists between public perceptions and those of the liberal establishment that has too much say about too many things in this country. Criminal gangs and desperate economic migrants know that every time bleeding-heart liberals oppose tougher penalties and tougher measures—and so blur the distinction between those in genuine need and those who break the rules—they do immense harm to the cause of genuine asylum seekers.

Finally, let me say a word about foreign criminals, who have been mentioned. In 2010, there were 4,000 foreign criminals here; now, there are 10,000. Surely every one should be deported. We do not want to import crime into our country. We must take back control and we must pass this Bill to do so.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Angela Crawley.

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[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

Now then, Janis Bite was 13 years old and living in Latvia at the start of world war two. Two years later, the Nazis came. Their request was simple: one male member from each family to go and fight the Russians. It was either Janis, his dad or his younger brother, so Janis went to the Russian front and witnessed the horrors of war in temperatures of minus 40.

When the war ended in 1945, Janis was classed as a displaced person—a refugee. Imagine that. He could not go back to Latvia, because he had been sent straight to Siberia and that is where they sent his dad, so Janis was given two more choices: the US or the UK. So he came to the UK to a small village in Derbyshire, where he and other refugees were housed in Nissen huts in army barracks. He did not complain or whinge or moan about the barracks or set fire to the barracks or make TikTok videos. In fact, they were so grateful to the UK that they all volunteered to work in the fields at local farms picking potatoes and other seasonal vegetables for no pay. Janis met a girl in the village, he fell in love and he later married. He worked hard all his life and had three sons, one of them being Alan in Ashfield. Janis loved his football. He became a British citizen and loved this country. He even went on to meet our Queen. Janis is no longer with us, but his story makes me feel incredibly proud of our great country and its willingness to help people from all over the world.

[Sir John Hayes]

The story my hon. Friend is telling is a story of someone who sought our aid and got it, but would he contrast that with what is happening now? Would Janis not take the view, which has been articulated in this Chamber tonight, that the system that he held in such high regard is now being gamed and exploited, besmirching the good name of our country and people like him?

[Lee Anderson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. That is absolutely right. I spoke to Janis’s family last week in Ashfield, and they made exactly that point. I will feed that back to them when I get back to Ashfield this weekend.

We have always been a welcoming and tolerant country that has reached out to genuine refugees from all over the world, but just like Janis’s family in Ashfield, most people in the UK do not accept that people travelling here from France in dinghies are genuine asylum seekers—[Interruption.] They are not genuine asylum seekers. We know that many of them have been trafficked with a clear instruction on how to claim asylum once they get here. That is because our asylum system is not fit for purpose, and this Bill stops that.

The Labour party and the Opposition want to bring back free movement. They dislike our points-based immigration system, and now they are going to vote against a Bill that protects our borders and helps us deport foreign murderers and rapists. They will always vote against the British people. This new Bill will ensure that people in genuine need, like Janis all those years ago, get the help they need, and the greedy lawyers and the human traffickers will be told, “No more.” We owe it to people such as Janis who are suffering today to ensure that we have a fairer system that offers genuine refugees a safe haven. This Bill does that.

We have nothing to be ashamed of in this country. We are a kind, tolerant and welcoming country. That is proven by the number of people who risk their lives every single day to get here. If Janis’s family can see that the current situation is unacceptable, surely the Opposition should see that too.

I give a massive thanks to the Home Secretary, who has stuck to her guns. She has listened to the British people and delivered. Opposition MPs want to travel into reality. I will offer this opportunity to all of you now sitting there now with those glazed expressions on your face: come down to Ashfield, come speak to some real people in my towns and villages, and the message you will get will be completely different from the message you are feeding into this House. I am here because of you lot and the attitudes you had in 2019. We are getting tough on crime, we are getting tough on immigration and we are getting tough on law and order.

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[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

What a great pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

For many of my constituents, rightly or wrongly, the success of the Bill depends on whether it stops or clearly limits three persistent and frustrating problems with our immigration and border controls. First, it depends on whether the Bill stops or clearly limits the use of the channel crossing by boat or truck to make a claim for asylum; secondly, it depends on whether the Bill stops or clearly limits the filing, over many years, of speculative further asylum claims—frequently on specious grounds—that clog up our system, crowd out legitimate claims, and generally make a mockery of our legal processes; and thirdly, it depends on whether the Bill stops or clearly limits the opportunity for cherry-picking that leads people to make an asylum claim in the UK rather than in the one or many other safe countries through which they travel.

It is for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the Minister to bear in mind that it is on those bases that my constituents will judge the success or failure of this measure, not the rhetoric that accompanies it. To me, however—and, I would say, to some other Conservative Members—there are further aspects that are important. Let me pick up the challenge from the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), on the views of those on this side of the House, because there are aspects of nuance and detail that I think it important to bring out.

First, if the assessment system is to be quicker, it is important for the Government to ensure that claimants have much better access to legal advice. Secondly, if the system is to work effectively, there needs to be greater availability of counselling, psychiatric and other medical assessments. Thirdly, we should once and for all have a culture of getting to the truth, rather than the culture of disbelief that has for too many years permeated the Home Office asylum system.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am intervening for a specific reason. What is actually happening is that the truth is being obscured by repeated claims which many of the people whom my hon. Friend is describing are encouraged to lodge by the unscrupulous lawyers who were given such a plaudit by the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy).

[Richard Fuller]

My right hon. Friend speaks very wise words.

Let me just say to Opposition Members that there is no monopoly on compassion, and that it does not mean saying that the system must apply to everyone in a particular process. Compassion applies to an individual claim. The importance of our system is that we get to that individual and do not lose sight of him or her. In a previous life as a Member of Parliament, I spoke in a debate on another immigration Bill and bemoaned the lack of compassion in our immigration system. It was encouraging to hear the Home Secretary use the word “compassion” so often, and to hear stories of compassion from other Conservative Members, whether they were about how a council looks after the people who are claiming asylum or about people’s feelings about the system. So there is no monopoly on compassion here, and I look forward to working with Opposition Members in finding ways in which we can make it work more deeply in the Bill.

Nationality and Borders Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford]

My hon. Friend gets very much to the crux of the problem. I am not going to talk about what threshold is right or wrong, but I am going to talk about the fact that we are trying to achieve a fair system that helps those who are most in need. That is what we truly need to understand. Our communities are rich in their diversity because of immigration and because of the people we have been helping. I think again of the Syrian resettlement scheme, which we are proud of. In Lancashire we have taken thousands, and I am proud of us helping those most in need, but for far too long the system has been exploited by people smugglers, criminal gangs and asylum shoppers, who cheat that system. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, people are paying extra either to break into a lorry or to get into a boat to be shipped across. That is not the right way to try to seek asylum.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

That abuse is not limited to people smugglers. It extends to the so-called human rights lawyers who know how best to game the system and to activists who encourage people to claim asylum on all kinds of different grounds, and when they fail to claim again. The system is corrupted by those individuals who seek not to defend the interests of the most needy, which my hon. Friend has described, but to exploit those who will do anything to get into this country, legal or illegal.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

Criminalising people who have come to this country irrespective of what they have left behind makes them criminals. What law have they broken when they are seeking refuge here?

What we have seen playing out in the channel crossings over the past few days occurred because the Government have closed down all safe routes for refugees to travel to the UK for protection. People are being driven to make dangerous journeys because they are out of options. To this callous Government, it is all a game—pure theatre. The Tories use all migrants, an ever-easy target, as a distraction from their own institutional failings and the gross inequality that falls upon their citizens.

The Bill does nothing to propose refugee resettlement or family reunion routes and will only put more pressure on Britain’s broken asylum system. About 10% of arrivals are expected to be unaccompanied children. The Government should be properly addressing the issue of safe routes for claiming asylum and helping unaccompanied children. Penalising refugees is a clear breach of article 31 of the refugee convention, but even more disconcerting is that clauses 27 to 36 seek to interpret the refugee convention to suit the Government’s whim. Unilaterally deciding how international law should be interpreted never ends well for the Government. The reason they feel the need to do so here is that they know they will be humiliated when those clauses are challenged. Once again, it is not so much a case of marking their own homework; more a case of being judge, jury and executioner.

One thing the Bill will almost certainly do is ensure that people seeking asylum here are kept longer. Whether through imprisoning asylum seekers for four years in our prisons or detaining them in barracks, that is an awful lot of money to spend on something that is not going to work. I dread to think what impact that will have on our creaking criminal justice system. Again, we have not seen the sums. Why not? Surely the Home Secretary will have cleared this with the Chancellor and costed it?

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I am conscious of time. I have to sit down in three minutes.

The Law Society of England and Wales warned yesterday that the Bill risks putting England’s global reputation for justice at risk—shameful. This is the Government who are reducing the country’s global standing so significantly. As if the inhumanity in the way the Government propose to treat asylum seekers is not bad enough, they go further by deciding to punish victims of modern slavery. The Bill peddles the Government’s signature toxic politics of fear and hostility by changing the standard of proof for determining if someone has a well-founded fear of persecution and making it more difficult for people to be recognised as victims of human trafficking. Despite choosing to start by disbelieving trafficked victims, there is nothing in the Bill about setting up a national operating standard procedure to train those whose first point of contact is clearly to identify victims of modern slavery. Why is that not in the Bill? Once again, it is just like the Queen of Hearts: sentence first, verdict afterwards.

We should most definitely be going after the traffickers and people-smuggling criminal gangs, but without international co-operation we will struggle to do that. The Bill is high on rhetoric, but low on action. Without introducing any safe routes, the Bill will be a boon for the international criminal gangs and a boost for their profits. Rather than breaking the business model, the Government have breathed new life into it by pushing people further into the arms of smugglers. Having reduced our ties with Interpol and tarnished our reputation with the international community, we have lost the soft power that things such as our commitment to international aid bought us.

We have been asking for safe routes to replace Dublin III since last year, but we have had nothing from the Government. Meanwhile, the Bill gives the Secretary of State new powers to act like the playground bully in delaying or suspending visa processing for citizens of countries that she believes are unco-operative with removals. In all honesty, if the Government seriously think that that will work in getting international co-operation, they are deluded. It is the same desperate politics that created the hostile environment and the Windrush scandal. Labour strongly opposes this misleading and deeply flawed legislation, and urges the Government to engage responsibly in a debate that recognises the humanity of those who have to flee their homelands and seek protection, no matter how they arrive in the UK.

This Bill is nothing more than a house of cards. It does nothing to address the crisis in our asylum system. It is deeply flawed and will end up collapsing if there are no bilateral agreements with our EU neighbours. We on the Labour Benches will be opposing the Second Reading of the Bill.

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[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

I will give way in a moment. There is no worse example of that than the small boats crossing the English channel. About 80% of the people on them are young single men, who have paid people smugglers to cheat the system. They are not fleeing war. France is not a war zone. Belgium is not a war zone, and nor is Germany. These are safe European countries with well-functioning asylum systems. These journeys are dangerous and unnecessary, and push to one side those in greatest need, including women and children.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has brought us this Bill. He deserves great credit for it, alongside the Home Secretary. But will he go further? Will he fulfil the pledge to actually turn back the boats in the channel that he has just described, using the Royal Navy, if possible? Will he process claims offshore, as has also been pledged? Will he do something to frustrate those lawyers who game the system by claiming all kinds of international obligations taking precedence over our sovereign law and our sovereign Parliament?

[Chris Philp]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his very timely intervention and I agree with what he says. This Bill contains provisions such that people arriving by small boat and other illegal means will be liable to prosecution and a four-year jail term, and people smugglers will face a life sentence. This Bill also gives Border Force the powers it needs to make interceptions at sea. Let me be clear: nothing in this Bill would have made the Kindertransport from the 1930s illegal. That was an authorised and organised programme that would be perfectly legal. Indeed it is rather analogous to the safe and legal route we are at this very moment offering locally engaged staff from Afghanistan. Let me also reassure the House, and in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), that there is no intention in this Bill to criminalise bona fide, genuine rescue operations by the RNLI.

Let me also be clear that nothing in this Bill infringes our international obligations. Opposition Members should study article 31 of the refugee convention, which makes it clear that it is permitted to impose penalties where someone has not come “directly” from a place of danger and where they did not have a reasonable opportunity to claim asylum somewhere else.[Official Report, 22 July 2021, Vol. 699, c. 10MC.] The people coming from France are not coming directly from a place of danger, as required by article 31, and they did have a reasonable chance to claim asylum in France. These measures are wholly consistent with our international obligations.

Nationality and Borders Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am conscious of the wide interest in a significant number of these amendments, so I will predominantly focus my remarks on the Government amendments in this first instance and address other matters in the wind-up.

Our asylum system must not reward those who enter the UK illegally from manifestly safe countries where they cannot possibly still be fleeing persecution and fear. People must claim asylum in the first safe country they come to, and making a secondary and unnecessary move to the UK puts lives needlessly in danger while pushing aside other vulnerable people, including women and children.

We must break the criminal networks that facilitate illegal immigration and exploit people. People who come to our shores illegally will be treated differently. Although we cannot resettle everyone who needs sanctuary, the large numbers we resettle in the UK will be made very welcome. We will be fair but firm in how we continue to embark on this landmark reform of our asylum system.

New clause 20 is a minor, technical amendment that will ensure a small number of references to justices of the peace in immigration legislation in the context of obtaining entry and search warrants in Northern Ireland instead become references to lay magistrates. This is a simple measure that tidies up the statute book.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

The Minister makes a critical point about claiming asylum in the first safe country. People traffickers rely on the idea of selling a destination, regardless of where the person starts. The measures my hon. Friend describes will frustrate the people traffickers and do a great service both to this country and to their many victims.

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[Tom Pursglove]

The point that I would make is that the Government will set out their intentions in due course. I think it is right not to pre-empt. It is important to make sure that this House is kept updated as to that work, and we will be very clear in our intentions.

[Sir John Hayes]

It is extremely encouraging news that the Government are going to—at last, I have to say—consider the Blair legacy of the Human Rights Act, but to substantially reform it will require legislation. That much is implicit, is it not?

[Tom Pursglove]

As I say, Ministers will come to the House with further details in due course.

Work is under way in relation to resolving the question of retained EU law, led by Lord Frost, with input from the Attorney General and the Ministry of Justice. For these reasons, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to withdraw their amendment 150.

I turn to new clauses 18 and 19 on illegal immigration offences, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). I hope that they and other hon. Friends supporting the new clauses will recognise that, as part of our groundbreaking new plan for immigration, the Government have sought robust changes to the law around illegal entry and similar offences through the very Bill we are discussing today. The Bill, which my hon. Friends seek to amend, already addresses and indeed exceeds the changes proposed in new clause 18.

Let me turn now to new clauses 24 and 52, tabled by the hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch), my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). As both new clauses regard settlement fees for non-UK members of our armed forces, I would like to debate them together. It is a fact that our Government and our nation highly value the service of all members of the armed forces, including Commonwealth nationals and Gurkhas from Nepal.

Nationality and Borders Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The whole thing smacks of a kind of bureaucratic trickery whereby every option is blocked off by some additional piece of bureaucracy. The Bill should have been an opportunity to unlock some of that, but instead it leaves us in stalemate.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Appositely to the remarks of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) about where people claim asylum and how it is processed, the Bill will allow a claim to be processed elsewhere before people get here. Based on what the hon. Gentleman says, that will be a positive move, will it not? It will also mean that people who are travelling through safe countries where they could claim asylum can do so there and have their claim processed there.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to offshoring, but as we have seen, offshoring does not work: it is costing millions and millions in Australia and every expert is panning the idea. If I have understood his intervention correctly, I am afraid that it is simply a non-starter.

The Opposition support Lords amendment 6, which removes the Government’s attempt to introduce differential treatment of refugees based on method of arrival. For instance, if a Ukrainian citizen were to flee and travel here across Europe while waiting for a Government visa office to open or a safe route to be provided, clause 11 would make them a second-class refugee. To be a first-tier refugee, they would have to have taken an aeroplane directly from Ukraine. That absurd technicality shows just how unjust the proposal is.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. My plea for Members to limit themselves to four-minute speeches simply has not worked. I point out to the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who intervened just now, that I consider that she has now made her contribution, because there is not enough time for everybody to get into the debate. We will now have a formal four-minute limit. I call Sir John Hayes.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Disraeli observed:

“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”

Many of the amendments put forward by the Lords are carelessly critical. They are veiled, as these things so often are, in a thin covering of assumed moral superiority, but surely it is not moral to oppose a Bill that tries to make the asylum system fit for purpose. Surely it is not ethical to conflate illegal immigration with the immigration of those people who diligently seek to come to this country lawfully and to surmount the hurdles we put in their path, and who, having done so, take pride in making the contribution mentioned by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell).

Nationality and Borders Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Gentleman’s remarks are effectively a charter for doing nothing. What is unacceptable is for people to continue putting their life in the hands of evil criminal gangs whose only regard is for turning a profit—they do not care whether people get here safely. We have a moral responsibility to stop this, and we have a moral responsibility to act, which is precisely what we will do through this Bill.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend accept my congratulations on the Patel-Pursglove plan vis-à-vis Rwanda? And will he ensure that, when people arrive here, they are on a plane as quickly as possible before some dodgy activist or fat-cat human rights lawyer can get their hands on them?

[Tom Pursglove]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary should rightly take a lot of credit for getting this new world-leading partnership over the line. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has been a passionate advocate for this approach, and I am pleased we are delivering it. I think it will make a genuine difference in acting as a deterrent and ensuring that we have global solutions to a global challenge.

In that sense, I welcome the steps that have been taken in the last few days. I hope my right hon. Friend will be reassured to know that we are working hard to make sure this is operationalised without delay and that, of course, people are on flights as quickly as possible. What we do not want at any stage—this goes back to why we need fundamental reform of the asylum system—is delay in the system. We want people to have certainty either way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thank you for your wise counsel, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I have already pointed to the work and refugee convention amendments, but we also need to address differential treatment. Lords amendments 6D, 6E and 6F provide that a person can be a tier 1 refugee if they have travelled briefly through countries on their way to the UK, as somebody from Kabul or Kyiv would have to, or if they have delayed presenting themselves to the authorities for a good reason. They would also require compliance with the refugee convention and state that family unity must be taken into account. The Government should get behind the amendments. What in them can there possibly be to disagree with?

The channel crossings have been taken out of the Home Secretary’s hands and handed to the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy. The Ukrainian refugee scheme has been handed over to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This Sunday, the former director general of borders and immigration called for a new immigration Department to remove responsibility from the Home Office. With her Department now effectively in special measures, will the Home Secretary not just for once do the right thing and accept the amendments today, so that we can begin to repair some of the damage done by this deeply counterproductive legislation?

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I will not delay the House unduly; my colleagues would not want me to. I just want to make two points. The first is that the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) is right: these matters should have been addressed earlier, by successive Governments—including Labour Governments, by the way. Our immigration policy has not been planned strategically, as it might have been. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point.

The hon. Gentleman also said that the system needs to be efficient. I spoke about Edmund Burke on Second Reading; he said that the test of civil society and the policy that relates to it was justice, and that when a policy ceased to be just it was barely a policy at all. For a policy to be just, it has to be ordered, efficient and consistent. Immigration policy has struggled with order, efficiency and consistency for a very long time. On that, the hon. Gentleman was also right.

However, the hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong about the amendments for the following reasons. First, the Lords seem unwilling to grasp a nettle that, as he described, previous Governments have also failed the grasp. That nettle is sorting out and amending a broken system to ensure that we can continue to give safe refuge to people in desperate need, and that the system cannot be routinely and persistently gamed—by people traffickers and, actually, by economic migrants pretending to be asylum seekers. That is the fact, and we have to face it and reform the system so that we can differentiate between the two. The Government are trying to do that. It is not an easy process, but the Lords seem to me to misunderstand the Government’s intention, which is to create a consistent, ordered and effective system.

In specific terms, the amendment pertaining to the Refugee Council is unnecessary because part 2 of the Bill is already in line with the Refugee Council. I am amazed to hear the hon. Gentleman say that asylum seekers should be allowed to work. What sort of signal does that send out to legitimate migrants who have come to this country seeking to perform a role in our economy to serve this country? What sort of signal does it send out to indigenous Britons—of all types and races, by the way—who are unemployed and seeking a job, when they are told they must compete with people arriving in the country as asylum seekers? That seems to be a nonsense, yet that is what the Lords amendment suggests.