Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

Countries mean more than their borders. National character, shared heritage and the institutions that give that history life matter. But borders matter too, for they are what mark the territory that defines citizenship, with its implicit entitlements, responsibilities, opportunities and duties, and the plain fact is that our kingdom’s borders are being breached day after day with impunity. Since 2018, some 85,000 people have entered Britain illegally, 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Seventy-four per cent. are men under 40 and 100% have travelled through safe countries, where they failed to claim asylum, to get here. Accommodating them is costing the British taxpayer every single day £6 million. It cannot go on.

Of course, Britain should provide a safe haven for people in fear—in genuine need—but it is a deceit to pretend that the asylum system has not been gamed and the British people taken for a ride by economic migrants with no legal right to be here, enabled by fat cat law firms that have grown rich on the proceeds, aided and abetted by militant interest groups that are determined to subvert the will of the people and cheered on by vacuous self-indulgent celebrities leading millionaire lifestyles. It may be uncomfortable for the bourgeois liberal establishment, but polls show that the British people want tough action on illegal immigration. Indeed, polling last week showed that people support the principles of the Bill.

Benjamin Disraeli said that justice is truth in action. Today, the Government are giving voice to the true wish of the British people to restore justice to our immigration and asylum system. It is not extreme to want to cap all kinds of immigration; it is not immoderate to deport illegal immigrants; and it is not unreasonable to give the Government the tools they need to do just that. It is time to take back control of our borders. It is time to stop the boats.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

None of this is ideal, but when people arrive in their hundreds—one day last summer it was more than 1,000—and all of a sudden become the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government, there is a practical limitation on what accommodation is available physically to house them. That is why our hotels are being taken over and are full and why various military bases have been used, with mixed success. It is why the Government are having to look at other solutions. However, we have a serious problem accommodating our own constituents, as we all know, because of the shortage of local authority accommodation, and we just have to be realistic about how we can properly look after people coming across the channel.

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

This is not just about illegal migration. The population of this country is growing in net terms, as a direct result of illegal and legal migration, by something like a quarter of a million a year. That cannot long be sustained. Over 10 years it is 2.5 million people, which is the size of many significant cities. That cannot go on, because the housing situation for all of those people is an insuperable challenge.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have made the point that whatever migration system we run needs to be effective, efficient and sustainable, but at the same time we need people to fill job vacancies in this country, and many of the people who have come here are self-sustaining. I had a meeting this afternoon with about 60 Hong Kong British national overseas passport holders who came here in flight from Hong Kong, and they are making a good go of starting a second life in this country. However we think we should operate migrant numbers, the numbers are not the important thing. It is being able to look after people safely and sustainably for all of our community that is the major consideration.

The other truth that is put about that we need to challenge is that the European convention on human rights is everything. If we look at the record of the judgments issued under the ECHR by the European Court of Human Rights in the last 10 years, we see that 47% of them—almost half—have not been complied with. In certain countries that figure is higher. For example, 61% of judgments again Spain from the European Court of Human Rights have not been complied with, and for Italy it is 58%, while for Germany it is 37%. In many cases—particularly France, where the figure is a little bit lower—they are mostly for non-compliance with immigration laws. So let us not try and kid ourselves that the measures in this Bill are in some way completely absurd and out of court compared with what other countries have been doing.

Having said all that, doing nothing is not an option. It allows people smugglers to continue the human misery. It is condoning bogus asylum seekers, and it is allowing those bogus asylum seekers to bump the queue of genuine asylum seekers to whom we do have a duty of care that the vast majority of people in this country want to see carried out. So we need to get the balance right on continuing our generous tradition of allowing safe haven for genuine asylum seekers escaping danger with much more robust action to clamp down on those who have no legitimate claim to be resident in the UK. They are gaming our system, taking advantage of the UK taxpayer’s generosity and, worst of all, queue-jumping over the genuine asylum seekers who need help.

This is where safe and legal routes and the main amendment I am putting forward today come in, and I will be prepared to press it to a vote unless I have some substantial reassurances from the Government, because this is nothing new and it is not rocket science. It is actually something that the Prime Minister has quite rightly committed to in principle. My new clause 13, which is the basis of the safe and legal routes amendments, would require safe and legal routes to be part of this legislation. The regulations referred to in the Bill would have to set out specific safe and legal routes by which asylum seekers can enter the United Kingdom in an orderly and sustainable way.

The routes specified must include any country-specific schemes that we have already. Specifically, we have routes for Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong, but we need additional ones. Additionality is key to this, because as the Bill stands, the Government could just say, “Well, we’ve got those safe and legal routes, and we can just tinker with those.” However, let us take the example of the 16-year-old orphan boy from east Africa —he is not from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong—who has a single relative legally settled in the United Kingdom. There are precious few opportunities for him to be able to come to the UK on a safe and legal route. It is in such cases that we need to offer an opportunity, capped in numbers and capped with all sorts of considerations. We need to offer such people a realistic opportunity that they may be able to get safe haven in the United Kingdom.

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[Tim Farron]

I will not give way again, sorry. I have taken loads of interventions and I am testing everyone’s patience; my speech is now 11 minutes in.

France could say the same to Italy or Spain, and then Italy or Spain could say, “Stay in the sea.” What we are seeing now is an attempt to undermine Britain’s part in the globe. We were told by some Conservative Members that we were leaving the European Union but not Europe, and that we would now be “global Britain.” Ignoring for a moment the moral obligations we have to people seeking sanctuary, let us remember what message it will send to our neighbours, friends and allies around Europe and elsewhere if we unilaterally decide that we are not going to play the game. This undermines our soft power and our sovereignty. This is why we support new clause 3, which deals with setting a target and gives a clear sense of Britain stepping up to the plate and being part of a global operation.

The Government talk about deterrence, but the Bill fails to understand the horrors that people have been through. People who have left Sudan or Eritrea often go through Libya, and I would ask Conservative Members to spend a moment to research what it is like for a refugee passing from the horn of Africa, for example, through to Libya and then crossing the Mediterranean. What are their experiences? We tell those people that it will be scary and that we are not going to treat them very nicely when they cross the channel, but that is nothing compared with their experience of crossing Libya. I ask Members to inform themselves about that in particular.

The Bill is clearly not aimed at tackling the criminal gangs. The simple fact is that the criminal gangs’ business model will remain alive and well. Why? Because people will arrive on these shores and then not claim asylum. They will go under the radar, which fuels modern slavery and criminality. More people will be exploited, especially women and girls. There is no question whatsoever that this Bill will do anything to tackle the business model of those gangs—it is clearly not intended to, which is another outrage. It is indeed a traffickers’ charter. It will therefore lead to more deaths in the channel. It is a recipe for uncontrollable borders, because there will be nobody applying for asylum. They will just slip under the radar. If the Government had done an impact assessment, they would know that. Maybe they did, but they have not shared it with us.

The simple fact is that we need safe and legal routes. People from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong stand a chance, one way or another, of having a safe route to the United Kingdom. But if you are a young Christian man seeking to avoid being conscripted in Eritrea, a woman seeking sanctuary from Iran or a person from a religious minority in Sudan, you have no chance whatsoever of getting here. That is morally outrageous. We are turning our back on our long-held principles and obligations. That is why new clause 6 is so important and why, with your permission, Dame Eleanor, we will push it to a vote tonight.

New clause 6 would ringfence asylum seekers from those countries that already have an 80%-plus grant rate—places such as Sudan, Eritrea and Iran. It proposes a pilot scheme for 12 months—this is measured, small and not all that ambitious—just to give the Government an opportunity not to be duplicitous about this and to show that we are at least providing an experimental and evidence-based safe route. I urge the Government to accept the new clause; otherwise, we will seek to divide the House. New clause 4 talks about a humanitarian travel permit, and new clause 7 deals with refugee family reunion.

If the Government seriously want to make the case that the Bill is going to undermine the business case of the people traffickers, evil as they are, they will fail to do so unless they provide meaningful, tangible, credible safe and legal routes. Those routes do not currently exist, and these new clauses allow the Government the opportunity to create them. If they will not accept them, this will prove that they do not have a plan to stop the boats and that they are just getting into the gutter to grub for votes.

To be fair, I think the Government have misjudged those who seek sanctuary here. I have met many of them. I have been to Calais and other places, and I have had to interrogate why people would choose to come to the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Devizes set out many of those reasons, but I have never discovered among those people any who have heard of the national health service or our benefit system. The lie that they are somehow coming over here to sponge off or threaten us is just that: it is simply untrue.

But those people have heard of something: they have heard of a Britain that is safe, where they can raise their children, where they can be who they are and have whatever faith they may be and whatever political views they may hold—a place where they can raise and feed their family in safety. I cannot imagine anything making me more proud than that being the reputation of this country. No amount of small-minded attempts to change the law by this “here today, gone tomorrow” Tory Government will dent that reputation. I think the Government have misjudged not only the asylum seekers, but Britain too.

Let me tell the House a story about my constituency, and then I will shut up. Let us be honest, the Lake District is not the most diverse part of the United Kingdom, yet in August 1945 half the children who survived the death camps, including Auschwitz, came to Windermere to be rehabilitated and to start their lives afresh, because that is who we really are. That is who Britain really is and we should be proud of that. Let us absolutely stop the boats, but let us do so in a way that makes sense and that is neither dozy nor dangerous.

[Sir John Hayes]

It is conventional in this place to say that it is a delight and a joy to follow the preceding speaker, and generally one does so as a matter of convention, but I am always pleased to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), even though I disagreed with almost everything he said. I know that he speaks with integrity and that he believes in his heart what he has said today, but I have to tell him that his purity—if I may put it in those terms—and his absolute Christian dignity have got the better of his reason in respect of this issue.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents, like mine, expect this House to be where power lies, for it is this House that is answerable to them. He owes his political legitimacy to his relationship with the people he described in his constituency, as I do to those in mine. When other powers in other places supersede the authority of this House, in the way the European judges did when they held up the planes for those being sent to Rwanda, our constituents feel not only frustrated but let down. They feel let down because they see the will of this House and the will of our Government being impeded, and indeed frustrated, by those overseas powers.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to the hon. Lady, who is deeply confused about the difference between treaty law and statute. Perhaps she will explain that.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s mind to the 1970s when, in this country, a Conservative Government passed legislation saying that a married woman, or any woman, coming to this country had to go through a virginity test, and it was the European Court of Human Rights that overturned that British legislation. Are you really telling me that you think that legislation was correct?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Is the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) really telling me that he thinks that decision by the European Court of Human Rights was wrong?

[Sir John Hayes]

I never knowingly defend the Heath Government, so I will not accept any connection with their measures. Indeed, it was Edward Heath who, against the interests of the British people, took us into the European Union in the first place, but I will not go down that road as it is not relevant to the amendments before us.

In the spirit I have just outlined, I will address the significance of the Bill and the amendments before us, in the context of the Government’s determination not only to tackle the issue of immigration per se, but to deal, in particular, with illegal immigration in the form of boats arriving in Dover. Just as we won the referendum campaign with the simple slogan “Take back control,” so it seems to me we will win this argument with a similar slogan: “Stop the boats.”

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I give way to my hon. Friend, who is an authority on all matters of this kind.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

When I arrived in this country as an immigrant in October 1978, I was bowled over by the hospitality and kindness I came across. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that, in order to maintain the British people’s welcome for outsiders coming here, we have to deal with illegal migration? That is why it is so important that we support the Bill this evening.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right, of course. In a sense, his comments reflect the remarks of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, but the spirit, character and reputation that Britain enjoys depend on both lawfulness and propriety. It is not unreasonable to suggest that our generosity should be defined by proper rules and standards.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) challenged the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale on the issue of people not bringing documents, I was left to wonder, as others may have been, why on earth a legitimate asylum seeker who is pleased to come here on the basis he outlined would want to discard the documents that would prove their case. Why would they do that? That is the kind of question my constituents ask me. I have to conclude that many people disguise their identity and discard their documents not because they want to make it more straightforward for the Home Office to deal with their claim, for clearly it would not make it more straightforward, but because they have something to hide.

Last year, 33% of the people arriving in small boats were from Albania. That proportion has now fallen because the Government have done something about it. So much for inefficient Ministers and the inefficient Home Office. They dealt with the Albania issue, and they will now deal with this issue with equal alacrity and skill.

[Stella Creasy]

I fear the right hon. Gentleman may have misread the statistics, because it was Afghans who made up 33% of arrivals. Between October and December 2022, only 9% of small boat arrivals were Albanian.

Perhaps, as a general principle, we should not try to process claims in the Chamber. We should look at the evidence. Many of us who deal with asylum seekers have had that conversation, about why papers are missing, and we have been told very clearly that the traffickers tell them to tear up and remove their papers because that makes it easier for the traffickers. When was the last time the right hon. Gentleman spoke to someone who came to the UK by an irregular route and who did not have their paperwork? What did they tell him? Can he tell us about the evidence he has from actually working with these people and understanding the pressures they are under?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady informs many of her arguments in this place with anecdotes, sometimes with undue success, but I will not be drawn into an anecdotal debate because I want to address the issue in a rather more serious way—I do not mean to disparage her, of course.

In addressing amendments 133 and 134 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), amendment 131 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and amendment 132 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), I want to be clear about the purpose of this Bill and why these amendments make sense. The purpose of the Bill is to deal with this matter as definitively as it can reasonably be addressed. The purpose of the Bill is to tighten the arrangements in respect of illegal immigration, and the amendments strengthen that aim. Our job, against a backdrop in which people are arriving in small boats and breaching our borders with impunity, is to re-establish the sovereignty of this country and the integrity of our borders by delivering legislation that does just that.

These amendments are designed to do two things. First, they would give the Government more power to achieve this objective. Secondly, they would limit the opportunities, which we know will be taken, to frustrate the Government’s will and, by extension, Parliament’s will to do more to address this matter.

I commend the Minister and the Home Secretary for their work on the Bill, but I am certain that the expectations it creates, the time it absorbs and the opposition it will undoubtedly generate, mean that, if it fails and the Government are found wanting, Conservative Members will pay a heavy price. The Minister knows we have been down this road before with the Nationality and Borders Act, which we were told would do the job. I do not think Ministers were deceiving us—they genuinely believed it would do the job—yet, although we did exactly what I described by devoting time and political capital, raising expectations and bringing about opposition, we found that we could not achieve what we wanted to and that we needed additional legislation to do so.

We will not be given a third chance. This is our second chance to deal, once and for all, with the boats arriving at Dover and with the tidal wave—the Home Secretary described it as a “swarm”—of people who know they are arriving illegally and are breaking the law, for they know they have no papers and no right to be here. They therefore make a nonsense of an immigration system that must have integrity if it is to garner and maintain popular support.

Of course, people enter and leave countries, but they need to do so legally. Surely it is not too much to express that simple statement. It is not too much to expect a Government to maintain lawful control of our borders, yet I constantly hear from Opposition Members that this is militant, unreasonable, extreme. It is anything but. It is modest, moderate, just and virtuous to have a system that ensures the people who come here do so lawfully, and that people who arrive here seeking asylum are dealt with properly. That is a modest aim, and it will be made more achievable by the amendments in the name of my hon. Friends the Members for Stone and for Devizes and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.

Given that the Minister is an old, trusted and good friend, I hope that, when he sums up the debate, he will agree to enter into a dialogue with those of us who speak for the people. We claim no more—no greater plaudit—than that we are the spokesmen of the hard-working, patriotic, lawful majority of the people of this country. In speaking for those people, we hope that he will enter into a dialogue with those of us who have tabled and supported these amendments with the aim of improving the Bill, of doing his work with him and for him, and in so doing honouring the pledge that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have made to the people of this country. Honouring that pledge is the right thing to do, the just thing to do and, indeed, the virtuous thing to do.

[Joanna Cherry]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Eleanor. It is convention to say that it is a pleasure to follow the previous speaker, but I find it hard to say that because I do not agree with anything that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said. It is an extraordinary proposition to say that, to use his words, it is virtuous and just for the United Kingdom to pass legislation that is in breach of our international obligations. These are not obligations that have been imposed on us from above. They are obligations to which we freely signed up. If the Government and Conservative Members do not like the obligations to which they freely signed up, they should have the courage of their convictions and join their chums in Russia and Belarus as non-signatories to the European convention on human rights. [Interruption.] They do not like it, but it is true: those are the other two countries in Europe that cannot live with the obligations in the European convention on human rights.

I want to make another preliminary point before I go any further. The right hon. Gentleman does not speak for my constituents—he does not speak for the people of Edinburgh South West. The contents of my mailbox and my conversations with constituents show that he does not speak for them. He does not speak for other voters in Scotland, either. We are proud of our international obligations, and we would like to remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

There is widespread concern about this Bill, and not just from lefty lawyers, to whom the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) referred earlier.

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[Laura Farris]

It is genuinely a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I will try to avoid too much mince in my own speech, but to continue in the respectful tone that she has struck.

I wish to take a little of the heat out of this debate and to say that I think the British people would recognise in the United Kingdom a country that has honoured its commitments since the launch of the 1951 refugee convention to offer sanctuary to those with a well-founded fear of persecution. The record of the past seven years, where close to half a million people have been granted asylum on humanitarian grounds, bears testimony to that.

I think that the British people would also recognise that there are peculiar and unique problems that have arisen with the small boat crossings. Five years ago, in 2018, 300 people made that journey; last year, it was 45,000. Of those, 80% were men aged between 18 and 40, all of whom had paid a people smuggler and all of whom had the physical strength and wherewithal to make a journey across continental Europe through the small boat route. We know that a third of them arriving last year were Albanian.

I just want to read what Dan O’Mahoney told the Home Affairs Committee—I see that the Chair is in her place—when he appeared before it last October. I am quoting verbatim. He said about the Albanian arrivals:

“The rise has been exponential, and we think that is in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and have begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants… Whatever sort of criminality you can think of…there are Albanian criminal gangs dominating”—

in this country—

“whether it is drug smuggling, human trafficking, guns or prostitution.”

He said that a lot of the Albanian migrants

“are not actually interested in seeing their asylum claim through… We typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days, and then they will disappear”

into the underworld.

That unique and specific problem requires a unique and specific answer. We all agree on safe and legal routes. I will not improve on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in his powerful speech. I heard from those on the Labour Front Bench, for the first time tonight, that they also endorse quotas, which is part of this Bill, and we agree with that.

In case my intervention earlier was not clear enough, I was simply saying that Harvey Redgrave, writing in a thoughtful piece for the Tony Blair Institute last July, talked about not only safe and legal routes, out-of-country rights of appeal and quotas, but an absolute prohibition on small boat arrivals. That really is the disputed issue in this legislation.

I rise to speak in response to amendments 131 and 132, which were tabled by two Conservatives, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), is in his place.

[Sir John Hayes]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, many countries have a cap per se on immigration. In Australia, Parliament debates an annual cap; when David Cameron and George Osborne were running the Conservative party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Home Secretary, we said that that number should be counted in the tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what we should go back to.

[Laura Farris]

It is certainly true that the promise inherent in the refugee convention—an offer to the world at large, conceived in an era before easyJet, before people going on holiday to any country and before mass migration—must be looked at through a different lens in the year 2023. Many of our international partners are now talking in that way, and we may have to have a debate on a different occasion to talk about the issue more broadly.

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[Laura Farris]

On the Government side of the House, I am probably the Member who has most recently been in the immigration tribunals, so I have an idea, but it is not my principal practice area.

The other thing that I think is relevant is that Parliament has in the past successfully recalibrated the interpretation of the convention and changed the way it is interpreted, and had no difficulty with that. The Bill already takes a number of novel steps in relation to established law. First, it creates an absolute duty of removal on the Home Secretary that applies irrespective of any human rights claim, with the exception of the non-refoulement principle. Secondly, the Bill expands powers of immigration detention, granting the Secretary of State a power to determine the period that is “reasonably necessary”, in some ways overriding established Hardial Singh principles. Thirdly, it limits the rights of appeal: the individual has a right of appeal, but that is capped at one. In my respectful submission, the Government must have the opportunity to see those clauses enacted, because I believe that they will be upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.

Back in 2012, the coalition Government changed the immigration rules in relation to the deportation of foreign national offenders and the application of article 8, which is the right to respect for private and family life. Parliament took the view that that was too often being interpreted in favour of the ex-convict, and, as a result, set new rules—from paragraph 398 onwards of the established immigration rules—to make it clear that there were limited circumstances in which article 8 should be engaged. Parliament said in terms that the balance should be struck in favour of the overwhelming public interest in deportation, above any article 8 claim unless there were very compelling circumstances to the contrary. That was upheld in successive decisions by our appeal courts, beginning with MF (Nigeria) in the Court of Appeal.

The decision by Parliament to circumscribe the ambit of article 8 when it applied to criminals was taken to the European Court of Human Rights for years, but the court would not hear the issue at all until 2017 in the case of Ndidi. I reminded myself today of how that case was approached. In fact, a quite compelling article 8 argument was made: the person had arrived in the United Kingdom as a baby and had never been anywhere else, and the offending was quite low level—drug dealing rather than any harm to the person. The courts here had said that he must be deported to a country that he had never been to before. He challenged that in the European Court of Human Rights, which said, “No, the British Government are absolutely entitled to circumscribe the application of article 8 in the way that they have.” His claim was rejected.

My simple point is that we can do things—in the way that the Government are seeking through the Bill—that may well be compatible with the European convention on human rights, and I have struggled to find any example of the court overturning primary legislation, which is what the Bill is, or constructing it in a way that is disadvantageous to the member state. The fact that so many Members refer back to the prisoner voting case does not enhance their argument. That case is 20 years old and has been reversed. I accept without reservation that it was wrongly decided—I think there was overreach—but I have heard no example from the last 20 years to suggest that the Court is still making the same mistakes.

We have talked about the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 not being a success, but that was not because the European Court of Human Rights said that it was unlawful or overreached; we simply concluded that it did not yet work. For those reasons, I think that the Bill already goes very far and should be given the chance to work through.

[Sir John Hayes]

This is a fascinating description of the three ways in which we can deal with this matter. One way is to leave the convention altogether, which is what I would favour but is not what we are proposing or debating tonight. The second is to have some kind of “notwithstanding clause” of the kind that has been proposed. The third is to assume, through the interpretation of the Court of the will of Parliament and Government, that we will have our way. My hon. Friend is making a good case for the third way, but the problem with that is that it places a great deal of faith—although she says that she does so on the basis of precedent—in the Court to honour the will of this House. I am not sure that I would have the same degree of faith. If she does not like the work of Professor Ekins and so on, I recommend that she look at the speech given at Cambridge University by the Home Secretary—when she was Attorney General —on the interpretative matters that my hon. Friend describes.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should sit down when allowing an intervention.

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[Stella Creasy]

The Minister knows that that is not how the scheme has worked; he knows that only 22 people have been resettled. He already has in his inbox the case I mentioned—it is long overdue his attention. Every single day, I think about that family. They were told that they should go to the Baron hotel. They could not get there because there was an explosion. They are now separated—the family are in hiding and the father is here, desperate and out of his mind about what to do. He was promised a safe and legal route by this Government, but of that promise there came no reality.

That is why I cannot support this Bill in its current form. First and foremost, it does nothing to the smugglers themselves. We all agree that the smugglers are the people we want to stop. Why is there not a single measure in the Bill that directly affects them? The idea that we can cut off their market does not recognise that we have seen these kinds of measures before. All that happens is the prices go up. People disappear; modern slavery increases.

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

[Sir John Hayes]

When we tackle illegal immigration, we are doing several things. We are attacking it at source by getting to the smugglers, we are dealing with the issues in the channel and on the coast, and we are creating a legislative framework fit for purpose. They are separate parts of a strategy.

[Stella Creasy]

I look forward to having a debate with the right hon. Gentleman tomorrow about my amendment 293, which would remove the word “Illegal” from the title of the Bill. It is not illegal to seek asylum. What he is talking about is not what the Bill will do. I have tried to urge him before not to process people’s claims in the Chamber; this is about the evidence of what we see.

I have multiple anecdotes about people who have been failed by our asylum system, the processing and the promises they were given of a safe and legal route. That is why this evening I wish to speak to the amendments about safe and legal routes. If the Government think this legislation is about illegal migration, by default there must be a legal process—so those safe and legal routes deserve much more scrutiny and attention. The Government have failed to provide a children’s rights assessment and equality impact assessment. It is so worrying that they are asking us to trust them when they cannot set out how they think people who are entitled to seek asylum because they are fleeing persecution should do so.

When I look at this Bill, I see that it needs a drastic overhaul even to meet its own ambitions or the pledges in article 31 of the refugee convention that somebody destroying their documents should not be penalised by the suggestion that their claim must be malicious. We should look at the actual evidence as to why smugglers encourage them to do that. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings suggests that somehow the Bill will do what the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 failed to do and what this Government’s policies keep failing to do. Let us learn from Einstein—that most famous refugee, who this country turned away. He said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

My new clause 17 is a probing one, on that basis. If the Government talk about safe and legal routes, we should know what those are intended to do. It simply says that the Government should set out what a safe and legal route is and which countries are therefore unsafe and require a legal route. After all, the Bill sets out countries considered to be safe. Ergo, all the countries not listed must be unsafe. The Government should tell us in Parliament how people should be able to access those routes and therefore not make dangerous journeys.

I also support new clause 13, tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) in new clause 10. We would all agree that all these new clauses need further work, but they all get towards a simple principle: to ask what is the role of a safe and legal route in this legislation. If the Bill is about illegal migration, what is the point of safe and legal routes? My amendment 138, which will be debated tomorrow, is about how that might then play a role in asylum processing itself.

There is a simple message in all this work. I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash); that might surprise people, and I am sorry he is not in the Chamber to hear it. He said that the processing and assessing of claims matters. Absolutely, and that is why the failures we have seen for a number of years have not been to do with the refugees themselves but to do with the politicians and their failure to get to grips with this. That is why it matters that the Government are not using the correct figures from the statistics authority. They are not showing us the true scale of the problem, which legislation has consistently failed to deal with. That is why we need to do something different, such as clarifying what a safe and legal route is and how it fits into the refugee convention and our processing. In a war, there are not simple processes of admin and bureaucracy that we can push people towards, so it matters all the more that we respect and recognise that in how we treat people who still think that life is better than death and who still choose to run.

I say to some Conservative Members that one of the top countries from which the people in the boats come is Iran. I have sat in this Chamber and heard people call out the Iranian Government and speak of their concern about the persecution of people in Iran. Not half an hour later, those people talk about how awful anybody in the boats is, although Iranians are the third most common country represented in them. There is no safe route from Iran.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

Contrary to the title of this Bill, nobody is illegal. Claiming asylum is an international human right. Desperate people arriving in the UK by whatever means they can, because there are no safe routes, should not be criminalised. I could say much more, but for now let me assure the Committee and the people listening and watching at home that my party will oppose this vicious, unfair and damaging Bill again in the Division Lobby tonight.

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

Several calumnies have found form in the contributions of Opposition Members in the course of our consideration of the Bill so far. Principal among them is that there is no factual basis that has provoked this legislation. That is simply not so.

Since 2018, some 85,000 people have entered Britain illegally, 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Roughly 75%—in fact, I think it is 74%—are men under 40. Nearly nine in 10 of those arriving are male; 18% are Albanian—and, by the way, Albanians make up 10% of the foreign prisoner population, with some 2,000 of them—and 100% have travelled through safe countries in which they could have claimed asylum in order to get here. Accommodating these people is costing the British taxpayer £3 billion a year. That is why we need urgent action to deal with the channel crossings but also, more fundamentally still, to reform our asylum system to make it fit for purpose and to cut immigration—and, I say to the Minister, not just illegal immigration, because we will need to turn to legal immigration too during the course of this Parliament.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. I have great respect for him, but I promised you that I would be brief, Dame Rosie, and I know that if I take interventions that will not be true, and I will break my promise. You would never forgive me for that and, worse still, you would not call me again.

I shall speak to some of the amendments that stand in my name, which I hope will help the Government in that endeavour. My amendments, along with those tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stone (Sir William Cash), among others, are designed to improve the Bill rather than to frustrate the Government’s efforts. Indeed, they are framed in order to make the Bill work—for the Bill must work.

The British people are at the end of their tether, tired of a liberal establishment blinded by its own prejudices which seems oblivious to the needs of working-class Britons but ever more indulgent towards economic migrants and anyone else who comes from abroad, for that matter. The British people demand and deserve something better than that. They deserve a Government who take their concerns seriously.

Just in case there is any doubt about those concerns, I refer Members to the work of Professor Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has studied these matters. He has revealed the opinions of an immense number of voters in so-called red wall constituencies. You will remember, Dame Rosie, that those are the seats that Labour hopes to win back, but it will not, because they are in the hands of very able Conservative Members of Parliament, many of whom take a view of the Bill that is similar to mine, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. Interestingly, 59% of people in those constituencies think that we

“should withdraw the right of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants who cross the Channel illegally in small boats to appeal against their deportation.”

That number

“jumps to more than three-quarters”

of 2019 Conservative voters and 39% of Labour voters. A large majority, six in 10, support

“stopping migrants in small boats from illegally crossing the Channel using any means necessary”.

Benjamin Disraeli said that

“justice is truth in action.”

My amendment 283 is designed to restore justice to our asylum system by affirming the truth. Little epitomises the anger felt by my constituents and many others about the unfairness of the system more than those economic migrants with no legal right to be here who arrive in Dover claiming to be younger than they are in order to game our asylum rules. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) pointed out when she was Home Secretary, in two thirds of age dispute cases, it has been found that an individual claiming to be a child is over—sometimes considerably over—the age of 18. This is a widespread problem.

Amendment 283 would introduce a scientific age assessment to ensure that those under 18 who need to seek shelter here can do so, as well as to find out those over 18 who lie to cheat our rules. The amendment is in keeping with the practices used in Europe by countries that verify the ages of those crossing their borders. The scientific age assessments used in many European countries for these purposes include dental and wrist X-rays in France, Finland and Norway, and CT or MRI scans in Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere.

I would be amazed if anyone who believed in the integrity of our asylum system opposed such an amendment, and I hope the Minister will confirm when he sums up that the Government intend to adopt it. Without such a change, we cannot properly break the business model of the people smugglers. These vile traffickers will simply tell the people whose lives they are risking to lie about their age to prevent them from being removed.

My amendments 129 and 130 would strengthen the Bill by ensuring that those who have no right to be here are swiftly removed. At present, the language in the Bill promises to “deport”. However, deportation is a distinct legal process from removal. Deportation is reserved for those who are a “risk to the public good”—typically foreign national offenders. By contrast, removal is a legal term for a process by which certain people may be removed from the UK, usually because they have breached immigration rules by remaining here illegally, but who do not necessarily pose a public risk or danger by so doing. Again, I hope that the Minister will enter into a discussion with me about how we can improve the Bill in that way and make it more effective.

I know, too, that the Minister will look at the amendments that aim to toughen the Bill further in terms of its language. Amendment 135, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, is vital as it will block courts from ordering that individuals who have been removed be return to the UK. If those removed to Rwanda were allowed to return to the UK following legal challenges, the deterrent gained from successfully sending them there would be diluted or lost altogether, so it is essential that those who want to join the small boats and the smugglers who organise their dangerous journeys know that the deterrent is credible.

Amendment 132 would ensure that other provisions of the Human Rights Act were disapplied. Right hon. and hon. Members know my view on the Human Rights Act: I would repeal it. And they know my view on the convention: I would leave it. But that is not what we are debating today, and it is not what these amendments seek to do. They simply aim to ensure that the Government’s policy, which has found form in this Bill which I hope is soon to be an Act, is not once again mired in appeals to foreign potentates and powers who will frustrate the will of the Government, this House and, more fundamentally, the British people.

I will not comment on amendments 139 and 140 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), except to say that they are arguably well-intentioned, but not necessarily so. A report last year, as my hon. Friend must know, showed that nearly two thirds of asylum seekers suspected of lying when they were unaccompanied children were found to be over 18. Of course care and sentiment matter, but we must exercise sense to avoid being naive about this subject.

For the sake of brevity, Dame Rosie, I will not say much more, except to conclude in this way: the British people want to deal with the boats. They want to restore order to our borders. They believe in the integrity of a system that determines whether someone is a genuine seeker of asylum in fear of persecution and in profound need or an economic migrant gaming the system in respect of their age. That is what the British people want, and that is what this Bill will do. By the way, just a quick word about judicial activism: it is a well-established concept and I would advise the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) to read about it in more detail, as he does not seem to have heard of it.

I say to the Minister that we must avoid listening to the bleats and cries of a bourgeois liberal establishment who will go out of their way to stop the Government doing what is just and right. I look forward to further engagement with him and, assuming that he says something sufficiently generous—indeed, slightly more than that; I would like to feel flattery—I will not press the amendments that stand in my name.

[Stella Creasy]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), a knight of the realm, lecturing us all on being in touch with the people and on class warfare. What a dystopian vision he paints of this country. I will confine my remarks to the three amendments in my name, because he does not speak for the majority in this country with his callous disregard for people seeking sanctuary, and in his callous disregard for the evidence and facts.

Amendment 293 reflects the challenge set by the right hon. Gentleman and by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who complains about people with visas. He must be disappointed that the Illegal Migration Bill does nothing about people who overstay their visa, which is clearly illegal. If this Bill were actually about things that are illegal in our asylum system, it would tackle visa overstayers. The Bill says nothing about people traffickers, and it contains no further sanctions and makes no further efforts to catch organised crime gangs. I now realise why it does not, having heard how the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North objects to the European Court of Human Rights standing up for British citizens who face the death penalty—he could not even say that stopping people being sent to their death for standing up to Putin is a good thing.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Alison Thewliss]

Is the right hon. Member going to disagree with the British Dental Association?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady will know that I tabled an amendment in Committee which the Government have now refashioned and tabled on Report, precisely because there is a pedigree for such testing across European countries. Many European countries routinely use such testing to establish whether children are actually children and to avoid the eventualities that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) has just mentioned.

[Alison Thewliss]

The British Dental Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and Unison’s experts disagree with the right hon. Member. These are professionals. [Interruption.] The Minister is laughing on the Front Bench and denigrating a trade union. Given the Government’s current position with respect to industrial disputes, I do not think that that is particularly wise of him. He might want to think about that.

I acknowledge Government amendments 134 and 136, but I am afraid I have real problems trusting the Government, because detaining children is wrong: that is the fundamental point here. The Government want to make regulations specifying the circumstances in which unaccompanied children should be detained, and further regulations on time limits. They do not have the courage to put those proposals into the Bill, and they know that we cannot amend statutory instruments should they deign to introduce them at some point in the future. We do not trust them to do the right thing here, because children are children, and it would be extremely harmful for them to be detained.

We tabled amendment 47 to try to humanise the Bill. Much has been said about hordes of people coming here and trying to claim asylum, but this, fundamentally, is about individual people, many of them fleeing circumstances that Conservative Members cannot even imagine. Accordingly, the amendment seeks to disapply the provision in clause 2 from people in a range of categories. The first, in subsection (a), covers

“a person who was under the age of 18 when they arrived in the UK”,

such as Shireen, whom I mentioned earlier, and many others like him.

Subsection (b) refers to a person from Afghanistan

“where there is a real risk of persecution or serious harm…if returned to that country”.

In Committee, I tried to personalise my amendments by putting a name to each of them. I could call this “Sabir’s amendment”, after Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council. He came here as a child in the back of a lorry, but he would be prevented from so doing, criminalised and removed to Rwanda if the Government had their way. He makes an outstanding contribution to Scotland. He has two letters which he said he would put on the wall in his house. One is from the Home Office, saying, “You are a person liable to be detained and removed.” The second was sent on behalf of the royal family when he was awarded the OBE.

Subsection (c) specifies

“ a person who is a refugee under the Refugee Convention or in need of humanitarian protection”.

That would cover many people who are currently fleeing from Sudan. Earlier, the Minister failed to identify a proper “safe and legal” route—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I hate the crossings. I hate every single aspect of the crossings. For a start, it is a traffic that turns people, in particular extremely vulnerable people, into a commodity. I have heard stories that traffickers often deliberately buy dinghies that are more dangerous, because they are hopeful they will be picked up by other people. That is despicable. They are deliberately putting other people at risk. They are also a sign of a failure of international diplomacy in other parts of the world, most notably in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. No doubt we will have people from Sudan in the not too distant future, too. They are chaotic and unregulated. There is no opportunity for justice or proper priority for those who are most in need, so I absolutely hate them.

Emotions run extremely high, most notably emotions on behalf of those who are being trafficked. They are in fear for their lives. They are terrified of being spat at, of being hated, of being in an environment they do not know and where they do not speak the language properly, and all the rest of it. Also, many people in this country watch with compassion that is mixed with anxiety and fear. That is why the language that we use is so, so important. I say very gently to the Minister that I really did not like it when, in a previous debate, he started using language about breaking into this country, and his using the word “cannibalise” today is very, very unfortunate. I know he is a decent man; I urge him to think about that language.

I do not, incidentally, buy the fundamental premise of the Bill either. If it really were trying to provide some kind of deterrent, it would have been thought through much more carefully. I do not believe that deterrent is really the matter of it. The push factors to the UK are far more significant than the pull factors in determining who ends up on a boat. Insofar as there is any evidence as to what the pull factors are, they are: that we speak English in the UK and lots of people are more likely to speak English than French, German, Italian or Spanish; that people already have family connections in the UK, so they think they might be able to base themselves here more easily; and that we have the rule of law. Those three things are not going to change.

I passionately dislike the Bill’s interaction with UK modern slavery legislation. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said it far more effectively than I can, but I just look at Government amendment 95. It is the worst piece of gobbledegook I have ever seen introduced:

“The Secretary of State must assume for the purposes…that it is not necessary for the person to be present in the UK…unless she considers that there are compelling circumstances…In determining whether there are compelling circumstances…the Secretary of State must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”

She is going to be in endless discussion with herself! It is just preposterous and completely undermines the good efforts, made over many years, to try to ensure we really can crack down on the traffickers. The best person able to reveal a trafficking ring is a victim of that trafficking ring. Without willing co-operation from those people, we simply give more power to the traffickers.

I also dislike the interaction with our international commitments. The former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), made the point earlier that, in essence, the Bill is asking us to say deliberately that a Minister can breach our international commitments. As somebody who has probably been the longest standing critic of President Putin in this House and has been saying this for a very long time, I do not want us to be in a very small group of countries with Russia and Belarus who have left the European Court of Human Rights. That, in the end, would do a terrible disfavour to British prosperity in the world.

[Sir John Hayes]

What the former Attorney General said—I thought it an extraordinarily contradictory contribution to our affairs—was that these judgments were not compelling. We are not compelled to abide by them—indeed we did not in respect of prisoner voting—yet he complained that there was something wrong with saying in law that we are not compelled to do so. Either we believe we are obliged to follow the judgments or we do not. The truth is that we should not be following them.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

There are times when we want to disagree with a Court ruling. The Labour Government certainly did over whether prisoners should have the right to vote. There was a lengthy process, and I cannot even remember where we ended up. I am not opposed to a disagreement with the Court—that can sometimes happen—but the Bill, and especially the amendments in the name of the right hon. Gentleman and others, deliberately ask the Government to front it up with the European Court and the European convention on human rights. In the end, that will do us long-term harm. When we want to have a conversation with China about abiding by international rules-based order, it will be more difficult for us to do that when we are offending our own treaty obligations.

Labour MPs are often asked the perfectly legitimate question: “If you don’t believe in this Bill, what would you do?” As I said earlier, first, I want a comprehensive security treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union. I think that was what we always wanted at the beginning of the Brexit process—the right hon. Member for Maidenhead was quite right to argue for it. I do not know why that is not on the table again now. It would solve many of the problems that we are seeking to address. Secondly, we should make it easier to arrest the traffickers. We need to devote more time, energy, money and international co-operation to making that happen. Thirdly, we need to process the backlog faster. The more people stuck in the backlog for months, the more the cost to the British people from hotels or whatever other arrangements are made. That is wrong.

Finally, I honestly do not think that anyone will be proud of this legislation in five, 10 or 20 years’ time. I hope that it will all be undone by a future Government. I do not even think that the immigration Minister will mention it in his memoirs.

[Sir John Hayes]

Edmund Burke said:

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

Defending our borders and our ability as a sovereign nation to remove people who have no legal right to be here is a matter of justice—it is legally just and socially just. So is our right as a Parliament and a Government to say how many people should come here lawfully. I suggest gently to the Minister that he needs to look next at legal immigration—the record numbers of people coming here and the visa system that allows that. All that matters to my constituents. I humbly propose that it matters just as much to the constituents of Members of this House from Ruislip to Rhondda, and from Worthing to Walthamstow.

Every poll or test of public opinion says that the British people want to stop the boats crossing the channel. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) said, not only does that endanger the lives of the people in the boats, it offends the principle that I just set out that a nation is no nation if it cannot control its borders. Despite the rhetoric that we have heard, Opposition Members are paying lip service to immigration controls. I believe, as do the vast majority of the people I represent, that there has been too much immigration into Britain for too long. Immigration is a salient for them in a way that it is just not for many Opposition Members.

Outside this place, the shrillest opponents of this legislation and the fiercest critics of the Home Secretary include those who are deluded and those who are devious. They are deluded in refusing to accept the reality that many of the people arriving in the boats are economic migrants, gamed by dodgy interest groups and devious lawyers to support spurious claims exploiting the capricious perversity of European judges, who no one in my constituency chose and who are not accountable to anyone in this Chamber or this country. The trouble is that some people do not believe in the integrity of our borders because, in essence, they do not believe in the integrity of our nation.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to my hon. Friend, who I hope does believe in the integrity of our borders and our nation.

[Laura Farris]

I do. I listened to what my right hon. Friend was just saying about the problem of European judges, but can he refer to a case from the European Court of Human Rights where those judges demonstrated a lack of respect for our immigration laws?

[Sir John Hayes]

I gave the example of a case that was not about immigration but about something as vivid as the issue of immigration: prisoner voting. Successive Governments—Labour and Conservative—opposed prisoner voting, and in the end the matter was dropped. That is a very good example of where the European Court of Human Rights was dismissive of the traditions and character of how we do things here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not because time does not allow.

The amendment I tabled in Committee, which has now been brought forward by the Government, will put in place scientific tests to establish beyond doubt the age of claimants.

Almost 90,000 people have come here in small boats in recent years. It costs £6 million a day to accommodate them in more than 300 hotels. The Government and this House must re-establish the faith of the British people that we understand their concerns. It is as simple as this: we must deliver the legislation because we must stop the boats.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I am interested to know whether I am part of the liberal establishment. As a working-class girl from Yorkshire, I am struggling a little with that concept. I wonder whether the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) is part of the liberal establishment that has been spoken about.

We on the Opposition Benches are clear that the tide of illegal migration to this country must be stemmed. We are also clear that the appalling rise in the number of people risking their lives in small boats to cross the channel is a damning indictment on this Government’s failure to secure our borders. Deflecting blame for their failure on each and every person who gets in a boat, at great risk to themselves, because they have no other option, is shameful and wrong.

I rise to support amendments 2 and 3, in the name of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), in the hope that Ministers will recognise the inherent injustice in this blanket approach and that they will reflect on the need to address the issue on the basis of what works, not what they believe will reverse their poor poll ratings on immigration.

The truth is that people are sick and tired of hearing from successive Tory Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries that they are finally going to get tough and sort out the mess that they themselves have made of our immigration system. If we want to address the growing cynicism in the country about promises made from the Dispatch Box that turn out to be hollow, Ministers have to give up their addiction to divisive and dangerous language and headlines, and get serious about the issue of illegal migration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank and commend right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for what has been a measured and thoughtful debate over the course of this afternoon. The Bill before us is probably the most significant immigration Bill in my lifetime; for that reason, it is important that we get it right. Today’s debate has centred on a number of significant issues. I will not reprise all my earlier remarks, having spoken then for the best part of three quarters of an hour and taken many interventions, but I will touch on the five principal areas that were discussed by Members on both sides of the House and attempt to provide any further reassurance that is required.

The first significant issue was the removal of minors. As I said earlier, the Government’s approach in respect of children is one in which we take the interests of the child extremely seriously. These are morally complex issues, and I and all the Ministers involved in the Bill’s preparation have thought very carefully about how we can protect children, both at home and abroad, as we have produced the Bill and the scheme that underpins it.

I hope that the ways in which we will approach the removal of children are now clear, thanks to the work we have done with several right hon. and hon. Members, including in particular my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). We will seek to remove unaccompanied children only in exceptional circumstances. As we have now made clear, the two principal purposes are for family reunion and for a child’s safe return home to the loving care of social services in their home country.

We have taken the issue of the detention of children extremely seriously, because we do not want to detain children. We will do so only in the most exceptional circumstances. The circumstances that we have now clarified in the Bill and in the debate, again with the helpful guidance and support of right hon. and hon. Members, are for the purposes of initial processing when children and families arrive irregularly in the United Kingdom in small boats or via other forms of clandestine entry, and then for the limited and defined purposes of removal from the country that I mentioned a moment ago. We understand the desire of many Members for there to be carefully thought through and limited time limits on detention. I hope that the amendment we tabled and my remarks today give reassurance that we will bring forward that regime and that it will be as short as practically possible.

There is a significant exception to that rule, which is, of course, for those cases in which there is a serious age-assessment dispute. In such cases, the undoubted desire to limit the amount of time for which a child is ever detained by the state has to be balanced against the equally important safeguarding issue of young adults posing as minors—indeed, not all so young, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said earlier with regard to the recent allegation about a 42-year-old posing as a minor. We have to get the balance right so that young adults do not regularly pose as minors and create an enormous and very concerning safeguarding risk for our young people.

[Sir John Hayes]

I rise simply to say that the engagement we have had with my right hon. Friend and his Department throughout this process has been exemplary. It has been a model for how good scrutiny can improve legislation. I thank him and, in particular, the Home Secretary for the stand they have taken.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and return the compliment. It is important that we in the Government listen to the expertise we have among Members from all parties. I hope Members will agree that that is the approach we are taking to these sensitive issues, of which age assessment is certainly one. I do not want to see a situation in which young adults are regularly coming into the UK illegally, posing as children, and ending up in our schools, in foster-care families and in unaccompanied-minor hotels, living cheek by jowl with genuine children. That is an evil that we have to stamp out, and the approach we are taking in the Bill will help us to do so.

The third issue that was the subject of debate and, again, a high degree of unity—certainly on the Government Benches, but perhaps more broadly—is the approach to safe and legal routes. We want to stop the boats; we also want to ensure that the United Kingdom continues to be one of the most respected countries in the world for the way in which we provide sanctuary to people who are genuinely in need. We are doing that already, as evidenced by the fact that since 2015, half a million people have come into our country legally on humanitarian grounds. We have safe and legal routes today, but I appreciate the views of a number of right hon. and hon. Members, including most notably my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.

That has led us to the agreement that we will rapidly bring forward the consultation with local authorities that grounds the desire of this House to be generous with the reality on the ground in our communities and councils. Within six months, we will bring forward the report that will result from that consultation, and as soon as possible over the course of next year, we will set up or expand the existing safe and legal routes so that the UK can be an even greater force for good in the world. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) laughs at that—of course, Scotland could step up to the plate as well. Since she tempts me, I will just say that her and her colleagues asked for an extension to today’s debate, but as far as I am aware, only two spoke in it. Fewer SNP Members spoke in the debate than could fit into Nicola Sturgeon’s battle bus.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

rose—

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

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

If I may, I will give way in the first instance to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

That is correct. The law today is that a child can be detained for eight days for the purpose of examination—that is not routinely done by the Home Office. Today, a child is detained for 24 hours or less and, whether for 24 hours or, if the Home Office chose to make use of the power, for eight days, they are detained only in age-appropriate accommodation. It would be unlawful to house an under-18 in accommodation that did not meet the standard set out in law. I will come on in a moment to describe that standard.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am immensely grateful to my right hon. Friend for all the work he has done on the Bill and these amendments. He will understand that the matters he is discussing bring age verification into sharp focus. As he knows, I tabled an amendment on that, which the Government ultimately re-presented as an amendment of their own. Will he confirm that age verification measures will be obligatory and comprehensive so that we do not any longer get the nonsense of people pretending to be children in order to game the system?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend is right. We take age assessment extremely seriously. As he knows, there are some young adults and individuals who abuse the system. Indeed, some are not so young—as I understand it, the oldest individual we have encountered who posed as a child was subsequently found to be 41 years of age. That is wrong as a matter of principle, and it is also a serious safeguarding risk to genuine children and all the caring people who are involved in supporting them, whether they be foster carers, teachers or members of the general public. We therefore have to take the issue seriously. That is why the Bill retains the power to detain an individual who is subject to age assessment for up to 28 days. During that period, the Home Office or local authorities would conduct age assessment. Today, that is done through the Merton system, which is proving to take longer than we would like, but which we want to be conducted within 28 days.

We are now taking advantage of the powers taken through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to begin to roll out scientific forms of age assessment. That will happen over the course of this year. Initially, it will happen concurrently with the Merton assessment. We want to ensure that that system is demonstrated to be robust and as swift as possible. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will unite in common agreement that it is important that we weed out cases of abuse, because they pose such a risk. I am afraid that we have seen some very tragic instances such as the murder that occurred in Bournemouth at the behest of somebody who had posed as a child. The state has to do everything in its power to prevent that from happening again.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

We should oppose all nine Government motions, which is precisely what my SNP colleagues and I will do this evening. Let me say again that this Bill is so appalling that the House of Lords should stop it in its tracks. However, Baroness Jones was the one speaker who had the guts to say:

“we should be stubborn about not allowing the Bill to go through.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 July 2023; Vol. 831, c. 1814.]

As I asked last week, if the Lords will not consider halting this Bill, which Bill will it be? This Bill is about locking up kids, forcing trafficking victims back to their exploiters, mass detention, closure of the UK asylum system and the trashing of international laws. If the Lords will not use their powers to block this Bill—a Bill that also runs totally contrary to what was in the 2019 Conservative manifesto—what is the point of their powers, and what is the point of the House of Lords? Let us hope that we can salvage something from these final proceedings.

On Lords amendment 1B, if the Bill is consistent with our international obligations, the Government cannot have any objections to the amendment. On the other hand, if, as the Government have at other times argued, it wrecks the Bill to have to be read consistently with international law, then the problem is with the Bill, not the amendment. That is a good reason in itself for the whole Bill to be stopped in its tracks. The revisions to the amendment mean that arguments about allegedly incorporating international laws have been addressed, despite the completely unsubstantiated assertion from the Minister. We have heard lots of strong words about protecting a dualist system of law, but given that the Government could not even make the normal human rights compatibility statement, we need strong action to protect fundamental human rights and the rule of law.

The grouped amendments 7B and 90D are also important in upholding the rule of law. They preserve judicial oversight, so that illegal decisions by the Government can be properly challenged before they are implemented. It really is as simple and fundamental as that. The Government keep talking about loopholes, but access to courts, the rule of law and fundamental rights are not loopholes; they are fundamental principles that we should be upholding.

Lords amendment 9B is another crucial amendment. It now includes safeguards to assuage the usual Government concerns about gaming the system, but retains the vital protection that if a person cannot be removed to Rwanda even after six months, they will then have their case assessed here. It simply preserves the status quo and is an essential protection. It remains an appalling prospect that people who are refugees will be left in limbo forever by the Government; never allowed to have their claim heard here and never able to contribute, even if removal is a near impossible prospect.

Indeed, it is also ludicrous that there will be people with totally unfounded claims for asylum who will get to remain here in limbo, often at considerable taxpayer expense, because of the Bill. The Bill stops unfounded claims being dealt with, just as it stops well-founded claims being dealt with. The end result is that thousands of people will need to be detained and accommodated in perpetuity. Many more will disappear underground, as they will have no reason to stay in touch with the Home Office. It is the end of the UK’s contribution to the refugee convention. Again, if the Government are not willing to move on that, their lordships should hold up the whole Bill.

On mass and limitless detention of children in inappropriate accommodation, of course we continue to support all efforts to curtail the horrendous new powers and to limit the extraordinary harm that we know—and the Home Office knows—detention causes to them. We therefore support Lords amendments 36C, 36D and 33B. As I said last week, the Government’s amendments in lieu really represent a pathetic non-concession. A theoretical right for some kids detained for removal to seek bail after eight days is just not remotely acceptable. At the very least, we need short, hard and fast limits, and those limits should be automatic and not dependent on a child being able to navigate the bail system and accessing the legal support that would be required to do that. And the time limits should apply to all kids, whether accompanied or not, and regardless of which particular powers they were detained under. The Government make claims about creating incentives to play by the rules, but, as with most of their claims, they offer absolutely no evidence. There is no suggestion, for example, that the introduction of strict time limits by David Cameron’s Government had the impact suggested here. It is just another myth.

As Members on both sides have said, the Bill is a serious threat to victims of modern slavery and trafficking, and yet again it totally ignores devolved powers on this subject. Those being exploited are the ones who will suffer, not the traffickers, whose power over their victims will only be enhanced by the withdrawal of any route to safety for those they are exploiting. We therefore support Lords amendment 56B and anything that will undo some of the damage that the Bill will do to modern slavery and trafficking provisions. Without 56B, the damage the Bill will do to slavery and trafficking laws across the UK is yet again sufficient to justify holding up the whole Bill.

On Lords amendment 23B and protections for LGBT people, we fully support everything Lord Etherton said in support of his amendments. Put the fact that these countries are not safe for LGBT people on the face of the schedule. Anything that builds on the flimsy and almost certainly unworkable system of “suspensive claims” should be welcomed. LGBT people should not have to go through that process in the first place. If the Government are committed to safe legal routes, they should have no problem with Lords amendment 102B. On the archbishop’s amendments 107B and 107C, a 10-year strategy is utterly sensible—indeed, it is essential. Long-term thinking is as necessary for issues surrounding forced migration as other pivotal challenges such as climate change.

Ultimately, the amendments can only add a little polish to an odious Bill that is utterly beyond redemption. It should be stopped in its tracks entirely and any parties that still send people to the relic of a second Chamber should be using their influence to see that that happens. Otherwise, this is all just for a show and very vulnerable people will suffer as a result.

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

Edmund Burke said that what matters

“is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.”

In considering the Government’s response to the Lords amendments, it is important to re-emphasise that the Bill is about fairness; about affirming the integrity of our nation by defending our borders from those who seek to arrive here illegally. We must have the power to remove those entrants from our country. To do so is just and fair. It is what the British people expect, what they voted for in 2019, and what they chose in the Brexit referendum.

Considering the arguments made in the other place, I was struck by the absence of a credible alternative to the Government’s proposal; there seems little sense there of the need to control our borders, stop the boats, save lives, and to make our immigration system fairer, more reasonable and more just. Sadly, much of the debate on the amendments in the other place has been characterised by a combination of denial and detachment from the popular will—denial about the urgency of the problem, and detachment from the sentiments expressed by my constituents and the constituents of other Members on both sides of this Chamber. Those arriving in small boats must be detained securely and removed swiftly, and it must be a straightforward process, for only through that process will we deter more people from arriving.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not, because of the time—I apologise to the hon. and learned Lady.

As the Minister has made clear, the Government’s response to Lords amendments 1B, 7B and 90D is rooted in the understanding that those amendments are unnecessary. The Government take our international obligations very seriously. Indeed, all three Appeal Court judges agreed that the Government’s commitments were in tune with and compatible with international law.

As for the motion to disagree with Lords amendment 23B, we must keep this matter in perspective. There is no evidence whatsoever that the vast majority of people coming to this country in small boats, or indeed a significant number of them, are seeking shelter from persecution because of their sexuality, and it is a distortion to pretend otherwise. In respect of the motion to disagree with Lords amendment 102B, this business of “safe and legal routes” is, again, a distraction, and a detachment from the urgency of this problem. The amendment is unnecessary and seems to constitute legislative grandstanding, for under section 1 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, the functions of the National Crime Agency already extend to combating all types of organised crime, including organised immigration crime.

Finally, let me deal with the motion to disagree with Lords amendments 107B and 107C, which propose the Archbishop of Canterbury’s “ten-year strategy”. I approve of having the Lords Spiritual in the other place. They are otherworldly—the Lord Bishops understandably take a view about an infinite, eternal future. However, those of us who are elected and answerable to the people directly have to deal with this world, here and now; and in this world; people demand that we control our borders, and they do so justly and reasonably.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not give way because I wish to finish promptly, as you would expect me to do, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The great Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said:

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”

This Minister and the Home Secretary have been constant in their purpose of controlling our borders. Let us have less sanctimony and more common sense; less self-righteousness and more selfless commitment to the people’s will; less soul-searching and more heartfelt advocacy of the interests of hard-working, law-abiding, decent, patriotic Britons who support this Bill and oppose the Lords amendments.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I regard the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) as a friend in the true sense of the word, but I say that it is a pleasure to follow him this evening—not least because it means that he has stopped talking.

There is a real sense of déjà vu about this debate, and not just because of the proceedings in relation to this Bill. We have heard all these arguments before, almost word for word. Everything that the Minister said at the Dispatch Box this afternoon had been heard in relation to what is now the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—and what progress has been made as a consequence of that? None.

I followed closely your exchange with the shadow Immigration Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker, in relation to the question of the Minister being misleading. I should say that I do not think for one second that the Minister was in any way misleading. I cannot speak for his intention, of course—only he knows about that—but I certainly was not misled. To any reasonable-minded person, it must surely be obvious what the Government are about today.