Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scope of Lords amendment 10 is specifically for those who served shoulder to shoulder with our armed forces and in our diplomatic and development efforts in Afghanistan. These are people to whom the United Kingdom owes a debt of honour and a debt of gratitude. I am not sure whether honour is a word that we can apply very easily to those on the Conservative Benches, but that is what this is about.

Lords amendment 9, in the name of the noble Baroness Butler-Sloss, is also based on a moral imperative, as it would prevent the removal of potential victims of modern slavery to Rwanda until they receive a decision from the Government on whether there is credible evidence that the person is a modern slavery victim. It really should go without saying that modern slavery victims should not be sent to Rwanda but, sadly, with this Government, basic moral decency is a scarce commodity.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Let me speak to Lords amendments 9 and 10. Those of us who have dealt with trafficked victims and those who served us in Afghanistan feel that there is some loss of moral compass somewhere. Those who served us in Afghanistan, in a whole range of different functions, have only just survived getting out of the country. They have been chased by the Taliban and their families have been harassed. Some of them got to Pakistan and were then threatened with force back over the border again. They have got to us traumatised, and we are going to traumatise them again by sending them to Rwanda. That cannot be right. I cannot believe that any hon. Member who has dealt with such cases could not support these amendments, because it is human suffering in the extreme, and for those who have served us, it is human suffering brought about by their loyalty to us.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes the case with passion and conviction. I know that he has a number of asylum seekers and refugees in his constituency and he does a huge amount of work on their behalf. He is absolutely right: there are some issues that should really transcend the day-to-day political considerations that we have in this place, because they are issues that are based on moral imperatives. It is deeply disappointing that, in Lords amendments 9 and 10, the Government have refused even to use them as the basis for negotiation or some kind of compromise. We find that deeply disappointing.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Stephen Kinnock

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We know from our long period of being in the European Union that, in order to get a deal with the EU, there has to be a quid pro quo. There has to be a negotiation based on a grown-up conversation about how to tackle the challenge we face, and an all-encompassing security agreement could be a very good way of opening that door, because of course the EU knows that the United Kingdom is a very important security partner for all sorts of reasons. I agree with my hon. Friend entirely on the very strategic point he has made. Although we support the Government’s new clause 8 on safe and legal routes, we believe it should be linked to securing a returns deal with the European Union. As I said, our approach is based on hard graft, common sense and quiet diplomacy, and we urge the Government to start thinking and acting in the same vein.

Our third commitment is that Labour will fix the problems with current resettlement programmes. This includes the broken Afghan schemes, and our new clause 21 instructs the Government to report every three months on progress—or lack thereof—in meeting their own targets in supporting those loyal-to-Britain Afghans who sacrificed so much to protect our servicepeople and to stand up for our liberal values in Afghanistan. All resettlement routes need to be properly controlled and managed, of course, and they therefore cannot be unlimited, but they do also need to work.

Fourthly, Labour’s long-term international development strategy will include tackling the root causes of migration upstream through increased humanitarian assistance and greater emphasis on conflict prevention and resolution programmes. This is slightly beyond the focus of the Bill, but an important aspect of migration policy—and a lesson that needs to be learned from Afghanistan in relation to Sudan, of course, which was mentioned earlier—is that if we cut aid and cut the right kind of aid, we will end up increasing the challenges around the dangerous channel crossings and hurt British values and interests.

Our comprehensive plan will also fix what is perhaps the Conservatives’ most astonishing failure of basic governance: the failure to clear the backlog. It is truly staggering that just 13% of small boat asylum claims are being processed within five years, and it is deeply troubling that, while around half of the huge 166,000 backlog is down to small boat crossings, another 80,000 has built up organically under the Conservatives since 2010.

This is no coincidence. Home Office decision making has collapsed. In 2013 the Conservatives downgraded asylum decision makers to junior staff, hired by literally going from a Saturday job one minute to making life or death decisions the next. No wonder this resulted in worse decisions, often overturned on appeal, and it is deeply troubling that the staff attrition rate in 2022 in these teams stood at an astonishing 46%. There is little prospect of improvement, given that Home Office statistics published on Monday show that this year the number of decision makers has decreased.

So let us be clear: the incompetence and indifference of consecutive Home Secretaries since 2010 have brought the basic functions of government to a grinding halt, and during this cost of living crisis the British taxpayer is paying the price. Our new clause 10 therefore sets out how the Government should get on with expediting asylum processing for the countries listed in the schedule to this Bill. If an applicant has no right to asylum in the UK, they should be removed, safely and swiftly, to the safe country from which they have come, such as Albania.

Further to new clause 10, our new clause 13 instructs the Home Secretary to publish a report every three months on the progress she is making on clearing the backlog.

[John McDonnell]

I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Minister’s flow, and I wholeheartedly support him, as we have time and again, with regard to the criticisms of the Government’s lack of processing of cases, including the lack of staffing resources. On new clause 10 and the proposal for an expedited asylum process, can my hon. Friend reassure me that there will be no lessening of the legal rights of asylum seekers, of access to legal representation and of the application of international human rights treaties and conventions?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Absolutely, the proposal is that there are a number of countries with very low grant rates and that must therefore be where we triage, and put them into a category where the processing can be expedited. However, all the processing must be done on an individual, case-by-case basis, in line with our treaty obligations; we cannot have block definitions of any particular category of asylum seeker, which of course is one of the main issues concerning the legality of the Bill, and that includes access to legal aid. So I can absolutely reassure my right hon. Friend on that point. We have to get the balance right: we must focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of dealing with the backlog—which must be based on triaging, giving much more support and upgrading the staff in the Home Office—but that must be underpinned by the provisions to which my right hon. Friend refers. Of course, the return on investment for improving the quality of decision making would be rapid and substantial, because quicker processing means fewer asylum seekers in hotels.