Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Tomlinson]

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman that any two countries’ systems are the same. As I have previously said, those freedoms are in Rwanda’s constitution. He has previously asked me that question, and I have read out the precise wording. I endeavour to do so again before the end of this debate.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Many people share the Government’s ambition to stop the boats. Would these Lords amendments not muddle the legislation in a way that, once again, would leave us open to an unnecessary court challenge? Can he reassure us that, unamended, the Bill will do the job?

[Michael Tomlinson]

I know my right hon. Friend has taken a close interest in the Bill since the outset, and he is right. The amendments fall into two categories: those that are simply unnecessary and those that are worse than unnecessary. The second group are wrecking amendments deliberately designed to prevent the very things that the Bill was designed to do—namely, stopping the boats and getting the planes off the ground.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has previously accused me of repeating myself from time to time—heaven forfend—but he is right, because our approach is justified as a matter of parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional propriety. Indeed, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) has even said that it is not unprecedented, and he is right. It also meets our international obligations.

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[John Redwood]

Where would the proposed returns unit send illegals to, and what if the countries concerned did not want to receive them?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am pleased the right hon. Gentleman has asked me that question, as we often get this point about returns from Conservative Members. What I find fascinating is that, when we look at, for example, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are clearly safe countries in principle, we see that 80% of the applicants from those countries whose asylum claims fail are not being removed by this Government. For instance, the Home Office rejected asylum applications from 1,750 Pakistanis in 2023, yet Home Office data shows that just 620 people were removed to Pakistan in 2023. A clear proportion of those would have been asylum seekers—some may well have been foreign national offenders. The key point is that there are many, many countries to which it is more than possible to return people, yet the Government are simply failing to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) asked an extraordinary question in Home Office orals on Monday about a foreign national offender in her constituency who has been convicted of a sexual offence and has asked to be returned to his country of origin, but the Home Office has not facilitated that or allowed it to happen. Clearly, there is something going seriously wrong with returns. As I have mentioned, we have seen the number of returned failed asylum seekers plummet by 44% since 2010. We should be focusing on those countries with low grant rates, because that is where we can clear some of this backlog and return people to their country of origin when they have no right to be here.

Legal Migration

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I have no doubt that the Immigration Minister, who is hugely experienced in this portfolio, will come fully armed with facts and figures at his fingertips.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

We eased the driver shortage by training more people at home and paying them more. Is that not the right model for the scarcity occupations?

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend is right. What we want is a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy. These proposals and the work that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced support that. Labour would do the opposite.

Stop and Search

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

As I mentioned in my statement, the Department is trialling a more sophisticated approach to calculating disparity, with a focus on the Metropolitan Police Service. That has produced a useful analysis based on actual suspects of violent crime, rather than the totality of usual residents of an area, as a denominator for calculating the rates of stop and search. It is experimental, but the data emerging from that advanced study demonstrates that disparity ratios are significantly reduced for black people compared with the traditional method, falling from 3.7 to 1.2. That is an emerging evidence base upon which policy will be made.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I strongly support the Home Secretary’s further measures to cut the unacceptable loss of life from violent crime. Will she confirm that her statement is part of a much wider strategy to tackle the underlying causes and problems, as well as the use of weapons?

[Suella Braverman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: stop and search is one tool in our armoury in the fight against violent crime. We have increased police resources and broader police powers; we have continued funding for our violence reduction units, which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violent crime in their area; we are working on piloting serious violence reduction orders; we have rolled out knife crime prevention orders; and we have been working intensively with all agencies to ensure that they prioritise such crime and take appropriate action.

Public Order

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The Chamber will not be surprised that I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The right to protest is an important and fundamental right that I will ferociously defend, but serious disruption, nuisance and criminality are unjustified, which is why the police need the right powers to police protesters.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am grateful for what my right hon. and learned Friend is seeking to do. Can she confirm that there could, indeed, be cases in which protesters stop one getting to hospital for an emergency operation or procedure, or stop a woman who is about to give birth from getting to hospital in a hurry, and that they are risking people’s lives?

[Suella Braverman]

Their tactics are dangerous. They are putting people’s lives at risk by stopping ambulances getting to emergencies and stopping people getting to hospital appointments. They are stopping people getting to work, school and funerals. The instances are infinite, and the disruption must stop.

Illegal Migration

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Every application for asylum is determined on its own merits, in conjunction with consideration of human rights laws, international conventions and our domestic laws. Depending on the circumstances of the case, all applications for asylum are considered.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

If we reduced the waiting time from, say, a year to three months when making a decision on an illegal migrant, would that not cut the accommodation and other public service costs by three quarters and relieve a lot of the pressure? What is a reasonable time to come to a conclusion on whether someone is illegal and should not stay, or is welcome here and can get a job?

[Suella Braverman]

That is why I am encouraged by the progress we are making on our initial decision backlog, cases preceding last summer where people have been waiting for many months and in some cases years for a decision on their asylum application. It is essential that we bear down on that backlog, shorten the time that people are waiting for a decision and fundamentally reduce the cost to the taxpayer.

Student Visas

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

No, we will not devolve immigration policy to the Scottish Government: it is right that the UK benefits from one immigration policy and that is the way it will always continue to be under this Conservative Government.

I am afraid that the hon. Lady was misguided on a number of fronts. First, it was this Government who created the international education strategy, which set a target of attracting 600,000 international students to the UK. We have met that target 10 years early and are likely to exceed it this year. The action we are taking today does not take away from that goal: it ensures that there are no unintended consequences. It was never the intention of that policy to enable a very large number of dependants to come to the UK with those students. It is right that universities attract the best and the brightest and that those who are on longer courses, such as PhDs or MPhils, can bring dependants with them, but it is not right that education is a back door for immigration into the country.

The statistics I quoted earlier show the significant increases in the number of student dependants. In 2019, 16,000 visas were issued to student dependants. Last year, the number was 136,000—an increase of eight and a half times. In 2019, for every 10 Indian students, there was one visa issued to a dependant. Last year, that doubled to one in five. For Nigerian students studying in this country, 65,000 dependant visas were issued in 2022 to only 59,000 students.

We do not want to do anything that would harm the international reputation of our universities, but it is right that we pay particular concern to pressure on housing supply and public services, to integration and community cohesion and to making good on our commitment to the British public that we will bring down net migration, which is what the vast majority of the public want to see done.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

When we invite people to our country, it is important that there is good provision of housing, school places and healthcare, but there are huge stresses on the system. Can the Minister give the House some guidance on how much the capital and revenue set-up cost is for a migrant family coming in? When we were in the EU some time ago, it reckoned the cost was €250,000 for a migrant coming to an advanced country.

[Robert Jenrick]

Obviously that cost varies widely depending on the country of origin and the skills of those individuals. The points-based system is set up in such a way as to encourage higher-skilled individuals to come to the UK for work purposes, but my right hon. Friend is right to say that it is a relatively accessible system, and that has meant large numbers of people entering the UK for a range of different reasons in recent years. We should be acutely concerned about the pressures that is putting on housing supply, public services and integration, particularly in those parts of the country with heated housing markets, such as the one he represents. That is why it is right that we take action of the kind we are taking today.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

We have a proud and extensive tradition of offering refuge to hundreds of thousands of people who apply according to our system and our criteria. I am proud of the refuge and security that we have provided to people fleeing the very circumstances to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

By ensuring that people do not remain here, we are removing their incentive to make the journey in the first place. But crucially, if people are truly in need of protection, they will receive protection in Rwanda. Critics overwhelmingly fail to acknowledge that fact. Let us be clear: Rwanda is a dynamic country with a thriving economy. I have enjoyed visiting it myself, twice, and I look forward to visiting it again.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is the Home Secretary also worried that the criminal gangs that are exploiting people in this dreadful way for great profit may also be linked to other types of serious crime and helping to finance other destabilisation?

[Suella Braverman]

I am afraid that my right hon. Friend raises a very worrying fact about what we are seeing. When I have spoken to police chiefs around the country, they tell me that criminality—particularly drug supply and usage—is now connected to people who came here illegally on small boats in the first place.

Thirdly, Rwanda is a fundamentally safe country, as affirmed by the High Court. It has a proud track record of helping the world’s most vulnerable, including refugees, for the United Nations.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to look at that case and any others that are brought to my attention. The backlog, however, is a symptom of the problem, which is that far too many people are crossing the channel illegally, and that is what this Government are determined to tackle. The hon. Lady and her Opposition colleagues have voted against every tough measure that we have sought to take in recent years. I hope that she will now get behind the measure that we are taking, the statement the Prime Minister made last week and, of course, our world-leading Rwanda partnership, which the Court today gave its agreement to.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Government introduce urgent legislation to strengthen control of our borders, and could that include a notwithstanding clause to guide the courts against using other laws that undermine the fundamental principle of the Prime Minister’s policy?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out last week our intention to bring forward legislation early next year, and at the heart of that legislation will be a simple point of principle that we on this side of the House believe: no one should gain a right to live in this country if they entered illegally. From that, all things will need to flow. Nothing is off the table. We will take our obligations to deliver on that policy very seriously. That is in stark contrast to the Labour party. At the weekend, the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), could not even say whether illegal entry to this country should be an offence. That says it all. We believe in securing our borders and in controlled migration. The Labour party is the party of mass migration.

Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for a number of valid concerns and suggestions that I will certainly bear in mind. It is important now that the Home Office tackles the quite serious operational issues it faces, one of which is obviously addressing the backlog of cases. We are going to do that by training the staff better, ensuring that they have the right leadership and ensuring that they can raise productivity by having a less bureaucratic system than the one we have today.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to disperse people throughout the United Kingdom in a fair and equitable manner. One of the challenges we face is the fact that, disproportionately, Scotland has not stepped up to this challenge. There are, I believe, only about 10 hotels in Scotland that are currently housing asylum seekers, for example, and the Scottish Government have not supported us in procuring others. Asylum seekers are primarily centred on the city of Glasgow, which has a very significant number of asylum seekers and a long history of accommodating them, but other cities and towns in Scotland need to do the same. If he would like to work with me to correct that imbalance, I would be delighted to do so.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The Minister should know that we do not want 24 hours’ notice of another hotel going; we want our hotels back to their proper purpose. When is he bringing legislation through this House as a matter of urgency to give him the legal back-up he is going to need so that fair and quick judgments on asylum are upheld, not overturned by the courts?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I are reviewing the legal situation, and we will come to a view about whether further changes are needed to make sure that our laws are sufficiently robust. My right hon. Friend and I are in agreement that individuals should come to this country only if they are genuine asylum seekers fleeing persecution, war or human rights abuses, not asylum shoppers who have passed through multiple safe countries, including France, and certainly not if they come from demonstrably safe countries in the first place, such as Albania. We should pursue all options, including Rwanda, to create the right amount of deterrence to deter people from making the crossing.

Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Member has my assurance that the standards of decision making will be upheld, but we believe we can do it in a far more productive manner than has been done in the past, and if we can make more decisions every week than we do today, we will get through the backlog as quickly as we can.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Government legislate urgently to deal with the obvious loopholes in the law that are exploited by people smugglers and economic migrants? And I share the concerns of my colleagues about the use of hotels in my area.

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and I are reviewing whether further changes to the law are required. One area we are particularly interested in is the modern slavery framework. That is important and well-meant legislation, but unfortunately it is being abused by a very large number of migrants today, and if we need to make changes to it so that we can ensure that it is not exploited, we will do so.