Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Josh Simons Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

As others have spoken about the specific measures in this Bill, I will take a step back and talk about the ideas that underpin it. There have been grumblings tonight that we are aping Conservative Members and that we are being asked to pretend, to delude ourselves and to dupe the public somehow into thinking that we support strong and controlled borders as a precondition for managed migration. I support this Bill, but I am doing no such thing.

For one thing, we have no need to ape Conservative Members. Their continued smug self-satisfaction smacks of their refusal to reckon with the magnitude of their failure, including to secure our borders. We also have no need to emulate the tub-thumping, NHS-destroying five musketeers who seem to be enjoying flying around the world, raking in cash and occasionally representing their constituents. Only one of them has bothered to show up tonight.

We should worry less about those people and more about the force of our own arguments—the arguments of those who believe in progress and fairness, and who seek to represent the interests of working people in this country. So often I have been told by people who live in wealthier, educated, cosmopolitan cities that support for strong borders and for the right of a public to choose who joins its ranks is an unenviable moral compromise. They say that open borders are the natural state of things, and the use of force to control them is a regrettable, if sometimes necessary, feature of the modern world. Those who think that do not understand the history of our democracy.

I hope the House will forgive a short detour. In the first great democracy in history—ancient Athens—about half the residents were migrants, or metics. Metics were subject to different rules; who joined the city was controlled and the bar was set high for who could become a citizen and vote. If metics broke Athenian laws, they were expelled from the city, and sometimes thrust into the blazing Greek sun. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that people who govern themselves control who they are and who becomes a member of the demos, but in recent decades, some in this country seem to have forgotten that principle. For instance, I was enormously frustrated by the remain campaign’s failure to acknowledge that the EU alters that fundamental principle. We might argue that control is worth giving up for some other reason, such as economic growth or reducing red tape, but without acknowledging that it is given up, we lack the credibility to make the argument.

This is something that my constituents understood perfectly well: control over who joins our self-governing nation is not a moral compromise; it is the heart of what makes us a free people and a strong democracy. The upshot is simple: control over the borders of this country is a precondition for a serious moral debate about who we should allow to join, on what terms and for what reasons. Unless elected Governments can demonstrate to their people that they have control over admission, we cannot seriously debate the trade-offs in who we admit and why.

The public rightly judged my party to have lost credibility on this issue in recent decades. In 2004, we chose not to put the brakes on and opened our labour markets to new EU members. At times, we openly mocked those concerned about migration, but we are not that party any more. I was not elected to this Chamber to espouse those views; in fact, I promised hundreds of my constituents that I would not rest until we gripped our borders, restored control, and yes, as the Home Secretary said, brought down the number of legal migrants entering this country each year—and I meant it. For me, this is not a regrettable moral compromise—a pact with the devil in which we hold our noses and ape Conservative Members to win votes—it is about a deep belief in what it means for our country to be strong, and our democracy respected.

Elected politicians do not just follow the polls; they explain and defend their convictions, and ours are these: the Labour party exists to represent working people. We seek to win power and use it to represent people outside the establishment who do not usually sit in the rooms where decisions are made. At the heart of that is the simple idea that elected people like me should take responsibility for deciding who gets to join our country. Parliament controls our borders, not Brussels or, after this Bill, smuggler gangs. We in the Labour party believe in control and order. The Opposition do not.

I welcome the Bill unequivocally. Those who abuse vulnerable people to threaten the order of our borders should be treated like terrorists, and I am glad that under this Government they will be. In doing so, we are not aping anyone; we are doing what Labour exists to do: take back control to represent the working people of this great country.

Southport Attack

Josh Simons Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for updating the House, and welcome the uncompromising inquiry that she and the Prime Minister have announced. I would like to ask about social media and the digital information environment. I worked in a technology company for a long time, and I concur with the Home Secretary’s comments: the companies that we are talking about know what is circulating online and what is getting virality. After last summer, does she feel that she and the Prime Minister have the information that they need to make decisions in real time in order to secure our online information environment?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I do not think anyone would suggest that Ministers are in a position to make decisions on individual cases, but what we need is the right kind of framework. Clearly, the Online Safety Act will put new structures and systems in place. The Prime Minister made it clear this morning that we should not shy away from taking any further action needed to address this issue, because fundamentally, if it is impacting the safety of our children, we need to act.

United Front Work Department

Josh Simons Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising the plight of his constituents. Yes, I can give him those assurances. The Government take very seriously the kinds of interventions he refers to. Through the defending democracy taskforce, we are looking carefully at the issue of transnational repression, and we will have more to say about it in due course.

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Can I ask the Minister about the integrity of our democracy? In particular, what steps is he taking to ensure the integrity of the processes and institutions of our political process, especially but not only with regard to China?

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I briefly mentioned earlier the importance that this Government attach to the defending democracy taskforce. We inherited that body from the previous Government. We are working at pace to ensure that it works across Government as effectively as possible. Fundamentally, it seeks to address the point he made about challenging those threats to the integrity of our democracy. This Government will ensure that no stone is left unturned in seeking to address the significant challenges that we all know we face.

Respect Orders and Antisocial Behaviour

Josh Simons Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I take crime, urban or rural, very seriously. The neighbourhood policing guarantee, for example, is not just about urban areas; it has to cover rural areas as well. People living in rural areas should feel that when they need the police, the police will come, and that there is a police presence in their communities. I am happy to discuss rural crime further with the hon. Gentleman, if there are specific points that he wishes to raise with me.

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Since I was elected, there has been a constant stream of antisocial behaviour incidents across the towns that I represent, at Hindley Town and Ashton Athletic football clubs and in Platt Bridge and Winstanley. It really dents people’s pride in the towns that they live in, as the Minister said. Does she agree that the capacity for councils and housing associations to apply for and issue respect orders is a vital part of the new powers that she has announced today?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Yes, I absolutely agree. This is not just about the police; it has to involve councils, social housing providers and the other agencies that will tackle, together, the scourge of antisocial behaviour.

Border Security and Asylum

Josh Simons Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I realise that the right hon. Member is keen to get rid of me before I have even finished standing up at the Dispatch Box. Unfortunately, we have seen a succession of Conservative Home Secretaries—eight, I think, in the last eight years—none of whom resigned. Two of them were sacked under the last Government—actually, those two were the same person. Look, we have to be serious about this, because the dangerous boat crossings are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. Nobody should be making those journeys, and we have to work not just here but across other European countries to stop boats before they reach the French coast in the first place, to ensure that lives can be saved and the gangs are held accountable for their terrible crimes.

[Josh Simons (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement on the shocking figures that are symbolic of the failure of Conservative Members to restore control over our borders. I note that, despite that spending of taxpayers’ cash, removals of failed asylum seekers and foreign national offenders collapsed under the Conservatives. What is the Home Office doing to ensure that those who have no right to be in the UK are swiftly removed and the rules are properly enforced?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I welcome him to his seat in Parliament. He is right that removals of failed asylum seekers have fallen by a third since 2010. Removals of foreign national offenders have fallen by a quarter. That is not good enough. It means that the rules are not being respected or enforced, and it is why we will set up a new returns and enforcement programme. We have committed to 1,000 additional staff to work on returns and enforcement, to ensure that the rules are respected, not only where we have returns agreements in place but looking at individual cases as well. We must ensure that we have a system that people have confidence in. There is a lot of chaos to tackle, but we are determined to do it.