UK Borders Control Bill

Debate between Karen Bradley and Christopher Chope

Friday 9th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on the Bill and on the debate he has started today.

The Bill raises important issues on the control of immigration to the UK. That is a key priority for the Government, and we have taken significant steps to strengthen the border and immigration system, including in respect of who is allowed to enter the UK and who is allowed to remain. I therefore strongly commend the intention behind my hon. Friend’s Bill, but I do not believe that the measures it contains are necessary. There are also aspects of the Bill that would be unlawful.

The measures contained in the Bill do not reflect the extent to which the new powers and other reforms to control immigration, which the Government have put in place already, provide an effective basis for controlling our borders. For example, the Immigration Act 2014 put in place a series of fundamental reforms that will ensure our immigration system is fairer to British citizens and legitimate migrants, and tougher on those with no right to be here. The 2014 Act limits the factors which draw illegal migrants to the UK and introduces tough domestic reforms to ensure that our controls on access to benefits and services, including the NHS and social housing, are among the tightest in Europe.

A number of my right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned net migration numbers. Our reforms have cut net migration from outside the EU by nearly a quarter since 2010, close to levels not seen since the late 1990s. Under the previous Labour Government, more than 1 million EU nationals came to the UK from 2004 to 2010. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, managed migration works. Like him, I am positive about both this country today and the future. We have a diverse population, which makes the UK a great place to be. It is also worth saying that there are pockets of the country where there has been significant amounts of migration, but there are areas that have not seen great changes in population. According to the Office for National Statistics, my own constituency saw an increase in population of 200 between 2004 and 2013, and some of them will, of course, be UK nationals returning.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised the issue of our economy. We have a booming economy in this country compared with the rest of Europe. The job is not finished, but our long-term economic plan means that the prospects for this country and this economy are better than they are anywhere else. He is right about the number of jobs created here in the UK. I understand that over the last four and a half years, we have created more jobs here in the UK than have been created in the whole of the rest of the European Union combined. That is why there is a pull factor for people. I can well understand that. I can understand why somebody sees an opportunity to get a job in Britain and thinks that it offers a better chance. We can all sympathise with that and understand it, but we have to be clear that migration policy must be fair to UK nationals living here today.

The Government have fundamentally changed the system we inherited, under which an EU national could arrive in the UK and claim benefits shortly after their arrival and for a significant period, with few checks on whether they had a real chance of finding work here. Now, EU national jobseekers cannot claim benefits until they have been resident here for three months, and then only for three months before we test whether or not they have a genuine prospect of finding work in the UK. Now, they have no access to housing benefit, and we have introduced new powers to remove EU nationals who are not fulfilling the requirements for residence and to prevent their re-entry for 12 months. We have new powers, too, to deport EU national criminals more quickly.

The Immigration Act 2014 will strongly reinforce our work to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws and continue to attract the brightest and best to the UK. Implementation is well advanced: many of the measures have gone live and are already having a positive impact on the ground. For example, we have revoked more than 4,500 driving licences held by illegal migrants, and since July 2014 we have deported more than 150 criminals, using new powers provided by the Act. New measures in it, including the immigration health surcharge and measures to tackle sham marriages and civil partnerships, will be introduced on a phased basis between now and April 2015. The Immigration Act also makes it easier to remove those with no right to be here and ensures that the courts must have regard to Parliament’s view of what the public interest requires in immigration cases, engaging the qualified right to respect private and family life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights.

[Mr Chope]

I sympathise with the Minister, given the responsibilities she has. I have just been looking at the immigration statistics issued on 27 November, covering the period July to September 2014. It says there that there were 9% fewer enforced removals from the United Kingdom compared with the previous 12 months. If the Government are getting so tough on deporting these people—quite rightly—why were there fewer removals in that period?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and I shall come on to his comments. We must be clear, however, that the Immigration Act gives us new powers. We have powers to remove people without regard to the number of appeals that they could previously have used. We should look at the powers that we have today and the criminals we can deport today.

Foreign criminals and immigration offenders are no longer able to hide behind weak human rights claims to prevent their removal from the UK—something that they could do before. We do not need the Bill’s provisions to enable us to deport foreign criminals or remove immigration offenders. The Court of Appeal has now confirmed that the consideration of a family or private life claim must be conducted in the light of Parliament’s view of the public interest, as set out in the Immigration Act.

The measures taken by the Government have significantly strengthened the legal framework for our border and immigration system provided by the Immigration Act 1971 and other legislation, which regulates non-UK citizens’ entry to, and stay in, the UK. The legal framework and operational measures we have put in place provide and implement the powers needed to examine non-UK citizens before or on arrival in the UK to determine whether they should be admitted or granted or refused leave to enter, in accordance with the immigration rules and regulations laid before Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Well, what a disappointment it is that the Government are not going to accept this Bill. I thought it was going to go through, but instead I am going to have to explain my disappointment to my constituents and to a wider audience. The debate has been useful, however, because it shows the extent of the constraints that this Parliament has chosen to impose on itself. [Interruption.] The Minister is agreeing with that. We have chosen to fetter our ability to control our borders, and this Bill would enable us to take the fetters off.

[Karen Bradley]

I just want to clarify what I was agreeing with. I thought my hon. Friend was going to talk about the great steps this Government have taken to ensure that we have managed migration. I apologise if I misunderstood what he was about to say.

[Mr Chope]

Nothing I have said, or that I intend to say, is designed to detract from the achievements of the Government. All I am saying is that despite the Government’s best efforts—as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, this Government have been working a lot harder and more effectively on this than the previous Government did—faced with the evidence I have educed today, I do not see how under the current legal regime we are going to be able to reduce net migration into this country to the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands as is the case at present.

The Prime Minister reasserted in his speech of 29 November his desire to get net migration down below 100,000. I agree with that. All I am saying is that I do not see how it is going to be done. We have got to have an open and honest debate about this, and it may well be that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is right that the only solution—unless we can get our EU colleagues to change the treaties, which seems to be a rather uphill struggle—is to put this issue to the British people in a referendum. They have not had the chance to have their say on this before because when we last had a referendum we had no concept of European citizenship and free movement of people, as imposed on us now. We could say to the people, “Do you wish to retake control of your own borders and re-establish ourselves as a sovereign nation with control over our own destiny, or do you wish to remain in perpetuity subservient to a supranational power, the European Union?” That is a clear proposition and I think it is implicit in what I have been saying that when presented with that choice I would choose freedom, sovereignty and democracy—and the rule of law.

I am therefore sorry that this Bill is not going to make any more progress. I could test the will of the House on it, but if I was to do that, I would jeopardise the chance of having even a very short canter round the next Bill on the Order Paper, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.