Immigration

Debate between Katie Lam and John Hayes

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Katie Lam]

I wish to make a little progress.

Fixing this broken system is the single biggest thing that we can do to restore trust in our politics. That means control of the borders and an end to mass migration; we need a system that works in the interests of this country and its people. Those who have come here legally and not contributed enough should be made to leave. Those who are here illegally, either by crossing the channel or from overstaying their visas, must be removed. The era of taxpayers funding accommodation, education, healthcare and legal challenges against their own Government for those who have no right to be here must end forever.

[Sir John Hayes]

We should deport the approximately 1 million people who are here illegally. We also need, as I hope my hon. Friend will acknowledge, to look at the indefinite right to remain. All kinds of people—with extremely dubious pasts, presents and possibly futures—have been granted that status. Will she commit the Opposition to relook at that, because indefinite does not mean permanent?

[Katie Lam]

We already have committed to that and will continue to do so. It is a clear amendment both to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill and to the deportation Bill in the name of my right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary.

Unless and until politicians of all stripes can deliver the migration system that the British people have voted for time and again, there will be no reason for them to trust in our political system, and they will be right not to. We have seen no indication from this Government since they came to power last year that they are willing to do what needs to be done to give the British people the immigration system that they want and deserve. The debate today, I am afraid, has been no different.

The Minister clearly wished only to speak about the record of the previous Government. But they are in charge now—and what do we see? My right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, points out the facts. He says that Afghans are 20 times more likely to be sex offenders, and Government Members say, “Outrageous!”. Well, it is outrageous; saying so is not. He points out that over 70% of Somalis live in social housing, and they call it race-baiting. That is exactly the attitude that has allowed our political class to ignore the reality of the world that we live in. No party and no Government who continue to treat the British public’s very legitimate concerns with such scorn will ever rise to meet the challenge of securing our border.

The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) called for more safe and legal routes, but demand to come to Britain will always dramatically outstrip our supply. There is no number of safe and legal routes that will ever stop people making the dangerous channel crossing. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) called for this House—not foreign courts—to decide who can stay in this country. I admire his stance, and I look forward to the launch of his campaign to leave the ECHR.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) made a characteristically insightful speech about the substantial challenges of integration, and rightly connected that to the volume of immigration. No country of our size could ever hope to integrate that many people each year, and he is right to say so.

Victims and Courts Bill

Debate between Katie Lam and John Hayes

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a privilege, as a Member of Parliament, to support our constituents in their hour of greatest need. All too often, that is when they are a victim of an appalling crime. Many of the constituents I speak to are at their wits’ end; they are desperate to be heard, helped and protected. They rightly want their tormentors to be made to stop, and they want justice.

Many of the steps taken in the Bill will be welcomed on both sides of the House and by victims across our country. It is right, for example, that we restrict convicted sex offenders’ access to their children, and it is right that we give victims more information about their offenders’ release. However, the calls for justice for the victims of grooming and rape gangs grow only louder. Across this country, people are rightly horrified by these crimes and the subsequent cover-up, which represents the biggest national scandal in our history, yet the Government have failed to use this opportunity to deliver real justice for those victims and survivors.

Last month, I spoke in this place of the details of just some of these disgusting crimes. I was able to so because of the organisation Open Justice for All, which has purchased, redacted and published transcripts from some of these court cases. However, it has been refused permission to do that in several instances, because a judge has claimed that there “no public interest” in doing so. This is wrong. Of course we must make sure that the anonymity of victims is protected, but nobody is suggesting doing anything to compromise that. These were public trials held in open court, and at the moment the transcripts represent the only way to get to the truth of these revolting crimes that have been carried out across Britain for far too long.

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

Is not the answer, in part at least, a national statutory inquiry into what occurred, not least because we do not actually know whether it is still going on? That inquiry would expose so much, which would allow all those right-thinking people to take the action necessary and protect so many of the people who might be at risk from further horrors.

[Katie Lam]

I can only agree with my right hon. Friend. It is appalling that such transcripts are currently the only way to understand what has happened in these cases. Relatedly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) has previously said:

“These aren’t just legal documents, they’re historical documents that tell the story in detail of some of the worst crimes in our recent history”.

This Bill acknowledges that transparent information about our justice system is in the interests of victims, but it does nothing to address the problem. What is more, due to the current limits on appeals against unduly lenient sentences, many victims of these horrific grooming and rape gangs will be denied a vital opportunity to seek real justice. In far too many of these cases, we have seen courts hand down lenient sentences. For far too many victims, there will be no redress and their abusers will walk free. Often after just a few short years, these monsters are back in the communities they came from, walking among us and walking among their victims.

Just last week, the Court of Appeal revisited the case of three men who were convicted of raping a teenage girl in Yorkshire. Ibrar Hussain and brothers Imtiaz and Fayaz Ahmed were convicted in January for committing unspeakably evil crimes against a 13-year-old girl. In the first instance, they each received sentences of less than 10 years. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark mentioned, he and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) referred this case to the Attorney General. In this instance, the court rightly ruled that these sentences were far too short. This Bill should have made it easier for victims to seek such redress. It does not.

Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension

Debate between Katie Lam and John Hayes

Monday 10th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful to the Petitions Committee and the well over 200,000 members of the public who have requested that we debate this topic today.

Some may be uncomfortable with the petition before us, which calls on us to suspend all immigration for five years. That would represent a radical departure from the status quo. Some may even be tempted to be dismissive of it, but that reaction would be wrong. I commend the hon. Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) for taking this so seriously.

This petition is an expression of the deep and entirely legitimate frustration that the British public feel with the way that successive Governments of different political parties have handled immigration. I say that that frustration is entirely legitimate because the level of migration to this country has been too high for decades and remains so. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) has said, the last Government, like the Governments before them, also promised to do exactly that—but again, like the Governments before them, did not deliver. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) summarised it well in a speech he gave here in Westminster Hall a few months ago:

“Immigration is the biggest broken promise in British politics, and probably the biggest single reason that British politics is so broken.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2024; Vol. 759, c. 163WH.]

This is not only about the betrayal of the public’s trust, terrible though that is. People can increasingly see the tangible downsides of high immigration in their own lives. They can see it in their wages, which are stagnating because they are being undercut; they can see it in their soaring rents, in how hard it is for their children to get on the housing ladder, in the cohesion of their communities and in the pressure on their GPs, their dentists and our infrastructure.

Several Members today have mentioned the public’s fears about that, including the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury). Those of us in Westminster should not be surprised to see members of the public demand a radical change of course. Elected representatives must respond to these material concerns, not with platitudes, but with actual change. If we fail to do so we will see demands for a total shutdown on immigration grow louder and louder.

I do not believe that we should suspend all immigration. Like the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), I believe that a small number of highly skilled people can make a valuable contribution to this country, bringing their talents, experiences and ideas with them—but our current system does not select for such individuals.

In part, this issue is about quantity. Over the last few years, this country has seen unprecedented levels of immigration: over a million people per year from 2022 onwards, and net migration at or expected to be at least 820,000 people, as we have already heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). That means adding as many people to Britain’s population as live in Leeds, this country’s third largest city, every single year. Even if they are highly skilled and keen to assimilate, every person who comes to Britain needs infrastructure, housing and healthcare. Assimilation itself, bringing new migrants into the fabric of our communities, becomes much more difficult with people arriving here at anything like this kind of scale.

This issue is about not just quantity, but about the people we welcome to Britain. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that people who come to this country do not cost more than they contribute. What they pay in tax should at least cover the costs of the public services that they use. That is the opposite of the situation we have now. Only a small proportion of those who have come to this country over the last few years are likely to be net lifetime contributors.

After just five years here, many migrants will become eligible for indefinite leave to remain. With ILR status, they gain access to universal credit and social housing, surcharge-free access to the NHS and much more. According to analysis from the Centre for Policy Studies, over 800,000 migrants from the past five years could soon claim ILR, at an estimated lifetime cost of £234 billion —equivalent to £8,200 per household, or nearly six years of defence spending.

If we accept that the immigration policy of the past few years was a mistake, we should make every effort to reverse its long-term consequences. That is why the Conservative party is advocating that the qualifying period for ILR should be extended, giving us an opportunity to review time-limited visas issued over the last five years. ILR conditions should be tightened to ensure that future applicants are genuinely likely to be net contributors. Those who have come here legally on time-limited visas and who have not contributed enough should be expected to leave.

But it is not enough to correct past mistakes. Moving forward, we must also design a sustainable immigration system that addresses concerns about immigration volumes and the people we allow to come here. Those who come to Britain should be genuinely high skilled, with the capacity to support themselves and their families without relying on public funds. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex has previously argued, culture also matters. We must recognise that fact and design our system with assimilation in mind. It is both fair and sensible to prefer immigration from societies that are more like our own.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is giving a compelling summation of both the debate and the problem. She will know that Trevor Phillips, the Labour politician and columnist, first deconstructed the idea of multiculturalism. His argument was that it perpetuated the notion that cultures could co-exist without anything that bound them together, but that those cultures would in the end segregate and, in his words, create ghettos. It is important that we challenge that and build a society based on what we share, the things we have in common, and the links and bonds that tie a civil society together.

[Katie Lam]

It is important to say, as my right hon. Friend’s intervention reflects, that we absolutely can have a multi-ethnic society, but that it is fundamental that we are one country and one people with one perspective.

The kind of immigration system that I have discussed is one that the British people have voted for time and again: limited, selective and tailored to our needs. Unfortunately, I have seen no indication that the Government are willing to implement such a system. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are not planning to extend the qualifying period for ILR? Can he outline what discussions he and others in his Department are having with ministerial colleagues about the impact that new ILR grants will have on public services? Have the Government made any estimation of the number of people who will receive ILR over this Parliament? Finally, will the Minister outline in detail, and most importantly with a specific timeframe, the substantive plans the Government have to address the volumes and impact of immigration, both legal and illegal?