Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Kenneth Stevenson and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Pete Wishart]

No, I am not going into this. I know that we are testing Dame Siobhain’s patience, so we will discuss this privately and might come back to it at another date.

As well as it being the right thing to do, this new clause would also let us use the skills available to us by giving people the opportunity for employment. The people I have met in some of the hotels in Perth have brought a whole range of skills that would be easily utilised by the community in which they are placed. It makes sense to take this change forward.

In the new clause, the Liberal Democrats suggest that work should be available three months after an application is made. That might be a little bit generous. If I was drafting the amendment, I would go for the six months that has been generally agreed with the all-party groups. I think that what we have done is introduce this issue as a debate item, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Woking for that. It is something that should be seriously considered.

There have been a number of questions at the Home Office about this and from a number of Members—not just from the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party but from Labour. I know that we have quite a compliant set of Labour MPs on this Committee, but a number of them have raised this in debates and in questions.

[Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

And there’s one of them!

[Kenneth Stevenson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. Can he tell me how many people in Scotland actually work, and how many are employed by the state? Where are these jobs that he is talking about, in which people are going to be employed? His Government cannot really get people employed just now. They have not been able to do that. They have not provided it. I do not see where the jobs are, but I am happy to listen to where they are coming from.

[Pete Wishart]

Of course, the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to have those statistics at my fingertips, so, as Ministers say, I will write to him to let him know how many people are in work in Scotland. But I say to him that we have the fastest-growing employment rates in the whole United Kingdom—something that he and I should be very proud about, given what has been created in our nation. He only needs to go and speak to some of the people in the care sectors in his constituency; they will tell him that they are crying out for available staff to come and fill the holes within their own sectors, as is the case in the health sector and in a number of others.

[Kenneth Stevenson]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the care sectors, and I take it that that includes palliative care as well. St Andrew’s Hospice is in my area; it costs £10 million to run it, and £3 million comes from his Government. That is an incredible shortfall. The hospice is talking about cutting numbers and not having as many staff as it would normally have, so where does the hon. Gentleman see all of these wonderful vacancy figures in care?

[Pete Wishart]

I am not entirely sure what point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make. I think jobs being available for ordinary Scots is the general thrust of his argument and debate, but I would just challenge him to go and speak to people who are actually working and serving in the care sector—people in the NHS. If he is really interested, he could come to my constituency and speak to those in rural sectors, and in hospitality and catering, who cannot get the people to staff their businesses, which is forcing them to close, or to open part time.

That is the reality of the situation, and here we have, sitting in these hotels, people who could do these tasks and functions. Not only that, but some of them are accountants, doctors and economists. The range of skills available in each of these hotels is quite outstanding. They speak perfectly good English. All of them could do these tasks. I think it is just such a waste that they are doing absolutely nothing other than waiting the months and months—possibly even years—for their applications to be processed by this Government.

I know this Government have improved on what was happening under the Conservatives, but there is still a long way to go before we are anywhere close to an efficient system in which people are having their applications processed readily and quickly. Therefore, I support the new clause; I think it is a good one to bring forward, and I really hope that the Government listen.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Kenneth Stevenson and Pete Wishart

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Pete Wishart]

And were they gang members?

Sarah Dineley: I cannot break that down, but that would include gang members. That is the total number of prosecutions.

[Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Q This might be a lag question, which is quite engineering-based, but you mentioned proactive, pre-emptive and disruptive, and those are engineering terms as well. I am really interested in how they react and would work within the Bill, how they would help the Bill and how the Bill would help them. Could you give us some idea of that?

Rob Jones: In relation to the powers in clauses 13 to 16?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

Yes, but that is gone.

Dame Angela Eagle: And very expensive they turned out to be. We have inherited such a mess, with huge backlogs and very long waits for appeals, that we have to try to clear up. We have an asylum system that essentially broke down—I think one of our witnesses was talking about it being “in meltdown” earlier today.

We are going to do the day job and start to get that system working. I think that having fast, fair and effective immigration decisions is a very important part of all of this, as is removing those whose claims fail so that we can actually get to the stage where people know that, if they come to this country and they do not have a reasonable chance of being accepted as an asylum seeker, they will be returned. I think that is what the deterrent is.

Seema Malhotra: If I may add one point, it is absolutely valid and right to say that this Bill is one part of trying to tackle both the criminal gangs and the demand. Certainly, the other side of the work that the Home Secretary has been leading on—in terms of agreements with other countries for returns, as well as the reasons why people are coming and what more could be put in place as a deterrent—is work that was also talked about in evidence today; international diplomacy is also an important part of the overall framework. That is going on in parallel, and it is important to be working upstream through diplomacy and agreements with other countries too.

[Kenneth Stevenson]

Q Listening today has been very interesting; I have written down some of the points. There were the points about organised crime, and about the Border Security Commander and the border post that he—or it might be a “she”, and I am not ultra-woke—would be in charge of. There is also the point about 2 million people coming over from Gaza, and that the tagging system has not worked, although I did not hear any evidence of that—I wanted numbers; as an engineer, I wanted to hear the background to that.

I then heard that there were no magical solutions and that war was not easy to win—so we are in a “war” with migrants. We then spoke about unkindness to asylum seekers. I think that the most important words that I heard today were proactive, pre-emptive and disruptive— that is what the Government are trying to be. Do you agree that that has to start with the gangs who are starting this and are pulling—or pushing—people across?

Dame Angela Eagle: Yes. There are many genuine asylum seekers, many of whom are granted asylum when they are finally processed, who have come in that way. There are also people who are trafficked, who are in debt bondage, who go into sex work in nail bars, say from Vietnam, or who end up—as the police chief told us—growing cannabis in hidden farms in all our communities or being involved in serious crime. Some of them are victims of modern slavery, and some of them are the perpetrators of all that kind of evil.

Budget: Scotland

Debate between Kenneth Stevenson and Pete Wishart

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Kenneth Stevenson]

I entirely agree, and we could go on. We could go on about the promised 800 GPs that are missing. We could go on about ferries. We could go on about everything. We could go on about selling off the seabed for well under what was required and not having any manufacturing input in Scotland for wind turbines or solar or any advanced manufacturing.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Kenneth Stevenson]

No, I will not give way.

Only yesterday we heard from the First Minister of Scotland, who ironically warned that not supporting his budget would play into the hands of populists. All the while he leads a party that has spent almost two decades pitting working Scots against one another in the interests of the Scottish National party, rather than the interests of Scotland. People can see through the Scottish Government, just as they saw through the Conservative UK Government. Their attempts to desensitise the electorate to the horror stories that we hear on a daily basis will fall flat, because this Labour Budget ensures that they have the money and the power, and there cannot be any more excuses. They have the votes. The First Minister should end the shadow boxing and focus on using the settlement provided by the Labour Government to deliver for Scotland.

This Labour Budget is promising for the people of Airdrie and Shotts and I look forward to working with the Scotland Office and other Departments to ensure that the impacts are felt. The Airdrie and Shotts constituency was at the heart of Scotland’s old industrial heartlands and it has all the skills and ability to be at the heart of a modern industrial strategy in this new era. I am pleased that this Labour Budget will unlock the potential of my constituency and its people to do so.