Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Kenneth Stevenson and Tom Hayes

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes]

Thank you for your patience, Mr Stuart. I will progress to my more substantive points.

I welcome the introduction of the new offence of endangering another life during perilous sea crossings to the UK, because we know that life is being endangered. At least 78 people died in the channel last year, and a total of 327 have died on the channel route since 2014. With your patience, Mr Stuart, I will talk about a particular case study.

We know that some of the lives that were cut short were incredibly young. A year and three days ago, a seven-year-old girl boarded a small boat in northern France with her three siblings, father and pregnant mother. The family joined six other children on that small boat, all of them seeking to cross the channel to reach the UK. Four other adults completed the complement on the boat. To describe that boat as small is a joke. It was later described as very small, no bigger than the kind a fisherman might use. It was too small for the number on board, which reinforces the point that I made to the hon. Member for Stockton West: that we are seeing the average number of people per boat rising, which accounts in part for the larger number of people trying to cross the channel to the UK.

The little girl I just talked about was pulled out of the water by rescuers. There were efforts to save her, but they failed. She could not be resuscitated. Aged seven, that child suffered a heart attack and she stopped breathing. Her family died. The six other children on the boat died. The four other adults on the boat died.

Later that day—3 March 2024—another boat crossing got into trouble. Thankfully, the 47 lives on that boat were saved. The night before, on 2 March 2024, another boat got into trouble when it deflated because it was not seaworthy. Again, thankfully, 20 lives were saved. But 327 lives have been lost on the channel route.

We know the facts of life in these flimsy boats. We know that every small boat is crowded with more and more people. We know that gangs are set on making as much money as possible, no matter the risk to life. We know that women and children are forced into the middle of ever smaller boats, so that when those boats fold and sink, as they do, it is they who are the first to be drowned or crushed. We know that the fuel is in containers that are so flimsy that they leak, and we know that when it mixes with seawater, saltwater, it inflicts the most horrific burns on the most vulnerable people.

We know another fact of life on these boats: the engines are among the weakest and the lifejackets are fake, do nothing and keep nobody afloat. And so I have to ask: why would we oppose the introduction of this new offence? It will ensure that anyone involved in physical aggression, intimidation or coercive behaviour will face prosecution and a sentence of up to five years.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been clear that this offence sends

“a clear message that we will take action against those who are complicit in loss of life or risk to life at sea.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 63.]

To hear that from a Home Secretary is really important for those criminal gangs that are contemplating criminality. This is about going after those who further jeopardise the safety and lives of others during crossings and who are actively preventing offers of rescue. It is not about, as some have said, criminalising vulnerable people and dangerous crossings. Indeed, the Home Office has already said publicly that the Crown Prosecution Service always considers whether it is in the public interest to prosecute individuals. This is about protecting children like the seven-year-old whose life was ended a year and three days ago.

I want to dwell on the point about child protection, because it is so relevant to the question of sea crossings and whether we have this offence to try to limit the loss of life. We heard in oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner for England about the horrifying crossings that are taking place, but we also heard that the Conservatives had forced vulnerable children into horrifying situations when they arrived here in Britain. The commissioner stated:

“Children were languishing without proper safeguarding in inappropriate places.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 21, Q21.]

The Children’s Commissioner had to persistently pursue, from a Home Office that hindered her from doing her job, data on

“children who had been victims of attempted organ harvesting, rape and various other things”.––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 25, Q26.]

As she says on children who are missing:

“We still do not know where many of those children are…that is not good enough.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 25, Q26.]

I say that because we have a massive child protection issue on our sea. We have a massive child protection issue in the United Kingdom. We need the Bill to make sure that children are safe.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. These steps have been taken following discussions with law enforcement to be as thorough as possible in our attempts to smash the criminal gangs and disrupt an organised activity at the very source, particularly in relation to endangering another during a sea crossing, but also when it comes to supplying and handling articles for immigration crime. We must allow enforcement every opportunity to identify the causes of such crime and use the findings of any investigation to deter further crossings. If he allows me a little bit of leeway, I will refer to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, who spoke about piloting boats.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Kenneth Stevenson and Tom Hayes

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Kenneth Stevenson]

Yes. I apologise—I think I have cut across the Minister, because she asked a very similar question, but, if you could give us an idea of how those three things that you spoke about before could be helped by the Bill, that would be really helpful.

Rob Jones: When we identify somebody from the UK who is involved in organising small boats crossings, for instance, we have to get very good, sophisticated surveillance control over that individual to get enough evidence to be able to produce a full file submission to the CPS for a section 25 facilitation offence. That could mean months of surveillance, or covert activity, in terms of eavesdropping and audio recordings.

In the meantime, we are seeing that individual with a public profile on social media, researching crossings, communicating with people overtly and meeting people. When you are looking at the commissioning of the offence, and you are living with somebody who is involved in serious organised crime, you are seeing that play out in front of you.

These clauses allow us to take elements of their business model—as they are meeting people, as they are researching, and as they are taking the preparatory steps to the section 25 offence—then go to the CPS and say, “We think we’ve got enough; we think we could go now.” That gives you more momentum, more speed and more agility.

It is the same mindset as trying to prevent attacks in the CT world. You would not choose to reactively investigate a terrorist attack; we would not choose to reactively investigate highly dangerous crossings in the English channel during which people get killed. We would choose to pre-emptively stop them, and that is what the new offences would introduce.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Q My question is regarding the asylum decisions backlog that the country faces, which we are now starting to move through. As a consequence, of course, some people will have their grants rejected and others will have them accepted. Where the grants are accepted, what would you say to anybody who claims that that could be a pull factor for people to try to access this country?

Then, just picking up on your point, Mr Jones, about criminal gangs starting to feel the pressure because of this new suite of tools, would you say that the tools provided for in this Bill, which will have a disruptive effect, could in consequence also have a deterrent effect on the criminal smuggler gangs?

Rob Jones: I will take the second question first. Obviously time will tell but, adding to what we are doing already, these tools will rack up the pressure, and that starts to change behaviour. It increases costs and increases friction in the business model. Those things contribute to deterring people from getting involved, and we see that with other areas of criminality. I will allow others to answer the asylum question.

Sarah Dineley: I am going to dip out, rather, and say that it is not really a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service, but I can tell you that the Home Office is undertaking a piece of work looking at what the pull factors are for migrants wanting to reach the UK, and at what point they reach the firm decision that the UK is their final destination.