Illegal Immigration

Debate between Lee Anderson and Mark Hendrick

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I thank the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) for securing this important debate. It is a shame that there are not more Members here today.

I will choose my words very carefully in this debate, because words and language are important. We need to get tough in this place about the problem of illegal migration. I hear time and again that these people are fleeing war-torn countries—they are desperate people fleeing persecution. Well, let me say, I have been to France and it is quite a nice place. There is no war in France and they are not persecuted there. I served on the Home Affairs Committee for two years. I went to the camps in Calais, and the first thing we noticed was that it was all young men—there were no women, children or families. They were young men between the ages of 16 or 17 and 30. They all said the same thing to us: they would point at the white cliffs of Dover and say, “El Dorado”. They wanted to come to this country because they thought that the streets were paved with gold—and they are paved with gold, if someone is coming from a country such as Eritrea or Sudan.

The most annoying part for me was that there was a charity there called Care4Calais, which would attract those people. It would give them the co-ordinates in whichever country they came from, and it would take weeks or months for people to get there. Once they got to the camp, Care4Calais would set up a school to teach them how to speak and write English. It would give them new phones with data, give them shelter, and get them ready for the crossing to the UK. I take issue with the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, who said that once they get to England they are never leaving—it is once they get in the channel. Once they get in the channel they are picked up and ferried to our country. When they get to our country, they are placed in hotels—[Interruption.]

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division. We normally add injury time to debates such as this. As soon as everybody is back in the Chamber, I will be in the Chair and any time we have lost as a result of the vote will be recouped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

With injury time, the debate will now continue to 4.15 pm. I call Lee Anderson to continue.

[Lee Anderson]

Thank you, Sir Mark.

Once the illegal migrants—let us get the wording right: they are illegal migrants—get into this country, there is no way they are ever going to be deported. It only happens in very rare circumstances.

The most important thing for me is to get the terminology right. They are illegal migrants. They are young men coming into our country. Quite frankly—people can say what they want about me—I do not want these people in my country. They have broken into our country. They have thrown their documents away. They are undocumented. We do not know where they have come from. We do not know what they have been up to in their own country. We do not know whether they are criminals. We do not know what their intentions are when they get here.

We are a soft touch. These are illegal migrants posing as asylum seekers. We have heard some horrific cases over the past two years, with some of these illegal migrants being granted asylum status and then going on to commit horrific crimes—again, abusing our asylum system.

I get reports as a Member of Parliament, and I know my colleagues do, of young, undocumented men roaming around our town centres, intimidating people. That has to stop. Yet we see the non-governmental organisations, the lefty lawyers and the Labour party together encouraging these illegal migrants to come over the channel by using the same old slogan: “smash the gangs”. I am telling everyone in this room that that slogan is a complete nonsense. We have to stop the pull factor for people coming to this country.

Once these young men in northern France—I have to been to the camps—get into the channel, they are in this country. We may stop 100 boats a month, but those same people will get on to another boat and keep coming. Once they are in this country, they are going absolutely nowhere, and they are costing us a fortune. At the same time as we are waiting for the results of a vote to rob our pensioners of their winter fuel payment, supported by the Government, we are spending nearly £6 billion or £7 billion on illegal migration.

In the minute I have left, I will tell a quick story. In 1941, my grandad Charles William Waterfield left the Nottinghamshire coalfields. He left the pits before mining became a reserved occupation. He put a uniform on and went to north Africa. He left a wife and two children behind to fight for King and country. He did that. He did not run away. He did not go to another country and leave his wife and children behind, which is exactly what these young men are doing. They are leaving women and children behind in a supposedly war-torn country. Quite frankly, I do not want these sorts of people in my country and neither do the vast majority of the British public.