Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department Debates - View all Lindsay Hoyle's debates with the Home Office
(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
Nobody wants to see people risking their lives in crossing the channel, but it is time for the Government to swap sensationalist rhetoric and barbaric Bills for evidence-based policy. The fact is that a significant majority of these people are likely refugees—Home Office officials have previously acknowledged that and so should the Home Secretary. Regardless of whether they are or not, these people should be treated decently and fairly, not criminalised, offshored or warehoused. The Home Secretary’s Bill is picking on asylum seekers instead of people smugglers—it is desperate stuff. There is no silver bullet, but we need co-operation with our neighbours to tackle smugglers and a two-way transfer agreement that allows for families to be reunited here, as well as for removals, where appropriate and lawful. In other words, we need to fix the problems that Brexit has caused. The Brexiteers have made their bed and they should lie in it. The Government cannot legislate their way out of this. We know already that inadmissibility rules have made things worse, not better. We know that offshoring will cost a fortune, will not work, and will destroy lives and any credibility that the UK has left—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Gullis, you have been catching my eye far too often. If you don’t behave, I’ll have a word with your mother.
Stuart C. McDonald
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, as that gives me the chance to repeat that we know already that offshoring will cost a fortune, will not work, and will destroy lives and any credibility that the UK has left. So it is time for the Government to ditch the criminalisation and the other cloud cuckoo policies that the Home Secretary’s own civil servants are criticising, and start working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the independent inspector of borders, with their real-world, evidence-based and lawful recommendations.