EU Action Plan Against Migrant Smuggling (EUC Report)

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the chairs of our two reports, the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat—under whom I had the privilege of serving on this committee. I do not want it to sound like Tony Blair if I keep wishing him goodbye, but I hope he will not go too far away.

I found that it was not until the speech, relatively late in the debate, of my noble friend Lord Marlesford that we really got round to gripping the problem here. The subtitle of the report of the committee on which I sat, An Impossible Challenge, is really what we should address. In a democratic state such as we are in, we have to realise that this impossible challenge must be met. The current problems and perception in Britain have to be faced head on.

I have risen in this House previously to point to the many legal migrants in this country, particularly from the EU but also from elsewhere, and the huge contribution they make, but I am afraid that in the way this debate is often handled people conflate illegal and legal migration, not recognising that the vast number of people in Britain who were not born here are here legally and are contributing enormously to the community. This is one reason why we have to tackle the problem and come up with a solution. Frankly, whatever the rights or wrongs may be, Europe will not accept unlimited numbers of refugees, as Chancellor Merkel is currently finding out.

We are also in a situation where, as our Prime Minister said, many,

“are not asylum seekers, but people seeking a better life”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/6/15; col. 583.]

Seeking a better life is not wrong. Most of the legal migrants in Britain are here seeking and finding better lives. But we have to look at ways in which we can deal with the problem of illegal migrants. Sophia is part of it but only a small part. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, outlined a way forward. There are other ways forward, but they will probably involve some sort of haven in north Africa. One problem at the moment is that if you are rescued at sea, you have effectively won the jackpot. All you have to do is get on a boat and be rescued, as opposed to sink, and you are okay. That is a very lottery-based approach.

A long time ago, a great Conservative politician, Robert Peel, drew the distinction between legitimate public expenditure and other public expenditure. I believe that one mistake this Government have made has been in cutting back public expenditure on both the coastguard service and Border Force. Why do we not look at the lorries as they get on boats to come to Britain? Because we have cut the number of people working for Border Force. Dedicated civil servants were doing an extremely good job and we decided to cut back the numbers employed. We decided not to put the latest technology on the docks in Calais and other places to X-ray and look through the sides of lorries to see whether human, breathing life was inside. One thing we must face up to is the need to reverse those cuts and not to continually tell civil servants and union members that they are useless. If we want to control borders, let us start by taking the legitimate steps within our own hands to control our own borders.

We also need a slightly less sentimental attitude towards some of the illegal migrants who are here. I was interested to see last Sunday—I am looking at the right reverend Prelate, because this is largely about his profession—Reverend Pete Wilcox, Dean of Liverpool, who has baptised 200 asylum seekers in the past four years. He said:

“Mixed motives are not unheard of”.

Later he admitted that,

“there was no similar rush to convert to Christianity from Muslims who already had British citizenship”.

It would appear that that is a fairly open loophole. The reverend prelate also said:

“I can’t think of a single example of somebody who already had British citizenship converting here with us from Islam to Christianity”.

That is clearly an abuse of process, and there is a lot more in this article and elsewhere. We need to toughen up a little because it is not fair to the legal migrants who are here if we behave in that way.

All migrants in Britain should be treated properly and should be given an honoured place in society because they work very hard when they are here. I also believe, however, that our current migration policy is not fit for purpose, so I challenge the Government to follow the advice of the great John Maynard Keynes:

“When the facts change, I change my mind”.

I believe that the facts have changed over recent years and I invite the Government to have a fundamental rethink about how they approach the problem.