Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, here we go again, as the Government launch yet another Bill to deal with their catastrophic failure on asylum. We have record backlogs, claimants waiting sometimes years for claims to be sorted, children lost, and claimants bundled into hotels with no or little local consultation. Last year, a record 45,000 people crossed the channel on small boats, up from four years ago, as convictions for people smugglers have halved. It is a public policy failure.

Just last year, the Nationality and Borders Act was passed. The Home Secretary said:

“Anyone who arrives illegally will be deemed inadmissible and either returned to the country they arrived from or a safe country.”


Can the Minister update us on how that is going? How can it work with no return agreements and the shocking Rwanda plan, as it should be, stuck in the courts? Last year’s Act led to 18,000 people deemed inadmissible because they travelled through safe countries. Without the return agreements, which the Minister never mentioned, can he confirm that just 21 were returned—or if he prefers, 0.1%. The other 99.9% were placed in shocking hotels, or similar, at the cost of £500 million and more boats arriving. It is chaos—chaos with shocking human consequences and potential rises in community tensions.

What is different this time? Where are the return agreements? Where are all those to be detained for 28 days going to be housed? What happens after the 28 days? Let us remember, among those people, there will be torture victims, those fleeing war and persecution, Afghan interpreters and families with children. It is chaos, unworkable, but it gets the Government the cheap headlines they crave—even if it means potentially excluding victims of modern slavery or trafficking. Where are the safe and legal routes that many in this Chamber have been asking for? To take one example, what route exists under the existing rules or under this Bill for Afghan interpreters who fled Afghanistan, and were told by the Government to flee Afghanistan, to avoid capture by the Taliban?

Let us put in place an alternative, one that will no doubt be mocked by those seeking sensationalism. This would include: giving asylum caseworkers the support and help they need to speed up the process, rather than criticising them in emails; putting in place proper new agreements with France, Europe and others, including returns; properly controlled and managed legal routes, such as family reunion and reform of resettlement. What is wrong with competent and sensible public authority? What about the plan to tackle gangs by establishing a cross-border policing unit—why has that not happened? Have we got to the point where, as a people smuggler told Sky News yesterday, three-quarters of the smugglers live in the UK? Is that right? What is the figure? What are the Government doing to arrest and prosecute them?

All of this is being done in a Bill that drives a coach and horses through international law, leading to a potential withdrawal from the ECHR. What does the Minister think one of its architects, Winston Churchill, would think of that? How does the Minister justify the unbelievable statement about the ECHR on the front of the Bill? I have never read something like this on a Bill before:

“I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”


That is written on the front of the Bill. It is unbelievable that a British Government should put on the front of a Bill that they should ignore international law and the legal system in this country. This is an absolutely disgraceful disregard for international law.

What will other countries think of us? Are we as a country not about upholding the principle of respecting international law? Is that not one of the things that we campaign for across the world? Of course, we have a difficult issue to deal with around small boats, and we have outlined, as I just did, some sensible ways forward. But it cannot be right to seek to solve this issue through strategies rather than solutions, or by gimmicks, quick headlines and recycling harmful rhetoric. The Bill is not a solution and is not in the finest traditions of our country, which we are all so proud of. It risks making the chaos worse. Is it not true that the only people to blame for that will be the Government themselves, but the people who will suffer are those seeking asylum from horror and tyranny?

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I came across an article that said:

“The longer the queue, the worse the administrative confusion, the greater the incentive is for racketeers to target their efforts on Britain. There is a direct link between Government incompetence in managing asylum cases and the surge in applications to stay here.”


This was written in 2000 by William Hague, then the leader of the Conservative Party and now of course the noble Lord, Lord Hague of Richmond. He was criticising the then Labour Government, but, in the ministerial letter we received, referring to plans to

“clear the legacy initial decision asylum backlog by the end of 2023”,

there was a complete failure to acknowledge that this legacy was created by a Tory-run Home Office, which has never got a grip over the last 13 years. Nearly 100,000 people have been waiting for a decision on their asylum claim for over six months—that is four times the number in 2019. We need a minimum service level in the Home Office.

We all want to see an end to dangerous channel crossings, but the Bill and the hullabaloo surrounding it are just more of the same gimmicky gesture politics, not the practical and sustainable solution that is actually needed. The Bill is not only unworkable but illegal and immoral. It treats people as criminals simply for seeking refuge. In the article I quoted from, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, said:

“We believe Britain has a moral as well as a legal duty to welcome here people who are fleeing for their lives.”


That “we” was the Conservative Party 23 years ago. No wonder that even some Tory MPs are now upset at the xenophobic and dehumanising rhetoric and intentions to breach the refugee convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.

In her enthusiasm to make the demonisation of refugees an election selling point, the Home Secretary appears to have broken the Ministerial Code: a fundraising email sent in her name to Conservative Party supporters disgracefully tarred civil servants as part of an “activist blob” that has “blocked” the Government from trying to stop the small boat crossings.

Why is the Bill needed, when the ink is barely dry on the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which was supposed to be the magic solution that would stop the boats? This plan will punish the victims of persecution and human trafficking, but it will do nothing to stop the evil criminal gangs who profit from these small boat crossings. Not only are the majority of men, women and children who cross the channel doing so because they are desperate to escape war, conflict and persecution; most of them are in fact granted the protection they need. Four out of 10 people arriving on boats last year were from just five countries, with an asylum grant rate of over 80%—the Home Office recently decided to fast-track applications from a similar list of countries. How does the plan to deem inadmissible any claims from people who arrive on small boats from countries such as Afghanistan or Syria accord with these facts?

The only way to stop these dangerous crossings is to create safe and legal routes. The Government talk about such routes, but where and what are they? Will the Government commit to granting humanitarian visas to people needing to flee? We are told that the Bill will introduce an annual cap on the number of refugees whom the UK will accept, but how would that work? If the next person arriving is escaping the terrible cruelty of the Taliban or the appalling regime in Iran, will they just be refused? The number of family reunion visas issued in the year to September last year was more than a third down on 2019, so safe routes are in fact being constricted. Will the Minister assure me that the Government will commit to supporting my Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill, which recently passed this House, when it progresses through the other place?

Instead of locking up asylum seekers or forcing them to stay in hotels, will the Government commit to ending their absurd ban on asylum seekers working after they have been waiting months for their claims to be processed? If so, they could pay their way.

We are expected to proceed with a Bill of which the Government themselves say there is more than a 50% chance that it is incompatible with the ECHR. Quite how they can say they

“remain confident that this Bill is compatible with international law”,

when simultaneously believing that it is only 50% likely to be, is a mystery. How can a law actually designed to circumvent human rights possibly be fit for purpose? Lastly, speaking of human rights, can I ask for a list of countries to which people would not be returned?