Illegal Migration Update

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, even as we discuss yesterday’s illegal migrants Bill update, new information emerges which requires the update to be updated, as we read in today’s papers of various claims and counter- claims. First, can the Minister explain to us where the Home Office will find the additional £2 billion a year, because it will no longer be allowed to use the foreign aid budget to pay for migrants in hotels? This is a result of the illegal migrants Act. Is this report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact accurate? Why has it never been mentioned? Did the Minister know about it, because when he was asked about it earlier by another noble Lord, he did not know anything about it. So can he update us on whether this should have been mentioned, or whether the reports of that additional £2 billion are wrong?

This Saturday we saw the year’s record numbers for a day, with 870 people crossing the channel. So far this year, 21,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats. Can the Minister tell us how many of those were children and what the estimate is of the numbers waiting in France for the opportunity? If the weather improves, does the Minister expect that that number will continue to grow?

As we watch the Government move from crisis to crisis on migration, can the Government update us on plans to house migrants? Is it the case that the Army base in the Prime Minister’s constituency is still to be used, and not dropped, as a possible option, as Sir Edward Leigh MP said yesterday in the other place? When will the “Bibby Stockholm” barge be fully utilised? Has all the legionella in the water supply now been dealt with? What happened with “Bibby Stockholm”, and when did Ministers become aware of the problems? What plans does the Home Office have for more barges or, as I read in the papers over the Summer Recess, for marquees?

The Prime Minister keeps declaring victory in respect of small boats, yet the “small boats week” designed to highlight success was a catastrophic failure that merely highlighted that fact. Is it not the case that the asylum backlog is still at record levels? Migrants continue to cross the channel in huge numbers, the provision of detention facilities outside hotels is a mess, and costs continue to rise. Can the Minister also update us on how many failed asylum seekers under existing laws are awaiting deportation?

We have continually called for proper returns agreements, particularly with France; safe routes; stronger police action nationally and internationally; dealing with the problems at source; and speedier decision-making. This Government remain in denial, while passing ever more laws, some of which undermine our international reputation. Can the Minister also tell me whether he agrees—and, if not, why not—with the deputy chair of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson MP, who said that his party had failed on immigration and that it had allowed the situation to get, to quote him, “out of control”?

We all believe that the small boat problem needs resolving—it needs dealing with—but greater competence and sensible policy would make a real difference, rather than always seeking tomorrow’s headlines. Is it not about time that the Government got a grip on this problem and, as a start, were actually competent in implementing the policies they put before us, rather than the incompetence we see day after day and week after week?

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I will not repeat the questions which have already been asked, except to emphasise the issue about the ODA money and the question of where on earth they will find funding for this to be changed.

This Statement is, basically, very thin gruel, because it opens the door to more problems than the problems we had already raised. I will question two of those big problems which are additional to the ones which have already been asked. The first is about the number of claim withdrawals. There has been a big increase in withdrawals of asylum claims, particularly from countries which have a very high grant rate for asylum claims. The previous rules on treating asylum claims as withdrawn provide three reasons that an asylum claim will be treated as implicitly withdrawn. The new version of the rules, since we completed the debate before the Recess, now adds two more grounds: failure to maintain contact with the Home Office or to provide up to date contact details, and failure to attend reporting events unless due to circumstances outside the applicant’s control. The Government say that the rule changes are to improve clarity regarding the withdrawal of asylum applications. It is difficult to see how adding yet further grounds will do anything other than increase the number of people who have genuine asylum claims thrown out.

The claims that I want to talk more about are those where, according to the rules, the circumstances in which an asylum claim will be treated as explicitly withdrawn have now widened. Before, the only circumstances in which a claim would be treated as explicitly withdrawn were where an applicant signed a specified form. Now, an applicant may also

“otherwise explicitly declare a desire to withdraw their claim”.

Can the Minister clarify what the “otherwise” circumstances are? These are new circumstances, but nowhere are they explained. How can he be sure that these people do not require protection, and what happens to them once their application has been withdrawn?

I will now follow on from the question I asked the Minister earlier today about the moving on process from Home Office accommodation. He indicated today that the process would be very swift, and he did not demur from the seven days I mentioned. That was down from the 28 days that currently exists; seven days now seems to be the new norm. We understand the urgent need to move people out of hotels and into more appropriate, community-based accommodation, but the way to achieve that is not by evicting them into homelessness—in effect, dumping them on the front door of the local authority, many without the biometric certificate which is the essential ticket to getting universal credit and the gateway to a home.

So my questions are these. What, if any, communication exists between the Home Office and local authorities of the names and details of those who are to be released and when? At what point, following the letter telling the recipient they have leave to remain, do recipients receive their biometric certificate, without which they cannot really proceed anywhere? Is there any standard of service in the Home Office on any time gap between the letter arriving saying that they have leave to remain and the biometric certificate being delivered? The Minister spoke today of the need to protect the service provision, but the actions taken by the Government focus entirely on the numbers issue, not on seeking a sensible solution to those coming through and out of the system. I fear that we are in for many more debates on the chaos left by a system that is driven by numbers and not by people.