Small Boat Crossings

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the question. No, it does not breach the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment. As the noble Lord will know, we do not comment routinely—as did his Government—on the location or content of particular asylum hostels. But he will know that this Government are resolutely committed to restarting the asylum process and to saving an estimated £7 billion for the taxpayer in doing so. We are going to deliver a major uplift in returns, and we have already returned people. We will scrap the Rwanda scheme, which the noble Lord was an architect of. We will save several million pounds in doing that and we will put that towards speeding up asylum claims and ensure that we put this matter back on track. We will revisit the Labour manifesto in due course, but I give him a firm “no” in answer to his question today.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register; I am supported by RAMP. We all want to stop dangerous journeys to the United Kingdom, of course, and it is right that we deal harshly with people smugglers, but surely we must also try to take away the demand for the trade that these cruel people provide. Claims for asylum protection can be made only from within the United Kingdom, so the way to beat the smugglers is to provide a safe way of making an application. Will the Government examine pre-screening people from countries with a high chance of a successful application—such as Afghanistan at 96% and Syria at 99%—and then provide them with a travel permit giving them the right to make an application for asylum, thus bypassing the smugglers? Does the Minister agree that this proposal would enable the Government to regulate and predict the number of asylum seekers, as has happened in other parts of the world?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

We will regularly keep under review how we manage the case load on asylum. The noble Lord has made some suggestions that are certainly worthy of examination, but the Government are committed, overall, to meet their international responsibilities on asylum, to reduce the use of hotels, to smash the criminal gangs and to end the Rwanda scheme and use that money in a productive way. On criminal gangs, since 4 July—which, he will note, was the election date—53 people have been convicted of smuggling, 23 of them for running small boats, and they are now enjoying 52 years in prison as a result.