UK Asylum and Refugee Policy

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as a member of your Lordships’ Justice and Home Affairs Committee. I thank the most reverend Primate who once again brings before us today a subject that allows us to rise above the topicality of daily politics and properly focus on and think about an important policy area.

Six years ago, I made my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House in another of the most reverend Primate’s debates, that time on British values. In his opening remarks he said:

“In short, we need a more beautiful and better common narrative that shapes and inspires us with a common purpose, a vaulting national ambition, not a sense of division and antagonism both domestically and internationally. We need a narrative that speaks to the world of bright hope and not mere optimism, let alone simple self-interest.”—[Official Report, 2/12/16; col. 418.]


In the area of migration, it seems that we have reached a place wherein lots of competing values and aspirations are clashing and failing to provide the necessary framework that can command consensus and that common purpose that the most reverend Primate so eloquently described in that debate.

Only last week we witnessed outrage in many quarters about the number of migrants who have entered the UK this year, forgetting the enormous public support there was, quite rightly, for the Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Kong humanitarian resettlement schemes. However, with figures of net migration juxtaposed and conflated with images of small boats, it is the case that, as my noble friend Lady Stowell referred to, a poll earlier this week showed that only 9% of people think current immigration in the UK is just right.

All too often the debate seems characterised in a way that consensus and a settled position may never be reached. I have yet to meet anyone—the most reverend Primate referred to this—who does not think there should be controlled migration. Of course government policy should be considered, and will always be challenged in your Lordships’ House, but if the Government can be expected to control migration and thereafter allow more humanitarian channels, they will have to act to defeat the evil of people smuggling. I am glad to say that it is a priority of the Prime Minister.

In this regard, I tend to agree with the Policy Exchange paper, which noble Lords have referred to, on controlled immigration, published last month. We must be realistic that the extra humanitarian routes many of us want will gain popular and then political consent only when the small boats issue and evil gangs have been confronted.

Consensus on migration issues requires leadership. If there are three principal buckets of migration that the UK wishes to fulfil—humanitarian, economic and educational—each must be properly defined and promoted to the people of this country. In each of these areas, a consensus of support can be built. It has been done before. However, it will require significant improvements in the systems deployed to control immigration, as well as assurance that the UK is proactively seeking to improve its humanitarian and asylum offer. Humanitarian needs will only increase. The UNHCR has identified that 1.5 million more people will require asylum or resettlement in the coming year.

Undoubtedly, something that leads to a lack of public consensus is the very slow processing rate of asylum claims by the Home Office, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure your Lordships that there will be the kind of human and creative investment in a Home Office system to ensure that asylum claimants are given as quick a decision as possible. The tiny numbers of asylum decisions at present cause only further distress for those escaping horrific tragedy, but mean that others see the UK as a place where a very slow process will allow leave to remain for a long period.

As well as being efficient, such a system must be humanitarian. I believe that the United Kingdom has a proud history of humanitarian action, but almost always at a point where it is just a little too late, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. We must move away from a situation where legal resettlement schemes are reliant on media reports to gain public traction, in turn to ensure political support for legal resettlement. We have one of the best diplomatic networks in the world. Surely we should have proactive resettlement plans that do not require horrific humanitarian circumstances before we allow a regular legal route to the UK.

Yes, we will disagree on the numbers, but the current schemes do not allow an organic ability to react to humanitarian crises from outside of specific countries. Can my noble friend the Minister outline what work His Majesty’s Government are doing with UNHCR to identify regular resettlement routes from areas of the world such as sub-Saharan Africa? Unless we allow such a mechanism, can we be surprised about the large numbers who end up on the north coast of Africa and then onwards to the channel?

With deep regret, I conclude that we currently do not have the clear consensus and values-based migration strategy that we would want, and which would then shape policy. This is the worst of all worlds. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can reassure us that this new Conservative Administration are determined to provide the leadership that the country needs in managing migration, while offering the humanitarian leadership that we all desire.