Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on such an accomplished maiden speech. I look forward to future contributions in this debate and other debates in the House.

It seems a lot longer than two years ago that I spoke in the Second Reading debate on the previous Government’s Rwanda Bill. In that contribution, I tried to make a case—perhaps unconvincingly—that in terms of the social contract with the British people on immigration, we, the political establishment, were in the last chance saloon. I tried to make the point that the inflows of illegal migration, and indeed the explosion of legal migration, meant that it was becoming impossible for any UK Government to create, with any significant public support, more routes for the very people who were desperately seeking refuge. I said all this with a heavy heart. I am afraid that the social contract between government and people on immigration has only deteriorated over the past two years.

I am sad to say that it seems difficult to imagine a Government commanding public support for a Syrian, Afghan, Hong Kong or indeed Ukraine resettlement scheme at this point in time. This is not a party-political point; I fully acknowledge that much of the collapse of public confidence in the immigration system came on this side’s watch. I therefore looked forward to a new Government with a fresh mandate carrying on a radical programme to ensure that we as a country could rebuild the trust and confidence required to operate a properly regulated and controlled border—and, importantly for me, to once again give the public confidence to support future resettlement schemes that are currently politically impossible for government to introduce.

There are elements in this Bill that I of course support: the creation of new offences, longer sentences for breaking immigration law and incorporating all sex offenders within Article 33(2) of the refugee convention, on refoulement. I also fully support the international efforts that the Government have made in addressing the root causes of illegal immigration, most especially the small boats. However, I ask the Minister: do the Government really think that the measures contained within the Bill will act as a deterrent for what is a hugely lucrative industry, in the form of people smuggling, when the prospective victims of people smuggling can see waves of new arrivals every week? Do they really think that the measures contained in the Bill help to build public trust in the current state of our border controls?

I was a reluctant supporter of the Rwanda scheme, but I understood that it was bold and radical enough to act as a deterrent and, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Horam, similar schemes had had success in Australia and Denmark. The Government have proudly abandoned the scheme in the Bill, but, at the same time, No. 10 Downing Street continues to brief out attempts to find a partner for offshore processing. The writing is on the wall. The Government will get into a situation where a scheme very like the Rwanda scheme will need to be applied. However, we will first go through two years of angst-ridden incremental steps that achieve very little and further build public exasperation. I understand this because that is exactly what the Conservatives did over the last few years. Only in the last years of the previous Government were we able to take the steps that halved legal migration and achieve parliamentary approval for the Rwanda scheme, which would have acted as a deterrent for illegal migration.

Getting control of our borders is not for me, I assure your Lordships, some nativist, nostalgic look to the past. Failure to act and rebuild public confidence by drastically reducing illegal migration only harms one group in the end—the very refugees who would be granted asylum through resettlement schemes that could command public and therefore political support. With every day that passes without real action, the ability of this country to help the most desperate recedes.