Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Sheryll Murray

Friday 4th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I say to the hon. Gentleman that the laws are there. It is the way in which they are used and implemented that is in question. I genuinely do not have enough facts about the circumstances of that case to offer an opinion, but I am sure the Minister will be able to do that for him.

Those who are in the UK illegally do face a sanction: deportation. For those who are desperate to be in the UK, the threat of deportation is a massive threat that hangs over their heads and the heads of their children every day of their lives. In reality, the Bill would not alter the incentives for those who are considering entering or remaining in the UK illegally.

I say gently to the hon. Member for Christchurch, whom I genuinely like, that at best the Bill would be superfluous. However, I think it might also be harmful, as it would distract from the efforts the authorities are already making in respect of immigration. The more we look at the contents of the Bill, the more apparent it becomes that it would add additional processes and unwelcome bureaucracy—an outcome that I do not think would be welcomed by the hon. Gentleman, given his record as a champion of cutting bureaucracy.

I am sure that it is not intentional, but one thing that I can commend the Bill for is its brevity. There are three simple clauses. It has a simplicity that I really wish existed in the immigration system. As any MP who has dealt with immigration casework knows, the immigration system is not simple.

What we end up with is a Bill that would not fix the problem. It would criminalise everyone who does not receive a positive decision that gives them legal authority to be in the UK, but that ain’t how the immigration system works. Numerous people in the UK are awaiting an immigration decision. Those people do not have legal authority to be here, as defined by the Bill. For example, a student might fall in love—it is only just past Valentine’s day—get married and apply for a spousal visa. That can take months. During that time, the Bill would criminalise her. Alternatively, an asylum seeker might appeal against a refusal of leave to remain. There is a very high level of successful appeals—I think it is roughly 30%—so the Bill would catch out fairly large numbers of people. As drafted, the Bill has complete disregard for due legal process.

Another major flaw in the proposed legislation is that it creates an offence of strict liability: that is, there is no excuse for being here illegally. Even if a person had good reason to believe that they had a right to be in the UK or had no choice about being in the UK, they would still be committing an offence. Take, for example, a family on holiday whose flight departs the day before their visa expires. If their flight was delayed because of bad weather—we know that these delays can be protracted; just think of Iceland’s exploding volcano—the family would be in the UK illegally. They would, if the Bill were enacted, be committing a criminal offence and there would be no defence open to them under the proposed legislation.

A similar situation could occur with a high-flying City lawyer—the type of person all of us believe we should be attracting to the UK. [Interruption.] I am speaking for myself! Let us imagine that this American lawyer was working for a UK magic circle firm and their employer was responsible for renewing their visa, but forgot to do so. When the lawyer tried to return to the UK from a business meeting in Amsterdam—I am citing a real case—it transpired that they had been in the UK illegally. The Bill would provide no excuse for that person. They would have committed a criminal offence.

In some cases, the prosecution would actively detract from efforts to deport an illegal immigrant or an illegal overstayer. Hundreds of failed asylum seekers return voluntarily every year, either because they have become fed up of living in the shadows in Britain or because the situation in their home country has improved and they are desperate to return home to be reunited with friends and family, and to live in a familiar culture. The Bill would discourage such people from doing so, because it would mean that they faced prosecution.

Finally, I turn to a type of prosecution that would be highly inappropriate: the prosecution of human trafficking victims who are brought to the UK against their wishes. Every year, thousands of people are brought to the UK and exploited for a whole number of reasons. I will talk about one case that came to my surgery. It is the case of a woman who entered the country illegally to be married to a man she had met only a few times. The marriage did not go well. She was beaten and regularly abused. Humiliated and fearing for her life, she ran. She ran to the people in her own community and thought that they would protect her, but they did not. They let her husband know where she was and he came for her, dragged her on to a plane and took her back to her village and her parents.

The woman’s parents tethered her, like a goat, outside the home. She was there for three nights with nothing to eat or drink. Children from the village sneaked her water. Her family were discussing what to do with her. They wanted to kill her, because she had brought dishonour to the community. The head of the village intervened. He brought a man to talk to her father. That man persuaded her family to let him take her away. She regards him as her saviour, which perhaps in a way he was. He saved her life, he brought her back to the UK, and he found floors for her to sleep on, and mattresses in the corner of factories that his friends owned. They gave her food and drink, and in return and in gratitude for the shelter, she worked in their factories across the country for more than a decade. She did not come to my surgery because she thought she was a victim of violence or modern-day slavery; she came because she was worried that she would be deported back to her family to be slain. She would be criminalised by this Bill.

One key threat that traffickers use to control their victims is that the police will arrest them. I have heard of pimps who dress up as police officers to rape the women whom they coerce, and of stories told to Vietnamese children who have been trafficked to the UK to work on cannabis farms, that the police are out to get them. If the Bill came into force, the traffickers would be right, and the police would be obliged to arrest and prosecute those children. Regardless of whether an individual is a child or a trafficking victim, under the Bill they would be committing an offence. In all such cases, criminal prosecution adds nothing to the desired outcome of reducing illegal immigration, about which there is a real issue.

Under this Government—the Government who all those sponsoring the Bill support—we have seen big cuts to the police and Border Force. More illegal immigrants have absconded, and fewer have been deported while the backlog of information on cases is not being pursued. Under this Government the number of illegal overstayers passed the 300,000 mark. The House of Commons Library—bless ’em—has worked on those figures for me because I asked for them yesterday. It tells me that, as of December 2015, the figure of overstayers and illegal immigrants in the country is 217,000. We need a Bill that will properly resource the UK Visas and Immigration service so that it gets through the backlog of unresolved cases.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

The hon. Lady has just quoted those figures, but earlier she mentioned various scenarios where someone could be in this country but not through their own fault. Do those figures include people who are overstayers although that was not their intention?

[Lyn Brown]

I think I am right in saying that given the nature of criminal gangs that traffick people in and out of this country, we do not know how many such people there are. I can only provide the official figures that the House of Commons Library gleaned from Home Office official publications. I have nothing else at my disposal.

I say to my friends in Friday sittings that we need a Bill that backs Labour’s call for greater enforcement and tougher punishment for employers who employ illegal immigrants and pay their staff way below the minimum wage. We need a Bill that bans recruitment agencies that exclusively advertise jobs abroad, and a Bill that makes it an offence to exploit immigrant workers and undercut British workers. If the hon. Gentlemen who entertain me and exercise my grey cells on Friday mornings are looking for guidance on how those policies might work, I suggest that they follow the lead of the Prime Minister and have a go at reading Labour’s manifesto.