Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Margaret Mullane Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Sorry, we have four minutes left and I have three people to get in.

David Coleman: Forgive me; I ran away with myself. I am so sorry.

[Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

Following on from what the Minister asked you about how we have to be mean or have open borders, I looked at your written evidence, in which you have put as your ninth point, “Make Britain unattractive again”, and then you refer to the Rwanda policy. You say that you do not really know, but we had the National Crime Agency in before you and they were quite optimistic about the deterrent aspects of the Bill. Are you saying that you are not at all?

David Coleman: I am not, but at the moment it is to some extent a matter of opinion. The sorts of measures being proposed in the Bill are a development and accentuation of what has been done already. After all, the Government are not doing nothing to try to moderate asylum seeking; they have already, like the previous Government, been involved in discussions with our neighbours to try to come to an agreement on all sorts of aspects of migrant trafficking. The Bill is trying to ratchet that up, perfectly reasonably.

So far those measures, although admittedly not as intense as this Bill wants to impose, have not been notably successful. I drew a parallel with the war against drugs, which has an effect. It reduces the volume of drugs in circulation and puts drug pushers in prison, but it also puts up the price of drugs. There is a rather depressing parallel there.

[Chris Murray]

Q In 2018, the Government was spending £18,000 per asylum seeker, per year. Then they brought in the Illegal Migration Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, and the Safety of Rwanda Act. By 2024, they were spending £47,000 per asylum seeker, per year. If you have any respect for public money at all, is it not self-evident that this legislation has failed and that we should try a different approach on immigration?

David Coleman: That, I suppose, is the reason why the previous Government wanted to try to do something very different indeed in the Rwanda policy.