Illegal Migration Bill

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

One of the benefits of the measures in the Bill will be an enhanced ability to support genuine asylum seekers and genuine victims of modern slavery and human trafficking. Our ability is severely impeded at the moment, because of the overwhelming number of claims in our system, many of which are illegitimate and spurious. They are clogging up our system so that we are unable to properly support those who genuinely need it.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

When the people of Clydebank, Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven contact me, they wonder why the Conservative and Unionist party is creating a new Bill of dubious moral and legal standing when it could just continue the long-running strategy of driving public services into the ground, making Britain poorer than all of our northern European neighbours and therefore decreasing the pull factors of migration. Finally, they wonder about the Home Secretary’s incredible—and I think absurd—claim that 100 million people are ready to come to the UK, and they want to say to the Home Secretary that it is going to take a lot more than a Bill copied and pasted from the Policy Exchange paper to make a difference.

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Member’s so-called absurd claim is actually backed up by the United Nations. More importantly, it is frankly naive to suggest that everybody coming here on a boat is a genuine asylum seeker fleeing for humanitarian reasons. The reality is that many of these people are economic migrants who are abusing our asylum system, and that is what this Bill aims to stop.