Immigration and Asylum Bill (Third sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsTuesday 13th October 2026
(2 days, 10 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 View all Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 October 2026 - (13 Oct 2026)
Siân Berry
It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I am moving amendment 64, to make fairness and efficiency duties of the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority. I should add that in this group I also support amendments 48 and 49, tabled by my Lib Dem colleagues, I oppose amendment 87 tabled by my Conservative colleagues and I support the Lib Dems’ new clause 12.
My amendment would impose on the IIAA a duty to operate fairly and independently and to handle cases quickly and efficiently. The Bill only imposes an obligation on the IIAA to aim to do those things. The amendment also removes the requirement for the IIAA to operate as part of the immigration system.
The Independent Immigration Appeals Authority will be a body that is independent in name; the reality, however, will be much murkier and more ambiguous. The Home Secretary will personally appoint senior figures in the IIAA, including its chair, and a Home Secretary appointee will be responsible for appointing adjudicators who make appeals decisions. The effect of the Bill is to make asylum decision making less independent, less fair and less expert. It brings asylum appeals under greater political control, putting at risk people’s basic human right not to be persecuted for who they are.
The major driver of the appeals backlog is the poor quality of Home Office asylum decisions, not tribunal judges. The Refugee Council has shown that about two thirds of Home Office asylum decisions that are challenged are overturned, either by the tribunals or by the Home Office itself. My preference, therefore, is for the Government to scrap all of part 1 of the Bill and get back to the day job of making good asylum decisions. If part 1 does go ahead, however—I will debate later whether that should happen—it should contain safeguards for basic standards of independence and fairness.
The amendment deals with two ways in which the Bill tries unfairly to align the IIAA with the Home Office’s policy priorities, rather than the requirements of justice and fairness. First, clause 1(5) states only that
“the IIAA must…aim to be accessible, fair and independent”—
not that it must be independent, fair and accessible in practice, but merely that it must aim to be so. By contrast, under existing rules for tribunals, there is a duty, an overriding objective on tribunals, to deal with cases fairly and justly. That is not an aim, but a requirement. As such, subsection (5) is a watering down, a weakening and an undermining of the independence of asylum appeals. My amendment would make it a legal duty for the IIAA to be independent, fair and accessible, as it is for tribunals, and not merely an aim.
Secondly, the attempt to draw asylum appeals into the Home Office’s sphere of influence is seen even more clearly in the fact that subsection (5) requires the IIAA to prioritise
“in particular…the fact that the IIAA operates as a key part of the immigration…system.”
That, I think, is an unambiguous push to align the IIAA not with the requirements of justice and fairness, but with Home Office policy priorities. My amendment would therefore remove any risk that the IIAA will be pressured into aligning with the Home Office’s immigration policy priorities, and let the IIAA be what it is meant to be: a quasi-judicial body for deciding appeals fairly and independently.
Ultimately, without my amendment, the IIAA will be a body with a conflict of interest at its heart: a requirement to aim to be independent and fair, but also a priority to view itself as part of immigration control. If the Government are sincere about creating a body that can deal with cases independently and fairly, without interference from the Home Office, the IIAA’s duty to operate independently and fairly should be more than an aim; it should be a requirement, just as it is for tribunals. Moreover, there should be no pressure on the IIAA to align with the Home Office’s political vision of immigration control, whoever is in charge of the Home Office. The amendment would create that safety against the priorities of future Governments, as well as this one, being able to put political pressure on the IIAA. The amendment would put all that beyond doubt. It gives the IIAA the best chance of being truly independent and fair. I will seek a Division on this amendment.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I will speak to Opposition amendment 87 and to two other amendments in the group.
As this is the Committee’s first debate on part 1 of the Bill, let me set out the test that the Opposition will apply to it. On Second Reading, the Home Secretary told the House that more than 150,000 people are waiting for an appeal decision and the average wait is well over a year. Every one of those months is a month in which someone whose claim may well fail remains in this country, very often at the taxpayer’s expense. The public have been promised for years that that would be fixed, and we need to see it happen now. Our test for every clause in this part is a simple one: will appeals be decided faster, and will those who lose be removed?
Clause 1(5) is where the Bill tells the new authority what it is for: the authority must aim to be accessible, fair and independent; it must aim to handle its cases quickly and efficiently; and it must have regard to the public interest. Amendment 48, in the name of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, would remove the words “aim to” from the first paragraph only, so that the authority would be under a firm duty to be “accessible, fair and independent”. I understand the instinct, but that hardens the wrong limb of the measure. If any duty in this subsection needs to be firmer, it is the duty to handle cases “quickly and efficiently”. That is the duty that the authority is being created to discharge, and it is the one that the public will judge it on.
Amendment 64 would remove “aim to” from both limbs, subsection (5)(a) and (b), but it would also remove the public interest duty in paragraph (c) to which I now turn. Amendments 49 and 64 in its second paragraph would go further than amendment 48. They would remove the duty to have regard to the public interest altogether. I respect the concern for independence that lies behind amendments 49 and 64, but I cannot agree. It would be remarkable for Parliament to tell the body that decides who may stay in this country that it need have no regard to the public interest or to public confidence in the system it is part of. An immigration system that does not have the confidence of the British public is a system that will not work.
Amendment 87 takes the opposite approach. It strengthens the public interest duty instead of removing it. In the Bill as drafted, the authority must merely “have regard to” the public interest, and the only content that the Bill gives to that interest is the fact that the authority is part of the immigration and asylum system. That tells an adjudicator nothing. The amendment states what the public interest is:
“the effective enforcement of immigration control, including the prompt removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have no right to remain.”
It would require the authority to give effect to that interest, not simply to have regard to it. The difference between “have regard to” and “give effect to” is not a lawyer’s nicety. A duty to have regard to something can be satisfied by thinking about it and then setting it aside; a duty to give effect to something cannot.
Clause 1(5) reaches well beyond the final decision in each case: it governs the authority in the “exercise of its functions”, which means how it lists cases, handles requests to adjourn and manages its caseload. Under clause 4(5), the Procedure Rules Board must also have regard to those objectives when it writes the rules. Amendment 87 would therefore shape every deadline, every adjournment rule and every listing decision the authority makes. It would put the effective enforcement of immigration control into the DNA of the institution from the start.
The Committee heard in evidence why that matters. Professor Ekins of Oxford University told us that one of the potential advantages of the new authority is that it could make
“the public interest in the enforcement of migration law a more pressing consideration.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Asylum Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2026; c. 22.]
Amendment 87 would make sure that that advantage is actually realised, rather than left to chance. This is not new ground for Parliament. Section 117B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 already states that
“the maintenance of effective immigration controls is in the public interest.”
The Minister may say that amendment 87 would compromise independence, but it would not. Clause 1(4) will still require the authority to
“exercise its primary function with a view to ensuring that justice is done.”
Clause 1(6) will still require every Minister to uphold the IIAA’s independence. Each case will still be decided on its evidence and on the law. What changes is that the institution is told plainly what it exists to achieve. We are clear that the public interest includes the swift removal of those who have no right to be in the country. That is one of the public’s most pressing concerns, and the new authority should be in no doubt that it is there to serve it.
New clause 12 asks for a report on the cost, timetable and capacity of the authority before part 1 can be commenced. Whatever view the Committee takes of a statutory lock on commencement, the questions are fair, and I will put them directly: what is the full cost of setting up and running the authority over its first five years, and how does that compare with the tribunal it replaces? How many adjudicators will be in post on the first day, and how many appeals will they decide each year? On what date does the Minister expect the authority to hear its first appeal?
We will press amendment 87 to a Division when it is reached.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Anna Turley)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank all Members for the constructive debate we have had on the amendments to clause 1 of this Bill, particularly the hon. Members for Brighton Pavilion and for Stockton West, and the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, who tabled amendment 87.
I would like to say up front that it is very clear that consent for our asylum system in the public domain is fraying. The important part of this Bill is to seek to restore control, restore fairness and rebuild the public’s confidence. We have made huge progress on initial decision making; we have cut the backlog in initial decisions by 72% from the 2023 peak. However, as we have done so, the appeals backlog has grown substantially, now with waiting times of more than two years. Some appeals are absolutely genuine, and they of course must be heard fairly. However, it is clear that some claimants are lodging appeals to frustrate their legitimate removal from this country.
As of June 2026, the open caseload in the first-tier tribunal immigration and asylum chamber was about 156,000. The average time taken to clear appeals across all categories is currently at 65 weeks: 72 weeks for asylum protection, 74 weeks for human rights and 48 weeks for European economic area free movement. The Government have substantially increased both capacity and productivity in the FTT IAC, but demand has risen considerably faster. Receipts increased from around 58,000 in 2023-24 to almost 118,000 in 2025-26, while the outstanding caseload rose from around 50,000 to more than 150,000. We have done our best to try to support the workforce within that existing system. We increased the judicial workforce by 21% to 311 judges, including 61 new fee-paid judges and 25 salaried judges who began sitting between January and March this year, and we are continuing further recruitment.
The structural constraint is just how quickly judicial capacity can scale. Judicial recruitment draws on a relatively limited pool of experienced lawyers, and it currently takes around 12 to 18 months from launching an exercise to a judge being able to sit, so that is not feasible. The IIAA therefore broadens the recruitment pool, providing greater flexibility and allowing us to increase capacity while maintaining robust safeguards around training, legal support, quality assurance and professional standards.
Siân Berry
I appreciate that, and I have laid out the possible alternative remedies, but judicial review is an essential backstop. I do not see why the Government are trying to remove it. This is constitutionally exceptional and I want the Minister to explain why it is okay.
This measure will not only undermine the rule of law; it will inevitably provoke litigation in the courts about how this ouster clause should be interpreted and effected. It is concerning that the Government want the IIAA, which is a novel—experimental, even—non-expert body institutionally close to the Home Office, making life or death appeal decisions, to be made completely immune from judicial review at the outset. It demonstrates the Government’s continuing and concerning prioritisation of speed over the rule of law and justice, which we have seen in other Bills. In those circumstances, my amendment is completely necessary. It would ensure that judicial review remained available in those cases where the High Court believed it was necessary. I hope that all Members will support it.
Matt Vickers
I want to speak about amendments 85 and 65. Clause 1(8) provides that a decision of the authority may be questioned in legal proceedings in only two ways: through the authority’s own review power under clause 6, or through an appeal to the upper tribunal under clause 7. Amendment 85 would remove the latter, ending the onward appeal to the upper tribunal.
One of the public’s deepest frustrations with the immigration system is appeal after appeal after appeal. The Home Secretary herself described it on Second Reading. She told the House about a convicted rapist whom it took more than four years to remove from this country after he had served his sentence because of a succession of late claims and legal challenges. We agree with her diagnosis, but we do not understand why the Bill preserves the structure that makes that possible.
Let us consider the journey this Bill still allows. A claim is refused by the Home Office, so the person appeals to the authority and loses. They can then ask the authority to review its decision or for permission to appeal. If that is refused, they can ask the upper tribunal. If permission is granted, there is a hearing, and if that succeeds, the case may be sent to be decided all over again. Each step is measured in months and, at every one, the person remains here—usually at public expense. That expense is considerable—the National Audit Office estimates that the immigration and asylum chamber cost around £79.5 million to run in 2024-25, and that is before the cost of legal aid.
Siân Berry
I appreciate the hon. Member’s laying out the process, but can he honestly say that, if he were subjected to any area of justice, he would accept those arguments and the process for taking away his right to appeal twice, which the amendment would effect? Does he believe that that genuinely represents justice without fear or favour?
Matt Vickers
The hon. Member for North Northumberland made a valid point—this is an appeals process. The case has been considered once but can go to appeal for reconsideration and even that decision can be reviewed again—that is a lengthy process. The entire objective of this Bill is to speed up the process so that it is fair to the taxpayers, as well as to those subject to it. Removing a whole tier of appeal would reduce the burden on the taxpayer, as would other amendments the Opposition have tabled. The time limits in clause 8 will not help, because they bind the authority rather than the upper tribunal. The Bill does not shorten the queue; it moves part of it upstairs.
The Government’s case for part 1 is that the new authority will make robust and defensible decisions with trained adjudicators, a chief appeals officer overseeing quality, and a professional standards officer setting standards. If that is right, its decision should be capable of being final. Where a genuine error is made, clause 6 allows it to be corrected and that review should be carried out by a legally qualified senior adjudicator. That is a fair hearing—a check for error and then an end.
Let me be clear about what amendment 85 would leave in place, because the Minister will say it removes any check on the authority. It does not. Every appellant would still have a full hearing before the authority on the facts and the law. Every decision could still be reviewed for an error of law under clause 6. Government amendment 36 will mean that that review is confined to exactly the kind of point the upper tribunal would consider. Amendment 85 would remove the second external tier, and its two separate applications for permission—the listing queue and the power to send a case back to the start. The Government accept that the onward appeal is only on a point of law and not a rehearing. The question is simply who checks the law and how long it takes. Our answer is a legally qualified senior adjudicator, with the authority, and quickly.
There is a further problem with subsection (8) as drafted. Professor Ekins told the Committee that this is not an effective ouster clause, that the courts would read it narrowly and that the Committee should not rest content with it. He pointed to the more precise model that Parliament used in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022. If the Government agree that the authority’s decisions should be final, they should draft subsection (8) so that it works, and we would welcome their help in doing so on Report.
Amendment 65, in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion, would take the Bill in the opposite direction. It would delete subsection (8) altogether and reopen the possibility of judicially reviewing every decision the authority makes, adding a third route of challenge to the two already in the Bill. I understand the hon. Lady’s concern for safeguards, but they are already there. Parliament legislated in 2022 to end judicial review of the upper tribunal’s refusals of permission, precisely because that route had become a means of delay. Clause 7(3) rightly carries that rule across. Amendment 65 would reopen at the first tier what Parliament closed at the second. Our position is clear; enough is enough. Years of delay and expense must come to an end, and the legal merry-go-round has to stop. We will seek to divide the Committee on amendment 85 and we will oppose clause 7.
Anna Turley
Amendments 65 and 85 concern the routes through which decisions of the authority may be challenged. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion and the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who tabled the amendments.
Amendment 65 would allow individuals to bring judicial review proceedings against the decisions made by the authority. As we have heard, the Bill already provides clear routes for correcting errors and for onward appeals. The authority can review its own decisions under clause 6 and decisions can be appealed to the upper tribunal on a point of law under clause 7 where permission is granted.
Anna Turley
I would like to speak to clause 1 in more detail. As we have discussed, clause 1 will establish the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority as a body corporate: a public body that is independent of Government. It is the first step in the Bill towards overhauling the current immigration and asylum appeals system, which has seen unacceptable caseloads and waiting times for a determination to be reached. The clause details the primary function of the authority, which will be to determine immigration and asylum appeals as well as applications for immigration bail. It will give the IIAA the authority to determine the same case types determined by judges in the first-tier tribunal immigration and asylum chamber today.
Access to justice is a fundamental common-law principle and a core requirement of the rule of law. Clause 1 will place a statutory duty on the IIAA to uphold that through a statutory objective to be accessible, fair and independent. As set out in the clause, the authority must also aim to handle its cases quickly and efficiently, and have regard to the public interest in the performance of its functions. The clause makes robustly clear that Ministers must uphold the independence of the authority and not influence decisions through any special access to its adjudicators. The clause also states that a decision of the authority in relation to its primary function may be challenged in legal proceedings only in line with the review and appeal framework. Such challenges will be directed to the authority’s review process and onward appeal route to the upper tribunal.
Schedule 1 makes a number of consequential amendments needed to transfer specified immigration and asylum appeal and immigration bail functions from the first-tier tribunal to the authority. Government amendments 22 and 24 make further consequential amendments to the schedule, which I will be detailing in due course. The schedule updates the relevant legislation so that references to the first-tier tribunal, the tribunal and tribunal procedure rules are replaced, where appropriate, with references to the IIAA and its procedure rules. Those amendments apply across the categories of cases that will form the IIAA’s primary function, as set out in clause 1. They are necessary and largely technical amendments, required so that the wider legislative framework operates coherently once the authority begins determining those cases. I commend Government amendments 22 and 24, clause 1 and schedule 1 to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Government amendments 22, 23 and 24 make further consequential changes to schedule 1 and appear to be technical. We do not oppose them. Is the Minister confident that the list is now complete? On clause 1 itself, the Opposition and the British public have one main question: how will this new appeals body get decisions made more quickly? What will the authority be able to do that the existing tribunal cannot? What reduction in waiting times do Ministers expect it to deliver, and by when?
Let me put the question plainly. The Government are taking immigration appeals away from the first-tier tribunal and giving them to a new body, but let us look at what stays the same: the same appeals brought by the same people against the same Home Office decisions, with a right of appeal to the same upper tribunal. Unless something fundamental changes in how quickly cases are decided and in how many people are removed at the end of them, this is rearranging the deckchairs. A new name on the door and a new chief executive will not clear a single case. The public will rightly ask what all that upheaval is for.
The Committee has been given very little to go on, and it has not been told what the Government heard before they wrote the Bill. In March, the Home Office opened a call for evidence on how the body should be designed, covering the recruitment and training of adjudicators, timeframes and oversight. It closed on 6 May. The Home Office said the responses would “inform the legislation”. The Bill was introduced seven weeks later and, so far as I can find, no response to that call for evidence has been published, then or since. Why not? What did the respondents say? Where did the Government disagree with them, and why? Will the Minister commit to publishing the response before Report stage?
Next, the backlog. More than 150,000 people are waiting for an appeal. Do those cases move to the new authority? Do they stay with the first-tier tribunal until they are finished? The authority is to take over gradually, so both systems will be running side by side for some time. How will the Government stop that creating more delay, or cases being lost between the two? The Government will be aware, from the difficulties of folding NHS England back into the Department of Health and Social Care, how hard it is to move functions, staff and buildings from one body to another while keeping a service running. What lessons have been learned, and when will any of this actually happen? The Bill does not say.
Part 1 comes into force when Ministers decide. The authority opens its doors when Ministers decide. Under clause 15, the first-tier tribunal carries on hearing immigration appeals for as long as Ministers decide. The Committee is being asked to approve the replacement of the tribunal without being told when it will be replaced. I ask the Minister for three dates. When will the first case be transferred to the authority? When will the last? On what date will the first-tier tribunal hear its final immigration appeal? If the Government do not know, they should say so.
Turning to the breadth of what the authority will decide, subsection (2) goes well beyond asylum. The authority will decide applications for immigration bail, appeals against deprivation of British citizenship and appeals under the EEA citizens’ rights regulations. Those are serious decisions about liberty and nationality. Under clause 2, many of them could be taken by adjudicators with no legal qualification. Will deprivation of citizenship appeals and deportation appeals brought by foreign criminals be reserved for senior adjudicators? Also, how will clause 1(8) operate where the complaint is about a procedural decision taken during a case, rather than about the final outcome?
Finally, on the practicalities, when will the authority start hearing cases? How many cases will it handle in its first year? Are the staff and money in place? Will the Minister publish the staffing, funding and transition plans, including the arrangements for appeals that are already listed for hearing?
The Opposition’s own borders plan would go further than the Bill. It would abolish the immigration tribunal altogether, with decisions instead being made in the Home Office through a quick, internal appeal. However, whichever model is chosen, the test is the same: decisions made quickly, and decisions acted on.
Matt Vickers
I will deal first with the amendments and then with the clause. Amendment 66, in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion, would require every member of the authority, from the chair to each adjudicator, to be appointed by the Judicial Appointments Commission. I understand that that is offered as a guarantee of independence; in practice, it could rebuild the very recruitment pipeline that the Government say they are trying to escape. The case made for part 1 is that reliance on judicial availability has left the system without the capacity or the flexibility to meet demand. Routing every appointment through the commission would import that constraint on to the new body on its first day. We cannot support that.
Amendment 67 would require every adjudicator to be legally qualified. It raises an important question, and the Opposition have our own concerns about qualification, which I will come to. What matters is that every adjudicator is properly equipped to make sound decisions quickly and that the authority can recruit enough of them to make a real difference.
Government amendments 25 to 27 provide that where a professional standards officer is appointed on the strength of experience rather than formal qualifications, it will be the chair and not the chief executive who judges whether that experience is sufficient. That seems sensible, since the officer who sets standards for adjudicators should not owe their appointment to the executive they oversee. I would be grateful if the Minister set out the rationale in a little more detail.
Clause 2 states that the Home Secretary is to appoint the chair, the professional standards officer, the first chief executive and the chief appeals officer. After that, the chair will appoint the two chief officers, and the chief executive will appoint the adjudicators who hear cases.
On qualifications, the Bill sets out a test for senior adjudicators: they must have spent two years in practice as a legal professional or have law-related experience that the chief executive considers equivalent. On executive adjudicators, the Bill is silent; clause 3(2) says only that adjudicators must receive “adequate training”. The Committee would benefit from knowing more of what the Government have in mind. What standard will an executive adjudicator be expected to meet before deciding a case, and how will it be tested? Will it be set out in the standards the professional standards officer must publish under clause 3(6), so that Parliament and the public can see it? That matters for speed as much as for fairness. Whoever is recruited, training and assessment must be up to the job. A poor first decision is one that is challenged, set aside and heard again, and every such case is potentially another year in which someone with no right to be here remains.
I have several further questions for the Minister. What criteria will the chief executive use to decide whether law-related experience is equivalent to legal practice? How many adjudicators will be recruited at the outset, and will experienced tribunal judges be encouraged to apply? Which categories of case will be reserved to senior adjudicators, and will the time it takes to recruit and train this new workforce add to the backlog in the meantime? Finally, when will the first appointments be made? Can the recruitment process begin before Royal Assent?
Anna Turley
The shadow Minister mentioned the Bill’s use of the phrase “adequate training and support”. In answering his question on that, as well as some of the other questions he asked that were more practical, it is really important for me to specify that it is not for the Home Office to decide that. The chief executive will be responsible for ensuring that the IIAA adjudicators have adequate training and support to maintain their independence from the executive. The chief appeals officer is responsible for overseeing the quality of decisions and developing a quality assurance mechanism. They will be able to identify any specific training needs of adjudicators and recommend them to the chief executive. It is really important that I confirm to the Committee that the IIAA is independent. It is not for the Government to decide what accreditation and continuous development will be required for the IIAA adjudicators, who will, in essence, be making decisions on appeals to which the Home Office is a party.
Police Funding: North-east England
Matt Vickers Excerpts(2 days, 10 hours ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) on securing this important debate. I reiterate my condolences to the family and friends of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough. Their deaths have been a tragedy for the local force, and their loss serves as a constant reminder of the risks our police officers face every day. Alongside other Members, I was privileged to attend their funerals. It was clear from everyone there how deeply they were loved by their families, respected by their colleagues and valued by the communities they served. The incidents that occurred after their deaths were a sad reflection of the problems that we face in the north-east.
Funding for our police forces is not an issue that should be taken lightly, as it clearly has a huge impact on their ability to operate effectively. As an MP from the region, representing an area served by a local force facing acute funding challenges, I share the concerns raised passionately by so many Members today.
As the Minister will be aware, following the incident in Middlesbrough, I raised the issue of police funding in the north-east, particularly in my own area of Cleveland. I have raised the issue on many occasions, under this Government and the last. While I appreciate the targeted funding announced in September, it is nowhere near enough to make a difference or solve the underlying problem. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) rightly points out that the funding has been more than consumed by the costs following the incident.
To give one example from the north-east, Cleveland serves some of the most deprived communities in the country and faces exceptional levels of demand. In the year ending March 2025, Cleveland had the highest recorded crime rate per head of population of any police force in England and Wales—122.1 crimes per 1,000 people compared with the national average of 87.2. While anecdotes can tell only part of the story, we unfortunately see brazen criminal activity—from off-road bikes to knife crime—taking place without effective intervention.
Andy McDonald
I am listening intently to what the shadow Minister has to say. Does the picture he is painting cause him to reflect on the savage cuts to Cleveland police under his party’s stewardship, which saw the force lose 500 officers? Will he apologise for that error?
Matt Vickers
I always think these things are better done—and have been better done—when there is one voice fighting for more resources for our areas. I was elected in 2019. In Home Office workforce data shared in September 2019, there were 1,226 police officers in Cleveland. In March 2024, there were 1,514. That is an increase of 288. In the year to March 2026, the number of full-time equivalent police officers in Cleveland fell by 17.
Matt Vickers
I am going to carry on; Stockton is going to have its say, as well as Middlesbrough. This week, police have had to impose section 60 and dispersal orders in Thornaby, in my constituency and the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, after a series of targeted incidents in which vehicles were driven into houses and two men were seriously assaulted with a knife. Yet the funding formula does not adequately recognise those pressures.
To be clear, although I speak as a shadow Minister, this is simply not a party political point. The Labour police and crime commissioner, Matt Storey, has warned of a £2.4 million funding shortfall—the equivalent of about 40 police officers. His argument, which the Minister has heard many times, is that a system based too heavily on population fails to take sufficient account of deprivation, crime and demand. The situation has been made worse by the Government’s decision to inflict the cost of national insurance increases on police forces while providing a woefully inadequate funding settlement. The consequences of that decision are clear.
While I recognise that areas such as Northumbria have seen an increase in officer numbers, the number of full-time equivalent officers in Cleveland fell by 17 between March 2025 and March 2026. The latest Home Office data shows that there are now fewer officers in place than in March 2024, under the previous Government. Ministers will point to the neighbourhood policing guarantee and, of course, we all want more visible local policing. However, if overall officer numbers are falling while more are badged as neighbourhood officers, they are being moved from somewhere else, often from response teams. That means fewer officers available when someone dials 999, longer waits for victims and less capacity to deal with the exact kind of serious incidents that we have seen in Thornaby this week. Given the scale of the challenges that the force is facing, which have been so clearly demonstrated, it seems preposterous that it is losing officers rather than gaining them.
I appreciate that the funding formula is not easily resolved. Hard-working MPs from across the House who represent areas disadvantaged under the existing rules have long pushed for change, including under the previous Government. However, I hope the Minister will accept that this issue requires action now. The most recent arrests under Operation Artemis, which include individuals connected to the events following the tragic incident on the A66, demonstrate the deep-rooted challenges the area faces.
What could we do immediately? The Minister will reject this proposal, but the Conservative party’s costed £800 million plan to recruit 10,000 additional officers across the country would at least go some way in tackling the issue. Although recruiting more officers is not a complete solution, our proposal would help Cleveland police by providing nearly 100 additional officers. The need is clear.
Despite all that, the message from people living in our area is that they want to see this as a turning point. Their resilience shows that change is possible, but only if we give our communities the support they need alongside robust enforcement. That means increasing police numbers, as I have said, but also ensuring that repeat offenders face consequences for their crimes, including prison where appropriate. The early release scheme, which is proving to be an unmitigated failure, undermines that. Offences that should see people behind bars are simply not. Because of the pressures on the criminal justice system, those offenders are not spending the time in prison that they should be. Although that may not fall directly within the Minister’s portfolio, I hope she is pressing her colleagues every day for an end to the early release scheme and for more police capacity.
Without effective enforcement, the funding allocated to police forces will not be used as effectively as it should be. Hon. Members in this debate know how easily the north-east’s problems can be overlooked. As we approach the forthcoming police funding announcements, I hope that the Government will reflect on the events of a few months ago, the words of north-east MPs and the need for meaningful improvement to police forces in our region. Our brave frontline police officers deserve the resources they need to do their job, and our law-abiding residents deserve safe streets to go about their lives without fear.
Sarah Jones
That is exactly the point about looking at the funding for the coming year. We are doing that. We are looking at the exceptional circumstances for police forces across the country right now, and what we need to do about that.
I want to touch briefly on police reform, which some people have mentioned. The point of police reform is to do two things. The first is to make sure our police are equipped to tackle the epidemic of everyday crime that we see in our communities, and the second is to make sure we are equipped to tackle the changing nature of crime. Most crimes have a digital footprint. Serious organised crime does not pay any attention to boundaries and is much more complex than it used to be. Members have mentioned online sexual abuse, for example. We need to be able to tackle complex crimes. That is the point of police reform. We do not have the time now for me to set out how we will achieve the changes that we will achieve, but we will legislate on the police reform programme in this Session. We will introduce changes to the structure of police forces, and the way in which the funding formula works will have to fit with those structural changes.
Importantly, we are also putting more police in our neighbourhoods. I want to make one final point, which is hard to make in a short space of time. We have had lots of conversations on police numbers, which I understand and appreciate and do not disagree with, but we cannot judge a police force on just numbers. It does not work. When the Tories were in, they cut police numbers by 20,000. They then rushed to recruit another 20,000, and arrest rates have actually gone down because we have 12,000 officers sat behind desks, not out in our communities fighting crime.
We have had no investment in technology over the Tory years, which means that everybody has to spend hours filling in forms and doing the bureaucracy—I am sure that hon. Members find the same whenever they go out with the police. If we can cut that, people will have more time to be more productive. If we can get police out from behind desks and into our communities, they can be more productive. I am not denying the point that hon. Members make about police numbers, but if we measure just police numbers, that does not actually reflect what the police do and how they do it.
Sarah Jones
I will not, because I have only a couple of moments left.
We are tilting our resources into neighbourhood policing. We have got just shy of 4,000 extra police into our communities.
I will end by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham. He asked me a series of questions and I have a list of answers. He asked how we are tackling violence against women and girls in the north-east. Other hon. Members asked questions about antisocial behaviour, online harms and the early release scheme. I am happy to meet and talk to other Members because we do not have the time here.
I assure hon. Members that the Government and I hear their case on the north-east. We are with them in their desire to reform policing and to make sure we have the people we need to fight crime so that their communities can feel safe, which is the very least that a Labour Government ought to be able to deliver.
Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsTuesday 15th September 2026
(1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 View all Immigration and Asylum Bill 2026-27 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 15 September 2026 - (15 Sep 2026)
The Chair
We are now sitting in public and the proceedings are being broadcast. As no Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill, we will now hear from our witnesses, starting with Dr Madeleine Sumption MBE, director of the Migration Observatory, and Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK. We have until 2.30 pm for this panel. Will the witnesses please briefly introduce themselves for the record?
Dr Sumption: I am Madeleine Sumption. I am the director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
Alp Mehmet: I am Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK since 2019.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Q
Dr Sumption: I will take those separately, starting with removals and then talking about arrivals. The two measures most relevant to removals are the appeals reform and the article 8 restrictions. It is very reasonable to assume that the article 8 restrictions will increase returns, but not as much as they will increase refusals, so some people will remain in the UK having been refused. It is very difficult to predict exactly how many people will be refused as a result of the measures, or how many of them will be returned. The Home Office modelling for the impact assessment seems broadly reasonable to me. It suggested just under 12,000 additional refusals as a result of the restrictions, and that some of those people—about 14%—would leave with no involvement of immigration enforcement at all, but the modelling also suggests that just over half would remain in the UK despite the refusal. It is one thing to restrict the legal challenges and the ability of people to get grants of status, but it is another thing actually to remove them from the UK.
I am not going to get into the details of how much appeals reform will actually speed up the process; I am sure you have lots of other people to talk about that and the legal complexities. If the reform has the intended effect of speeding up final refusals, I think it is reasonable to assume that that would increase returns, because that means, in effect, that the immigration enforcement budget can be used more efficiently and that there is less chance of losing track of people during the lengthy period when an appeal is ongoing, but I do not have a view on precisely how effective it will be at speeding things up.
It is quite reasonable to assume that there would be an increase in returns as a result of the measures in the Bill. The deterrence aspect—whether that would feed through into fewer people arriving—is harder to assess, and the evidence is not as good as I would like it to be. A few studies suggest that one of the things that makes a country less attractive is a lower probability of receiving a grant of status, particularly if combined with swift return. To the extent that the measures in the Bill make returns faster, there is some evidence that, particularly for low grant-rate nationalities—people who are relatively unlikely to get asylum—there could be a knock-on effect, so long as the refusals actually lead to a return. For people in the UK who have been refused but are not returned, the available evidence—I should stress that it is quite limited—suggests that there would be less impact.
Matt Vickers
Q
Alp Mehmet: First, can I say the Bill is a step in the right direction? I commend the Home Secretary for having the courage to introduce a Bill with measures that are going to have some sort of impact. I am not sure what that impact is going to be; some bits of the Bill, frankly, are going to have the opposite effect to the one intended, and are more likely to attract people. I will come back to that later, if I may.
If we are talking about the boats, the only thing that will deter both those coming in the boats and the smugglers themselves—the gangs—will be detention on arrival and speedy action to deal with and remove them. Only that will work; I have no doubt about that. There is nothing in the Bill that will allow that to happen.
Have any measures of the sort that are being proposed worked? Nothing in the Bill reflects the sort of measures that, in certain countries, have had the desired effect of deterring people and keeping them away. The sorts of measures introduced in Australia, Denmark or—dare I mention it?—America, as well as even Greece, that have had an impact on the numbers applying for asylum bear no resemblance to what is in the Bill. Will the Bill have any major impact or deter? Sadly, I do not think it will do either.
I am afraid that the Bill is a bit of a wasted opportunity, as was the last Bill, on which I also gave evidence with Tony Smith, who is appearing after me. That Bill also, in effect, cancelled out all the deterrent factors that were already in place. While this Bill has little things here and there, it is essentially all about process as well.
I welcome the introduction of the new appeals authority, but I will add that it seems to be going back to the system that was in place 45 years ago, when I was an immigration officer in Dover and appeals first appeared on the scene. That may have an impact on gaming the system, for example, as the Home Secretary argues, but significant impact? I do not think so.
The Chair
We will now hear from Tony Smith CBE, the managing director of Fortinus Global Limited. We have until 2.45 pm for this panel. Could the witness briefly introduce himself for the record?
Tony Smith: Good afternoon. My name is Tony Smith. I am a former director general of the UK Border Force, and I am now an independent border security and border management consultant. Thank you for inviting me.
Matt Vickers
Q
Tony Smith: I served in the Home Office from 1972 until 2013, at all levels, from immigration officer up to director general, when I retired. I saw lots of pressures on lots of Governments of lots of different colours about the issue of how to stop illegal immigration and remove those who should not be here. So I have a lot of experience there.
Also, a couple of years ago, I went back into the Home Office as a consultant to advise on the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the setting up of the illegal migration operations command, which gave me experience with the boats issue. Fortunately for me, that was not happening during my service; people were coming in differently, in the backs of lorries or through the common travel area. The boats phenomenon is relatively recent, but I do have some knowledge and experience of it.
In my view, the only way to tackle this is to stop illegal intake—in other words, you need to stop people getting to the UK in the first place. That is what we did with the carriers’ liability legislation. That is also why we put the Border Force in France, and why we stopped people getting on ships or aircraft to come here illegally—I think that one of the reasons smugglers shifted to the beaches is that we cannot do that there. Your first priority ought to be to try to reduce asylum intake wherever you can. The second point is to swiftly remove the people who do make it through into the territory. That will then send a deterrent message to those waiting in France, or wherever it may be, to come over. Those are the two metrics.
On the issue of asylum intake, it is not just about the boats. Last time I checked, asylum intake was between 80,000 and 90,000, which is too high. People are coming with visas. You should be able to stop a lot of that, because they are all fingerprinted when they are given a visa and when they claim asylum. When I was in post, on a Monday morning, we would have a read of who had got visas and was now claiming asylum. The post would then be challenged and asked, “Why are you issuing visas to people who are then coming for asylum?”
There are lots of things in all that, but basically the answer to your question is that you have to try to reduce the intake overseas as best you can and, when people do make it here, get that removals rate up.
Matt Vickers
Q
Tony Smith: It is more what it does not do, which is exclude people coming from safe third countries, such as France, from claiming protection. That was the intention of the Illegal Migration Act. There is also provision in the 2002 legislation where someone has come from a safe country and, under article 31 of the convention relating to the status of refugees, they are not in immediate fear of persecution. We interpreted that as saying, “If you come from France on a small boat, you could have claimed asylum there—you did not have to—ergo you will not be granted asylum in this country.” The previous Government relied on that for the Rwanda plan, and this Government rely on it for the one in, one out scheme. There is now provision to exclude people from claiming asylum if they come via that route. There is no provision to exclude them from claiming protection under human rights or modern slavery.
There are some things in the Bill that I applaud. There are attempts to tighten up on article 8 of the ECHR to stop some claims under human rights and under modern slavery provisions as well, which is to be applauded. But while you continue to run a system where somebody simply needs to get within the 12-mile zone and then make a claim for protection, and you bring them ashore and process that claim in the UK, I am afraid that that is always going to send a message back, particularly to the high-intake nationalities we are talking about, from Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Iran, that all you need to do is get within the 12-mile zone and claim protection, and it is very unlikely—only about 4% have ever been removed—that you will be removed. I am afraid that that still creates a factor for migrants who are unsettled in the Schengen zone, who do not want to stay in France and who are determined to come here. It also still fuels the smugglers’ business model—there is profit in this; this is international organised crime—and they will continue to exploit that market.
Anna Turley
Q
Tony Smith: The Bill is really about the asylum process, rather than law enforcement. I think the Bill last year was more about the law enforcement; this is about the asylum process. There are some good things in here. As I say, I applaud the article 8 reforms, because article 8 is often used as a lever quite late in the process. After someone has been here for quite a while and has been through the process, you suddenly get an article 8 claim because they have developed a connection in the UK. So I think that that reform is right and will help to reduce the pull factor.
I like the idea of the tighter protection arrangements—the 30 months at a time. My only counsel against that is that the Home Office, in my experience, tends to automatically grant and grant and grant, because it is a lot easier than refusing, and that might just become an automatic turnover of grants for however long you allow people to stay.
I think you ought to look at who is going home. If people go back to their own country on holiday when they have a claim for refugee status, we can establish that. We have the passenger information and can cross-match that to their asylum records. If people go back to their own country once they have been given some kind of protection status here, they should not be allowed back in, because they are clearly not in fear of persecution.
The faster appeals process is absolutely essential. The problem with the appeals process is that it went over to the Ministry of Justice years ago, when the Home Office and MOJ were split up. The MOJ does not seem to have been really bothered about it—it has other things on its plate. The backlog is over a year now, so you have to try and get a grip of that. I do not know how you get that in the Home Office and how you persuade them, but I think it is a good idea. You really have to get that end-to-end process going right.
I like the idea of recouping public funds from people, a bit like in the student loan scheme. If people have come here and been a draw on public funds, and they then get into the workplace, why would you not claw back some of that money into the public purse?
I think that all those things might reduce pull factors. They are really good reforms. I am not saying they are not good measures; what I am saying is that, in my opinion, they are not good enough to stop the boats.
The Chair
We will now hear from Guy Dampier, who will be joining via Zoom. We have until 3 pm for this panel. Can the witness please briefly introduce themselves for the record?
Guy Dampier: Hello, I am Guy Dampier. I am the senior researcher on nationhood at the Prosperity Institute.
Matt Vickers
Q
Guy Dampier: The fundamental issue that we face, as we do in this entire crisis, is human rights legislation—whether international or domestic. It means that we have the extremely lengthy process of going through the asylum claim. It makes it very difficult to establish some of the facts and very difficult to remove people, even in cases where we have refused to grant them asylum.
Tony Smith mentioned earlier that something like 4% of all small-boat migrants who have come since 2018 have been removed. Of those, the largest number have been Albanians because we essentially had a way to send them home without breaching human rights. That is unfortunately not true for the vast majority of other nationalities coming here. Until that human rights issue is tackled, the rate of returns will always be relatively low.
Matt Vickers
Q
Guy Dampier: That is a very difficult one, because one of the big problems that the Bill does not tackle is the fact that an increased number of people are coming legally and then claiming asylum. Since 2019, I think, the number of those coming on the study route has gone up by four times and the number of those coming on the work route has gone up by 22 times. A lot of people are abusing the legal way of getting into the country and then claiming asylum, often suspiciously close to the end of their visa. Nothing in the Bill would really tackle that; that area is really missing.
Anna Turley
Q
Guy Dampier: On the strung-out appeals, the new immigration appeal authority is supposed to help tackle that. The difficulty there, which will touch on article 8, is that potentially the people being used will not be fully legally trained as adjudicators. There are examples of countries that have such a system, including Denmark, Canada and, I think, Norway, but all those have relatively high bars for people to become adjudicators—and in a lot of cases, I think that they end up being lawyers anyway.
The Australians had a similar system. I believe that they cancelled it precisely because the paperwork was being done so badly that they had to redo things or the wrong decisions were being made. Although bad decisions are being made now, the new authority could potentially lead to worse decisions, depending on the quality of the people who come in. We cannot know that quality, but at the moment the lack of qualifications in the legislation is a potential danger.
On article 8, we are seeing restrictions and a narrowing down of things, which is good and will reduce the number of people able to use it. But that will apply only to a minority of cases—even when we are dealing with people who have come here illegally. The majority of people claiming under article 8 now will not be affected. I believe that the Home Office estimates that something like 50% of those who will be refused if this legislation passes will remain in the country illegally; obviously, that is something of a problem.
The Chair
Q
Angela Afzal: Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting the International Rescue Committee and myself to give evidence. I am a policy manager at the IRC, which is a global humanitarian organisation. We support people affected by conflict and crisis from the moment they are displaced until the rebuilding of their lives in safety. In the UK, we deliver integration services.
Matt Vickers
Q
Angela Afzal: We would say that we do not want people to be making dangerous journeys in order to receive refugee protection. That is why we advocate for a range of different safe routes: so that refugees have an option that does not involve risking their lives to get to the UK. We acknowledge, however, that at the moment, other than the one in, one out scheme, there is not an alternative for people to claim asylum from outside UK territory. If people claim asylum having made an irregular journey, gone through the asylum process and gained refugee protection, the entitlements they have should not be dependent on the method by which they entered the UK.
Matt Vickers
Q
Angela Afzal: To reduce small boat crossings, there will be a range of interventions. Our position would be that the safe routes need to be part of that, because if refugees do not have an alternative, they will use people smugglers. Under the Biden Administration in the US, for example, there was a mixture of a change of internal policy on the border and an extensive offer of safe routes for people. The evidence showed that when there was an alternative, people chose it, and it reduced irregular arrivals significantly.
Anna Turley
Q
Angela Afzal: Sorry; I did not catch the second part of your question.
The Chair
Q
Jacqui McKenzie: Good afternoon. I am Jacqueline McKenzie, a partner at Leigh Day solicitors, where I am head of the Windrush immigration and asylum team. I have been working in the immigration and asylum jurisdiction for 20 years as a lawyer, and for 20 years before that in local government.
Professor Singer: Hello, everyone, I am Professor Sarah Singer. I am a professor of refugee law at the Refugee Law Initiative at the University of London. I run our masters programme in refugee protection and forced migration studies and I am also joint editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law, which is the leading academic publication in the refugee law field.
Matt Vickers
Q
Jacqui McKenzie: Sorry, I cannot actually hear the question.
Professor Singer: Which aspects of the Bill do you anticipate would lead to the greatest number of litigation cases?
Jacqui McKenzie: It is difficult to say, but one of our major concerns—this is purely as a practitioner, not a researcher—is about the removal of the current tribunal system and the establishment of the independent immigration appeals mechanism. We think there is considerable risk there, for a number of reasons.
The first reason relates to the separation of powers, and it is one that the Committee should be very concerned about. The whole point of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 was that it was a constitutional device set up by Parliament to have a separation of powers. However, what we will see instead is a system where the Home Secretary appoints the chair and the chief executive officer of this new authority, and that person in turn will appoint the adjudicators, which gives rise to some concern. We are very concerned about whether there is scope to challenge that. The whole idea of the tribunal system is that we have highly trained judges with lots of experience presiding over it. However, it is not clear, and there may not be a problem, because we do not know where the adjudicators are going to come from. Our major concern at the moment is their independence.
I just want to add that the whole of this is predicated on there being a backlog in the system, but it is not clear that just changing from one system to another will really address that. We saw the Home Office bring in large numbers of people to try to fast-track immigration decisions, but what we saw with those decisions was a number of errors, which have now caused problems in the immigrations appellate system. We do not envisage that that is going to change. In my practice, for instance, we regularly see decisions going into the appellate system that should not be there in the first place. The evidence of that is the fact that the tribunals are now awarding costs against the Home Office, and we had two cases recently where it was clear that the Home Office had failed to follow directions on the need to review the whole case or assess the evidence before it; it just failed to do that. If you are going to replace one system with another, but you still have very poor decision making in the first instance, you are not really going to clear the backlog.
I could go on forever, but just recently I accidentally sat in on the wrong hearing at a tribunal. I was only meant to be an observer; a younger member of my team was doing a hearing, and I thought I would like to observe it. I was sent the wrong link by the tribunal, and it took me about half an hour before I suddenly realised that I was on the wrong link—I thought this other matter was just being heard first, and mine was going to follow. I sat through half an hour, and it was a man from Iraq with no representation and no bundle. The interpreter did not really understand him, and it was a waste of time. It took about 30 minutes for the immigration judge to say, “We have to abandon this.”
That brings me to the fact that the other cause of the backlog is the large number of people who are not represented, and that is partly because of the problems in the legal aid system. I know we have recently had an increase, but if we want to get rid of the backlog, we are going to have to address the larger numbers of people coming into the system with no representation at all because they cannot find a lawyer. Most legal aid lawyers cannot make this work on the rates, so they are giving up. My own practice is currently considering giving up legal aid work, and we are one of the few that is still around doing it.
You are going to have people coming into the tribunal system requiring adjournments, and the tribunal system will have to deal with not only that, but very poor decision making coming from the Home Office. I have other concerns about the Bill, but that is my biggest concern. The thing I am exercised about at the moment is whether there is a way of legally challenging this, but I do not know yet.
Matt Vickers
Q
Jacqui McKenzie: We are worried about the provisions in the Bill around article 8, particularly as they relate to the best interests of children and the redefinition of the family, at a time when we are recognising that families come in all different types and colours—I do not mean colours in terms of race; that is probably not the best word. There is not a straightforward definition of a family. The Bill seeks almost to narrow it down to who lives in the house and who does not. That is the sort of language we are getting from the Home Office in trying to describe what it means, because we do not know yet. All we have is a template of an idea.
We have section 55 on the best interests of the child, which most of us base our work on. That enables families using article 8 to remain together in the country. In the impact assessment accompanying the Bill, I saw that fewer than 12,000 families were likely to be refused. We are going for such a draconian measure to deal with a very small number of people. It almost reminds me of Rwanda again. We spent £700 million and we got four volunteers out. Even if we had got some people out through enforcement, it would have been a very small number.
I cannot quite understand why we are targeting families. A lot of those families are actually the third and fourth generation of people who settled here and then brought over their children. In Windrush families, south Asian families and west African families, we have this concept of leaving children behind. The first came when they were over the age of 18, and now large numbers of their children are the ones caught up in the system and using article 8 to remain. Those are the sorts of people we would be targeting. This is their home. They are settled here. The numbers are small. It is not yet clear to me why we need to be doing this.
Anna Turley
Q
Jacqui McKenzie: I think I might have confused the point. There are two separate things. The point I was making about the man from Iraq was about the lack of representation. That lack of representation, and people coming unprepared to do their appeals, causes judges’ time and the entire tribunal’s time to be wasted. That goes out of the system and it comes back in. The poor decision making is a separate thing. I do not know whether the refusal of that man, which brought him into the appellate system, was a good decision or not. We did not get round to that bit, but we see considerable poor decision making.
I work quite a lot with the Windrush community. We keep seeing in the news, “They’re waiting for the Windrush generation to die.” I do not think that is true at all—I do not think the Home Office is that sinister—but we are seeing very straightforward cases taking two or three years to come to conclusion. The whole reason for that is the poor decision making. You get cases where the first decision is a zero, and then it goes up to six figures after two or three reviews. We are dealing with an elderly cohort, and these reviews go on for years and retraumatise the victims.
I see the same sort of thing across my practice: poor decision making on a number of things, including human rights applications and asylum claims. I do not know how, unless things are improved in the first instance, we will reduce the backlog in either the existing tribunal system or the new appellate authority.
Professor Singer: Just to clarify, that is bad quality initial Home Office decision making, as opposed to adjudicator decisions.
Jacqui McKenzie: Home Office decisions, yes, absolutely.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Buttle: I think that the provisions as they currently stand ask businesses to report on what they are doing. It has now mandated particular areas, but there is a difference between reporting and performance. There is still an opportunity for companies to just take a tick-box approach, complying with the letter of the Bill and the clauses rather than actually taking action. So there is an opportunity for companies still to not do the human rights due diligence in the way that this Bill is currently drafted.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Buttle: At CCLA we have been advocating, in addition to reporting requirements, for a smart mix of legislation that would include a mandatory human rights due diligence Bill and potentially a forced labour ban for the UK.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Buttle: As I say, we have been evaluating companies’ modern slavery statements for three or four years now. There is also another investor coalition that we are part of, which is Rathbones’ Votes Against Slavery initiative. That has identified 194 instances of companies in the FTSE 350 not complying with section 54 over the past six years. That is quite widespread and companies are not actually complying. In our benchmarking work, we have identified some of the largest companies in the world that have exposure to modern slavery. They operate in high-risk geographies. They have supply chains that reach into high-risk geographies and they are in sectors that we deem high risk that are not currently complying with section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act. So we do think there is a risk at the moment, and we think that financial penalties would mean there is a risk of not complying with the legislation. On the way that the Bill introduces penalties of £1 million or up to 1% of turnover, that should be sufficient to make businesses consider this more seriously.
Anna Turley
Q
Dr Buttle: I think it will, but the other thing to note is that there has not been very much enforcement by the Home Office of the Modern Slavery Act in the past. In addition to the penalties, we need some enforcement by a body; we would consider that in future that may not be the Home Office, and that the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade might be a better place to enforce this. If there is no enforcement, companies may still consider not complying with the regulations.
Ben Goldsborough
Q
You just raised an interesting point about parliamentary scrutiny and oversight. Comparing and contrasting the system we live under now with the proposed system under the Bill, would you say that it will give Parliament more tools to scrutinise the effectiveness of the system, in terms of reporting?
Alison Hewett: I am probably not best placed to comment from a delivery perspective. I can say that under the Bill, as the SRO, I will be required to deliver a programme that gives effect to these changes and requirements. It is probably for our policy colleagues and, potentially, Ministers to opine on that.
Matt Vickers
Q
Daniel Flury: It currently takes about 56 weeks for an appeal to clear the system in the first-tier tribunal, which is only going to worsen in the years ahead as more of the claims that have been sitting in the backlog for some time are concluded. It is even longer for appeals —that 56 weeks is all appeals. As to where we think it could get to, I do not think any of us could say yet, unless the Home Office wants to offer something. I think we can all agree that it needs to improve substantially, because 56 weeks is unacceptable in any jurisdiction.
Matt Vickers
Q
Daniel Flury: I could not say from an HMCTS perspective.
Alison Hewett: Not at this stage. We are undertaking quite a lot of detailed modelling, but that is very much a work in progress. It would be inappropriate to get into that level of detail at this point.
The Chair
If Members have no further questions, I will thank the witnesses for their evidence and move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witness
Stephen Webb gave evidence.
The Chair
Q
Stephen Webb: I am Stephen Webb, director of programmes at Fix Britain. Before that, I was at Policy Exchange and, before that, I spent a long time as a civil servant, including 10 or 15 years in the Home Office, where I dealt with some of the issues covered by the Bill.
Matt Vickers
Q
Stephen Webb: In a sense, the Bill seems mainly to look at the stock rather than the flow, looking at people already in the country. I know the Government have legislated previously on the actual crossings. I suppose the question is, within the way the Bill is structured at the moment, what would make the biggest difference in deterring people from starting the journey in the first place? That is quite hard to say, because there are lots of changes around making it more difficult to make claims, particularly under article 8.
My main point is that I feel, as I have written before, that it is not just article 8, but article 3 that gives asylum seekers an extremely high chance of staying in the country. Although the Government have chosen to toughen, somewhat, the way that article 8 will be treated, the Bill is silent on article 3. That is slightly disappointing, given that the Chişinău declaration, back in May, talked about reforming both and suggested areas where the courts—both domestically and in Strasbourg—could potentially tighten things up. I would see that as the main area.
Matt Vickers
Q
Stephen Webb: You obviously have a combination of both the article 8 definitions and the decision-making body, with a new appeals structure. The appeals structure could be very helpful. There is a significant problem of public confidence in the immigration tribunals as they stand, so I welcome the Government’s measures essentially to phase that out.
It is very hard to say how decision makers and people on appeal are going to interpret this. There clearly is a toughening-up here, certainly on article 8. There is nothing at the moment that does much on article 3 claims, which, as the Committee knows, have been broadened very widely by the courts over the last 20 years into things like whether there is an equivalent health system in the host country and the receiving country, and into areas that are really quite surprising for something that is supposed to be an unqualified right.
Anna Turley
Q
Stephen Webb: The problem with the immigration tribunals at the moment is that the reporting on judgments, in some cases, has been pretty shocking. The judiciary have not helped themselves in the way that most first-tier judgments are not routinely available. The only time you really hear about them is when they go up on appeal and are quite often turned down. The point about the famous chicken nuggets case is that it was not actually upheld on appeal. It was turned down, but it gave people a taste of the sort of things that might be happening in the tribunals. Obviously, there are recorded cases of tribunal judges coming from quite an activist background, which again seems very odd—I think the public would not expect that.
From that point of view, there is an opportunity to reset and to have clear rules about impartiality. There is also considerable scope to speed things up, which will definitely be helpful. Certainly, a lot of cases are lost because of the time it takes to get to a hearing, so people can build a case. Maybe they will get involved, rightly or wrongly, genuinely or not, in making a political case. Maybe they will create it. They might start developing religious reasons or, indeed, article 8 reasons related to relationships formed in the country. The quicker a decision is made, the more likely it is that it will be rapidly upheld at that first stage. Those are all positives. It is going to be a big process to find these people—identifying them, training them and getting them ready—but in principle, I think it is a good idea.
The Chair
Q
Anna Turley: Good afternoon. I am Anna Turley, the Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum.
Dan Hobbs: Good afternoon. I am Dan Hobbs, the director general for migration, borders and international policy and programmes in the Home Office.
Bas Javid: Good afternoon. I am Bas Javid, the director general for immigration enforcement at the Home Office.
Matt Vickers
Q
“Little of the appraisal is quantified and most impacts are…uncertain.”
What measurable difference do the Government expect the Bill to make? How many additional removals will it deliver? How much faster will cases finally be resolved?
Anna Turley: The Bill is a really important part of our armoury for dealing with illegal immigration and securing our borders in this country. In introducing it, we have tried to be clear that this country has fundamental values of decency, fairness and tolerance that we hold dear. We have an historic role in providing safety to those fleeing war and persecution but, as we have heard today from lots of witnesses, we must recognise that the world is changing.
The current system was not designed to cope with a world that is so volatile and insecure, or with people travelling through multiple safe countries before crossing the channel, particularly by boat. We have to confront the situation facing our asylum system, which is one of the most permissive, compared with other countries in Europe. Unfortunately, it is acting as a pull factor, providing a perverse incentive for people who have arrived illegally to switch to the asylum system once here. The Bill, as part of our wider process, tries to tackle that.
The Bill is part of a range of measures we have in place to tackle issues raised by the shadow Minister, such as removals. I just want to set it in its context, because we have had a lot of conversation today about whether the Bill will be the silver bullet to stop the boats. I think it is really important to see it in the broader context of all the other measures that we are bringing in.
As you know, we have established the Border Security Command, which has been part of the reason why—together with our one in, one out deal with France—we have already seen small boats down by over 40% this year. We have stopped 38,000 channel crossings, and the number of asylum claimants we have awaiting their initial decision is at its lowest since 2019. We are now down to fewer than half the hotels that asylum seekers had been placed in, and we have seen 80,000 removals since the last election, including 11,000 foreign national offenders. As I said, the Bill is one part of the armoury that we want to use.
The problems we want to tackle are clear. Some 41% of asylum claims are from people who are already here and hold visas from another form of entering the country. As colleagues have heard, the first-tier tribunals have 156,000 appeals outstanding, with 72 weeks being the current average for asylum appeals. We have a number of late claims mechanisms that people use to threaten removals, and at the moment 95% of asylum decisions get appealed. That is the context we are trying to deal with through the course of the Bill’s passage.
We have obviously talked about the Bill’s measures today, and we are confident that they will start to address, as part of that broader armoury, some of the pull factors that are leading to us being seen as having one of the most permissive processes in Europe.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: I do not want to put a specific figure on it. I am pleased with the statistics we have seen, and I want people to judge us on the outcomes of the measures we have introduced so far, which have seen 60,000 removals and 48,000 crossings stopped. We will have our metrics to measure this, but I do not want to put a specific figure on the impact at this stage of the Bill’s progress. We know the measures are specifically designed to tackle the blockages in the system and the reasons why people are able to frustrate and string out appeals. The Bill is targeted at the specific issues that mean people can string out the process, which are why the system is not functioning.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: Bas, you have an example—we discussed this earlier today.
Bas Javid: With all the measures in the Bill, we want to address what potentially gives people the opportunity to frustrate removals, either in bad faith or just by being late, whether that is article 8 appeals or national referral mechanism issues. I would highlight two things that frustrate operational removal. One is the successive number of issues that people raise, but not necessarily all together, and there is also the fact that it is done very late, often on the steps of the plane, particularly on charter flights.
To give an example, in 2025, on all the charter flights that my teams ran, over a third of the people frustrated their claims through late NRM referrals. That is just an example of the kind of things that happen, and that obviously also puts a lot of extra cost and wasted resource into the system, where I would otherwise use that resource to remove people legitimately.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: I have one example that we saw in the past. We had an Albanian man who become a British citizen but falsely claimed to be the father of eight children between 2022 and 2024. He was sentenced to six years in jail in October 2025, but having a British father on the birth certificate meant that the children could be registered as British citizens, meaning that they could then be an anchor for the Albanian father and Albanian mother. That is an example of where it is currently being used to thwart a fair process. That is the kind of example that we would seek to use.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: Of those who have been granted leave to stay here on the basis of article 8, 71% had entered illegally or overstayed. That gives you a sense of how often this provision is used by people who have thwarted other means to be in this country. This is meant to be a safeguard, but we had 77,000 applicants for article 8 in 2025, which again gives a sense of the scale at which it is being used. As my colleague said, that is really affecting our ability to enforce our rules and protect those in genuine need.
Matt Vickers
Q
Bas Javid: I do not have an exact number on the total. When we look at it in individual categories, such as people in the appeal system where the appeals right is exhausted, that is in the thousands—tens of thousands in many cases. In terms of individuals in particular cohorts or groups, we can break that down. I can get those figures for you—I do not have them to hand—but it is several thousand.
Anna Turley: I have one figure to add to the point on article 8. For those who were granted an article 8 right to remain in 2025, the cost to the taxpayer is £4.9 billion. That again shows the scale and the impact on the British taxpayer.
Dr Ahmed
Q
Bas Javid: Everything we do within my team and the wider system, we do with compassion, respect and dignity. For every person we come across, whether that is a voluntary return or an enforced return or a foreign national offender, we follow the rules of policy and law. Our strapline is stop, manage, remove and protect; safeguarding and vulnerability form a huge component part of what we do, day to day, and how we run and manage our operations.
On the benefits that the IIAA will bring in terms of speeding up and discontinuing successive claims, it will obviously allow us to manage and process people much quicker, and it will certainly separate the people who have legitimate claims from those who potentially do not.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: We can certainly get back to you on that figure. As I said, we know that there were 77,000 applicants in 2025. We also know that 70% of our foreign national deportation appeals were allowed on article 8 grounds. We can probably do the maths and get back to the Committee.
Matt Vickers
Q
Anna Turley: I would not want to give incorrect figures. If it is okay, I will reply to the Committee in writing with that information.
Dan Hobbs: There is data in the Bill’s impact assessment on the loss that we see, both on the national referral mechanism and the removals, and where it would be our intention to reduce that attrition as much as possible from them both. There are a number of elements to this: the late claims process, the new procedures under the IIAA and the changes in terms of treatment of credibility under the national referral mechanism. Bas can probably talk more to that, but you will see people using multiple channels. The intention of the Bill is partly to ensure that there is an appeal that deals with all those issues and that, if they are brought late or after the notifications, they are treated as bad faith—that is the intention here. There are a number of elements, so isolating just the individual bits relating to the article 8 clauses will be quite difficult to assess.
Anna Turley: To build on that, the impact assessment says that article 8 reforms will result in an additional 3,600 people per year being removed. That is on the basis of our analysis finding that 31% of people who were refused article 8 applications were removed from the UK or claimed asylum. The 3,600 figure is estimated by applying the 31% proportion to the 11,700 total number of people estimated to be refused an article 8 claim due to the measures in the Bill. Hopefully that gives a little more clarity, but I am happy to write to the Committee.
The Chair
If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. That brings us to the end of today’s session. The Committee will meet again at 9.25 am on Tuesday 13 October to begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Jade Botterill.)
Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting)
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 month ago)
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The Chair
We are now sitting in public again and the proceedings are being broadcast. Good morning to our witnesses. Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest in connection with the Bill? No. If any interests are particularly relevant to a Member’s questioning or speech, they should declare them at the appropriate time.
We will now hear oral evidence from Eleanor Lyons, the independent anti-slavery commissioner; Dr Will Prescott, head of research at Bright Blue, who will be joining via Zoom; and Vicky Tennant, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees representative to the UK. We must stick to the timings in the programme order that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 10.10 am. Will the witnesses please briefly introduce themselves for the record?
Vicky Tennant: I am Vicky Tennant, the representative to the United Kingdom for the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR. We are the body that has responsibility under international law for advancing protection and solutions for refugees.
Eleanor Lyons: Good morning—nice to see you all. I am Eleanor Lyons, the UK’s independent anti-slavery commissioner.
Dr Prescott: I am Will Prescott, head of research at Bright Blue. Thank you for letting me join via Zoom.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Q
Dr Prescott: Obviously, reducing the number of irregular arrivals would be welcome for all concerned, but I gather that this particular session is looking specifically at the modern slavery components. We have to remember that only a relatively small proportion of small boat arrival modern slavery claimants are actually victims of modern slavery. A lot of victims of modern slavery do come here—sometimes legally, sometimes under false pretences. I am not necessarily sure that tying a reduction in small boat arrivals to modern slavery is necessarily a positive thing; I think you are slightly confusing two different issues.
Eleanor Lyons: I think there are already safeguards in place to stop any misuse of the system. There is a high evidential threshold to be recognised and acknowledged as a victim of modern slavery. There are the reasonable ground and conclusive ground stages, and you cannot self-refer to be a victim—you have to be spotted by a designated first responder organisation. Multiple Select Committees over the years have found no evidence of a widespread misuse of the system. The latest Home Office data that has been provided is only for those on high-risk deportation flights, who represent less than 2% of the number of potential victims of modern slavery identified in this country last year. I do not think you need new legislative solutions to deal with any of those challenges; the Home Office already has the powers it needs if it wants to challenge them and tackle them.
I remind the Committee that the largest group of victims in this country are UK nationals. All the changes in the Bill relating to questioning victims’ credibility if they take a long time to come forward, have inconsistencies in their account due to trauma, or have similar exploitative experiences to others—which they normally do, because organised crime groups exploit people in similar ways—mean they will also have their credibility questioned as UK nationals. For me, that undoes years of work by safeguarding professionals in understanding how victims feel scared to come forward and talk about their exploitation.
Matt Vickers
Q
Eleanor Lyons: If you took the premise that there is an issue with the system, I would focus on better training and support for first responder organisations so that they are good at doing referrals in the first place. There is a real mix in terms of how qualified and competent first responder organisations, such as local authorities, police forces and charities, are. I would also look at a higher quality of decision making from the Government. At the moment, about three quarters of negative decisions that are challenged are then accepted as having been the wrong initial decision by the Government, and are overturned. If there were more opportunities for people to be identified, better-quality decisions and a more trauma-informed approach, we would identify victims earlier in the process and there would be fewer challenges on that part. All this legislation will do is to make it very hard for us to identify or support victims who need help.
The Minister of State, Home Department (Anna Turley)
Q
Eleanor Lyons: Thank you, Minister, for your engagement so far on the Bill. It is very much appreciated. Building on what I was saying, we really need a system that allows for early identification and support of victims of exploitation. That includes all victims of exploitation, UK nationals and non-UK nationals. When I first came into my role three years ago, the big conversation was about what mandatory training would look like for first responder organisations, so that they would know how to spot a potential victim of modern slavery. Many victims themselves do not even recognise that they are being exploited. To introduce early support into the system would make a huge change on that side of things.
I am concerned about the Home Office data on already high-risk flights. Less than 2% of the total number in the national referral mechanism are on those flights. The Home Office has five days to make a “reasonable grounds” decision. It only protects a victim of modern slavery for five days if they are referred into the national referral mechanism. If the Government decide that, actually, they do not think that there are grounds for those people being a victim of modern slavery, after that point they do not get any extra enhancements for indefinite leave to remain, so I do not think that that provides extra protection for victims. All we try to do in that period is to provide them with the support and care they need in their recovery period, if they need it.
The Chair
Q
Helen Rance: Good morning, everybody. My name is Helen Rance. I am a director at the National Crime Agency on threat leadership.
Matt Vickers
Q
Helen Rance: Sorry, could you say the first part of the question again?
Matt Vickers
Q
Helen Rance: In answer to the second part, no—nothing specific has been omitted from the Bill. Obviously, the Bill has more direct focus on modern slavery and human trafficking—which I will call MSHT from now onwards—but in terms of the biggest thing that will help with organised immigration crime, which is a major focus of ours at the National Crime Agency, nothing specific in the Bill will fundamentally change how we investigate serious and organised criminals entering the country. What it will do is make our borders less attractive to criminals entering. That is our overarching opinion on that.
Matt Vickers
Q
Helen Rance: No.
Anna Turley
Q
You mentioned the importance of deterrence. That is critical, and it is one of the key things that we want to achieve in the Bill. Could you say a little more about how you think the measures in the Bill will help to deter people and make interventions earlier in the process of illegal immigration?
Helen Rance: In terms of deterrence, we are obviously a law enforcement agency, and we would not make specific definitive judgments on the different effects that the measures will have on deterring crossings or immigration. We very much think that deterrence is about a combination of factors, and is, ultimately, a matter for Government policy. However, we believe that the measures contribute to a system that is seen as firm, fair and less susceptible to exploitation by organised crime groups. It is likely that that will help the overall deterrent effect. The changes to appeals, protection status, asylum arrangements and the removal process might contribute to making the UK a less attractive target for the criminal networks that facilitate illegal immigration.
The Chair
We now hear from Dr Conor Casey, senior lecturer in public law and legal theory at the University of Surrey and senior fellow at Policy Exchange, Judicial Power Project. We also hear from Professor Richard Ekins KC, professor of law and constitutional government at the University of Oxford and head of Policy Exchange at the Judicial Power Project. Both will be joining us via Zoom. We have until five past 11 for this session. Gentlemen, you are very welcome. Let us start with an introduction from Professor Ekins.
Professor Ekins: You have done so already, Chair, and I thank you for it. I am a professor at the University of Oxford, and I lead Policy Exchange’s work on judicial power. I have written a great deal on migration and asylum law, including the problems, as I see it, of the application of the European convention on human rights in that context and also how successive Governments and, with respect, some parliamentarians have misunderstood the refugee convention and its protections.
Dr Casey: Thank you very much for the invitation to speak today. My name is Conor Casey. I am a senior lecturer at the University of Surrey School of Law and a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. My area of expertise includes public law, administrative law, the law of the European convention on human rights and how the convention is interpreted in the UK domestic courts.
Matt Vickers
Q
Professor Ekins: Litigation will certainly arise in consequence of these new provisions, if they are enacted; they will not end the controversy in this space. The litigation may turn on different questions, such as whether something counts as “normally”. There is a great deal of uncertainty about how the changes made by the relevant provision, clause 18, will be received by the courts.
In a sense, the legislation leaves untouched the fundamental structure of article 8 in this context, which is individuated proportionality assessment. It tries to clarify, or maybe streamline, some aspects of the way in which article 8 is understood and applied—those changes are to be welcomed, so far as they go—but it is unclear whether, and to what extent, that will restrain the courts in applying article 8.
The legislation takes for granted continuing individuated assessment. The legislation does not purport to be an exclusive code for article 8, does not displace article 8 under the Human Rights Act, and does not direct the courts to focus only on the terms of this legislation and close their eyes to the Strasbourg case law. The way in which article 8 will be understood and applied will be informed to some extent by this new legislation, but there will be arguments about precisely what it means and whether there are conditionals in the legislation at play.
It will always be open to unlawful migrants and asylum seekers who are making arguments by reference to article 8 to invite the court to go back to the Strasbourg Court’s case law and to take this legislation as, in a sense, advisory. I know that that may sound somewhat strange, but that is effectively the structure we have. Parliament is not clearly telling the courts, “Focus only on this legislation, and close your eyes to the other body of case law.” It could attempt to do so: it could go further, by disapplying article 8 under the Human Rights Act and making this an exclusive code for the relevance of family life. That would require some recasting.
To my mind, the more fundamental problem is that we are maintaining individuated proportionality assessment as the test for the lawfulness of removal. That will inevitably be somewhat—“ad hoc” is perhaps the wrong term, but it will be particular and unpredictable. A great deal will turn on the persons who are making the adjudicative decisions. The Bill obviously has something to say about that, but how it will play out is quite unpredictable.
That is a complicated answer to your question. There will certainly be litigation, and it would be a mistake to think that this new legislation will authoritatively determine how article 8 will be understood. It will make some difference, but much turns on how it is received, which you simply cannot tell from where you sit now.
Dr Casey: I agree. There are two different ways, broadly speaking, that this Bill could be received by courts and tribunals. One way—which, so far as the Home Secretary is concerned, would be the positive scenario—is that the tribunal takes very seriously the clear intent behind the Bill, which is to tighten and narrow the circumstances in which article 8 can be invoked and successfully relied on to resist a removal or deportation.
However, as my colleague Richard pointed out, a lot of the wording in the Bill gives leeway for more flexible or generous interpretations for applicants. For example, the Bill says that article 8 applies “normally” only to a nuclear family—partners residing together, or a parent and a child residing together. That “normally” suggests that judges might take a broader understanding of other types of family arrangements. With the standards throughout the Bill—unreasonable impact, “adverse” impact or “unduly harsh”—there is, again, scope to give these a much more generous interpretation, such that, for some judges, it might be hard not to find an instance where deportation could not be considered harsh or as having an adverse impact on a child, because it separates a family unit.
I can imagine some judges—not all, but some—reading these standards in a generous way that would capture a large sweep of cases and defeat removals and deportations. There is a scenario where the reception of the Bill is such that judges retain quite a lot of discretion to come up with their own understanding of the right balance between the public interest and individuals’ family life and, plausibly within the text of the Bill, to reach conclusions that are in tension with the clear policy intent behind the Bill.
I think that that is an unavoidable situation if one accepts the strictures imposed by the ECHR and its jurisprudence because a sine qua non of article 8 law, as articulated by the Court, is that the tribunal must reach its own assessment—it must reach its own assessment of proportionality. At best, Parliament may give indications of where it wants weighting to go but, to stay within the strictures of the ECHR, the courts must have the final say.
Also, in response to the question about whether, if article 8 claims are less attractive, other claims might be made under the ECHR: absolutely. I imagine that article 3 claims will probably increase. The difference between article 3 and article 8, as the Committee will know, is that article 3 is categorical—there is no qualification if the threshold is met. The threshold sometimes includes things like whether removal will lead to substandard medical care, compared with the NHS; that is ill treatment. We could see a spike in such invocations, and the Bill does not touch article 3 claims whatever.
Professor Ekins: I should add that this legislation, as the Committee knows, builds on the Immigration Act 2014, which also attempted to tighten the understanding and application of article 8; that is largely viewed as having been much less effective than Parliament intended in 2014. This legislation will go further and that is to be welcomed, but the earlier Act should be a cautionary tale about the risks of failure.
Anna Turley
Q
Professor Ekins: In my view, the legislation does not strike the right balance, because it fails—as have successive Bills, I think—to take sufficiently robust measures in relation to the problem of illegal migration and people smuggling; I am thinking of the small boats crisis in particular. That is somewhat distinct from the broader problem of unlawful migration, which is clearly a problem—people overstaying, foreign criminals and so on—but the small boats crisis has particular features that warrant a particular response.
To my mind, unfortunately, although the legislation tinkers with aspects of how the refugee convention should be understood in our law—perhaps we will come to that later—it seems, silently at least, to take for granted that persons who have contracted with people smugglers and made it across the channel are entitled to asylum and to remain in the UK. I think that that is a misunderstanding of the terms of the refugee convention, which do entitle us to expel persons from the UK, even when they are genuine refugees under the meaning of the refugee convention. That is a protection that all member states enjoy. It entitles us to expel them to other states, because they have entered in violation of our migration law. It would be different had they entered directly from a state where their lives were in danger, but no one coming from France is in that position. That makes that a structurally different position to other contexts, when people flee danger.
The legislation simply does not address that feature of the problem. The measures it takes—which, as I say, I welcome as far as they go—simply tinker with the edges and do not address the central problem. Genuine refugees will cross the channel but, so long as contracting with people smugglers is a viable route to enter and thus to settle in the UK, that will persist. It is a logical and rational expenditure of funds, and it is a flourishing business so long as you do not care about the lives of people crossing a dangerous water.
There is a failure to recognise the protections that we have as a country under the refugee convention. We may take action that would not place persons in danger—they can be removed to safe third states. As far as I can see, the Bill is focused on increasing administrative adjudicative capacity to process appeal claims more speedily. That is admirable, but it leaves untouched the central structural problem, which I and others writing for Policy Exchange have tried to draw attention to over the years.
Dr Casey: I agree. I do not see anything in the Bill that would deter unlawful channel crossings. But, as has been mentioned, , depending on how the Bill is received in the courts, it might deter overstaying on visas and the breaching of conditions of your permission to reside. That could be valuable, as those are significant numbers, but I do not see anything that would deter unlawful channel crossings in any way.
You could go further in the Bill and, for example, take advantage of provisions in the refugee convention that allow states to return those convicted of serious criminal offences or of threats to national security to their home countries, even if there was a risk of ill treatment. The refugee convention allows that, but it would not be possible within the confines of the ECHR. Article 3 puts a categorical prohibition on those kinds of returns even if the person being returned poses an enormous threat to the United Kingdom itself. So even if you did take full advantage of everything that the refugee convention permitted you to do to protect your own immigration system, the ECHR would pose even more stringent restrictions in many respects.
Professor Ekins: I agree with everything that Dr Casey has said, but I would add that that is article 3 as—in my view—misinterpreted by the Strasbourg Court. Article 3 does provide a categorical prohibition on torture and subjecting people to inhumane treatment; as I say, that has been misinterpreted in recent decades to establish a much more far-reaching bar on taking action that exposes someone to a risk of such action from third parties.
In 2021, we published a paper that addressed in close detail the misinterpretation of the ECHR and its far-reaching impact for immigration and asylum law. That Policy Exchange paper is backed by Lord Hoffmann, former judge of the House of Lords. It makes clear the problem in the Strasbourg Court’s reading of article 3—as well as its reading of article 8, I should add.
The Chair
We will now hear from Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst for the Refugee Council. For this session, we have until 11.25 am. Mr Featonby, could I ask you to briefly introduce yourself?
Jon Featonby: Thank you very much. On behalf of the Refugee Council, I really welcome this opportunity. I am Jon Featonby, the chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council. As an organisation, we support around 15,000 refugees and people seeking asylum each year, from when they first enter the UK right through to when they get refugee status and are on their integration journey after that.
Matt Vickers
Q
Jon Featonby: I am going to focus on the people who enter the UK for the purpose of seeking asylum within the international protection regime. For us, this comes down to how the refugee convention has been interpreted and operationalised since it first came in in 1951. That has been based around countries like the UK requiring somebody to be present in the UK, in their own territory, before they can access the protection systems. By its nature, that means that people have to undertake some of those dangerous journeys to get there.
It is important to recognise that the convention talks about somebody being a refugee once they have been forced to leave a country because of war and persecution, and it is then blind to where that person is. There are obviously benefits if those people do not need to undertake dangerous journeys to get somewhere. There are benefits for the individuals who do not need to put their lives at risk—we see the really deadly consequences that has across the world—and benefits for the host countries themselves if people are able to arrive in an orderly manner and do not have to resort to the types of journeys that they have to now.
It is also part of this important international context that most refugees—most people displaced from their countries—stay in the countries that border the ones they have fled from. Some people move on, and sometimes that can be because the countries neighbouring the place they have fled are no longer safe for them and no longer allow them to try to fulfil their lives, particularly as we see refugee situations becoming increasingly protracted across the globe. That is one of the things that we see lacking in the UK’s response at the moment. It is not just the UK’s response; we have seen the deterrence measures that you mentioned being adopted by successive Governments. We have seen some impact of that, particularly this year in terms of the drop in small boat arrivals.
From the Refugee Council’s point of view, we would argue that the bit that has largely been missing from this is about how you continue to undermine the business model of the people smugglers and the people who take advantage of the people seeking safety. That is where we would talk about the importance of safe and legal routes. The previous Government opened up new routes, and we think that the Afghan and Ukraine schemes are great successes.
One of the challenges that we see at the moment is that those safe routes available to people have dropped over the last year; the number of people arriving on safe routes in the last 12 months is down by about 50%. Refugee family reunion has been temporarily suspended for over a year now, and we have seen the closure of the Afghan schemes. We have been promised that new safe and legal routes will open in the new few months, with arrivals next year, but it seems that those numbers will be quite small.
If we look at what worked in somewhere like the US under President Biden, it was having two sides to the approach: yes, the enforcement approach, but on the other side of that, quite generous, open, safe and legal routes, so that the people who genuinely need safety are able to get to somewhere like the UK without having to put their lives at risk.
Matt Vickers
Q
Jon Featonby: For the people who are refugees, it is about having an asylum system that first and foremost does what it should do, which is making decisions as quickly as it can that are right the first time. I think making sure that that happens has been a bit of a challenge under successive Governments now. For the people who are genuinely seeking protection and who need it, the system needs to make sure that they are able to access that protection when they do.
What we have also seen is the challenge at the other end. For the people who are found not to have that protection need, there needs to be a firm and fair system in place to make sure they are removed from the UK as quickly, and hopefully as humanely, as possible. That is probably where there have been challenges. Some of them are legal challenges, but some of it comes down to basic good caseworking in the Home Office.
Anna Turley
Q
Jon Featonby: The easiest way to look at some of this is through the immigration statistics published by the Home Office. Since small boats really started in around 2019, the top nationalities have largely stayed the same. There have been people from Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea and Iran, and the reasons why people would seek safety from those places are quite well known. Within that time, there have also been spikes from other countries. Quite famously, there was a lot of attention in 2022 on Albanians, but those numbers dropped quite quickly. That was probably a slightly different route from some of the other countries.
The Refugee Council has done some analysis in the past on what you would expect the asylum outcomes to be for those nationalities. Historically, you would expect around two thirds of the people crossing in small boats to go on and get protection. That has dropped slightly in the last year because the overall grant rate has dropped, although one caveat is that because the Home Office has not published appeals outcome statistics for the last three years, it is quite hard to work out exactly what happens once some of those cases go through the appeals process.
Safety of the Jewish Community
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this debate on an issue important to so many of her constituents.
Despite having been in this role for only a couple of years, I have too often stood opposite Ministers to condemn violence against and, on solemn occasions, mourn the loss of life in the Jewish community—people targeted for no reason other than being Jewish. When those tragedies happen, we seem to find ourselves in the same post-tragedy discourse, with public figures stating that antisemitism has no place in our society, rightly acknowledging that it is an evil that must be vanquished. Yet how hollow must those words ring when British Jews know that another incident could merely be round the corner?
When the Golders Green attack occurred, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to state clearly:
“This is a national emergency”.
As with any emergency, there is no single solution. It requires multiple measures, but underpinning those must be a willingness to tackle the underlying ideologies that allow this hatred to fester. Today the facts are stark. Having visited the Community Security Trust’s headquarters, I join hon. Members in recognising the organisation’s incredible professionalism. The CST data released in August showed that between January and June, antisemitic incidents reached the second highest total ever reported to the trust in the first six months of any year. That is a disgrace.
Prior to October 2023, the CST had only ever recorded monthly incident totals exceeding 200 on five occasions. In the first half of 2026, the organisation logged more than 200 incidents of anti-Jewish hate in every single month, and more than 300 a month from March to June. Those incidents ranged from threats to life, assaults and arson to damage and desecration of Jewish property and abusive behaviour.
But there is another statistic that should stop every Member of this House in their tracks. The latest Home Office figures show that in England and Wales, there were 106 police recorded religious hate crimes targeting Jewish people for every 10,000 Jewish people. Across the population as a whole, the equivalent rate was 1.7 recorded religious hate crimes per 10,000 people. If we put those figures alongside one another, the disparity is extraordinary and horrifying. On that population-adjusted measure, the rate of recorded religious hate crime targeting Jewish people was more than 60 times the rate in the overall population—I repeat, more than 60 times the rate. Religious hate crime is concentrated against Britain’s Jewish community, and on an extraordinary and horrifying scale.
In modern Britain, that fact should shock every one of us: it is a stinging indictment of where we are and why this debate is so necessary. It also illustrates why the Government were right, in the summer, to allocate further police resources to tackling the issue. Ultimately, across matters of enforcement, we need to increase police presence, see urgent prosecutions, put a moratorium on hate marches, implement maximum sentencing and deterrence, conduct a comprehensive audit of counter-terrorism cases involving antisemitic motivation, deport foreigners who express antisemitic views supporting violence or terrorism, and better use existing powers to ensure that hatred cannot be targeted at Jewish communities.
The question I have is this: is enforcement enough, when the ideas that fester continue to be popular? Many of us across this House were fortunate enough to go to university; yet, as has been said, polling conducted for the Union of Jewish Students earlier this year paints a horrendous picture. How can someone feel safe when one fifth of the university campus would not share a house with them and one in four have seen behaviour targeting Jewish students? Can the Minister confirm when the Government will publish the Bell review into antisemitism in schools, and whether they will accept its recommendations in full?
There is nothing intellectual about prejudice, there is nothing progressive about excluding Jews and there is nothing enlightened about recycling vile conspiracy theories that are centuries old. The same polling found that 16% thought it was not antisemitic to claim that Jews control the media or government. We need to tackle the ideologies creating this mindset, because antisemitism does not begin with an attack on a synagogue. It begins with ideas and conspiracy theories. It begins when Jews are treated as a sinister collective and ancient prejudices are allowed to spread under new guises. The need to tackle this across communities is unfortunately clear.
Polling by Policy Exchange this year found that more than two in five British Muslims believed that Jews had too much power over the media, weapons manufacturing and the banking system. We should be capable of saying two things at once: the overwhelming majority of British Muslims are not responsible for antisemitism and should never be treated as though they are, but when antisemitic attitudes exist within any communities, we do that community and British Jews no favours by being frightened to confront them.
Siân Berry
At a recent event hosted by my wonderful local progressive synagogue, lots of issues were raised with me. This is a synagogue—it is not a representative of the Israeli Government. We cannot have anyone conflating Jewish faith with that. This is a synagogue that prays for Palestinians every week, but in that place, in my progressive city of Brighton and Hove, security and safety were still the absolute backdrop to everything raised; they have real fear. Would the hon. Member agree that it is so important for us to build solidarity and cohesion in communities, and make sure we do not drive further wedges between people in tackling this issue?
Matt Vickers
I agree that opening doors is part of the solution, but I also agree that we have to tackle antisemitism wherever it might be, and it is most prominent.
The same applies to antisemitism on the far right. Hatred does not become acceptable because of the politics of the person expressing it. These views go to the heart of the problem. It is not enough merely to have resources to protect the Jewish community. We must combat the intellectual idiocy that upholds and spreads antisemitic views. The test of a liberal democracy is not whether the majority feel safe; it is whether minorities can live openly as themselves, without fear.
I have taken a sombre tone because it is impossible to look at the current situation with rose-tinted glasses. However, for the vast majority of people, antisemitic hatred remains abhorrent. The university polling showed that many recognise this hatred when they see it, with 82% deeming calls to “globalise the intifada” to be antisemitic. That majority matters, but a tolerant majority cannot afford to become a silent majority.
My request to the Government today is twofold: first, to use the powers of the state unapologetically to protect Jewish people, and secondly, to go further upstream, work with the Jewish community, listen to Jewish students, challenge institutions that allow antisemitism to flourish, confront extremist ideology regardless of where it originates and, when making decisions in response to events in the middle east, remember that British Jews must never be treated as proxies for the actions of an Israeli Government. Whatever our political disagreements, that principle should be utterly uncontroversial.
I know that Members across the House want to see the Jewish community safe, but wanting is no longer enough. When the population-adjusted rate of recorded hate crime targeting Jews stands at more than 60 times the overall population rate, when Jewish students are questioning whether they belong on their own campuses and when Jewish families require security simply to practise their faith, we have to recognise the scale of the emergency before us. That is not simply a problem for the British Jewish community; it is a test for Britain, this Government, this House and our country, and it is one we cannot afford to fail.
Draft Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) Order 2026
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I thank you, Mrs Barker, for chairing the debate.
I do not think that anybody on the Committee objects in principle to making it easier for someone to prove that they are over 18 without having to carry a passport or similar around with them. There are obvious conveniences for consumers, and potentially for businesses, but I would like the Minister to provide some reassurance about where the measure sits within the Government’s wider approach to digital verification.
The order before us appears relatively narrow. It allows licensed premises to rely on a registered digital verification service when checking somebody’s age. We are told that its use will be voluntary, that businesses will not have to accept digital identification and, importantly, that customers will still be able to use physical identification. I welcome that assurance, but I would like the Minister to put it beyond any doubt that there is no intention for digital identification to become, in practice or in law, the only reasonable means by which somebody can prove their age when purchasing alcohol.
As technology changes, it is right that the means by which the Government regulate should expand to incorporate and utilise that technology. This should not be about digitally excluding people, but about increasing people’s options and choices and allowing people to do business more easily. As has been acknowledged, the work on this matter is based heavily on efforts begun under the Conservative Government, which were consulted on in 2024. Critically, that work was about ensuring that people have additional methods of proving their age, rather than requiring them to adopt a digital identity.
As I see it, allowing shops, for example, to utilise existing verification schemes and then validate them with something like a QR code appears to be a sensible step for the Government to take. More and more people leave the house with only a phone in their pocket, making it all the more likely that their physical ID has been left at home. Giving them another means of proving their age is therefore a practical and sensible development.
Although I have noted the likely benefits stemming from the measure, I would like to see clarity on a point made in the other place last week about whether cards bearing the PASS—proof of age standards scheme—hologram will continue to be recognised as the preferred form of physical proof of age. Can the Minister confirm that, in making these changes, there will be no change to the recognition of PASS hologram cards before the office for digital identities and attributes has provided its supporting analysis, and PASS and others have had a proper opportunity to respond?
In addition, I understand that retailers in the wine and spirit trade have raised a technical concern about the meaning of the words “deliver identification”. Put simply, when somebody proves their age digitally, what information does the retailer actually need to receive? Is it sufficient for the digital verification provider to confirm that the customer meets the relevant age requirement, or must further identifying information be provided? I hope the Minister can confirm that that will be made absolutely clear to retailers in the updated guidance. Those may be small and more technical elements, but given retailers’ responsibility to ensure that they serve people of the appropriate age, it is critical that we get the regulations right to support businesses and make compliance easier, not more difficult.
I would like to return briefly to the question of choice. The Government’s modelling assumes that the uptake of digital verification for this purpose will reach 100% after seven years. If that remains the assumption, can the Minister confirm that those who choose to use physical forms of identification will nevertheless continue to be able to do so? There will be people who do not have a smartphone, people who cannot readily use digital verification services and people who simply do not want to use digital identification. We would not want any of those individuals to be excluded. The benefit of the measure should be that it adds another option, not that the new option gradually becomes the only practical option.
Overall, I recognise why the measure has been brought forward and the practical benefits that stem from it. In doing so, I hope that the Government ensure that the conditions they impose allow the system to operate effectively, give businesses the certainty they need and preserve genuine choice for the public. Digital technology can make proving our age more convenient. It should not make having a digital identity a prerequisite for participating in everyday life.
Policing in Cleveland
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Shabana Mahmood
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the way that he has responded to this incident on behalf of his constituents, who I know have been deeply affected, as he has himself. The outpouring of support for the families of PC Blades and PC Clough is a real testament to the people he represents. Let me assure him, on ensuring that the Government proceed with their planned review of the funding formula, that as we change police force structures, the case for the necessity of changing the formula is also made out. We could not keep the same funding formula with a new policing system in any case. I say that to assure him that both reviewing and reforming the police funding formula are absolutely critical to the programme of police reform. We know that on many occasions over 14 years the previous Government promised reform of the funding formula but then ducked that reform at every opportunity. The move to a new structure for policing in this country provides the best opportunity to relook at funding, and let me reassure him that that is absolutely on the agenda. We will be updating the House on the timetable for that, once the independent review on police force structures has been completed and presented to the House.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
As a local Member, I pay tribute to PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, and to every police officer who has worked tirelessly throughout these horrific and tragic events. Our thoughts remain with their families and colleagues. Despite having the highest crime rate in the country, Cleveland received the lowest increase in funding, with our local Labour police and crime commissioner warning of a £2.4 million shortfall. I very much welcome the mutual aid and the funding that has been announced, but will the Home Secretary guarantee that the new funding formula will properly reflect the pressures of serious and organised crime faced by Cleveland, so that this funding does not prove to be merely a sticking plaster?
Shabana Mahmood
The hon. Gentleman is a local Member, and he is taking the opportunity to ask a question from the Back Benches to reflect his local interest; I pay tribute to him for his response to this incident and the wider pressures in his local area. I assure him that, when we begin the work on reforming the funding formula, we will start with a first-principles approach to what we are seeking to achieve. That will include broader issues of demand for policing and will reflect the reality of what policing different areas looks like.
The new police force structure—a new regional force model that is big enough to surge capacity to local areas when required—will give the flexibility to ensure that forces are not condemned to permanently relying on mutual aid. It is to the credit of the policing system that people step up and do what is required to keep their areas safe, but nobody could argue that that is the right way to run policing in our country in the 21st century. It desperately needs reform. Most of the policing system leaders recognise that the structure needs reform. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that funding reform will flow as a result of that. The first phase of consulting on funding reform will relate to the first principles of what the funding is for and how to reflect the needs of different areas.
Immigration and Asylum Bill
Matt Vickers ExcerptsMonday 13th July 2026
(3 months ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
This has been an important and thoughtful debate, and I begin by thanking Members from across the House for their contributions.
There have been genuine differences of opinion this evening, but I think there is broad agreement on one point: our immigration system is not working. Immigration is one of the defining issues facing our country. It goes to the security of our borders, the integrity of our laws, the pressure on our public services, and, ultimately, the confidence the British people have in the ability of the Government to keep their promises.
The British people expect an immigration system that is fair to those who play by the rules and firm with those who seek to abuse them. They expect secure borders, swift decisions, effective enforcement and, above all, a Government to deliver. That is the test the Bill must meet.
In many respects, today’s debate brings us full circle. Ministers stood at the Dispatch Box and argued that immigration policy should be about grip and control, not gimmicks and false promises, yet over the past two years, we have seen too many headlines, too many announcements and too many promises, while illegal migration has continued to undermine confidence in our borders.
Let me be clear: I do not believe that anyone in this House wants to see people risking their life crossing the channel in small boats. Those crossings benefit organised criminal gangs, undermine confidence in our immigration system, place enormous pressure on communities, public services and public finances, and all too often end in tragedy. Nobody should accept them as inevitable. The question before us today is therefore a simple one: does the Bill contain the measures necessary to stop illegal migration? That must surely be the ambition.
The Government’s own impact assessment recognises that deterrence is essential, but it also accepts that the deterrent effect of these proposals is too uncertain even to quantify. That uncertainty goes to the heart of the Bill. The fundamental principle should be straightforward: if someone enters the United Kingdom illegally, they should not be able to stay. Everything else flows from that principle. Without it, public confidence is weakened and genuine refugees lose out. Those who come here legally and contribute to our country are let down, and the criminal gangs continue to exploit the gaps in our system.
To be fair to the Home Secretary, there are measures in the Bill that the Opposition welcome. It is right that the Government are seeking to recover more of the costs of asylum support. It is right that Ministers are finally acknowledging that the article 8 framework has frustrated removals. It is right that they recognise shortcomings in the operation of the modern slavery system. It is right that they acknowledge that the current appeals process is too slow, too cumbersome and too vulnerable to abuse. In truth, one of the most striking features of the Bill is that the Government have finally accepted many of the arguments that they have spent the last two years dismissing.
Recognising a problem, though, is not the same as solving it. The Home Secretary and I agree on much of the diagnosis; we disagree on the cure. Time and again, the Bill identifies the right issues but stops short of the reforms needed to address them. The Government propose a new independent immigration appeals authority, yet they cannot tell us with any certainty whether it will speed up removals or simply replace one backlog with another.
The Bill looks to narrow article 8 claims, while simultaneously creating a new, sponsored human rights claim that risks opening another avenue for litigation. It speaks about strengthening deportation powers, yet it leaves unanswered the wider questions about the legal framework that continue to frustrate removals. Despite repeated promises, the Bill contains no comprehensive reforms to settlement, no clear answer on preventing those who arrive illegally from obtaining citizenship, and no comprehensive removals framework capable of delivering the deterrence that Ministers say is necessary.
That is why the Opposition have tabled our reasoned amendment. We believe that the Bill does not yet go far enough to restore public confidence or deliver the outcome that the British people rightly expect. Our alternative is clear: those who enter the country illegally should have no right to stay.
Several Members have spoken about public confidence, and they are right to do so. Public confidence depends on knowing that the rules matter; that those who have no right to remain will be removed; that foreign national offenders can be deported swiftly; that endless legal challenges cannot frustrate the clearly expressed will of Parliament; and that those who come here legally, work hard and contribute are not disadvantaged by a system that appears unable to distinguish between those who respect the rules and those who seek to exploit them.
As has been mentioned, the Home Secretary faces a political challenge from her own Benches. If she wants to come back and deliver real and meaningful reform that will properly secure our borders, and if she needs some support to do that, she can give us a call—[Interruption.] Give me a call.
The British people do not want another cycle of announcements followed by disappointment. They want to know that criminal gangs will no longer profit from human misery; that dangerous channel crossings will end; and that those with no right to remain will not spend years exhausting endless appeals while the taxpayer picks up the bill. They want to know that Britain remains a country that welcomes those who come legally, while maintaining control over who enters and stays. Those are not unreasonable expectations, but the foundations of a fair immigration system.
As the Bill progresses through Committee, the Opposition will scrutinise it carefully. Where measures meaningfully strengthen border security, improve enforcement and restore confidence, we will support them. Where they fall short, we will seek to strengthen them. The Home Secretary has moved some way towards recognising the scale of the challenge facing our immigration system, and I welcome that. The Bill identifies many of the right problems, but it still stops short of the bold reforms needed to solve them. For that reason, we have tabled our reasoned amendment.
The British people deserve an immigration system that is fair to those who follow the rules, uncompromising with those who do not, and capable of restoring control of our borders. That remains the standard by which the Opposition will judge the Bill. I commend our reasoned amendment to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call my favourite Home Office Minister.
Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Vickers Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Dodgy vape shops are a scourge on our high streets, but even more horrifying are some of the people who run them. Twana Jamal, convicted in France and described as the godfather of people trafficking, has reportedly been found running two vape shops in Leicestershire. Does the Home Secretary agree that that demonstrates the need for stronger powers to tackle rogue vape shops and organised crime? If so, why have the Government cut funding to regional organised crime units, and opposed stronger closure powers for the police and local councils.
Shabana Mahmood
The Government have not opposed stronger closure powers. In fact, the Government are currently consulting on a planned increase in closure orders, from six months to 12 months. We will be bringing forward legislative measures very shortly and are also looking at the separate regime in relation to closure notices, none of which was acted on when the hon. Gentleman and his party were in government.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Under the last Government, police numbers reached a record high. Labour promised to increase police numbers, but instead we have seen them fall. As the Minister was forced to confirm, they are down 1,318 in the last year. Is the Minister doing anything to protect the number of officers in response policing so that when people ring 999 in their hour of need, they are not left waiting?
Sarah Jones
As the shadow Minister knows—and as we replay every question time—the previous Government cut the number of police officers by 20,000. They then recruited 20,000 and put 12,000 of them behind desks, which is not where the public want them to be. We have put 1,300 officers back on to our streets. By the end of this Parliament we will put 13,000 of them back on to our streets. Let me end with a statistic: under the last two years of the previous Government, shop theft rose by 60%, and it has just fallen by 1%. We are turning the tide on the terrible crime that the previous Government oversaw.
European Entry and Exit System
Matt Vickers Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) for securing this important urgent question. Anyone who has travelled or spoken to those who have tried to use the new European entry-exit system understands why the scale of the challenges over summer is so great, and despite all the problems, it has now been reported that a separate new online system to preauthorise entry to the EU will be delayed until next year. That is a pitiful response, indicative of the problems facing so many UK travellers, and there is nowhere near the urgency needed to address the problems facing the EES as we enter the summer holidays. As the president of Airports Council International Europe recently expressed, politicians should
“stop pretending...that EES is working just fine. It is not.”
That delusional attitude among EU colleagues is not acceptable. With the EU telling representatives of the travel industry that a full suspension of the system is not needed and not possible, the Government must stand behind the interests of British travellers. For instance, there appears to be a ridiculous situation in which a facility built in Dover cannot be activated until the technology for the kiosks, which is the responsibility of the French authorities, is working.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands, who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, is right: it is time to “apply maximum pressure” before chaos arrives at the border at Dover. Will the Minister detail what conversations the Government have had, and what pressure they will apply? Have they asked for a temporary suspension, relaxation or phased use of EES checks at periods of exceptional congestion? Given the increased traffic, what have the Government done to strengthen plans in case queues spill out of Dover or Folkestone? It is in all our interests to ensure that people can get through border checks quickly, and it is time to ensure that that happens.
Alex Norris
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for his questions. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I share his point about the importance and impact that preauthorisation can have. We want that to become the norm, and as I said, we are engaging with member states to encourage them to take up use of the EES app. He asked about the intent of our colleagues in the European Union, whether in the Commission or in member states, and I do not detect a lack of intent. They are keen to engage with us, and we engage with them frequently. They want this system to work, and it is important that it does. It is a good thing that our neighbour wants good security arrangements, and we benefit from that too—we certainly have that level of engagement.
The hon. Member talks about full suspension, and as I said yesterday to the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands in the Home Affairs Committee, I would not set that as the goal and aspiration because I do not believe it is deliverable. What we delivered in May, and what we will seek, is that when we get to peak times and the system is clearly not managing flow appropriately, we need the right flexibilities in place on the ground for staff to make changes that prioritise flow. That is my priority. The hon. Member talks about the facility, and I say gently that of course that facility cannot be used until the technology that it is based on works. We want that to be the case as soon as possible, but that is not a business for us. We have made the money available so that the infrastructure is there. We have delivered on that element, but the technology is clearly taking time to stand up.
The hon. Member talks about pressure, and we are engaged at all levels of Government. In the Home Office, the Home Secretary has engaged with her counterpart and with the Commission, as have colleagues from the Department for Transport, including the Secretary of State, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and we are raising these issues on a daily basis. On contingencies, let me take this opportunity to say what a good job the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum has done on this. I am a big resilience forum enthusiast: those are local people making direct local changes to improve their community under pressure. There is also the Dover traffic assessment protocol and Operation Brock. Those arrangements are in place, and we will work with people so that they make the best operational decisions they can along the way.