Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I realise that my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) was unable to get a meaningful answer, but with Islamist extremism behind three quarters of MI5’s caseload, it is essential to shield our democracy from its pressure. The Minister has repeatedly reiterated the Government’s non-engagement policy with the Muslim Council of Britain, despite a Government Minister attending its annual dinner. More recently, there have been concerns about attendees at Government events who have publicly expressed some frightening views. Will the Minister assure the House that the Government remain committed to a non-engagement policy with those who seek to promote extreme views that undermine our democracy? Where Government Ministers go against that, how does the defending democracy taskforce respond?
Dan Jarvis
I assure the shadow Minister that our policy on engagement has not changed. I have responded on this matter on a number of occasions. What I can say to him, addressing the substance of the issue, is that we will tackle extremism wherever we find it. The Government take these matters incredibly seriously. We will never allow them to be used as a political football. We will address these matters and tackle them head-on.
Matt Vickers
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) has outlined, this weekend we heard the shocking reports that the parents of a nine-year-old girl were arrested by six Hertfordshire police officers and placed in a cell for 11 hours because they complained about their daughter’s primary school on WhatsApp. At the same time, 270,000 shoplifting cases have been closed without a suspect being identified. Does the Minister agree that the police should be able to get on with the job of tackling crime on our streets? Can she comment on whether they were getting their priorities right in that case?
Dame Diana Johnson
As the shadow Minister will know, this is an operational matter for policing, and it is quite clear that the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner have set out that there will be a review of what happened in that particular case.
Crime and Policing Bill (First sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsThursday 27th March 2025
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Crime and Policing Act 2026 View all Crime and Policing Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 March 2025 - (27 Mar 2025)
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, and the Police Federation of England and Wales. We must stick to the timings in the programme motion that the Committee has agreed. For this session, we have until 12.15 pm. Will witnesses introduce themselves briefly for the record?
Chief Constable De Meyer: I am Tim De Meyer, chief constable of Surrey and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for disclosure.
Tiff Lynch: Good morning. I am Tiff Lynch, acting national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales.
Dan Murphy: Morning. I am Dan Murphy, assistant national secretary of the Police Superintendents Association.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Q
Chief Constable De Meyer: The NPCC does not see any measures that have been omitted, save perhaps for the provision on begging, which was in an initial draft, but we understand there were concerns in respect of how that might be enforced. Overall, the NPCC is extremely supportive of the Bill. It seems to us that it brings a lot of laws up to date and frames the law in a way that is much more consistent with the way that a lot of crimes are now committed. It generally enables much earlier intervention and prevention on the back of the new or adapted offences that are created.
Matt Vickers
Q
Chief Constable De Meyer: The point in respect of begging is that, although we were generally supportive of the inclusion of nuisance begging in the provisions, it would require a certain amount of judgment in how to enforce that. That was the only point that NPCC colleagues noted was in the original provisions but is not here. Other than that, they are extremely supportive.
Tiff Lynch: In relation to the overarching Bill, we concur with Chief Constable De Meyer. We are supportive of new legislation that brings us up to societal issues. I do not want to sound like a broken record throughout all the questions, but our main concerns are the infrastructure that sits behind the legislation; the demand that is placed upon the officers we represent, who will be out there on the streets enacting this legislation; resourcing; and the learning, training and development of the officers who will be required to carry it out.
Dan Murphy: The Police Superintendents Association also supports the Bill and the provisions within it. With any legislation, there will obviously need to be clarity through the courts, training or the guidance that comes with the Bill. I have read with interest the debates for and against some of the clauses. On the power of entry, electronic devices and public order, some of the definitions are not defined within the legislation. There is a specific concern that I have read—it might not be a concern—about mandatory reporting in clauses 45 to 54 and whether the covert nature of policing would be dealt with through an exception or some kind of exemption with regard to that route.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dan Murphy: I think it gives you the tools to do the job, but whenever you enter private homes, you only have to look at the case law on warrants, where we have full powers, to see that they are challenged regularly. We need to make sure we are trained and get it right. As this is a new bit of legislation, I am sure there will be challenges either way as and when it is used.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dan Murphy: I think there is a role for the Government and Parliament to communicate that it is a power that has been given to policing. It is not something that policing is searching for and trying to use. The public need to understand that it has been given to us for a reason, and we are using it.
Tiff Lynch: I would go one step further in relation to the public having knowledge of the powers. That also gives our police officers confidence that the Government are behind them when they are enforcing these laws, and the knowledge that they are supported in what they are doing.
Chief Constable De Meyer: We know that the ability to track mobile devices is not sufficiently accurate at the moment for it to be relied upon without some form of corroboration. Therefore, one understands why things are more tightly framed. Where there is good intelligence for its use, this ability to enter swiftly to search for stolen goods without the need to get a warrant will mean that we are able to recover stolen property more swiftly, and that investigations are less likely to be frustrated. To ensure legitimacy in the eyes of the public, that obviously needs to be carried out carefully, but overall it will make it less likely that property, whether electronic property or property linked to rural crime, can be swiftly disposed of. Our current inability to deal expeditiously with those sorts of crimes can adversely impact public confidence. Overall, it is a very positive operational thing.
Dame Diana Johnson
Q
Chief Constable De Meyer: The requirement of belief is obviously a relatively high bar; for example, it is above suspicion. I think that that reflects the need to ensure that a new power such as this is applied carefully and with appropriate corroboration. Crucially, an inspector is going to be readily operationally available for an officer in this sort of dynamic circumstance, so the officer will be able to make contact with and get the authorisation from them. It seems to me that the thrust of the power is very much towards enabling the police to recover property quickly, so belief is a good safeguard and the inspector is appropriately senior and accessible. I would agree on those two points.
Matt Bishop
Q
Chief Constable De Meyer: It is important to point out how rare it is in this country for a firearms officer to discharge their weapon; reassuringly, it is rarer still that someone dies as a result. Obviously, it is right that there is a proper investigation wherever that happens, but I do not think it is in the interest of public safety for an officer doing such an important job to feel inhibited from doing what might be necessary, and what they are trained to do, in rare and extreme circumstances, because they are concerned that their name will be made public in a subsequent investigation, with all the risk to them personally that that entails. I cannot say for certain, and colleagues here would give a better indication as to the extent that such a measure might assuage their concerns, but it seems to me to be a necessary and sensible move.
Tiff Lynch: Without repeating what Chief Constable De Meyer has said, certainly we were pleased with the Home Secretary’s announcement on the granting of anonymity to firearms officers in those situations, particularly with NX121 and the case that followed.
Our firearms officers are volunteers. That is key and it really needs to be noted. They put themselves and their lives at risk to protect society. In these cases, for their families and their own wellbeing, and because of what may follow, it is absolutely right for them to be granted anonymity for a required period of time. To answer your question specifically about reassuring our firearms officers out there today, there is some reassurance, but again, it is a matter of time passing until they actually feel that that will continue.
Dan Murphy: It is definitely a step in the right direction. Firearms officers, like all police officers, are interested in actions rather than words. They would like to see a difference, so once they start seeing that difference, it will make a difference to them. I know that there will be some announcements on the accountability review soon. I think Dame Diana is involved in that, and I know the Government are looking at it. We are really encouraged that there may be some more positive steps that will lead to actions that support officers who put themselves in those more difficult situations.
Matt Vickers
Q
Tiff Lynch: In relation to the powers, this is something that I find myself repeating not in this forum but in other interviews: you can bring in many laws and powers, but we need to have the infrastructure and the resources to use them. We have officers out there with casefiles that are getting longer and longer. There is only so much that can be highlighted as a priority, because if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Yes, we support the laws. It is for Government to make the laws and for us to carry them out. We will do so, but it is about managing expectations not just from policing but from society.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dan Murphy: If you have someone who is a prolific offender, and the police are constantly dealing with them and there are constant victims, the best place for that person is in prison. Getting them into prison is sometimes not easy, but I think that is the answer.
The Chair
Just a reminder that we need to keep things really short if we want to get everybody in. It may not be possible to do so.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sir Robert Buckland: There are a couple of things, Mr Vickers. First of all, just to build on Mr Sells’s point on clause 16, I understand the huge concern about shoplifting and the perception among many shop proprietors in our towns and cities that, in some ways, it was almost becoming decriminalised and that action has to be taken. But the danger in changing primary legislation in this way is that we send mixed messages, and that the Government are sending mixed messages about what its policy intentions are.
Sir Brian Leveson is conducting an independent review into criminal procedure. We do not know yet what the first part of that review will produce, but I would be very surprised if there was not at least some nod to the need to keep cases out of the Crown court, bearing in mind the very dramatic and increasing backlog that we have. I think that anything that ran contrary to that view risks the Government looking as if it is really a house divided against itself.
It seems to me that there was a simpler way of doing this. When the law was changed back in 2014, there was an accompanying policy guideline document that allowed for the police to conduct their own prosecutions for shoplifting items with a value of under £200, if the offender had not done it before, if there were not other offences linked with it, if there was not a combined amount that took it over £200 and if there was a guilty plea.
What seems to have happened in the ensuing years is that that has built and developed, frankly, into a culture that has moved away from the use of prosecuting as a tool in its entirety. I think that that is wrong, but I do think that it is within the gift of Ministers in the Home Office and of officials in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to say, “That guidance is superseded. We hope, want and expect all offences to be prosecuted.” That would then allow offences of under £200 to be prosecuted in the magistrates court. There is nothing in the current legislation that prevents any of that, by the way, and I think it would send a very clear message to the police that they are expected to do far more when it comes to the protection of retail premises.
On clause 14, which covers assault on retail workers, I was a little surprised to see that there had been a departure from what was a rather interesting amendment tabled in the previous Session to the 2023-24 Criminal Justice Bill by, I think, the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris); in fact, I think it was supported by you and others. It sought to amend the law to increase protections for shop workers, but with an important expansion: the offence would be not just an assault, but a threatening or abuse offence as well, which would encompass some of the public order concerns that many of us have about shop premises, corner shops and sole proprietor retail outlets. Yet, we have gone back here to a straight assault clause, which in my mind does not seem to add anything to the criminal code at all.
We have existing laws of assault, which was often the argument of Ministers, including me, when we debated these issues in the past. Again, it seems to me that the opportunity to widen the offence to cover different types of abuse against important retail workers is being missed at the moment. If I was advising the Government, which of course I am not, I would ask them to look again at the clause and to consider expanding it to make it much more meaningful for the people I think all of us want to protect.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sir Robert Buckland: Again, it is a missed opportunity. I think that, accompanying that type of behaviour, is a natural community concern about the prevalence of people who are—well, they are worse than nuisances—real menaces to the wellbeing of the local community. An attack on a shop, in my view, is an attack on the wellbeing of the whole local community. Given how important the local shop is as a lifeline for many people, including older and vulnerable customers, any attack on it that means that its services are lost, even temporarily, is a very serious attack on the community. Therefore, using this opportunity to increase the suite of preventive measures available would seem a very sensible thing to do, and I hope the Government will consider accepting any amendments that will no doubt be tabled with that aim in mind.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sir Robert Buckland: That is a very difficult issue that I looked at carefully when I was in the Government. One of the challenges, of course, is that the offences might be prolific but the sentences they carry often do not even cross the custody threshold.
There are two ways of looking at this. First, the community-based intensive intervention solution seems to be working, particularly in the case of young offenders, and we should look at expanding it to apply to adult offenders as well. There would, of course, be a huge concomitant cost, particularly for the probation service and all the agencies tasked with the intensive supervision of, perhaps, a drug or alcohol addiction. That is the sort of work that will take them off the streets and get them cleaned up, without sending them to a meaningless short-term sentence.
At the other end, there are people committing hundreds of offences, for whom the law cannot as yet provide a cumulative answer. It is difficult for me to suggest on the hoof how we would encompass a sentencing option that allows a roll-up, so that there was a longer term of imprisonment for someone prolific. The danger is that there is always a cliff edge: if someone has committed 24 rather than 25 offences, why should there be such a differential? The long-term answer lies in prevention. I strongly endorse the intensive community-based approach, which is not currently available to the courts.
Matt Vickers
Q
Oliver Sells: Could I touch on a subject that troubles me? It is implicit in the Bill, and it is not necessarily a popular view. The trend towards sentencing inflation has created a growing prison population of particularly young serial offenders who are serving longer and longer sentences. That is causing difficulties with the cost of the prison population and with what to do with people we cannot send to prison. The courts struggle the whole time not to send people to prison unless it is absolutely necessary. The idea that we could, for instance, abolish short sentences—there is a proposal for their removal—seems to me to be very double-edged indeed. We need to be very careful.
The courts, including the magistrates court, must have the powers to move swiftly. This is one of the problems in our system, particularly in respect of the kind of crime we are talking about. When I started out at the Bar, cases were dealt with overnight, and the next day were done and dusted in the magistrates court. It was effective and speedy. Speedy justice is much more effective than slow justice. We have created a situation and a structure, over many years now, where there is almost an acceptance of delay in the system, and I do not accept that at all. If you go to a magistrates court, you will see so many cases adjourned because it is not ready. They are piffling reasons, on the whole—complete nonsense, in my view. When a case is prepared overnight, it should be in the court within a matter of days and dealt with straight away. I do not think we have really understood that in the Bill. It is not quite there yet, in my view.
Sir Robert Buckland: With its wide scope, the Bill is an opportunity for the Government to act on, for example, the recommendations of Jonathan Fisher KC on the overdue reform of disclosure. The disclosure rules were created back in 1996 and are no longer fit for proper purpose. Anything the Bill can do to help to future-proof the use of assistive technologies would be a great opportunity for Ministers and officials. I am convinced that the use of assistive technology—I use the word “assistive” because it is technology not to replace the judge or the jury but to assist them in their deliberations, as well as assisting disclosure officers and the police in their investigations—is absolutely right.
The Chair
Thank you, Sir Robert. We have already used two thirds of the time allotted for our eminent witnesses. As time is fleeting, I request that people keep their contributions as short as possible so that we can cover the greatest amount of content and allow Committee members to ask a question.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Spike Aware UK. Once again, we must stick to the timings in the programme motion. The Committee has agreed that, for this session, we will have until 1 o’clock. Could you please introduce yourself for the record?
Colin Mackie: Good afternoon. I am Colin Mackie. I am the chair and co-founding member of Spike Aware UK.
Matt Vickers
Q
How important are the measures in the Bill, and why? Is there anything that you think the Government should be doing beyond what is in the Bill?
Colin Mackie: I think this is majorly important. It is a giant step forward. Up until now, spiking has been a very grey area. It is charged as assault, theft, poisoning or whatever; it has been such a grey area that it has been hard to process it. That has the knock-on effect of putting victims off coming forward, because they do not know where they are going to go or what is going to be talked about, and they are unsure. Perpetrators of spiking feel, “Well, nothing’s really happening over this. I don’t hear of anybody getting charged for it, and it’s only a bit of fun; we don’t think we’re going to do any harm,” so they carry on doing it.
Having a stand-alone offence is beneficial for the victims, and I also think it is beneficial for the police. I feel that once a law is in place, you are going to get a co-ordinated response from police. Currently, victims in Newcastle are treated differently from victims in Newquay, and it is the same across the whole country. That is one of the major problems that victims tell us about all the time: some forces are great, while others are not so good. I have had one victim tell me that the police said they did not have the manpower or the time to go in and check the CCTV at the club where they were spiked. Another victim told me that uniformed officers turned up and were not sure how to deal with it, but half an hour later, the CID were there and straight into the club. We cannot have that inconsistency; we need to move forward with that.
You were asking earlier, “What can we do to help?” In bringing in the Bill, we have to involve A&E, because A&E has a big part to play in this as well. All too often, as you know, it is the job of the police to gather the evidence, but a spiking victim is likely to appear at a hospital—at A&E—unconscious or confused and not sure what is going on. They are not going to think about asking for a police officer to attend—they are not in a state to do that—so unless they have a family member or a friend there, that is not going to happen. By the time they get maybe two days down the line and think, “Yeah, this is what’s happened to me; I want to report this,” there is a good chance that a lot of the evidence has gone. We need that in the Bill as well: for A&E to play a bigger part by gathering evidence and holding it for the police. Then, if the victim wants to take it forward, it is there.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)
Q
You mentioned that you welcome the clarification in the Bill, which will create a specific offence of spiking by using the word “spiking”. Can you expand on why that will make such a difference for victims? You mentioned some of the issues with the police using different types of offences. Why will it make such a difference to have a specific offence?
Colin Mackie: A victim will recognise that spiking is an offence when they approach the police. Currently they are not sure if they can report it. They are nervous and they are not sure if it is an offence. That has been a big thing that we get fed to us. Away from just the girls, there is a lot of spiking going on with boys now. Males are being spiked as well. It is possible that anybody could be spiked. That is a big thing, because we find that a lot of males think it is a girls’ problem. They think it is tied in with a sexual assault or whatever. If you just say “spiking” males will think, “Yeah, I have been spiked,” and that is it—it is the fact that they have been spiked.
A lot of spiking is now taking place and nothing else is happening. People are not being sexually assaulted or robbed; they are just being spiked. It is what we call prank spiking. People are doing it because they can. I think the ability for someone to come forward and just say, “Yes, I have been spiked and there is a law on spiking,” is the way forward.
Crime and Policing Bill (Second sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsThursday 27th March 2025
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Crime and Policing Act 2026 View all Crime and Policing Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 27 March 2025 - (27 Mar 2025)
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Q
Christopher Morris: USDAW has membership in the wholesale sector—we have recognition agreements with Booker and Makro, and Bestway—and I think there is scope for that. People have to be registered to attend wholesale, so they have a card and the wholesaler knows who they are; so initially you might think that would restrict the likelihood of threats, abuse and violence against wholesale workers, but quite commonly we find that there are still issues there. People are still abusive towards those workers, who still have to check ID and things, and enforce certain parts of the law. While those workers have those sorts of responsibilities, we think that there is a case for them to be covered by the provisions, for extending the scope of the provision to include wholesale as well as retail.
Paul Gerrard: We are very supportive of the Bill, as you as you would expect. Retail crime has risen significantly over the past few years. At the Co-op Group, we have seen a 44% rise in all forms of retail crime, a 43% rise in threats and abuse, and a 24% rise in violence. I think the offence is welcome because we have seen it working in Scotland. In Scotland, when the police attend, you get a 60% charge rate, whereas in England and Wales there is currently a 10% charge rate, so we know it works.
First, speaking as a former law enforcement officer, the statute is really important, but it has got to be implemented and it has got to be used. I very much welcome the work that Amanda Blakeman, the chief constable in North Wales, has done, because we had some improved police response. Secondly—this is probably not about the Bill, but it is about the broader issue of tackling retail crime—70% of retail crime and much of the violence is committed by a relatively small number of prolific offenders. When you look those prolific offenders, there are very often vulnerabilities in there—it could be substance abuse, it could be gangs and so on. If this clause becomes law and those individuals get in front of the courts, what the courts do needs to be the thing that stops the behaviour. Sometimes, that will be a custodial sentence.
I was talking to a colleague whose leg was broken when they were in the wrong place when a thief was leaving a store, and another colleague just last Saturday who had seven stitches on their head because they would not give someone change that they were not entitled to for an ice-cream. We need to make sure that the criminal justice system takes the right action to stop the behaviour. Yes, it could be a custodial sentence, but it could be rehabilitation orders, restorative justice, community orders—whatever stops the behaviour. That is the key for me. This piece of legislation is great because it will get them into the criminal justice system more quickly and easily, but we must make sure that we take the right action at that point.
Graham Wynn: Paul is one of my members, so to some extent I defer to him, but yes, we are totally supportive of the retail elements of the Bill and we look forward to its being enacted. You ask about expanding it to include wholesale. Obviously, I am here to promote the interests of retailers, not to support others who need protection also having some sort of protection. Wholesale, as Chris has said, is a similar situation in many ways; but the one unique thing about retailers is that they have to enforce age-restricted sales, and in some respects they are enforcing the law themselves, so they are in a slightly different position from many others. The violent offences often occur in the context of refusing a sale or asking for ID and someone not having it.
Two more things. First, if you want to extend the Bill, we would like it extended to drivers, making sure that people who deliver to people’s homes from supermarkets and other places are also protected: there is quite a strong desire for that. Secondly, it is important that the statistics are gathered for retail crime. One of the things this offence does is to ensure that we have better statistics at the official level. It is important that we do not extend it so far or in such a way that we do not still get the statistics for the retail element. That is one of the key plusses, if you like, of the offence, because statistics can be debated, to put it that way, between official ones and the ones we gather.
Matt Vickers
Q
Paul Gerrard: As I said before, I think whatever intervention will stop the behaviour is important, and the things you just described could easily do that. A custodial sentence could do it too, but so could things like rehabilitation orders. Over the last couple of years, we have worked in specific partnerships with 19 police forces managing 700 offenders, less than 7% of whom received a rehabilitation order. Any retailer will tell you that substance abuse is a real driver of much of this behaviour. It cannot be right that only 7% are getting rehab orders, because you are not tackling the root cause. On the things you describe, absolutely, but I think there is a range. It is about what will stop the reoffending behaviour. It could be custodial, rehab, curfew or tags.
Christopher Morris: There are two ways to look at it from the retail worker’s perspective. When someone has been into the store and committed serious violence or posed a significant threat to a retail worker, that retail worker still has to go back to that same place of work and carry on performing the same task and will be constantly worried that that incident could happen again. Where there are significant incidents and issues, a ban or a curfew might well be appropriate in certain situations, to ensure that the retail worker is protected and stop mental health impacts from the initial incident.
Matt Vickers
Q
Graham Wynn: Yes, it is important. If not dealt with speedily, the people who could give evidence in the trial or to the court might well have moved on, or they might no longer recall the offence or work for the same retailer, especially when there is a violence issue, so speedy and swift justice is worth while and makes the point. In terms of the types of sentences, when we were in the EU the Commission always used to say in its directives that the sentence must be “dissuasive”. I think that is a good term: the penalties must be dissuasive. On exactly what the range should be, it is for the Government and people to place it in the context of other offences and evidence of what works best.
The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)
Q
Christopher Morris: From the evidence that we have in Scotland of some of the provisions and the feedback that we have received from members, they do feel more reassured, on the basis that they know there is a specific offence there to protect them. As was mentioned before, they are quite often involved in law enforcement, and they feel that they should have the right of law enforcement there.
Such a provision also sends a slightly broader message: it sends a message to perpetrators. We were pleased that Police Scotland did a significant amount of work before the Scottish provisions came into force to educate the police force on the use of the provisions and where they could be used. As Paul was saying, we have seen a drop in violence, and it is the police using those provisions that has helped to lower violence among perpetrators. When cases reach the courts and judiciary, the provision also sends a clear message that this is a significant issue for them to deal with. So I think it helps retail workers, but it helps right along the chain of making sure that the issues are tackled and dealt with.
Paul Gerrard: I say with the greatest respect to this place: do not underestimate how, over the last 10 or 12 years, retail workers have felt completely abandoned by law enforcement. This account is a couple of years old—I think the police have made great strides in the last 15 months—but when you ring to report an armed robbery with three masked men with machetes, and you are told to ring the non-emergency line, that tells you as a shop worker how to feel.
I was with a colleague this morning, one of our Nisa partners. Ben, from Freshfields in Croydon, is the owner of three small shops. He told me that he and his staff know about this provision and are genuinely pleased that someone is looking out for them. Do not underestimate the impact it will have. We have 55,000 colleagues in the Co-op. My colleagues absolutely know about this and welcome it, because they feel, alongside the improved police response that they are beginning to see, that someone other than the Co-op and their families care about what happens to them at work.
Graham Wynn: It sends a message to potential offenders and, indeed, to retail workers. They can see it as part of a package that includes these proposals, the Government’s action on neighbourhood policing, with specific mention of taking action on retail crime; and the retail crime action plan from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, with its desire to have better police attendance for violent crimes or where the person is detained and there is clear evidence. Last, it is part of a package leading to better and improved statistics, so that everyone can feel more confident that the police will attend and that something will happen to those who commit these offences.
The Chair
I apologise in advance for the fact that we have some interesting lighting effects. We will work through it, one way or the other.
We are now going to hear oral evidence from the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. We have until 3.10 pm for this panel. Could the witnesses please identify themselves for the record?
Baroness Newlove: I am Baroness Newlove, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales.
Suky Bhaker: I am Suky Bhaker, chief executive of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.
Matt Vickers
Q
Baroness Newlove: I only have 15 minutes, so I will not drag on. I welcome what is in the Bill, there are some issues on mandatory reporting, police vetting and the antisocial behaviour case review.
Suky Bhaker: The Suzy Lamplugh Trust specialises in stalking and harassment, so speaking to the specific introduction of new clauses on stalking, we welcome the introduction of statutory guidance on additional protection for victims, on the right to know. and the additional measures around stalking protection orders, but some details need to be caveated within those clauses.
Matt Vickers
Q
Baroness Newlove: Yes. I have looked at what is in the Bill, and it is something I have worked on for quite a while with the Safeguarding Alliance. Sarah Champion MP was involved when we were working on the Victims and Prisoners Act. I still have a problem, because the clause does say that the offender who comes out must inform the police. For me, it is always been about trust, and I just think it is wrong that we rely on the offender to inform the police and probation. That is what has gone wrong in the first place. To agree that a prisoner can change their name in prison is utterly unbelievable; and to rely on and trust the offender will notify the agencies—it still worries me that it is not the other way around.
Matt Vickers
Q
Baroness Newlove: Antisocial behaviour, as everybody knows, is an issue I really champion. I have an issue with the ASB case review. I welcome what is in there, but it is the small print. I know you are going to create a police body review for the ASB case review, but there needs to be more support as people go through the process. Communication is a huge issue for victims. While I say I welcome this body doing it, I still think they need what we call a single point of contact, a SPOC—which sounds like something from “Star Trek”, so I call it an advocate—or a victims’ advocate to support them right through. While they are waiting for all these procedures to go through, they still have the impact of the antisocial behaviour. An advocate would ensure that they get one-to-one contact, which helps them to understand the process. Also, I welcome having that response, and that if they do not like the response or the way the process has gone, they can appeal it, but in all that, they need support right the way through.
The Chair
Suzy Bhaker, do you want to comment?
Suky Bhaker: I will defer to Baroness Newlove on issues relating to anything that is not stalking.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sharon Maciver: The measures outlined in the Bill are a significant step forward in providing a legal framework that specifically tackles the criminal exploitation of children. We hear first-hand through the services that we deliver across Scotland, England and Wales the devastating impacts that exploitation has on children, on their families and on communities.
We published a report in 2024 that analysed safeguarding incidents that had occurred for 140 children. Within those incidents we found that 50 children had been stabbed as a result of criminal exploitation, and a further 48 children had been harmed with weapons, including acid, dog chains and metal poles. We heard that a number of those children who had been physically harmed had not attended emergency services when they needed it.
For me, there was an issue there when we think about the current system and the trust that children have in accessing the system, which should be there to safeguard and protect them. As a starting point, we welcome the introduction of the new offence and the preventative orders in sanctioning those who choose to exploit children.
In terms of the risks that we see, we welcome the new offence but we have some concerns around the wording in relation to how the offence would be applied to those children who are seen to be under the age of 18. The wording refers to an offence being committed if it is reasonably believed that the child was under 18.
Last year, we had a review into the criminal exploitation of children chaired by Professor Alexis Jay. Within that, we heard significant evidence and concerns around the adultification of children, recognising that these children too often do not acknowledge their own exploitation, and as such they receive a justice response as opposed to a welfare-first response. That is a consideration we need to make in terms of language, first and foremost.
Secondly, we welcome the prevention orders in the Bill, but we need to think about the potential impacts on children and how we feed back information to safeguard and protect them. If we think about a prevention order or an offence being placed on an individual who chooses to exploit children, we need to think about whether that child is named as part of the offence, and the potential repercussions that that could cause for them. However, if we choose not to name a child, how do we ensure that sufficient information is shared among the agencies that safeguard them, making them aware of the measures that might be imposed as part of this order? That, for us, is of critical importance.
In terms of the protection of children, I could go on to talk about measures we would like to see in the Bill, but I appreciate that you may want to come in. Or would you like me to continue?
The Chair
I should explain that the first question is often an opportunity for witnesses to make a brief opening statement. Mr Sexton, if you wish, you are most welcome to do so.
Dan Sexton: IWF is very supportive of the measures introduced to tackle AI-generated child sexual abuse material. I want to outline why this is important, and the evidence that we have for seeing this harm manifesting. The legislation is already robust in the UK for the content. Whether it is real, generated, synthetic or hybrid, child sexual abuse material is illegal regardless of how it is created. However, the tools that have been released recently to enable you to create content are not, and that has created a loophole that we have seen exploited. At the point when you use that technology to create an image, the image is illegal and you have committed a crime, but the tooling is not. That means we have seen offenders train and create models, manuals and guides. The model is just a file that has been trained on child sexual abuse material, so the training process would have been committing crimes because you are accessing it using child sexual abuse at that point.
The file itself that comes out at the other end is not illegal, and neither is the guide. So those two things can be shared freely on the internet, effectively giving people a do-it-yourself child sexual abuse generation tool, which they can download to create their own content. The hope is that these clauses will first give us some ability to ban, remove and take down this content, but also, crucially, remove some of the ambiguity that there is online about what is legal and what is not. That ambiguity itself causes people to sometimes commit acts that they perhaps would not have done had they known it was illegal, so we are very supportive of those measures.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dan Sexton: There are many, many things that we could do to improve online safety, and many things that could be done to improve the safer use of AI tools. However, in the context of this Bill and the criminalisation of things, we think that it has done a good job of blocking these particular loopholes. I think the other stuff is better suited to things like a future iteration of the Online Safety Act and AI safety Bills. So we are very much content with these clauses.
Sharon Maciver: In terms of inclusion and what we would want to see in the Bill, we would like to see greater protections for children. We feel that in order to have an end-to-end response to tackling the criminal exploitation, we need to have not only measures that sanction exploiters, but measures that protect children, recognising that children who are criminally exploited will be victims of abuse while also being in conflict with the law. In terms of building trust in the system, as I reference in terms of children’s trust, there is also a requirement for agencies working in this space to feel confident that the system can respond to the issue. Often we see children, as I have described, being significantly harmed. Also as a result of exploitation they cause significant harm to others, and that is a really complex dilemma for agencies to try to manage. So we feel that having increased protection orders that specifically address the duality of a child being a victim as well as in conflict with the law would be helpful, as well as ensuring that children have access to a statutory defence.
We also believe that a definition of criminal exploitation would be helpful in understanding the scale and extent of the problem and how many victims there are across the UK. Of course, the new offence will ensure that data is captured on the number of perpetrators. Equally, we would want to make sure that we understand how many victims there are, and ensure that the response we have is that agencies feel confident in what that system does for children.
Alex Davies-Jones
Q
Dan Sexton: We see sites coming up frequently. At any given time, we have around 200 websites dedicated to sharing and hosting child sexual abuse material on our list, and that rotates. We often see those sites moving. It is the same administrators and the same site, and every time they get taken down in one place, they move to another, which suggests that the administrators and the people behind them are not getting caught or being prosecuted. I am unsure of the effect the Bill will have, considering that those administrators are already clearly committing crimes based in this country, and in many countries, and are not getting caught.
I would like to see whether the new clauses extend beyond just the site administrator to everyone else in the chain. A website does not just appear out of nowhere. It is not just the administrator; a lot of parts are required for a site to appear. If there are greater obligations on everyone else in that chain, those administrators may find it much harder to create and run their sites in the first place. A lot of our work is about introducing friction and making it harder to create and share child sexual abuse material. One part of that is arresting people, but there is a lot of other stuff that could be done to make it harder for the crime to happen.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the Local Government Association and the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly. We have until not later than 4.10 pm for this panel. Could the witnesses please identify themselves for the record—ladies first?
Councillor Conway: I am Councillor Sara Conway, here on behalf of the LGA.
Councillor Garratt: I am Neil Garratt, leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly.
Matt Vickers
Q
Councillor Garratt: At the London Assembly, a big part of our work is scrutinising the Met police, including people’s concerns about policing and particularly around protests—we have had quite a lot of disruptive protests recently in London. There are some concerns about finding the balance between the way that the police and the courts interpret the powers that the police have to police protests, and how the general public, as expressed to me, interpret those powers. That goes in two directions; it is not all one-way traffic.
My perception is that there is a gap in the Bill, or perhaps an opportunity, to do something about disruptive protests. If you look at section 12 of the Public Order Act, it sets out the gap between substantial and minor disruption to the community. On the face of it, that seems a perfectly reasonable and sensible way to distinguish between significant disruption, which the police ought to act on to remove protesters, and minor disruption, which is just a normal part of life. We have challenged the commissioner on his officers not acting to remove, for example, people who park themselves in the road, glue themselves to things or lock on to things. His challenge to us is that his officers are enforcing the law as it exists and as it is being interpreted by the courts.
In particular, the Ziegler judgment essentially sets a high bar for what constitutes substantial disruption. For example, when people park and block a road, it is not considered substantial disruption. I would like to see some thought in the Bill as to how the police can be empowered to make sure that people can still protest in the way they would like, because it is an important democratic freedom, while other people are not prevented from just going about their life or their day.
In the other direction, I also see a challenge—again, it is not addressed in the Bill, but it could be—around what I think of as an emerging de facto blasphemy law, which is quite concerning. People who wish to protest are almost always annoying somebody in some way with the issue that they want to protest about. Rarely do people protest in favour of or against things when everyone agrees with them.
I have a concern about when the nature of that protest touches on religious or cherished beliefs, and people often react very negatively to that. You then see the police, and seemingly the courts, viewing the person who is reacting angrily to the protest as, in some ways, the victim, and the protester as, in some ways, the protagonist or cause of the problem. I think, having removed the blasphemy laws in 2008, the will of Parliament seems to be that you are allowed to offend people’s religious sensibilities.
We saw the example in Manchester with the burning of the Koran, and there was an example at the Turkish embassy in London. There are numerous examples along those lines, where section 4A of the Public Order Act seems to be used to determine that if you are causing harassment, alarm or distress, that is enough to block somebody from being able to carry out what otherwise would seem to be quite a peaceful protest. There is scope for the Bill to address both of those problems.
Councillor Conway: I was not going to comment, but I will on the bit about protest. We really welcome the Home Secretary’s amendment to the Bill that was announced last night about intimidation at places of religious worship. As a Barnet local councillor, that has obviously been a key area of focus for our communities, in particular during the past year and a half. I think that balance between intimidation and the right to protest has been very fairly dealt with, and it is a very welcome introduction to the Bill.
I am pleased that we are here today to represent local councils. Local councils, councillors and our officers are at the frontline of delivering community safety, and of keeping everybody safe and protected in our boroughs, district councils and all the areas across the country. Every point on my list that I want to make focuses on resources. There is some really good stuff in the Bill, but it needs careful working through so that there is no obligation or statutory duty without the resourcing to properly deliver it on the ground.
On training, I can give specific examples as we go along. With regard to collaboration, that is something that people in local government, as leaders of place, are very good at. However, we need the resourcing to do it. I know that at the moment, we in local government talk about resources in every space, but they are essential. That is particularly the case in areas such as social services, for example, with some of the duties there.
Broadly, we welcome the Bill overall. It has some really important measures in terms of cuckooing and child protection. As someone who leads on community safety on the ground, I think that those things are vital. There are measures in the Bill that will save us from having to try to find different ways around things so that we can directly go to the heart of the problem.
It is key that you keep talking to local government—particularly about fly-tipping. You cannot see the word “fly-tipping” as a local councillor and not have something to say. It would be great for the LGA to have further in-depth discussions with the Government as to how that is delivered locally and effectively. We are absolutely vital for doing that.
The Chair
Before we proceed, for my benefit and that of the Hansard reporters, could you please speak up a little? There is a certain amount of background noise coming from outside, which makes it quite difficult to hear.
Matt Vickers
Q
Councillor Conway: We at the LGA think that we really need to sit down and go through all of that thoroughly. It would be very welcome to have that conversation. We also want to have in place the long-term funding and the ability to work together, because some of this sits with the Environment Agency as well. We need to do that properly together and understand more about it. Solutions to fly-tipping need to be delivered locally, and local government is key to that, so we would welcome a detailed conversation on that issue.
Councillor Garratt: You asked me specifically about fly-tipping. I think you would probably get almost universal agreement that fly-tipping is too much of a problem and more needs to be done about it. On my reading of the Bill, all that seems to be proposed is that, essentially, the Secretary of State would write to councils and remind them of their powers. If I went back to my local council officers and asked them what they thought about that, they would probably think it is quite patronising. They would probably say that a better remedy would be more resources or possibly more powers, but they probably know what powers they have. That is my experience of senior council officers.
Matt Vickers
Q
Councillor Garratt: Resourcing is an issue, and I suppose I am bound to say that prioritisation can be an issue. We have seen councils change control and a new administration decides that it is more of a priority and makes it more of a focus.
The one area where there is a gap between the law and public perception would be when you have private land that is adjacent to a highway. If it is on the highway, it is the council’s responsibility, and the council can use its resources and deal with it. However, if it is adjacent to the highway, councils, particularly with their resource constraints, are not enthusiastic about spending their resources on someone else’s property. These places might look as though they are part of the highway, but actually they are not. You get these little bits of land, often on corners and things, that are technically private property, and that makes them the property owner’s responsibility. That is an area where there is a question mark at the moment.
Councillor Conway: Just to note, councils do not have the powers to take enforcement action against large-scale fly-tipping, which has been a focus recently, or where criminal activity is involved. Any statutory guidance would need to be clear on that point. We do a lot locally to target fly-tipping. We as a local council actually announced today some very successful work that we have been doing, but there are gaps that need to be resolved together.
Matt Vickers
Q
Councillor Garratt: It is a problem. The measure would allow the seizing of a vehicle, effectively on one action rather than two actions. As the law stands, the problem is that the police officer would have to witness it happening, speak to the person to give them a warning and then wait for it to happen again. If they just drive away, they have obviously got away with it, so the measure in the Bill to potentially allow the police officer to seize it at that first instance is useful.
You sometimes see cases of what we are talking about around London or streamed live on social media: people meeting up and doughnutting around car parks and driving up and down, with huge crowds of people very close. It is overwhelmingly a public safety issue, so being able to simply seize those vehicles at that point would be a very useful power.
Matt Vickers
Q
Councillor Garratt: In terms of vehicles, I think that is positive. Another thing about private dwellings or properties, which is not related to vehicles, is the provisions on GPS-tracked devices. You can stick a GPS tag on all kinds of things, including mobile phones and bicycles. That is an extremely useful power that we would welcome, but it also requires the police to decide that it is a priority to track those things. Dr Newport, who I believe is coming later, chained his bike outside Scotland Yard, which definitely has the power to look at its own CCTV and chose not to. That challenge will remain.
I produced a report a couple of months ago showing that every six minutes a mobile phone is stolen in London. That is increasing year on year. We did some polling and the majority of Londoners are now wary in the way they use their phone. You see people turning away or going into doorways, essentially because the criminals who are stealing these phones are operating in a fairly risk-free environment. Anything that introduces some countermeasures to that is very welcome, and making it easier for the police to track and apprehend those people is also very welcome.
Councillor Conway: We welcome the provision on cars to help to create a peaceful and respectful environment. I am very aware of the issues that can happen locally with that. Obviously, increased collaboration between councils and police may require further resourcing, but I note, again, that we are already delivering that collaboration on the ground. We do that quite a lot, but it would be very welcome to have an increased focus and more resourcing.
I wanted to pick up on phones. I was fortunate to represent the LGA at the mobile phone summit that the Home Secretary organised—the Minister was there—and that summit was very welcome. I note, again, that through a proactive relationship with our local police force, really effective action is happening. Local councils have a real role to play in how we work as leaders of place, and how we tackle the crimes that affect people’s everyday lives.
As a Barnet councillor I should add that we are fortunate in Barnet to have funding from the Mayor for London for a specific violence-reduction-unit project over the next two years. That is designed exactly to tackle the mobile phone issues, with a whole range of after-school activities, and we enable people to mark their property and so on. There are solutions to things, and we really welcome the framework that the Bill will provide, but local government needs resourcing to deliver effectively on some of the obligations that are coming in.
Councillor Garratt: Can I make an additional point closely connected to that? New powers are proposed in clauses 78, 80 and 81 on SIM farms and electronic devices used for vehicle offences. They are good measures and we welcome them. I have a useful suggestion. In 2023, an additional power relating to lock-on-type offences was added to stop and search, to allow police to stop and search someone on the basis that they were looking for equipment that would be used for a lock-on-type protest. With the new offences relating to SIM farms and electronic USB devices that plug into a car and allow people to steal it, it would potentially be useful to add an additional stop-and-search power so that the police would be able to stop and search people they believe are equipped for those crimes. Otherwise, there is potentially a gap, whereby a new crime has been created but it is difficult for the police to enforce it.
Dame Diana Johnson
Q
I want to ask the Local Government Association specifically about antisocial behaviour, the respect orders in the Bill, and the strengthening of some of the powers in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. What are your reflections on how increasing the respect orders and those other powers will help local authorities to deal with antisocial behaviour?
Councillor Conway: Anything that can help local authorities to deal with antisocial behaviour is very welcome. It is welcome that breaching a respect order will become a criminal offence. It is important that that will set off a different process. Again, though, there are pressures on local authorities.
I note two caveats. One is the new ASB data reporting requirements, which may cause pressures in certain areas. There needs to be dialogue with Government about how to do that really effectively. Also, on the new duty for police and crime commissioners, which will bolster the role of the Victims’ Commissioner in ASB case reviews, we want to caution that that should work okay with the Victims and Prisoners Act. It should not set up two different systems and there should be consistency on the ground.
On ASB itself, I will again speak from a local perspective for a minute or two. We have been fortunate to be London’s first pilot of the Clear, Hold, Build strategy. We are nearly two years into that, and overall crime is down 20%, year on year, across the board. It has also taken a collaborative approach into our policing and partnership. In my particular ward, which had a lot of issues, ASB is down by 65%, which is extraordinary. Burglary is down by 67% and violence against the person is down by 59%. Those results do not just happen. With all this, an effective and proactive local government, partnership with the police, and everyone working together are really vital.
We really welcome the proposals, but it is about how we implement them in practice on the ground. Local government obviously has a very strong story to tell, and dialogue through the Bill, and once it is introduced, will be really important to demonstrate how it is working on the ground. Thank you for the powers to, hopefully, be able to do more.
Matt Vickers
Q
Emily Spurrell: I suppose the first thing to say is that there is a lot in it that we welcome. There is a lot in it that, as PCCs, we have been calling for for a long time—for example, the extra protection for retail workers and the recognition that they should not have to face assaults while doing their job; the measures to strengthen the ownership for businesses and sellers to crack down on the sale of knives online; the greater powers in relation to the ASB case review to achieve more consistency across the country; and the police appeals measure, because currently we do not have the ability to appeal the outcome of the police tribunal. There is lots in the Bill that we welcome, and I think it will go a long way to support some of the issues that we face locally.
The one thing I would highlight, which will come as no surprise and I imagine you have heard it from many others today, is resource and our capacity to deliver on some of these issues. We welcome all the actions—there is a lot to welcome—but there is some anxiety, particularly among police forces, about being able to meet the demand and about not raising the expectation of the public that, because these powers now exist, suddenly there will be a huge swathe of activity in the area. It is all about resourcing and being able to deliver on the new activity.
Matthew Barber: A lot of the measures in the Bill were in the previous Criminal Justice Bill. A lot of that work is welcome, and there is some consistency. For me, a lot of the provisions fall into two categories. Some are closing loopholes. As far as the public are concerned, certainly, there are some really welcome moves on allowing the police the ability to enter premises without a search warrant where electronic devices with location detection are available. That has been a huge frustration for the public—they expect the police to be able to do that and do not understand that the current law prevents it. There is some tidying up of those elements.
There are some other very welcome areas, such as drug testing on arrest—the Thames Valley force has been rolling out one of the pilots—but that falls into the second category of provisions: ones that will need significant resources. In this case, that means resources not just for police forces to provide the kits and the testing, but for our local authority and health partners to provide the treatment that will come as a result of drug testing on arrest. Several measures in the Bill will require potentially significant resources.
One of those measures is the monitoring of sexual offenders—those on the sex offenders register. Again, some welcome moves are expected by police forces, but that will put additional resource burdens on policing. I think it is worth noting for the record that police forces do an awful lot of work in protecting the public from predatory sex offenders, which often goes on behind the scenes—it is not seen by the public, but it is vital and needs to be properly resourced.
If Parliament were inclined to go further in that area, it could allow the police to interrogate the digital devices of those on the sex offenders register. At the moment, that only happens if there is a sexual harm prevention order in place specific to that offence. Given the proliferation of online grooming and the proliferation of people on the sex offenders register, that additional power could be helpful in detecting other offences.
Roger Hirst: In common with my colleagues, I very much welcome the provisions in the Bill. I echo Matthew’s comments about the additional costs related to drug testing on arrest. I will also bring it to the Committee’s attention that there have been real problems with the industry providing the equipment for that. It is under-resourced at the moment. There is some investment that needs to be made, probably via us, in helping the industry develop. At the moment, we are not doing anything like as much as we would like to do, simply because of the constraint of materials. It is probably single-digit millions, but it is a substantial investment that needs to be made.
I particularly welcome the provision to make spiking a separate offence. That is certainly something that we in Essex are seeing in our night-time economies; sadly, it is a growing area and one where we need to be able to provide better protection. Being able to point to it as an individual item and make some noise about it will be really powerful to prevent it from happening. I think that plays into the overall Government ambition to reduce violence against women and girls.
There is an opportunity in the Bill to pick up on some other items that we have been looking for for quite a long time. We PCCs and PFCCs are very much victims’ mouthpiece in our areas, and we are in contact with many victims’ groups. I consistently get feedback that victims would very much like provision for convicted offenders to be required to attend their sentencing hearing. There is a feeling of a lack of justice when that does not happen, and a feeling that they as victims are not seeing justice exercised in the way they would wish to.
I also get feedback that victims would very much like to see mandatory life sentences for the worst categories of homicide. There are some homicides that are egregious enough to mean that it is fairly obvious that the person is unlikely ever to be able to be released without at least creating the risk of harm to the public.
Following up on what Matthew said about dealing with sexual offenders, there is also the opportunity to ban sex offenders from changing their name. There is nervousness among the public that sexual offenders are not always known, are hard to track and can evade the monitoring that is supposed to be there for offender management, so that would be extremely welcome.
The last thing would be bringing in an offence of aggressive begging. We have that in our city centres in Essex and it can be very disruptive. There is certainly a lot of feedback from traders and town centre operators about aggressive begging. Whether it is Southend, Colchester or Chelmsford, we certainly see the centre of town being disrupted.
Matt Vickers
Q
Emily Spurrell: A big part of it for me is understanding what is driving their offending. We see the greatest success when you invest in diversion and intervention. We know there are prolific offenders, particularly in relation to retail crime, where they are struggling with drug addiction or alcohol addiction, there might be mental health issues going on, and there might be poverty, in some cases. I think we need to get much better and invest much more heavily—lots of us as PCCs do already, but we need to do much more in this space, and we could if we had the resource—in diverting people away and putting them on to the right intervention to stop the things that are driving their offending in the first place.
Matthew Barber: I broadly agree. There is a huge amount, particularly around drug treatment and diversion, that needs to be done for some of those prolific offenders. We also need to recognise that there are those who operate in the organised crime space who are not necessarily the victims of drug abuse themselves, but the spreaders of that drug abuse, and we need to look at the sentencing and other preventive orders that can be put in place. At a lower level we have the criminal behaviour orders, which I am pleased to see included in the retail element of the Bill, but for a number of other prolific offenders, who will seek to commit a wide variety of crimes, we need to look at sentencing and at some of the provisions in the Bill that I do think will help to bring those individuals to justice where at the moment they may well evade justice. For example, procuring, handling and trading in some of the electronic equipment used in the pursuit of theft of vehicles is not an offence at the moment. That change in legislation will help to tackle some of the organised crime element.
Roger Hirst: I think similarly. One of the provisions that is very much to be welcomed is the doing away with the £200 minimum on shoplifting. So often these are prolific offenders, but each offence is treated by the court system as a single offence—effectively a de minimis offence—when, in actual fact, if you are doing that number of relatively small shoplifts in one day, you can be making quite a lot of money out of it. That improvement is definitely positive.
That does mean that we have to appeal to you—perhaps not in relation to the Bill, but overall—to ensure that the criminal justice system is properly funded. There is undoubtedly an additional burden on the criminal justice system that will come out of the Bill. It is all well and good for us to ask for more resources for policing, and for PFCCs and PCCs, but it is really important that the criminal justice system gets to grips with its backlog. In Essex, we are currently having cases listed for 2028. That is an extremely painful situation, and it can be the case for very serious crimes. That needs to be worked through, please.
Matt Vickers
Q
Matthew Barber: It is certainly an issue in Thames Valley. The proposed change in legislation is welcome, both for cars, where we see antisocial behaviour with four-wheel vehicles, and for bikes. The change to remove the warning is particularly useful for bikes, because we are talking about vehicles that are not always registered, so identifying the owner of the vehicle to follow up on a warning is incredibly difficult. It is much easier with a four-wheel vehicle, but even in those circumstances the public generally expect the police to be taking action, and a warning that lasts for only a 12-month period is inadequate. I would be very supportive of the disposal of those vehicles—generally by crushing—following seizure. For people to have their vehicles removed and crushed if they are using them in an antisocial fashion seems to be an effective deterrent.
Emily Spurrell: I echo what Matthew said. One of the challenges that we have, depending on the vehicle, is when police officers are in pursuit of or trying to stop a vehicle. Particularly with off-road scramble bikes, which have proper engines, that can be a real challenge, in terms of what powers the police have and how comfortable they are to try to follow without creating further risk to the public or the individuals on the bike. That is a constant challenge. I am not sure what the obvious answer is, but it is something that police forces have to contend with.
The other bit, on e-bikes in particular—again, I do not know what the answer is—is whether more engagement could happen with the companies. In Merseyside, organised criminal gangs use them because they are quieter than scramble bikes and so easier to navigate around. They are able to adapt the speedometer, or the mechanism, which means they are going faster than they are designed to go. That is obviously incredibly dangerous for them as well as for the public around them. Anything that can be done to make that more difficult, and keep them to what they were designed for, would help.
Roger Hirst: I would differentiate between e-scooters and e-bikes. From the evidence that we have in Essex, e-bikes seem to be like any other powered two-wheeler. I would simply recommend that they are treated like any other powered two-wheeler: they should be registered with registration numbers; there should be an obligation to wear a crash helmet; and they could be used on the roads in the same way as any other powered two-wheeler.
There is a big difference, though—certainly for us—with e-scooters. Two young people on one e-scooter were very sadly killed last month in Basildon—a nine-year-old and a 15-year-old. It very sadly ended their lives and ruined their family’s lives and the lives of the people who hit them. It is very hard for us to see in Essex how e-scooters are compatible with our road system. I have to say that, having been to Bristol, I was very impressed with how they work in the old docklands there, but we do not have anywhere like that in Essex.
That was not the first fatality that we have had. E-scooters are very risky vehicles. It is very hard to see how they will ever be able to be used on either the road system or the footpath system. From my perspective, either they should be restricted to very small areas where they can be used safely, or we do not need them, because, in terms of the deaths per kilometre travelled, they are very dangerous indeed.
Matt Vickers
Q
The Chair
This will be the final answer on this subject.
Roger Hirst: We use both. We use what we can. We have crushed hundreds of e-scooters so far.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Dr Lawrence Newport. We have until 5.05 pm for this witness. Dr Newport, could you identify yourself briefly for the record, please?
Dr Newport: I am Dr Lawrence Newport and I run the Crush Crime campaign.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Newport: There are some points that might be helpful to bring up in broad terms. One of the chief issues that I have heard from the police since starting the campaign a few months ago is that there are a bunch of barriers to things they are trying to do. Some of them have said it that is becoming more and more difficult just to do the basics of their job, so the more things can be streamlined and the clearer we can make what is going on to the public, the better.
Many of us have CCTV, Ring cameras and so forth on our houses. I think there should be an opt-in national database to which homeowners can upload their footage and be paid a nominal fee of some amount annually. At the moment, officers go door to door to collect footage when something happens. At Christmas, everyone on my road had their tyres slashed, and the police had to go round to try to get footage from everyone’s Ring cameras individually. That obviously takes a lot of time, and on Christmas day there are not many police around, so things become very complex and take a long time. If there were a national database, I am sure many homeowners, like me, would simply upload the footage. It would be there, and the police could download it straightaway.
Connected to that, homeowners sometimes require planning permission to mount CCTV on their home in case it oversees a public area. If there were exemptions to that, neighbourhood policing would become a lot easier and a lot of burglaries and petty crimes would be easier to solve. If people are attacked in an alleyway, it would be possible to easily get hold of footage that otherwise might be very difficult. That is just on the CCTV side.
I have also heard a lot of complaints from officers about their computer systems. They say that the old systems are very difficult to use, take a lot of time and crash frequently. On some of the newer systems, I have heard a lot of complaints from officers who say that they find the Met system extremely difficult and that it breaks all the time. There is some evidence to suggest that arrests dropped significantly when the new system at the Met was introduced, but it has been very difficult to get any information on that. Freedom of information requests are not successful, and in fact Chris Philp asked in Parliament about it and did not get an answer. A clause to ensure much more transparency about procurement and the effects of different systems would go a long way to helping the public know what is actually going on inside. It would also help the police explain to the public why there are so many problems—for instance, why so many crimes are simply falling through the net.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Newport: I certainly support it. The previous wording was encouraging, and it is good to see this happening now, although I would prefer it to go much further. There is an epidemic of phone theft and snatch thefts in general. We now have better and better technology, and of course it will only get better, faster and cheaper. Given that, we should be able to actually use that information. The longer we wait for this and the more difficult we make it, the more detailed these pipelines will become.
My sister-in-law’s phone was stolen—it was actually two weeks after I launched the campaign, and only a week after the bike theft video that I did outside the Met—and within a week it was in China. These are very established networks. There is obviously a massive industry that has been allowed to take hold, so we need to give the police the best powers while keeping this in line with people’s expectations for their own home life and so on. I supported the previous wording, and I would like the Government to go as far as they can on this.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dr Newport: I think there should be provision in the Bill to ensure that, particularly for career criminals—people with 15 previous offences to their name—the more offences they commit, the longer they spend in prison for their current offence. That is technically in the current guidelines, but there are a lot of exemptions in the way they are drafted by the Sentencing Council. It should be put into statute that that is a direct, clear statement that the Sentencing Council should follow, and we should make sure it is super clear to judges.
Dame Diana Johnson
Q
Dr Newport: I support a ream of measures before people get to 15 or more offences—before they get to the point where they are career criminals or hyper-prolific offenders. Early intervention is of course the absolute key, if you can get people before they enter that point. I support all measures to try to do this as fast as possible. That means tagging, and other such measures—[Interruption.] I support them, but the building does not.
We have very good evidence that the earlier we intervene—it is not just early intervention, but the speed of that intervention. We have to make sure in statute that people are seen in a courtroom very soon after their first, second or third offence. That would mean that we see meaningful change and people not entering the career criminal pathway. Once they have done, we of course need to imprison them for longer periods.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sam Durham: I lead on rural crime for the National Farmers Union, and we are quite keen that the Bill is rural-proofed so that rural communities get the benefit from these changes as much as possible. Our quick view of the Bill is that the area we are particularly interested in is fly-tipping—that really blights rural communities and private landowners. We feel that there is currently a gap in local authorities addressing that. Some work very effectively on it, others rely on the police and others rely on other Government agencies. We find that it is not clear to a landowner with a fly-tipping incident how it gets dealt with. It is a bit of a lottery across the country. The improvements on guidance in the Bill are to be welcomed. We welcome that side of the legislation.
We feel that the ability to search without a warrant for electronic goods—that was mentioned by the previous speaker—could have benefit for agricultural theft. We encourage our members, wherever possible, to fit tracking devices to their vehicles and machinery. Having talked to some of the national police chief leads I have contact with, they would welcome the ability to track a stolen tractor or quad bike and then enter the premises where they believe it to be. I know that the legislation is focused more on phone theft, but we think that there could be the added benefit of addressing equipment theft. We welcome the Government pushing for secondary legislation on the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which should help that side as well.
Finally, one thing that my members mention to me quite a lot, which is on the offensive weapons side, is that they deal quite a lot with poaching and other incidents on-farm. One unfortunate trend we have experienced in various parts of the country is the use of catapults. They are being used to kill wildlife and farm animals, as well as to cause criminal damage to tractor windows and the like. Catapults could be added to the list of offensive weapons. A criminal element is using them now, because if they are caught in possession, it is not so easy for the police to push a prosecution through. That is what we welcome in the Bill so far.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sam Durham: We have worked quite closely with the police and the Government on hare coursing legislation, which allows the seizure of items that are used. In hare coursing incidents, the dogs are valuable assets, as are the vehicles. Certainly, those kinds of measures could act as a further deterrent, but from a landowner’s point of view, it is that key issue of which authority’s responsibility it is. I think it is clear that it should be the local authority. Police have found they are having to address it, and I know police and crime commissioners see it as a priority, but that does cause confusion on the ground for the landowner about who deals with it and what happens when you have an incident. Once the tipped rubbish is there, it is the landowner’s responsibility to clear it up.
Matt Vickers
Q
Sam Durham: Again, that works as a good deterrent in some rural criminality, so we would support those kinds of issues. We do look at food security issues as well, including the illegal import of meat. I know our president is keen to investigate whether there is the potential to seize and crush those vehicles as a deterrent measure.
Keir Mather
Q
Sam Durham: Certainly. For a long time, while we have been working on crime, we have always pushed for co-ordination and consistency as the key. My members on any county or police force boundary will certainly say that they have the issues you mentioned. A criminal will know that they will get treated differently in one force area compared with the other, and stolen equipment can be taken across borders where there is less chance of investigation and action. We welcome some of the work the National Police Chiefs’ Council is doing now, including bringing together the national rural crime unit. The Home Office has funded that unit for the next three years, and that is positive news. Information sharing, the sharing of best practice and linking forces together is key.
We see that there is also a challenge for the Government to work across Departments. I was at the National Rural Crime Network conference on Tuesday, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Office were there. There are instances, such as with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and fly-tipping, in which other Government Departments can work together more at a national level and filter that down to working together on a local level.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the group Stand with Hong Kong. We have until 5.35 pm for this witness. Could you please identify yourself for the record?
Venita Yeung: Thank you, Chair and members of the Committee. I speak today as both a Hong Kong-born refugee in the UK and a representative of Stand with Hong Kong, a 100% grassroots, independent and crowdfunded advocacy group that runs the secretariat of the all-party parliamentary group on Hong Kong.
Matt Vickers
Q
Venita Yeung: I would like to draw the Committee’s attention to a grave risk posed by the public order clauses, particularly those that would criminalise the act of concealing one’s identity at protests. For many Hongkongers in the community, face coverings at protests are not a matter of convenience or anonymity; they are a matter of safety—a shield against foreign repression. This is not theoretical; it is already happening in our country.
As you may know, in the past few years, the national security law in Hong Kong and article 23 has created a climate of fear. Its extraterritorial reach means that even actions taken in the UK can result in repercussions thousands of miles away. Even community groups that meet privately with parliamentarians often ask not to be photographed or named publicly, for fear of being identified by foreign state actors.
At anti-Chinese Communist party protests, which often take place in the UK, it is very common for participants to be photographed by pro-Beijing individuals, as mentioned in the report by the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2023. Those images are often passed back to Hong Kong or Chinese authorities, or circulated on Chinese platforms such as WeChat group chats or Weibo. As a result, many protesters have been doxed and their families back home visited or harassed by the police force. It is a common tactic deployed by authoritarian regimes to silence dissidents and mobilise their members in the overseas diaspora to monitor fellow members of the diaspora and minimise or silence democratic, dissenting voices. The press has documented multiple cases of Hong Kong protesters and Chinese international students being reported by their peers for attending peaceful protests in the UK.
The Chair
Ms Yeung, I certainly do not wish to be discourteous, and neither do I wish in any way to make light of the very real concerns you are expressing, but could I ask you to relate your answer very specifically to the question that was asked: how can the Bill be improved or amended to address some of the issues that are of concern to you?
Venita Yeung: If the Bill is passed in its current form, it would criminalise the safety precaution that many in our community must take to avoid identification. I think that the clause that would criminalise concealing one’s identity at protests should be taken away.
Matt Vickers
Q
Venita Yeung: That is an interesting question. I can only speak from the experience of anti-CCP protests, most of which are very peaceful and do not result in any kind of arrests. To balance the needs of public order, the police could always communicate with protest organisers ahead of the protest, and improve their relationships with community leaders to see how they can facilitate a peaceful protest, instead of deploying measures that inadvertently assist authoritarian repression.
Dame Diana Johnson
Q
“likely to involve or has involved”
the commission of criminal offences. Having set that out, do you have a different view on that clause?
Venita Yeung: This is a complex issue, but I will try to summarise my view. The power is devolved into police hands to decide whether criminal offences will take place in a protest. At the recent Chinese embassy protests, where there were over 20 police cars and over 6,000 protesters, there were clashes between organisers and police where a disproportionate amount of police power was designated at those protests. For context, lots of Hongkongers who have recently settled here might not understand English perfectly, which could lead to them misunderstanding police instructions.
If more police powers are given, in that case, it could easily have led to an abuse of power, especially when the police do not understand the nuances. I believe there is a letter addressed to the Met police about disproportionate measures being applied to the Hong Kong and repressed Chinese community protests, drafted by Tom Tugendhat MP and Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from Ministers for the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. We have until 5.50 pm for this panel. Will you introduce yourselves briefly for the record, starting with the Policing Minister?
Dame Diana Johnson: I am Diana Johnson. I am the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention.
Alex Davies-Jones: I am Alex Davies-Jones. I am the Minister with responsibility for victims and violence against women and girls.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dame Diana Johnson: Thank you for the question. Having heard the evidence this afternoon, and this morning as well, I am happy to reflect on what has been said. Clearly, setting out the statutory guidance that will be made available will help to provide a consistent approach. Points were made about the inconsistent way that fly-tipping is being dealt with, and about the fact that perhaps not all local authorities are using all the powers they have. I think there is merit in having that statutory guidance set out, but I am willing to look at other proposals that might come forward.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dame Diana Johnson: It is fair to say that the power is already available to courts, when they convict on shop theft—and hopefully soon on assaults on shop workers—to use the full range of sanctions, which includes tagging, community service and a whole range of things. With the offence of assault on a retail worker, we are making a specific presumption that a criminal behaviour order should be attached to it. We are not, in any way, saying that it may not be appropriate to use a tag.
I have also been told that a lot of prolific shoplifters—the people who are committing these offences—have chaotic lifestyles, and tags are not always going to be the most effective way of dealing with them. That is something to be mindful of when you are saying, “That has to be part of the punishment.” That is why the court should use its discretion to apply whatever sanction is most appropriate for that individual.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dame Diana Johnson: On dispersal orders, we have taken the view that this is a power that should be given to the police and kept with the police. We do not think it should be used by local authorities. We think it is a serious power, and the number of hours it can be used for is going up, so the police are best suited to make those types of decisions.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dame Diana Johnson: It is very disconcerting when you keep being lit up and then plunged into darkness, so I apologise if I cannot remember everything you said, but we certainly think that what we are introducing to get rid of the warning requirement is important. All members of the Committee know how the use of e-vehicles to commit antisocial behaviour blights communities, whether it is motorbikes, mini motos or e-scooters. We think this is a really important tool that the police will be able to use to seize these vehicles without having to give the warnings, because we know that that frustrates the police and communities. We think that removing the warning requirement will be very impactful, but I am certainly prepared to look at other measures as well.
Matt Vickers
Q
Dame Diana Johnson: One of the frustrations I have found since becoming the Minister for Policing is that data is not held centrally. We have problems with data because of the changes that were introduced during the coalition years to devolve everything down to the 43 police forces, which often measure things in slightly different ways. One of the measures we will introduce will try to provide clear data to the Home Office, so that we can see what is going on with such matters, which are of real concern to communities. We want to make sure we have accurate data, and you are probably right that we do not have that now. Police forces are probably using different ways of categorising antisocial behaviour involving vehicles, so I take your point on that. There is work to do.
The Chair
Ms Davies-Jones, I am conscious of the fact that most of these questions are the responsibility of the Policing Minister, but is there anything you wish to add?
Alex Davies-Jones: Nothing on this part, Sir Roger. I am happy to come in on the Ministry of Justice measures.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsTuesday 18th March 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 March 2025 - (18 Mar 2025)
The Chair
Good morning, everyone. Would everyone please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode? We will continue line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The grouping and selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. I remind Members about the rules on declaration of interests, as set out in the code of conduct. I also remind Opposition Members that if one of your new clauses has already been debated and you wish to press it to a Division when it is reached on the amendment paper, you should let me know in advance, please.
New Clause 24
Immigration Tribunal: hearings in public
“(1) The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 5, after subsection 5, insert—
‘(5A) All hearings of the Tribunal must be heard in public, and all decisions delivered in public,’”.—(Matt Vickers.)
This new clause would require all rulings in the Lower Tier immigration tribunal to be heard in public.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The Conservative party has tabled the new clause to ensure that proceedings of the lower-tier immigration tribunal will be heard in public. We have seen absurd outcomes in some of the cases heard in the upper tribunal in recent months, and we feel it is important to make sure that the system is transparent and that the public have full access to the tribunal records at both levels.
Examples of recent cases reported by the Telegraph include that of an Albanian criminal who avoided deportation after claiming that his son had an aversion to foreign chicken nuggets, and that of a Pakistani paedophile who was jailed for child sex offences but escaped removal from the UK as it would be unduly harsh on his own children. More recently, it was reported that a Pakistani man was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman but was allowed to stay in Britain after he claimed he was gay. An Albanian criminal also avoided deportation after a judge ruled that long-distance Zoom calls would be too harsh on his stepson.
The absurdity is further emphasised by the case heard recently in which a Ghanaian woman won the right to remain in Britain as the wife of an EU national, even though neither she nor her husband was present at the wedding held in Ghana. The lower-tier tribunal stated that the marriage was not legal, but that was overturned in the upper tribunal, which ruled that the proxy marriage was recognised in law and that registration at the same time as the marriage ceremony was not mandatory.
The continued abuse of our legal system, and the use of human rights as a defence, has gone on for too long. In another case, a tribunal ruled that a convicted Ghanaian pastor who was deported from Britain for using fake documents should be free to return to the country. Despite being jailed for using illegal documentation, the individual in question appealed under article 8 of the European convention on human rights, leading a judge to revoke the deportation order, claiming that it was an “unjustifiable interference” in his human rights.
The number of decisions may be used as an argument against the new clause, but these decisions are important. The first-tier tribunal’s asylum appeal backlog increased from 34,234 outstanding cases at the end of September 2024 to 41,987 by the end of December. That contrasts with 58,000 in the first quarter of this year. That is significantly more than the upper tribunal, but it underlines the importance of us knowing what has happened in these cases. Public trust is pivotal, as it—
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Murrison—I suspect that you will be bookending our proceedings, if we make reasonable progress today. Does the shadow Minister acknowledge that increases in appeal backlogs are a result of the legacy process that his Government undertook, because people whose claims were not granted in that process have appealed and added to the backlog?
Matt Vickers
We know that significantly more people are arriving in the country. In fact, since the election, the number arriving illegally is up 29%, as is the number of people staying in hotels. The Government are actually removing fewer people than arrive by small boat now. The more people arrive, the more the backlogs will become an issue. Transparency in these tribunals is essential.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I am really trying to get my head around the new clause. Why would decision making in public be different from decision making in private?
Matt Vickers
Public trust in these decisions is completely and utterly broken. The answer to that is not to allow a good chunk of them to go unseen by the public. The public deserve to see and the people making the decisions deserve to be held to account. We need to ensure that the law is fit for purpose. We need to see the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the ECHR. That needs to be there for all to see. Public accountability and transparency are a good thing. The taxpayers out there, who fund all this, have a right to know what is going on, at any level, in the tribunals.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. I agree that there is a lack of trust in our immigration and asylum system, but does the hon. Member agree that the cause of that is not the conduct of courts in public or private, but the backlogs that have been created and the inability of the Conservatives to tackle the problems in our immigration and asylum system? Will he also reflect on the fact that the Conservatives in government had the opportunity to introduce this change but chose not to? Is he perhaps playing a bit of politics?
Matt Vickers
We have seen what has happened since the election. We will not go into the fact that numbers are up significantly, and whether the number of people arriving by small boat is down significantly, but actually, regardless of when it is changed, here is an opportunity, with a piece of legislation, to change this. The trust that the public have in the system is completely battered by these decisions, so it is right to have that transparency. The answer to the need to build public trust is not to hide a good chunk of what is going on, but to let more people see it. The light of day would be very good at getting rid of some of this toxicity, holding people to account and ensuring that the legislation that we have tomorrow is fit for purpose. As parliamentarians, we should be held to account for the legislation that we are putting forward. We should be held to account for its consequences, including in the tribunals that are making so many decisions on these cases.
Public trust is pivotal when advocating for Opposition new clause 24. It transforms the subject of the debate from a dry procedural tweak into a fundamental issue of democratic accountability. The British public’s faith in the immigration system has been battered by the bizarre tribunal rulings highlighted earlier—decisions hidden behind closed doors that defy common sense and insult victims. By mandating public hearings at the first-tier tribunal, we can signal that justice is not just for claimants but for taxpayers, who fund it.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
The hon. Member has a lot to say in Opposition, but the big question is: why did he not do this when the current Opposition were in government?
Matt Vickers
We were doing lots of things. I am sure we will come on to some of the progress that was being made, including the Albania agreement, which has taken thousands and thousands of people back to Albania and reduced the number of people coming. That deterrent stopped people setting off in the first place. It was real progress.
The Bill—this is the reason why we are sitting here today—is the opportunity to shape what comes next, what impact that will have on the number of people coming across the channel and what impact that will have on public confidence in our courts system. That is what we are here for. It is why we have bothered sitting here for so many hours—to ensure that the legislation that goes forward tomorrow is fit for purpose.
Matt Vickers
Well, we will see how much longer we get to sit. Time will tell, but I will move on.
Tom Hayes
The hon. Member is making a very powerful point about the importance of restoring trust and, to be fair to him, he has been making that point for many years. On 20 July 2021, he said in debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill:
“Our asylum and immigration system is not fit for purpose. It lines the pockets of criminal gangs and people smugglers, and it is not fair on genuinely vulnerable people who need protection. It is also not fair on the British public, who pick up the tab.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 902.]
I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman about what happened in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and, in fact, the years before that. Does he agree with the 2021 hon. Member for Stockton South, as he then was, that in fact the cause of the mistrust in our asylum system is the management of it, not what he is trying to address here?
Matt Vickers
I am glad the hon. Gentleman is a fan; I made an effort today with the tie. I think I was speaking as much common sense then as I am today. I agree that the system does not work. That is why we are here. It is why I hope these proposals will make a difference. It is why we are trying to improve the system. And that is why I think we should have transparency in these tribunal outcomes.
As I said, we are talking about decisions hidden behind closed doors that defy common sense and insult victims. By mandating public hearings at the first-tier tribunal, we can signal that justice is not just for claimants, but for taxpayers who fund it and citizens who live with its consequences. Transparency exposes these absurdities, has the potential to curtail judicial overreach, and could reassure a sceptical public that the system prioritises their safety and fairness over secretive leniency, because trust, once lost, is hard to rebuild.
It is only right that the general public, who foot the bill for these cases time and again, are allowed to fully understand what their money is being used for. It is only right that the public can see these sessions so that there is a place for scrutiny and accountability. It is only right that such a shameful abuse of the UK’s legal system be exposed to the taxpayers of this country.
Mike Tapp
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The hon. Member for Stockton West has made a creative argument, and I will try to bring some sense to it. First, we have to look at what the new clause would actually do for the country and our judicial system. Public hearings could expose vulnerable individuals, including victims of persecution or trafficking, to undue public scrutiny, which could deter genuine applicants from seeking justice. There are also security risks. Sensitive information about applicants’ backgrounds, including details that could endanger their families in their home countries, could be exposed.
There is also the risk of the legal system being overloaded further, given what we have inherited. Increased public interest in the hearings could lead to more appeals and challenges, which would cause more delays and inefficiencies in the system. Finally, the new clause is simply unnecessary as courts already have the discretion to allow public access when appropriate. It would remove vital judicial flexibility.
Dame Angela Eagle
I have to compliment the hon. Member for Stockton West on his tie, since he raised it, and the hon. Member for Weald of Kent seems to have good taste in the colour of her jackets. I promise that that is the last fashion statement that I will make in our proceedings today.
On new clause 24, we agree that accountability and transparency are absolutely vital for building trust and credibility in the immigration system. Under rule 27 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014—note the date—the presumption already is that hearings at the first-tier tribunal must be public unless the first-tier tribunal gives a direction that it or part of it is to be held in private. Indeed, the majority of hearings at the first-tier tribunal are public. However, there are sometimes appropriate reasons for a hearing not to be public. For example, hearings may be held in private to preserve confidentiality in respect of sensitive medical details or to protect the privacy of a victim of a serious crime—for example, of a sexual nature. It may also be done to protect a party or witness from duress.
That is precisely why the Tribunal Procedure Committee has broad discretion to determine what practice and procedure in the first-tier tribunal will best support the overall interests of justice, and why the judiciary has a range of case management powers under the tribunal procedure rules to decide how individual cases should proceed. Those tribunal powers were published and written when the party of the hon. Member for Stockton West was in government, in 2014. It is expected that judges will have a wide discretion in dealing with these sensitive issues.
On making rulings of the first-tier tribunal available to the public, currently judgments of the immigration and asylum chamber of the first-tier tribunal are not routinely published. The decision about whether to publish a judgment is a judicial one. However, members of the public and the media can apply to the tribunal for a copy of the judgment in a specific case. I know that the Lord Chancellor will continue discussions with the judiciary about how we can bolster accountability and transparency to build public confidence, but I cannot help feeling that perhaps certain people who might work for a certain newspaper are getting to the end of their search engines for absurd cases that they can publish, and want a whole new database to search. If they want to bring these issues out into the open at the first-tier tribunal, perhaps they should send some reporters to listen to the case or apply on an individual basis for the judgment to be published. Perhaps that might assuage their ongoing interest in these issues.
Matt Vickers
I thank the Minister for her opinion, but we stand by this new clause. We want greater transparency, and we think this is an opportunity to do just that and allow the public to see what is and is not going on, so we will press it to a Division.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Conservative party is clear that the ability of immigrants to remain indefinitely in the United Kingdom and to acquire British citizenship should be not an automatic right, but an earned privilege, reserved for those who have made a real commitment to the UK. New clause 25 would increase from five to 10 years the period before a person can claim indefinite leave to remain, and add conditions to ensure that those applying for indefinite leave to remain have not claimed benefits or relied on social housing while here on work visas. Those claiming indefinite leave to remain must also be able to demonstrate that their household would be a net contributor and that they do not have a criminal record.
It is only right that individuals prove they have made a positive contribution to the United Kingdom and that their place in society is justified. For too long, the United Kingdom has been seen to have an open door policy, and this has been abused. Enough is enough. The 10-year rule would prove commitment—five years lets you settle; 10 years lets you prove you belong. It is enough time for people to learn our language, adopt our values and pay their dues.
Tom Hayes
This proposal has emerged before the Leader of the Opposition sets in train her new policy commissions, including one on immigration, so it is good to get a teaser today. Under this proposal, will a person who would seek to apply for indefinite leave to remain after 10 years be required to apply for limited leave to remain every 30 months?
Matt Vickers
The hon. Gentleman has got me. I was hoping he was going to spout some more of the common sense that I have contributed to Hansard.
Tom Hayes
I might be able to help the hon. Gentleman. The IPPR, which listens to the voices of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees navigating that 10-year process—people who look to settle here legally—and which looks at the data, published a report, “A Punishing Process”, which talks about some of the administrative costs and difficulties of the process. As part of the Leader of the Opposition’s new commission on immigration, will the hon. Gentleman be able to provide an assessment of the true cost to the Home Office of an individual applying for LLR every 30 months? Will he would maintain the requirement that people have to pay £2,608 as an adult and £2,223 for a child in visa fees? One of the concerns of the IPPR report is that poorer people often get pushed into greater poverty by having to apply every 30 months.
Matt Vickers
We have processes in place that determine this, and they do come with a cost. However, the cost to the British taxpayer of allowing this to go on unabated is that much greater. There are processes in place and there are costs attached to them, but there are huge costs attached to allowing people indefinite leave to remain on shorter terms than we are suggesting.
Matt Vickers
There is huge cost. I will come to what the cost will be in the next few years of the number of people who are about to gain indefinite leave to remain.
Matt Vickers
No, I will not give him the name of the report.
Applying the 10-year rule, rather than the five-year rule as now, would prove commitment. As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said:
“A British passport is a privilege, one that has been debased by benefit tourism for too long. Our plan gets it right, making sure that those who pay their way get to stay.”
The Prime Minister, bizarrely, does appears to think that British citizenship is not a pull factor, so much so that the Government are seeking to repeal swathes of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 passed under the previous Conservative Government. In doing so, this Government will scrap rules that meant that almost all those who entered the United Kingdom illegally would not be entitled to British citizenship, and that asylum seekers who failed to take age tests would be treated as adults. Those were common-sense policies. We are calling on all parties, and especially the Government, to support this new clause. We need to ensure that everyone who comes to this country is willing to contribute and to integrate into our society.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, was first a refugee in the UK, and she said that, in Britain, people would say to refugees, “You’re welcome here…and when are you going home?” whereas, in America, they said, “You’re welcome here…and when will you become a citizen?” Does the hon. Member not think that the problem the last Government created was that they moved to a high-churn model of migration, with huge numbers of people coming in, working in low-paid jobs, not integrating and then leaving, and more people coming in? We want to incentivise people to learn the language, engage with our institutions and follow our rules, which means that pathways such as this are really important, not the model that we have seen for the past 14 years.
Matt Vickers
The principle here is that we are saying, “You will get indefinite leave to remain, not after five years but after 10 years.” We have already had the debate about British citizenship and what that means—all the benefits that come with it and all the costs to the taxpayer that are attached to it. I therefore I think that this principle is right: if someone is going to stay here, they have to have been here longer, earned their keep, contributed and integrated properly. I think that 10 years allows that. I think that this is the way forward, and I stand by it.
Tom Hayes
I thank the hon. Member for his patience in allowing me to intervene again. Is it not fair of the Government to accept only those amendments whose details are actually known and worked up; and is it not, therefore, unfair of the hon. Member to press a new clause when he has not worked out the details of what its implementation would look like?
Matt Vickers
The details and the need for people to engage with the authorities are already in place. This new clause is literally about saying “10 years” instead of “five years”. No part of it amends existing provisions regarding migrants’ responsibility to account for themselves during that period. There is no suggestion of any change to that; it is beyond what we are amending through the new clause. If we wanted to change that, there would certainly be a debate to be had, and there would probably be opportunities to bring forward amendments, but that is not what we are proposing here. We are proposing to increase the period from five to 10 years.
Our country is our home; it is not a hotel. We can guess what the Government’s response to this will be—more deflection and criticism—but they must remember that they are in government now and have a duty to protect the British taxpayer from unnecessary costs. If they do not act, every UK household is forecast to pay £8,200 as a result of between 742,000 and 1,224,000 migrants getting indefinite leave to remain in the next couple of years. The Government must act to ensure that everyone who stays in the country is a net contributor.
It may interest the Government to know that changes to indefinite leave to remain have happened before—and can and should happen again now. In 2006, under the then Labour Government, the Home Secretary extended the time required to obtain indefinite leave to remain from four years to five years, an extension that applied retroactively to those already actively pursuing indefinite leave to remain. It is hoped that this Government will make a similarly bold move and support new clause 25.
Before the accusations start to be thrown around, let me make it crystal clear that new clause 25 is not some cold-hearted exercise in exclusion; it is a robust, principled stand for expectations—a line in the sand that says that if someone wants to live here, stay here, and call Britain their home, that comes with a reasonable cost. That cost is not measured just in pounds and pence, but in commitment, in responsibility, and in proving that they are here to lift us up, not weigh us down.
A recent study undertaken by the Adam Smith Institute found that, according to figures produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the average low-wage migrant worker will cost the British taxpayer £465,000 by the time they reach 81 years of age. It is clear that opening the ILR door to millions of new migrants will impose a considerable and unwanted financial burden on the British taxpayer for decades to come.
The OBR report explores the opportunity to reform indefinite leave to remain rules, which new clause 25 seeks to do, to help mitigate the long-term fiscal burden of low-skilled migrants, who are unlikely to be net contributors to the public purse. A refusal to back new clause 25 is not just inaction, but a choice to prioritise the untested over taxpayers—to keep the welcome mat out while the costs pile up. The Opposition say no, this is our home, and we expect those arriving to treat it as such.
Pete Wishart
It is a pleasure to once again to serve under you as Chair, Dr Murrison. When I look at the Tory amendments in their totality, they are quite frankly an absolute and utter disgrace. It is as if the Tories have learnt absolutely nothing from the Rwanda debacle and the Illegal Migration Act 2023. Some of the amendments that we will be debating are simply heinous, lacking in any reasonable standard of compassion and empathy. What a country they would create: one devoid of human rights and international protections, where people are simply othered and deprived of any rights whatsoever. Some of the most desperate and wretched people in the world would be denied and booted out.
I used to say that the Tories would never beat Reform in the race to the bottom, but looking at the collection of amendments that we are debating today, they are going to give it their best shot. It is just possible that they will out-Reform Reform colleagues in the House of Commons. The amendments are not only terrifying but ludicrously unworkable—blatant political grandstanding, designed to appeal to the basest of instincts. We have the grim task of having to debate them one by one; I just hope that the Committee will reject them totally out of hand.
New clause 25 was raised in a blaze of publicity at the end of the self-denying ordinance from the Leader of the Opposition when she announced her new immigration policy, which I understand has been changed and finessed over the course of the past few weeks, but is still as grotesque underneath as it started. The Conservatives do not believe that British citizenship should be a privilege; they believe that British citizenship should be virtually unobtainable, and that the strongest possible tests must be applied before anybody is ever going to get the opportunity to call themselves a British citizen. That is totally and utterly self-defeating.
The provision will apply to work-based visa holders, skilled workers and global talent, who can currently apply for ILR after five years. Extending that period to 10 years could deter highly-skilled workers and investors from coming to stay in the UK. It may lead to workforce instability, particularly in sectors reliant on international talent. It would also disadvantage certain migrants and people who have lived legally in the UK for 10 years but do not hold one of the listed visas. This is an unworkable, crazy proposal that can only be self-defeating and have a massive impact on our economy. It would create a massive disincentive to the very people we need to come into the UK to fill some of our skills gaps. I hope the provision is roundly rejected.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison, and to make a few remarks at the end of this interesting debate. I will make a few general comments first and then make more detailed comments on new clause 25.
It is worth re-stating some of the shadow Minister’s points. He said that, for too long, we have had an open-door policy that is open to abuse. He also said that we should remember that we are in government. He is absolutely right that the Tories lost control over our immigration system. We do not need reminding of that—nor do we need reminding that we are in government clearing up their mess.
The context for a lot of the debate today has been the massive backlogs that have built up in every part of the system, the failure to have controls over our system, the levels of abuse and the fall in returns for those who have no right to be here. It is worth mentioning that the steady increase in settlement grants in 2017 reflects high levels of migration in previous years. It is almost as if the Tories are attempting to close the gates to the field from which the horses have long bolted, and everyone else is now picking up the pieces.
It is worth correcting the impression that the shadow Minister gives about our policy. We agree that settlement in the UK is a privilege; it is not an automatic entitlement. However, we understand that the immigration system needs to account for people in a range of circumstances beyond those specified in new clause 25. We also recognise and value the contribution that legal migration makes to our country and believe that the immigration system needs to be much better controlled and managed.
Provisions for settlement are set out in the immigration rules, so the Bill is not the correct legislation for debate about requirements for settlement. What we are doing with this Bill is strengthening our borders, going after the criminal smuggling gangs that have caused so much damage to the lives of migrants already and put lives at risk daily, and securing our borders against systemic abuse.
New clause 25 would restrict settlement in the UK to a handful of economic routes and partners of British citizens. Other routes to settlement in the current immigration system would therefore be excluded from settlement should the new clause be accepted, including settlement for refugees. The shadow Minister may have a view about, for example, a situation facing an Afghan interpreter for the British armed forces who put their life at risk, was evacuated to the UK after the chaos in Kabul in 2020 and was then put up in taxpayer-funded accommodation after arrival in the UK. Correct me if I am wrong, but under clause 25 they would be banned from ever settling in the UK.
It is important that we understand that settlement in the UK is privilege, the argument for which was rightly made. It is right because settlement conveys significant benefits, including the right to live here permanently and to access work, study and public funds, as well as a pathway to citizenship. We also have rules and processes to recognise the expectation that people should serve a period with temporary permission before being eligible to apply for settlement.
There is a range of periods of time that people need to spend in the UK before they can qualify for settlement. Many are five years, but there are shorter periods for exceptional routes. The hon. Member for Stockton West did not lay out his view on some of those specialised routes that may offer a shorter path to settlement, such as the global talent route or the innovator founder route. They allow settlement within three years to help the UK to attract the best talent from around the world, and they reward those working in business who are making some of the greatest economic contributions.
While I want to quote from the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute, as they are the most important references in these debates, the new clause does not really think through the immigration system as a whole. We must think about it being fairer, more controlled and managed, and we must ensure that it recovers from the chaos that the last Government left it in. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Stockton West will know, the Government will also set out our approach to immigration, including how we bring net migration down and how we link skills policy with visa policy, so that we reduce our dependence on recruiting from overseas. We will be setting out that coherent approach to a future immigration system in a White Paper that is coming out later this spring.
Matt Vickers
I am stunned—shocked. In fact, I cannot believe that the SNP is less than enthusiastic about our new clause. The Minister and the hon. Member for Bassetlaw were keen to talk about records, but at the risk of repeating myself, immigration is too high. Previous Governments have failed to solve it. I would love for the Government to succeed in doing so, but I am not convinced that they will, particularly without a robust deterrent. I say it again: since this Government were elected, the number of people arriving here illegally is up 28%, and the number of people in hotels is up 29%. There are 8,500 more people in hotels in communities across the country, and fewer of those people who arrive by small boat are being returned.
Seema Malhotra
Does the shadow Minister also agree that, since we came into government to the end of January, returns were almost 19,000, which is up around a fifth on what they were 12 years before, including an increase of about a quarter on enforced returns? He may want to talk more about that.
Matt Vickers
I am sure the Minister will agree that a large part of those are voluntary returns. I am sure a large part of them may also benefit from some of the agreements made by the previous Government. Actually, when we talk about the people arriving here illegally on small boats, the number is up significantly in the last two quarters, since this Government came into office. That is a fact.
Tom Hayes
I am reading from the Home Office website, which says:
“Comparisons of arrivals between the same months in different years may also be affected by differences in conditions. As a result, we do not make comparisons between shorter periods where arrival numbers…may fluctuate considerably.”
The Home Office also comments:
“Financial, social, physical and geographical factors may influence the method of entry individuals use and the types of individuals detected arriving… These factors may also change over time.”
Therefore, is it not the case that looking at just two quarters, and trying to make a comparison, is not really the most robust way of doing this? Is it not better to reflect on the Bill and the changes it is seeking to introduce, and to realise that it will make a significant difference in the medium to long term?
Matt Vickers
Two quarters is a significant amount of time. This is a record. The hon. Gentleman might not be comfortable with it, but the number of people who have arrived here illegally being returned is going down significantly. It is a fact, and this new clause matters. More than 742,000 people will qualify for indefinite leave to remain in the next couple of years. As we have said, that could cost our constituents £8,200 per household. That is a significant cost to people in my part of the world. Because of that cost to my constituents, I would like to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss
New clause 43—Age determination by the Home Office—
“(1) A person who claims to be a child must not be treated as an adult by the Home Office for the purpose of immigration control.
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply where—
(a) the Secretary of State has determined that the circumstances are exceptional, or
(b) a local authority has determined that the person is an adult following a Merton-compliant age assessment.
(3) An age assessment must be undertaken by a social worker who has undertaken training on the conduct of age assessments.
(4) The Home Office must retain a record of the methodology and outcome for each age assessment undertaken for the purpose of immigration control.
(5) The Secretary of State must, through regulations made by statutory instrument, establish a framework for independent oversight of the conduct of age assessments.
(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this Act may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(7) Where a person claiming to be a child is determined by the Home Office to be an adult and is placed in adult accommodation or detention, the Home Office must notify the relevant local authority as soon as possible.”
This new clause would ensure individuals claiming to be children are not treated as adults, except in exceptional circumstances or following a Merton-compliant age assessment. It would provide independent oversight of the age assessment process, and notification to local authorities when a person is placed in adult accommodation or detention.
Matt Vickers
The Bill repeals sections 57 and 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which concern scientific age assessment methods. The Conservative party completely disagree with that decision. Every European country apart from ours uses scientific age assessment techniques such as an x-ray of the wrist, although there are other methods. More than 50% of those claiming to be children were found to be adults after an age assessment in the quarter before the election. Without a scientific age assessment method, it is very hard to determine their age. There have been cases of men in their mid-20s ending up in schools with teenage girls, and that carries obvious safeguarding risks. We have tabled the new clause to ensure that scientific methods for assessing a person’s age are used, and to disapply the requirement for consent for these methods to be used.
Matt Vickers
We have said that there are several methods. If we are unhappy with one, we can use alternatives. This is something that British taxpayers want to see. They want to ensure that our classrooms and social care settings are safe.
Matt Vickers
There are a raft of methods. I am happy to be directed, but every country in the EU uses the method I have mentioned. It is tried and tested. It is easy to criticise, question and find holes in a plethora of methods, but I think this is the right thing to do.
Matt Vickers
We can debate the methods at length, I am sure, but I think we have a responsibility to have a method. The fact that the rest of Europe is doing it means it is something we should be doing.
Tom Hayes
The rest of Europe is doing free trade, but the shadow Minister does not want to do that. We should reflect on Europe and what we want to import into our country.
On the bone age assessment, can the hon. Gentleman tell us with confidence grounded in science that it would be able to determine the range of relevant ages? Can he tell me what the margin of error would be for someone aged 18 or 19, and what an assessment of bone density and bone age would tell us if they posed as 15 or 16?
Matt Vickers
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that these age assessments could go some way to ensuring that a 20 or 30-year-old does not end up in a classroom beside a teenage girl. There is an opportunity to provide a power that can be used, along with all the knowledge that the agencies have, to make an assessment. The science can be determined, and the agencies can look at it in the round. We know that people have turned up without any form of identification. This is an opportunity to draw a line in the sand. Where agencies think this is the right thing to do, they can use the power. Of course, they will use it in moderation and in the context of the question marks around any method that they would use to assess age.
Matt Vickers
I would trust our agencies to use them in context and apply all the other things that they might apply in any given context. This would be another tool that agencies could use, on top of all the knowledge that they might have of people coming in and what their ages might be. This is an opportunity to give our agencies another tool, and it is the right thing to do.
That is why we tabled new clause 26, which would ensure that scientific methods for assessing a person’s age are used, while disapplying the requirement for consent for these methods to be used. That would ensure that adults could not claim to be children. It also gives the Government an opportunity to undo the mistake of repealing the relevant sections of the Illegal Migration Act and allow age assessments for those claiming to be children.
Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. Given that the hon. Gentleman’s concern is about children, we should recall the evidence session in which we heard the Children’s Commissioner’s concern that spending extended periods of time in asylum hotels leaves unaccompanied asylum-seeking children vulnerable to organised crime, notwithstanding the mix of ages in those hotels. Why does he still stand by the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, when they are part of the reason why those children were in asylum hotels for so long?
Matt Vickers
I will stick to the new clause and the age assessments. This is a tool. It would not be used unabated. It is another tool that our agencies could use alongside whatever other assessments they might make. We would be giving them the opportunity to require people to undergo an assessment, and that is a good thing. That is why the rest of Europe is doing it. The agencies and experts—the professionals on the frontline dealing with these very troubling, difficult cases—should have all the tools they could possibly require to handle them. I see no reason why we would prevent them from doing so.
Tom Hayes
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s desire for our frontline staff to have all the tools they need. The Bill will expand the number of tools, but those are the tools that frontline staff are requesting. We could have scientific age assessments, and the Government are certainly not ruling them out entirely; there is work going on in the Home Office to consider their efficacy. Does he agree that we need tools that will help our frontline staff achieve the goals that we set them? The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that age determination is an inexact science, and that the margin of error can sometimes be as much as five years either side. I myself am not a scientist or a member of the royal college—I assume that the same is true of the hon. Member—so is it not better that we listen to such expert bodies, and develop policy in line with them, rather than just saying, “Because Europe is doing it, we ought to do it”?
Matt Vickers
That is a safe assessment of my scientific qualifications.
We are not saying that this is the only thing that agencies and experts on the frontline, who deal with these cases day in and day out, will be able to use; it is something that they can use. If we have ended up with adults in classrooms alongside children, that is wrong. We need to give the agencies every tool in the armoury to make the situation work. This is one thing that they can use—with their knowledge and with every other assessment they would make—and it is the right thing to do.
We have talked about kicking this down the road. I think we have a commitment that the Government will do something on this issue some day, or some time. But here is an opportunity to keep the power in the legislation for agencies to use here and now, rather than in six months or a year. I am sure that the Minister will give me a timeframe on whether the Government will come back with such a power.
The SNP’s new clause 43 is almost the polar opposite of our new clause. It states:
“A person who claims to be a child must not be treated as an adult by the Home Office for the purpose of immigration control.”
We know that there are adults coming to this country who claim to be children. Believing them without question would make it harder to control our borders and create significant safeguarding concerns. Why does the SNP think it should be made harder for the Government to determine the true age of those entering this country illegally? How does this best serve the interests of the British people? Given the SNP’s blind adoration for the European Union, we must question why they are happy for the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a key part, to be the only European nation that does not use medical tests to determine the age of those coming to the country.
Why does this matter? The issue has not decreased in significance. The number of asylum age disputes remains high, particularly in the latest available figures. Of those about whom a dispute was raised and resolved, more than half were found to be over the age of 18. The fact that a record number of asylum seekers pretend to be children should be the wake-up call that we need to ensure that we have the checks in place to verify age and stop those who seek to deceive from entering the UK. As the available figures show, this tactic is becoming commonplace, and action must be taken to stop this abhorrent abuse.
If the figures were not evidence of the need to support new clause 26, perhaps the facts of the cases will be. A 22-year-old Afghan who had murdered two people in Serbia claimed asylum in the UK by pretending to be a 14-year-old orphan, when in fact he was 18. There is the utterly horrific case of the Parsons Green terrorist, Ahmed Hassan, who posed as a 16-year-old before setting off a bomb on a tube train in west London, injuring 23 people. Although the Iraqi’s real age remains unknown, the judge who jailed him for 34 years in 2018 said he was satisfied that the bomber was between 18 and 21. The clock is ticking. The crisis is not slowing; it is surging.
In quarter 2 of 2024 alone, 2,088 age disputes landed on the desk of the Home Office. That is 2,088 claims where someone said, “Trust me, I’m a child.” By the end, 757 were unmasked as adults, and the deception rate was a staggering 52%. That is not a blip, but a blazing red flag. That is more than 750 grown men, and potentially dozens more uncaught, slipping through a system that Labour has crippled by repealing the scientific age checks in the Illegal Migration Act, leaving us guessing in the dark while the numbers climb.
Dame Angela Eagle
I will deal with some of the broader points in my response, but we do age assessments. We do not simply accept—just as his Government did not—asylum seekers’ claims about their age as if they were the truth. I would not like the shadow Minister to give the Committee the impression that that is happening—that we are accepting claimed ages without any kind of check. I will go into much more detail in my response to the debate about precisely what we do, but he must not give the impression that we are not checking; we are.
Matt Vickers
I hope the Minister agrees that we should be doing more, rather than less. We need to give agencies all the opportunities and powers to do so, with or without the consent of people who aim to deceive. That is the right thing to do.
If we rewind to 2022, 490 disputes in quarter 1 ballooned to 1,782 by quarter 4. Now we are at 2,088 and counting. This is not a fading headache; it is an escalating emergency. It is a conveyor belt of fraud clogging our borders and spilling into our schools. Failure to conduct these vital checks would mean that we are not just blind, but complicit in handing traffickers a playbook that says, “Send adults, call them kids and watch us flounder.” The public sees it and parents feel it, and every day we delay, the risk festers. We need science, not sentiment, and we need it now.
Pete Wishart
I rise to speak to new clause 43 on age determination by the Home Office. The one thing we can agree on with the Conservative Front Benchers is that my new clause could not be more different in objective and tone than what we have heard from the shadow Minister. My new clause aims to uphold a simple yet vital principle that no child should be wrongly treated as an adult, subjected to detention or placed in inappropriate accommodation, as happens right now. The new clause would ensure that the Home Office treats as an adult an individual who claims to be a child only in exceptional circumstances or following a Merton-compliant age assessment conducted by local authority social workers. Furthermore, any decision to treat a young person as an adult would have to be made by an appropriately trained official, with reasons recorded and subject to independent oversight. Where such a decision results in the person being placed in adult accommodation or detention, the relevant local authority would have to be notified immediately.
Labour Members are right to have a go at the shadow Minister, but it is imperative that we get this right. This is life-determining and life-shaping for the individuals at the sharp end of these age assessments. The consequences of flawed age assessments at our borders are severe.
Recent data reveals that between January and June 2024 alone, at least 262 children were wrongly assessed as adults and placed in adult accommodation or detention, exposing them to significant safeguarding risks including exploitation, violence and even criminal prosecution. It is worth noting that in many cases, those children endure months of uncertainty before being correctly identified and moved into appropriate care settings. Such errors not only violate child protection principles but undermine the credibility of our asylum system.
The current process of visual assessment, often conducted at the border by immigration officers, is wholly inadequate. Assessments based solely on appearance and demeanour are inherently flawed and have led to serious misjudgments. International and domestic guidance is clear that age assessments should be undertaken only when necessary and should be conducted using holistic, multidisciplinary approaches, yet that is far from the reality.
Concerns about visual assessments have been raised not just by non-governmental organisations, but by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, the Children’s Commissioner, parliamentary Committees and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. In response to those great concerns, the Government have argued that they are improving the age assessment process through the national age assessment board, and by introducing scientific methods of assessing age—we are back to that debate again. It is important to note that neither of those initiatives has any impact on visual assessments made by officials at the border. Biological methods such as dental X-rays and bone age assessment remain highly unreliable, as medical and scientific bodies repeatedly state. I listened to the hon. Member for Stockton West make great play of saying that that is what all of Europe does, but there are countless cases that the EU and other European nations have got wrong. I can send them to him; he can spend most of the day looking at them. They get cases wrong, just as we do with visual assessments.
It is right that in this Bill the Government seek to repeal clause 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which would have meant that children who refuse to undergo these invasive and questionable procedures are presumed to be adults by default—an approach that runs contrary to any safeguarding principles. The previous Government attempted to justify that policy by highlighting the risk of adults falsely claiming to be children to access benefits and services designed for minors. However, the reality is that the greater danger lies in the wrongful treatment of children as adults, which places them in unsafe environments, denies them their rights and can have devastating long-term consequences. The number of children found to have been misclassified as adults outweighs the number of cases where an adult has falsely claimed to be a child, so we have the balance totally wrong.
Crucially, there are greater risks and consequences to placing a child among adults, where there are no safeguards in place, than to placing a young adult in local authority care. It is essential that we restore local authority-led age assessments as a primary mechanism for resolving age disputes. As child protection professionals, local authority social workers are best placed to conduct those assessments in a manner that is thorough, fair and in the child’s best interests. The new clause would ensure that young people who assert that they are children are treated as such unless and until a proper assessment proves otherwise. It also guarantees transparency, independent oversight and accountability in decision making, thereby restoring trust in the system.
Dame Angela Eagle
I start by endorsing what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said about Dolores, Thomas Roberts’s mum, whom I met last night. She has gone through a searingly awful life experience. It is difficult even to think about that, let alone to offer any comfort. Unfortunately, I do not think that her experience would have changed much had scientific age assessment been in place, although the person in question had been assessed by his local authority as a child and was therefore in a separate environment from that which he would have been in had he not been assessed.
I am determined to see whether we can connect up our information about people coming from Europe, following Brexit and the disintegration of our access to Eurodac and various other pieces of information collected in Europe on asylum seekers and those arriving illegally—not all of them are asylum seekers. Reconnecting, if possible, to those databases would give us more comfort than we have at the moment. However, I emphasise that when people come to this country, we do check them against all our biometric records and the terrorism lists and watch lists that we have. It may be possible for us to do more in future.
We have had a debate about new clause 26 from the Opposition and new clause 43 from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire on behalf of the Scottish National party. That has again demonstrated the wide range of opinion that there is at both ends of the argument whenever we consider such issues. I will deal with both arguments in my response, and I hope to find a middle way.
First, repealing section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which the Bill seeks to do, does not stop our capacity to do age assessments. Listening to some of the contributions from members of the official Opposition, one would have thought that repealing section 58 will take off the table—completely and utterly—all age assessment. That is simply not true. The age assessments in section 58 were about the duty to remove somebody to Rwanda; they were not connected to anything else. As I understand it, the issue with that legislation was that the then Government’s intention was not to remove children to Rwanda, so it became more important to have a way of assessing whether somebody was a child. The Safety of Rwanda Act and the IMA—the previous Government’s approach to this issue—would have created even bigger incentives for people to claim that that they were children, because they would have avoided being sent to Rwanda, not that anyone ever actually ended up there. The previous Government’s approach of deportation permanently to Rwanda actually created even more incentives for people to lie about their age.
The fact is that there are people who are genuine asylum seekers who are children, people who are not genuine asylum seekers who are adults who claim to be children, and children who sometimes claim that they are adults. When that happens, one has to look at modern slavery issues and coercive control. There are safeguarding issues on both sides of the age assessment argument. Children pretend to be adults for reasons that we can imagine, but we will not go into those, because they are not very pleasant. There are also incentives created by the way in which the Children Act 1989 deals with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. As a Kent MP, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent knows exactly what happens with the Kent intake unit and the pressure that her own local authority has been put under. However, she also knows about the Government support that her local authority has been given to disperse unaccompanied asylum-seeking children around the rest of the country so that some of the burden can be shared.
We are dealing with people who arrive without papers. Some of them wish to lie about their age, and some have been told to lie because the people-smuggling gangs perceive it as a way for people to access more resources than they could if they were seen as adults. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire pointed out, the system can get it wrong on both sides. People who are children have been judged to be adults and put in inappropriate places, and people who are adults have been judged to be children and put in appropriate places. There is no guaranteed scientific way of making a judgment. We can make judgments about people who are much older, but we are dealing with that uncertain four to five-year range on either side, which is the difference between 18 and 24 or 17 and 23; you will know about that, Dr Murrison, from your work as a medical doctor.
On new clause 26, I want to reassure Opposition Members that there is already provision in law for the use of age assessment, and our repealing of section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act does not remove that provision. That is because the Immigration (Age Assessments) Regulations 2024, which followed scientific advice from the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee in the Home Office, specify for the purposes of section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 the scientific methods currently recommended for age assessment. We have retained those bits of legislation; neither the 2024 regulations nor section 52 of the Nationality and Borders Act have been repealed by the Bill, so the capacity to use scientific age assessments remains on the statute book.
The hon. Member for Stockton West did not seem to know which age assessment methods we were talking about. The 2024 regulations specify the power to use X-rays and MRIs, and that it is possible to take a negative view of the credibility of a person who refuses to consent, where there are no reasonable grounds for refusing that consent.
With those measures on the statute book, the Government continue to explore methods to improve the robustness of age assessment processes by increasing the reliability of the scientific methods being used. At the moment, we do not have enough certainty about the gap that exists in the current assessments, which are still being assessed. The hon. Member for Stockton West and the Conservative party put these things on to the statute book but then did not operationalise them. At the moment, we are doing as much work as we can to see how reliable they are, with a view to operationalising them. But as I wrote in a response to shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South, when he wrote to me about this issue, we are in the middle of that process. I hope that we will soon be in a situation to make announcements one way or the other, and those announcements will be made in the usual way.
Matt Vickers
New clause 26 does not specify the method to be used; it commits the Government to coming back within six months with a statutory instrument. How long does the Minister think it will be before the Government are in a position to do that? Is it six months’ worth of people coming here without our having the ability to assess them without their consent using these methods? Is it a year? Is it 18 months? How long does she think it will be before we are in a position to make these decisions?
Dame Angela Eagle
We are making a scientific assessment of how accurate and effective the methods are that could be used to make age assessments, and I hope to have some results from that work soon. What I do not want is to have a clause in primary legislation telling me that I have to do that by a set time.
I am trying to reassure the hon. Gentleman that despite the repeal of section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which this Bill brings about, the capacity to do age assessments and apply them scientifically is still on the statute book. We are looking closely into how we can operationalise these methods if we feel they will give us a more trustworthy result, but we will not do that if we do not. We are in the middle of getting to the stage where we can make that judgment.
I will also address new clause 43, which says that we should not use age assessments at all, other than in exceptional circumstances. Given what the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said when he moved it, I think it accepts that we should continue with Merton assessments, which are the other way of dealing with age assessments currently. Those usually involve two social workers and various other experts interviewing the person concerned to try to get a handle on their real age.
Matt Vickers
I welcome the fact that the Government will come back with scientific age assessments that also do not require consent. But if six months is too long, at what point would the Minister expect to be concerned? If we have not been applying these assessments and we have ended up with the wrong people in the wrong classrooms for years, at what point should we be concerned? If six months is too soon, is it 18 months?
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Gentleman is being a bit mischievous. We are in the middle of an assessment of whether scientific age assessments work and at what level of capacity and detail we can trust them. I expect reports fairly soon, and once I have them I can make a decision on how we go ahead with them. I will let Parliament know in the usual way when that has happened, but it is not useful or effective to have the hon. Gentleman’s new clause setting a deadline for that in the Bill. I hope he will accept that in the helpful way in which I intend it. We are not in disagreement on principles, but if we are going to use scientific age assessment, we need to ensure that it is as effective and useful as possible, so that it can be taken seriously and play an effective part in the battle that all of us want to be involved in: ensuring that children do not end up in adult settings and adults do not end up in children’s settings.
Matt Vickers
People who arrive here deceptively claiming to be children cannot be allowed to succeed. We should make use of the best scientific age assessment methods available to us, with or without consent. Those will not be used in isolation, but alongside all the other possible assessment methods available to us. We can debate the science all day. The new clause would require the Secretary of State to define those methods within six months through a statutory instrument, using expert advice to do so. One deceptive adult migrant in a classroom or care setting alongside children or vulnerable youngsters is one too many. Giving our agencies the ability to use the best scientific methods available to them to assess age without consent can further their ability to protect children. I would therefore like to press new clause 26 to a Division.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the Minister for her response to my new clause 43, but a lot of what she claims is in it is not actually there—I hope she accepts that. Those of us who visit asylum seekers in our constituencies will recognise that the determination is probably the most contentious issue that asylum seekers bring to us; it is the thing that perplexes and concerns them the most. They are very sensitive to it being done wrong, and it gets done wrong in both directions, as the Minister said.
The number of children found to have been misclassified as adults outweighs quite significantly the number of cases where an asylum seeker has falsely claimed to be a child. Everybody is right that there is no scientific or other method to determine age that is 100% effective—visual assessments certainly are not. Surely, however, the people who are best qualified to make these assessments are people who work with children—whose main business is to make these sorts of judgments about children. That is why we have asked for Merton-compliant age assessments, so that an holistic view is taken of the individual and they are assessed properly by social workers trained to work with children. Surely that is the most effective means to determine these things.
I am not saying that we should not use other things, but where the issue is in dispute—perhaps I should have included that in my new clause; clearly, the people sitting in this Committee could not be classified as children—we must get it right. That is so important as we go forward. It is life-changing, dangerous and damaging to be misclassified. As I said in my initial contribution, this is not an immigration issue, but a safeguarding issue. We must get it right. That is why I will press my new clause to a vote as well.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I beg to move, that the clause be read a Second time.
It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The new clause would enable replacements of large portions of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 —in particular, sections on asylum, immigration control, age assessments and modern slavery—to ensure the upholding of the refugee convention, to provide for safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees and to help prevent dangerous channel crossings.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Liberal Democrat new clause 27 seeks to repeal provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 passed by the previous Conservative Government. By attempting to repeal section 29 of the Act, the Liberal Democrats are seeking to prevent the Government from removing people, including criminals, to a safe third country.
Rewind back to 2022 when 45,000 people crammed into small boats, flimsy rafts teetering on the channel’s unforgiving waves—a swarm, spurred by the hope of slipping through our borders, hammering coastal towns and stretching security to its limits.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
Did the hon. Gentleman really mean “swarm” in that context? That is quite emotive language.
Matt Vickers
Well, hot air is required in this room this afternoon, and I intend to provide it.
We fought back with the Nationality and Borders Act third-country removals, which helped the Government to deter crossings by 36% in 2023 from 45,000 to under 29,000—not by chance, but by design, sending a message to traffickers and migrants alike that Britain is no soft touch or guaranteed prize. Now, the Liberal Democrats barge in with new clause 27, desperate to repeal section 29 to shred that deterrent and plunge us back into chaos, flinging the channel wide open not just to the weary but to every chancer or criminal. That is not tweaking policy; it is torching a firewall, inviting all those to Dover’s cliffs and Deal’s shores and erasing every inch of progress that we have clawed from the crisis. The Lib Dems owe us hard answers. How many boats—50,000 or 60,000?
The Albania deal delivered a masterstroke of border control. That pragmatic triumph has turned a torrent of illegal crossings into a trickle through sheer diplomatic grit. Back in 2022, Albanians dominated the small boats surge. A 12,000-strong, relentless wave of young men were lured by traffickers with promises of easy UK entry for £3,000, clogging Dover’s processing centres and fuelling tabloid headlines of chaos. Then came our 2023 pact with Tirana—a no-nonsense agreement that flipped the script with fast-track returns, joint police operations and a clear signal: Albania is safe and you are going back.
By 2024, the results were staggering. Weekly flights were whisking deportees home, with each jet a nail in the coffin of the smuggling networks that once thrived on our porous borders. That was not luck or loud threats but cold, hard execution, bolstered by UK-funded cameras on the Albania-Kosovo frontier and Albanian officers embedded in Dover.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
I think that the hon. Gentleman is somewhat overstating the impact of the Albania policy. After the initial agreement was signed, we saw a massive spike in numbers coming from Albania, and the numbers had already started to fall before the communiqué was signed. The correlation and causation arguments that he is making on the Albania scheme do not add up at all.
Matt Vickers
What is effective? The deal reduced the number of people coming from Albania by more than 90%. If we could get a few more agreements like that, we would be on the way—that would be huge progress. The Albania deal represented huge progress; to suggest otherwise is wrong. It choked off routes before boats had even launched and had a real impact.
Chris Murray
Would the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the Albania returns were largely due to large numbers of foreign national offenders, who are a completely different category of people from those we are talking about in either this clause or this Bill?
Matt Vickers
We would want to return foreign national offenders; that is really positive. But the number of people choosing to cross because of that deterrent effect went down by not 10% or 20%, but by more than 90%. More than 90% fewer people arrived from Albania in small boats. That is huge progress. If we can replicate that elsewhere, I will be a very happy boy because we would see a huge impact on those crossings across the piece.
New clause 27 is hellbent on repealing that backbone, oblivious to how crossings from Albanians were successfully slashed, while the Rwanda threat kept smugglers guessing. If the Liberal Democrats prevail, every bilateral deal will be on the chopping block. Imagine Albanian numbers roaring back to 12,000, with other current surges unchecked. That is not progress; it is sabotage—a reckless bid to unravel a system that is finally biting back at the chaos. Do the Liberal Democrats not want to be able to remove people from this country who have entered illegally? Do they believe that any national of a safe country should be able to seek asylum in the UK? Can Liberal Democrat Members explain why that would not create a massive pull factor and encourage people to cross the channel in small boats?
The Liberal Democrats are also seeking to repeal sections 15 to 17 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which specify that the Secretary of State must declare an asylum claim made by a person who is a national of an EU member state inadmissible. Why would the Liberal Democrats believe that anyone from the EU needs to claim asylum here? Picture this scene, which is so utterly ridiculous that it strains the bounds of credulity: an EU citizen, perhaps some laid-back Amsterdamer, pedalling along the city’s picturesque canals one sunny afternoon, tulips nodding in the breeze, then suddenly deciding to chuck it all, hop on a ferry and pitch up on Dover’s pebbled shores, requesting asylum, as if the Netherlands’ orderly bike lanes and windmill-dotted horizons had morphed into a scene from—
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
We are witnessing some particularly theatrical prose, perhaps for the first time. Has Boris Johnson got a new job as the hon. Gentleman’s speechwriter?
Matt Vickers
His writing seems to be going quite well at the moment. I do not know that I have the cash for him.
What I have described is not asylum. We cannot pretend that the EU’s 27 nations and its vast tapestry of safe, stable and prosperous lands—we can take our pick of France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and so on, each a bastion of peace and plenty—somehow warrant the same desperate lifeline that we reserve for those fleeing real and genuine chaos. This is the same organisation that the Liberal Democrats supposedly want to build closer ties with. They also want the UK to grant asylum to people who come to this country having already been in a country where they have claimed and been granted asylum. Why are the Liberal Democrats encouraging people to cross the channel when they already have asylum or can claim asylum in a safe third country?
Just like the Labour Government, the Liberal Democrats want to remove sections of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 that allow local and public authorities to conduct an age assessment on an age-disputed person. As we discussed before when the SNP did not wish those who claim to be a child to be treated as an adult, every European country apart from ours uses scientific age assessment techniques such as an X-ray of the wrist. As we have said, there are also other methods. More than 50% of those claiming to be children were found to be adults after an age assessment in the quarter before the election. Without a scientific age assessment method, it is very hard to determine age. Given the horror stories in this area, why do Liberal Democrats want to put the people of this country at risk, and blindly allow unverified people into the UK?
Let us now talk about a nightmare unfolding right under our noses: one that the Liberal Democrats seem hellbent on making worse. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, 560 adults—grown men with stubble, receding hairlines and years behind them—had the gall to pose as kids, slipping through the cracks until scientific age checks, such as wrist X-rays and dental scans that every sensible European nation uses, caught them red handed and stopped them cold.
The Lib Dems’ new clause 27 would axe those checks and rip out the one tool keeping us from dumping people who are 25 years old or even older into classrooms alongside children. That is not some abstract risk. It has happened and it is real; it means men in their 20s sitting at desks meant for teens, all because we have let sentiment trump science. That would not protect children, but endanger them—a reckless gamble that would turn schools into hunting grounds and parents into nervous wrecks, all so the Lib Dems can pat themselves on the back for being compassionate. If they get their way, every classroom will have a question mark. How many 25-year-olds will slip through before the damage is done?
What do the Liberal Democrats believe should happen if the authorities believe a migrant who is claiming to be under 18 is actually an adult? Do they believe that such people should be placed in schools with schoolchildren? Again, it seems as though the Liberal Democrats want to strip the Government of any power to control who comes to the country. That would see net migration drastically increase.
The issue cuts deeper than policy, however; it is about what people expect, and the Liberal Democrats’ new clause pulls hard against that grain. Voters have signalled what they want loud and clear, with 68%—nearly seven in 10—backing tougher border controls in surveys: a call echoing from Dover to Folkestone, where residents live with the reality of arrivals day by day. That is not a passing opinion; it is a steady demand—rooted in years of debate, from the 2016 Brexit vote to the 2019 landslide—for a system that prioritises their say.
Dame Angela Eagle
I do not know what the hon. Gentleman had for lunch, but perhaps we should find out and get some of it ourselves. We can then all compete with the poet laureate and the virtuoso performance that we have just heard.
I am going to talk about the new clause, however, which is in respect of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire is proposing that numerous sections of the 2022 Act be repealed under the Bill.
I should start by making it clear that we are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly, and ensures that the rules are properly enforced. That is a financial necessity to deal with the backlogs that we have inherited—the permit backlog in particular, but also others, especially in the appeals space—so that the costs do not continue to mount up at the expense of the taxpayer. Getting the system moving again is an important part of what we have been doing.
Following the election, the Home Secretary acted rapidly to change the law to remove the retrospective application of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which allowed decision makers to decide asylum claims from individuals who arrived in the UK from 7 March 2023. Previously, there was a ban on that, because of the duty to remove, which was never going to be sensibly put into effect.
I am not going to speak to every section of the Nationality and Borders Act, but the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire wants us to repeal very large chunks of the Act under the new clause. I will mention only a few, and I hope that she will forgive me for not talking about every section.
The introduction of the national age assessment board, for example, in March 2023, relies on a piece of the Nationality and Borders Act that the hon. Lady wishes to repeal. In the interim, since that Act has come into being, we have introduced the national age assessment board and made it available across the country. It continues to offer significant improvement to our processes for assessing age, including creating greater consistency in age assessment practices, which can be very inconsistent in the practical delivery of Merton-compliant assessments in different local authorities—some are more experienced and some better at it than others. The national age assessment board creates a standard and a bar below which it is hard to go. It sets important standards in age assessment, improves quality and ensures that ages are recorded correctly for immigration purposes.
The Nationality and Borders Act also placed protections and support under the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings on a legislative footing for the first time in the UK. That includes the right to a recovery period in the national referral mechanism, during which potential victims of modern slavery and trafficking are eligible for support and are protected from removal from the UK. The Act provides the means to disqualify individuals—I suspect that this may be the bit that the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire objects to—from protections or support on the grounds of public order or bad faith. However, that is in line with article 13 of the convention; that part of the Nationality and Borders Act put the convention into UK law. I am surprised she is suggesting that we should remove it.
The Act also sets out the circumstances in which confirmed victims of slavery and trafficking may be granted temporary permission to stay in the UK. The Government will be launching a public consultation, before summer recess, on how we can improve the process of identifying victims of modern slavery. We will provide details on that consultation in due course.
Susan Murray
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This new clause would make provision for leave to enter or remain the UK to be granted to the family members of refugees and of people granted humanitarian protection. Through the clause the Liberal Democrats seek to support refugee family reunion and to help people to integrate into the community, learn the language, make a home and work to contribute to society, exactly as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh discussed.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clause 29 requires that within six months of the date on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State should lay before Parliament provision for leave to enter or remain in the UK to be granted to family members of people granted refugee status and of people granted humanitarian protection. In the new clause, family members include: a person’s parent, including adoptive parent; their spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner; and their child or sibling, including their adopted child or adoptive sibling, who is either under 18 or under 25, having been under 18 or unmarried
“at the time the person granted asylum left their country of residence to seek asylum”.
Further, it can be taken to mean
“other persons as the Secretary of State may determine, having regard to…the importance of maintaining family unity…the best interests of a child…the physical, emotional, psychological or financial dependency between a person granted refugee status or humanitarian protection and another person.”
If those provisions were not already incredibly vague, the Liberal Democrats have included a proposal that other persons can be determined by the Secretary of State. That could obviously result in a huge number of spurious claims made by family members who will say that they have a dependency on another person so they must be allowed to come to the UK under the provision. We already have judges completely stretching the definition of “right to family life” under article 8 of the European convention on human rights. The Liberal Democrat clause would be subject to even more abuse.
Beyond the vagueness, new clause 29 risks piling unbearable pressure on an economy already creaking under migration’s weight. Each new family member, however loosely defined, brings costs—in housing, where shortages already top 1.2 million units, in healthcare, with NHS waits stretching past 7 million, and in schools, where 9 million pupils squeeze into overstretched classrooms. The costs of supporting asylum for individuals run into the tens of thousands of pounds. Multiply that by thousands of dependants under this elastic clause, and we are staring at billions more siphoned from taxpayers, who have already seen their council tax spike. The Liberal Democrats do not set a cap; they fling the door open ever wider, ignoring how finite our resources are. Britain’s compassion has no bounds, but its resources certainly do. Our generosity must have limits. New clause 29 pretends otherwise, and working families will foot the bill when the system groans under the strain.
The new clause does not just invite claims; it opens a legal floodgate that could drown our courts in precedent-setting chaos by letting the Secretary of State define “family” on a whim. Whether we are talking about emotional ties or financial need, new clause 29 hands judges a blank slate to scribble ever-wider interpretations, building on the already elastic right to family life under article 8.
We have seen what has happened. As has been mentioned, an Albanian stayed because his son disliked foreign chicken nuggets. A Pakistani offender lingered, citing harshness to his kids. Let us now imagine dozens or hundreds of cases stacking up, each further stretching dependency—cousins, in-laws, distant kins—all cementing new norms that bind future policy. The Lib Dems would not just be tweaking rules; they would be unleashing a judicial snowball that would roll over border control for years to come. “Family unity” sounds noble, but the sprawl under new clause 29 could stall integration in its tracks—a challenge we cannot ignore when one in six UK residents was born abroad. Bringing in broad swathes of dependants, potentially with limited English skills or ties, risks clustering communities inward, not outward.
If we look across the channel, we see that Germany tightened family reunification after 1.1 million arrivals, capping it at 1,000 monthly for refugees’ kin, citing overload. We are not outliers for wanting clarity. Other nations prove it works, yet the Lib Dems chase a boundless model, ignoring how allies balance compassion with capacity, leaving us to pick up the pieces when this experiment fails.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire proposes an amendment that seeks to significantly change the current refugee family reunion policy, and to expand the current eligibility to include siblings, children under the age of 25 and any undefined family member.
The Government fully support the principle of family unity and the need to have provisions under the immigration rules that enable immediate family members to be reunited in the UK when their family life has been disrupted because of conflict or persecution. Accordingly, in recognition of the fact that families can become separated because of the nature of conflict or persecution, and because of the speed or manner in which people may be forced to flee their homes, communities and country, our refugee family reunion policy is extremely important and generous. The route enables those granted a form of protection in the UK to sponsor their partner or child to come to the UK, provided that they formed part of that family unit before they sought protection. Increasing numbers of visas have been granted through this route under the current policy, and indeed under the previous Administration. In 2024, 19,710 people were granted family reunion visas—twice the number in 2023, when around 9,300 visas were granted.
On the specific proposals in the new clause, it should be noted that any expansion of the existing approach without careful thought, including where such an expansion would allow an undefined family member to be brought to the UK, could significantly increase the number of people who qualify to come here, and runs the risk of abuse of those routes. That would have an impact on the taxpayer and could result in further pressures on public services and local authorities, which may have to accommodate and support the new arrivals.
We believe that introducing a rule that allows children to sponsor their relatives would risk creating incentives for more children to be encouraged or even forced, as we know can happen, to leave their families and risk hazardous journeys to the UK across the channel in small boats. That is a serious and legitimate concern regarding the best interests of those children.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
We believe that the right to remain in this country is a privilege, not a right. We also believe that to be able to stay in this country, a person must contribute to this country. As recent research by the Centre for Policy Studies has outlined, there is a risk that many of those coming to this country are either low-paid workers or have dependants who may or may not be working. Those individuals are likely to represent a long-term burden on the country’s finances rather than be net contributors. That sentiment has been reiterated by liberal publications such as The Economist, which only last week said in one of its leaders that
“governments must also learn from the policy mistakes that lend it credibility.”
Tom Hayes
It was remiss of me not to say earlier that I admire the hon. Gentleman’s tie—it is very nice. On the point he raises, I have said consistently that that particular report by the Centre for Policy Studies is flawed. As we move towards the Government’s new net migration White Paper, which will specify how we can bring labour into the country that is skilled only, rather than the low-wage labour that we saw under the previous Administration, there will not be that kind of burden in the future.
Matt Vickers
I aim to please with my tie. The hon. Gentleman can probably attach as much importance to the policy paper as he sees fit, as he does with anything else I might or might not say; it is for him, and for readers of the debate, to determine the value and weight they add to that. Another proposal we have put forward is on salary thresholds and what someone should be earning in order to remain in this country. I think that is a big deal; I will go on to outline why I think it is important, but yes—it is a big deal.
As I was saying, The Economist said only last week in one of its leaders that
“governments must also learn from the policy mistakes that lend it credibility. It was foolish to admit lots of newcomers without liberalising housing markets. Also, since migration flows to rich countries cannot be unlimited, it makes sense to favour highly skilled economic migrants over lower-skilled ones nearly all the time. Arguments for low-skilled migration built around supposed labour shortages are flawed.”
Interestingly, in countries outside the UK, research has shown the importance of income in long-term migration. A report in the Netherlands, which used detailed microdata on fiscal contributions and benefits to the entire population to calculate the discounted lifetime net contribution of the immigrant population present in 2016, was published in December 2024 and concluded:
“If the parents make a strongly negative net contribution, the second generation usually lags behind considerably as well. Therefore, the adage ‘it will all work out with the second generation’ does not hold true. High fiscal costs of immigrants are not that much caused by high absorption of government expenditures but rather by low contributions to taxes and social security premiums. We also find evidence for a strong relationship of average net contributions by country with cultural distance, even after controlling for average education and the cito-distribution-effect.”
Although we should acknowledge that the Netherlands is a different country with its own unique systems and that its situation does not necessarily apply to the UK, the finding highlights the need to examine the impact of migration decisions in comparable nations. New clause 32 takes steps to do that, ensuring that migrants contribute to our economy.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
This is a very different hon. Member for Stockton West speaking now from the one who spoke last week, when he spoke against and voted against the Liberal Democrat amendment to allow and encourage asylum seekers to work so that they could benefit our economy. Does he not remember last week? Where was his concern for the taxpayer then?
Matt Vickers
I would suggest that that is quite a creative interpretation of last week’s events. This debate is about what people contribute when they are legally able to, rather than creating anything that would draw more people to make that crossing and to turn up in this country.
New clause 32 would revoke indefinite leave to remain in certain circumstances: that a person
“is defined as a ‘foreign criminal’ under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007”;
that the person
“was granted indefinite leave to remain after the coming into force of this Act,”
but has not spent 10 years resident in the UK;
that the person or their dependants
“have been in receipt of any form of ‘social protection’…from HM Government or a local authority”;
or that the person’s
“annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period, or subsequent to receiving indefinite leave to remain.”
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing, because it is a cornerstone of this proposal and speaks volumes about who we are as a nation and what we stand for when the chips are down: anyone who has entered this country under the carefully crafted, well-designed and wholly principled safe and legal routes—those lifelines that we have extended through the Ukraine scheme, the British nationals overseas scheme or the Afghan schemes—would find themselves entirely exempt from the rigours of new clause 32, and rightly so. Those schemes are not just policies, but promises; they are solemn commitments that speak to our national character, and we stand by those we have pledged to protect.
Let us think of the more than 200,000 Ukrainians welcomed since 2022, fleeing Putin’s bombs—families clutching what they had, offered sanctuary through the Ukraine family scheme and Homes for Ukraine.
Chris Murray
Looking at the proposals set out in this new clause, how exactly is the hon. Gentleman proposing to calculate the £38,700? Is software available in the Home Office or in His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? What if someone was found to have overpaid taxes after they were found not to meet the amount? Would the Home Office go and find them overseas and bring them back? This proposal sounds absurdly unworkable.
Matt Vickers
Lots of processes are in place, but we are putting down a principle. It is the same as the skilled worker visa threshold of £38,700. We have to set a line that requires people to be self-sufficient and not a drain on resources. This is the line that we are setting.
There are also Hongkongers. By 2025, nearly 180,000 British national overseas visa holders had escaped Beijing’s iron grip—huge British talent. More than 20,000 Afghans have been resettled since the Kabul airlift. Those were the right things to do, and we would exempt them from this proposal. These are not random arrivals; they are people we invited, whose stories of sacrifice and loyalty resonate with the values that we hold dear, from duty to decency. We would not renege on those commitments and tarnish the trust that we have built.
Let us cast our eyes across the globe, because other nations are not just theorising about this; they are proving that it works, day in, day out, with systems that do not just talk a good game but deliver tangible, measurable results that we would be foolish to overlook. Take Australia, a land of vast horizons and sharper borders, whose points-based residency system does not mess around. If someone is pulling in less than 53,900 Australian dollars—£28,000—and they are dipping into welfare, Australia will show them the door, an approach that is saving taxpayers billions.
These are not quirky outliers or flukes; they are lessons carved in policy stone and shining examples that tying status to contribution is not some pie-in-the-sky dream but a practical, proven playbook that delivers real savings and sharper borders, and stands up to scrutiny. New clause 32 lifts straight from that script, making £38,700 the line in the sand, with no benefits to lean on and no criminal record to tarnish the deal. It is not radical; it is road-tested, and echoes what works elsewhere on the globe.
Critics might cry, “Unworkable!” but the conditions in new clause 32 are trackable. HMRC already logs income for tax. The Home Office flags criminals under the UK Borders Act 2007, and the Department for Work and Pensions tracks benefits down to the penny. We are not reinventing the wheel—just syncing data to enforce the rules, with £38,700 as a clear line, 10 years as a fair test, and exemptions for the Ukraine, Afghan and British national overseas schemes, showing that we can tailor it.
This is a framework that says, “If you’re here for the long haul, you’ve got to bring something to the table, not just pull up a seat.” Australia and Canada have shown us the path with lower costs and tighter controls; we would be stupid not to take it. I would like to know why the Government would disagree with the principles behind the new clause. Why do the Government want foreign criminals to remain in the UK with indefinite leave to remain? If the Government believe in the £38,700 amount for skilled workers to obtain a visa, why would that not apply to people remaining in the UK indefinitely?
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I was not going to speak to the new clause; I was just going to let the hon. Gentleman drone on, in the hope that we could possibly get away on Thursday morning, but I have been irked to my feet. I am not sure whether I prefer the new loquacious hon. Member for Stockton West. I do not know what he has done about his speechwriting, but I preferred the version that we had last week. That was probably more in keeping with the Conservatives’ contributions to this Committee.
This is a horrible new clause, which penalises lower-income workers, deters skilled immigration and harms vulnerable groups. The retrospective nature of some of the provisions is simply absurd, and would lead only to legal challenges and all sorts of administrative complications. The new clause would introduce retrospective punishments, taking ILR away from individuals who had received it under the previous rules simply because a future Government—thank goodness this will never be so—had later decided to raise the bar. People make long-term decisions to buy homes, raise families and contribute to communities based on the stability of ILR. Changing the rules after the fact destroys trust in the whole system.
The proposal sets an arbitrary income threshold of £38,700, meaning that a nurse, teacher or social worker—people the UK depends on—could lose their ILR. Many industries, including healthcare, hospitality and retail have workers earning below that level. Are we really saying that under no circumstances would they be welcome? The proposal also ignores economic realities. People face job losses, illness or temporary hardships. Should losing a job also mean losing the right to live in the UK?
New clause 32 states that ILR should be revoked if a person has received any sort of “social protection”, including housing support. This would punish people who have worked hard and contributed but who need temporary support due to circumstances often beyond their control. It targets families, disabled people and those facing financial hardship, effectively saying, “If you need help, you don’t belong here.” Skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs want certainty. If they fear that a downturn in income or a short period of hardship could see them lose their right to remain, they will choose other countries over the UK.
As we have also heard, how can this be enforced? Constantly monitoring ILR-holders’ income, benefits and job status would be an administrative disaster; it would be costly, error prone and unfairly target individuals. This new clause is simply cruel. It is unnecessary and unworkable, and I hope that it is rejected out of hand.
Matt Vickers
We feel strongly about the measures in the new clause, and we wish to press it to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 33 aims to help the Government by providing a way to put securing our borders above spurious human rights claims to frustrate removal. It would disapply the entire Human Rights Act 1998, as well as any interim measures of the Strasbourg court that prevent the effective operation of legislation relating to immigration and deportation. The result would be that those seeking to appeal deportation or other immigration decisions would not be able to make human rights claims under the Human Rights Act in British courts.
The new clause would apply that new power to all aspects of immigration control, including enforcement, deportation, the granting or removal of immigration and asylum status, and any other immigration entitlements. We would expect Parliament to legislate and the Home Office to decide immigration cases based on their reasonable interpretation of the European convention on human rights, but UK judges would be able to use only UK law passed by Parliament to decide appeals, and no longer make expansive and common-sense-defying interpretations of what they claim the ECHR means.
The Human Rights Act would still apply to non-immigration matters, so UK judges could continue to apply the ECHR directly to them. We would still be under the ECHR, so applicants would still be able to go to the Strasbourg court, but the new clause would stop UK judges expanding the definitions. In that scenario, it would be possible to deport people pending a Strasbourg appeal, and it would repeat the measure in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 to give Ministers the power to ignore an ECHR rule 39 interim order. We are not saying that the new clause provides the full answer to controlling our borders. Wider questions such as ECHR membership and wider immigration system reforms are to be addressed in longer-term pieces of work, but the new clause would be a step in the right direction.
The reason the new clause is necessary can be seen in recent decisions about immigration appeals. For example, an Iraqi drug dealer was saved from deportation from the UK after a judge ruled that he was too westernised to be returned to his home country. That man, who was jailed for more than five years after a conviction for dealing cocaine, had lived in Britain for 24 years and has a British-born daughter. Home Office officials attempted to have him deported, but a specialist judge in the asylum tribunal ruled that returning the man to Iraq would violate his human rights as he would be viewed with suspicion. The judge said that the man, who cannot be named, would face persecution in Iraq because he would be seen as westernised.
As we have already mentioned, an Albanian criminal was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son would not eat foreign chicken nuggets. An immigration tribunal ruled that it would be unduly harsh for the 10-year-old boy to be forced to move to Albania with his father, owing to his sensitivity around food. The sole example provided to the court was his distaste for the type of chicken nuggets available abroad.
Chris Murray
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could just assume that we are familiar with those two cases by now and either not bother citing them or think of some new examples to support his arguments.
Matt Vickers
I think they are relevant; they are things that both the public and I are bothered about. They show the failings of the system and why people are so concerned about the way that it is going.
As a result, the judge allowed the father’s appeal against deportation as a breach of his right to family life under the European convention on human rights, citing the impact that his removal might have on his son. An attempt to deport a Sri Lankan paedophile, who was convicted of assaulting three teenage boys, was delayed over claims that deportation would breach his human rights.
Matt Vickers
I am concerned about the consequences of the Human Rights Act for cases such as this and its role therein.
Matt Vickers
I am concerned, in the context of this new clause, about what the Human Rights Act means for these immigration cases. That is why the new clause proposes to remove its impact and disapply it.
Tom Hayes
I am still not very clear—I apologise, maybe I ate too much at lunch. Does the hon. Gentleman have issues with the Human Rights Act such that he believes that we ought not to be applying it generally? Is this the first step towards its disapplication, or is he more concerned that, while the legislation is fine, we have in what seems a minority of cases judges who are not applying it correctly? Could he also tell me whether what he has here is a snapshot of cases that he is concerned about or the totality of cases that he is concerned about?
Matt Vickers
We have talked about the relevance of disapplying the Human Rights Act with regards to immigration and the impact that it is having on these cases. I think I have been clear, and the hon. Gentleman can read Hansard.
As I was saying, the man was jailed for five offences of sexual activity with a child but has been able to stay in Britain since 2011, owing to a protracted dispute over his asylum case. In 2012, the man, who cannot be named, was branded in court a “danger to the community” over his offences against boys aged between 13 and 15. He then applied for asylum by claiming that his life would be at risk were he to return to Sri Lanka, because he is gay. Since his initial application, his case has been through several court hearings, as judges have assessed whether deporting the 50-year-old would breach his human rights. Those are just three examples of how ever-expanding interpretations of the Human Rights Act have been increasingly frustrating the removal of those who objectively ought to be deported.
Matt Vickers
I think if we allowed first-tier tribunals to go public, we would see a lot more. These things undermine public confidence in the legal framework and the institutions that uphold them, and I think they are terribly wrong. One of these cases is one too many. They are happening in ever-increasing numbers; that is why we have tabled this new clause, and the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to vote for it or otherwise.
Our new clause represents a first step to restore some common sense to immigration appeals. New clause 33 steps up to wrest back control from a judiciary that has wandered far from the reservation, turning the Human Rights Act into a sprawling, open-ended blank cheque for immigration status, a carte blanche that has left us all scratching our heads at the sheer audacity of it.
Tom Hayes
That is also a helpful clarification, because the hon. Gentleman’s concern is with the judiciary and its behaviours. Can I clarify what he has just said, exactly as I heard it: his concern is purely about the judge’s application of the Human Rights Act, and he himself is absolutely fine with the Act?
Matt Vickers
We allow our domestic courts to use it. We have created the framework and put it in place, and they do what they can with what is in front of them. I am concerned about the way in which it is applied, and we need to change that if we want to impact the outcomes of those cases and appeals.
Last year alone, we saw far too many appeals built on article 8, the right to a family life, flooding courts with ridiculously broad pleas. This Parliament is elected to decide the laws of the land. Judges are there to uphold that law, yet they have morphed into border gatekeepers, perched on high and second-guessing Home Office decisions with interpretations so elastic they would snap any thread of reason, and family life ballooning to mean whatever they fancy on any given day. The new clause yanks that power back to where it belongs: with MPs, who are answerable to the people who elect them.
New clause 33 is not just a legal tweak; it is a turbocharge for a deportation system bogged down by endless appeals, with removals stalled by Human Rights Act challenges. Each case drags on, costing tens of thousands of pounds per detainee in legal fees and housing, and clogging up detention centres that are already at capacity. Disapplying the Human Rights Act for immigration would fix the logjam, letting Ministers and officials act fast, deporting those our domestic legislation was created to deport and freeing up resources for border patrols and visa processing, which actually keep us secure.
New clause 33 would restore public safety—a lifeline for a priority that has been fraying at the edges and unravelling thread by thread, as dangerous individuals exploit Human Rights Act loopholes to cling to our soil like barnacles on a ship. In 2024 alone, thousands of foreign national offenders—thieves, drug peddlers and worse—languished in UK prisons, costing taxpayers millions to house. Nowhere near enough were bundled on to planes and removed, leaving thousands to stroll out post their sentence, free to roam our streets, because of Human Rights Act claims tying our hands and deviating from Parliament’s intended outcomes.
New clause 33 would cut through that mess. It would mean swift, no-nonsense removal of those who have shattered our laws—not endless hand-wringing debates over some nebulous right to stay that keeps them loitering in our towns. Public opinion, or the view of British law-abiding taxpayers, is clear—nearly three quarters call for foreign criminals to be removed—yet here we are. The current set-up lets threats fester when they should be gone. As the months go by, more of these bizarre judgments emerge, undermining public confidence in the entire system and our legal institutions.
Let us take a tour beyond our shores, because other nations are not fumbling in the dark; they are lighting the way, showing us that this is not some wild, radical leap but a steady, proven path that we would be daft not to tread. For starters, France increased its deportations by 27%, and is also seen to be deftly side-stepping ECHR interim measures, with domestic law overrides. Twenty-seven per cent. sent home—no faffing about with Strasbourg rule 39 edicts; just a clear-eyed focus on keeping France’s borders taut and its streets secure.
Then there is Australia, where the Migration Act does not blink. Rights claims bow to border control, and many are whisked out yearly with minimal fuss. The law, created by those elected to do so, determines who stays and who goes. These are not rogue states; they are democracies—proud and pragmatic, balancing security with sovereignty. New clause 33 strides right into that company. Parliament would lay down the law, not Strasbourg’s fleeting winds, echoing what has clicked abroad, from Paris to Perth.
I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on this proposal—in particular, whether she thinks that some of the recent examples of failed deportations are acceptable. We are apparently very familiar with chicken nugget-gate. If she agrees that some of these outcomes are unacceptable but does not feel that this approach is the way forwards, how will the Government end these cases, which are making a mockery of our justice system and undermining public confidence in our legal institutions?
Pete Wishart
I am compelled again to rise in opposition to what is probably the most egregious of all the new clauses that we are having to consider in today’s marshalled groups. The hon. Gentleman has laid some competition before us, but this new clause is by far the most disgraceful and appalling. The Human Rights Act is an important guarantee. It is what makes us good world citizens and provides rights that are universal. It protects fundamental freedoms such as the right to life, the prohibition on torture and the right to a fair trial—and the Tories do not like it one bit. The right-wing nonsense that we heard from the hon. Gentleman is a fundamental departure from the principle that human rights apply universally, not just to those the Government deem worthy. It is a dangerous precedent that undermines the UK’s long-standing commitment to justice, fairness and the rule of law.
Dame Angela Eagle
I am not sure how much of the debate we could have heard, Dr Murrison, had you made that observation at the beginning of it.
I do not think this Government wish to join Belarus and Russia among those who are not signed up to the European Court of Human Rights. The Government are fully committed to the protection of human rights. When we talk about human rights, that means all people who are human: everybody, applied universally.
As the Prime Minister has made clear, the United Kingdom is unequivocally committed to the European convention on human rights. The Human Rights Act is an important part of our constitutional arrangements and fundamental to human rights protections in the UK. To start taking those away on a bit-by-bit basis, particularly beginning with people who are very unpopular and have done difficult or bad things, could be the start of a very slippery slope if we are not careful. That is why I am proud that our Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has printed on its front cover that it is compatible with convention rights. This Government will always do things that are compatible with convention rights.
The paradox of some of what has been said in the debate we have just had is that it politicises decisions. That is a very different approach to judicial issues from the one we have seen for very many years, where, in effect, a lot of the powers on particular issues that used to sit with the Home Secretary have been taken by judges who are publicly accountable for their decisions. I do not think that this Government would want to see that reversed. The paradox of new clause 33 is that all those who potentially had a human rights claim, whatever their circumstances, could go straight to the Strasbourg court, which would clog up that court. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire pointed out, that is not taking back control, it is abrogating it, and would flood the Strasbourg court with decisions that could have sensibly been taken here.
That is not to say that any one of us would not be frustrated by particular individual decisions, but I caution against using decisions that have been only partially covered or talked about on the front pages of The Daily Telegraph, which often takes decisions in cases out of context. We have talked a lot about chicken nuggets, and I would just put on the record that that case is being appealed, and judicial activities on that case have not yet finished.
With that commitment to human rights and European convention rights, I hope that Opposition Members will think about some of the potential consequences of what they are suggesting in chopping up human rights and wanting to put us in the same company as Belarus and Russia; about the way convention rights were developed; and about the benefits that adhering to human rights frameworks has given us as a democracy over the years.
Matt Vickers
I am sure that the Minister must disagree with some of the examples that we have seen, and agree that they undermine public trust in the judiciary, legal institutions and the frameworks we have. What is the solution? Must we grin and bear the appalling outcomes of those cases or is there a solution? How does she propose to stop such things happening?
Dame Angela Eagle
I would respectfully say that the hon. Gentleman’s party had many, many years to think of a solution, and most of the cases that Opposition Members have raised today had their genesis in the years that they were in power. Close to the very end, as they became more and more frustrated, they started coming up with more and more outlandish approaches.
Obviously, one wants the entire judicial process to be used, as speedily as possible, and if the Home Office wishes to appeal a particular case, it will do so. We keep a constant eye on the issues and we think about reforms that we could make. Obviously the hon. Gentleman will be the first to hear if we decide to make changes, but we do not wish to abrogate from the Human Rights Act, the ECHR and the human rights framework. That is where we and other Opposition parties differ from him and his party. That is why I do not accept new clause 33 and I hope that the Committee will vote against it if it is pressed to a vote.
Matt Vickers
The public are appalled by these cases. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire does not want us to change legal frameworks over chicken nuggets: if the Human Rights Act creates a situation in which criminals, rapists and paedophiles are able to stay against domestic law and the intentions of the people charged with making that law, it is unacceptable. We feel strongly about this and wish to divide on the matter.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 42—Removals from the United Kingdom: visa penalties for uncooperative countries—
“(1) The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 70, omit subsections (4) and (5).
(3) In
(4) In section 72—
(a) subsection (1), after ‘A country’, for ‘may’ substitute ‘must’.
(b) In subsection (1)(a) omit ‘and’ and insert—
‘or,
(ab) is not cooperating in relation to the verification of identity or status of individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country, and’
(c) in subsection (1)(b), after ‘citizens of the country’ insert ‘or individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country’,
(d) omit subsections (2) and (3), and
(e) in subsection (4), omit from ‘70’ to after ‘subsection (1)(a)’ .
(5) Omit section 74.”—(Matt Vickers.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not cooperating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status.
Matt Vickers
Currently a prison sentence of one year is required before a foreign national who is a convicted criminal can be deported. Even then, removal can be frustrated by asylum and human rights claims. New clause 34 would prevent a foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK, as well as anyone who has been charged with or convicted of an immigration offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, and would disapply the Human Rights Act from those cases. We believe that the protection of British citizens is paramount and should be the overriding priority for Government. If a foreign national has been convicted of any offence, they should lose their right to remain in the UK.
Dame Angela Eagle
On that point we agree, so why was his Government so tardy at actually deporting foreign national offenders when they were in office?
Matt Vickers
We have just had a lengthy discussion about the Human Rights Act and the impact it has on deportations. However, if she agrees so wholeheartedly on the principle, I am sure she might consider backing our amendment.
There are a number of countries where the UK has a significant number of foreign national offenders currently serving in British prisons. However, we deport only a small number of those foreign national offenders each quarter. Our new clause 42 would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not co-operating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status. We have done this by amending the Nationality and Borders Act, so that the ability to impose visa sanctions is not discretionary but mandatory. We know that there are countries that are hard to secure returns to. We believe strongly that that should not be without consequences for those countries.
New clause 34 shifts the lens to where it belongs—on the victims left in the wake of foreign offenders, not the perpetrators gaming the system. In 2024, theft offences alone averaged just 8.1 months—a shopkeeper’s livelihood dented, a pensioner’s purse snatched, or a family’s peace of mind and sense of security destroyed. Public order crimes averaged just 9.6 months, with more huge consequences for the wellbeing of victims who are left with a fear of entering public spaces or unable to go about their ordinary lives. Yet the one year deportation bar enables those culprits to linger, post-sentence, free to reoffend while victims wait for justice that never comes.
This clause says, “Enough.” Any conviction, for shoplifting or worse, triggers removal—no Human Rights Act excuses—because every day a foreign offender is allowed to stay is another day a British victim’s trust in the system erodes. Why are the Government okay with that shadow hanging over our streets? New clause 42 would force nations to play ball uphill. We see too many countries dither and delay in refusing to take back offenders. Mandatory visa sanctions flip that script. No co-operation, no UK visas for their elite. Watch fast how passports materialise when there are real consequences. Why is Labour soft-pedalling when we could wield this stick, clear the backlog and reduce pressure on prison places?
Katie Lam
New clause 34 prevents any foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that immigration never makes the British public any less safe. Unfortunately, however, many of those who have come to the UK in recent years have broken our laws. According to Ministry of Justice figures, a staggering 23% of sexual crimes in the UK—almost one in four—are committed by foreign nationals.
The overall imprisonment rate for foreign nationals is 20% higher than that for British citizens. Of course, the trend is not uniform: some nationalities are more heavily represented than others. Albanian migrants are nearly 17 times more likely to be imprisoned than average; those from Algeria are nearly nine times more likely and those from Jamaica nearly eight times more likely to be imprisoned than average.
Those who seek to harm this country, to break its laws and to undermine what we hold to be fair and right should not be allowed to remain here. As the Government are well aware, our prisons are already overcrowded. We must not allow foreign criminals to continue exacerbating this problem and we must not endanger the British public by allowing foreign criminals to stay in this country.
Under our current system, too many of those who break our laws are being allowed to remain in the UK. Often, Home Office attempts to deport foreign criminals are blocked because of absurd and ever expanding human rights rules. In the interests of public safety, we must not allow foreign criminals to remain in Britain; that includes by making sure that the Human Rights Act cannot be used to prevent us from deporting those who break our laws.
How, specifically, does new clause 34 do that? It amends section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, which we have already mentioned today. Section 32 would be amended from its current form, which defines a foreign criminal as a person who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen, who is convicted of an offence that takes place in the United Kingdom and who is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of least 12 months, or is a serious criminal as defined in section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. What would replace section 32 would be much simpler; it would instead say that a foreign criminal was anyone who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen who is convicted of any offence in the United Kingdom, and explicitly include within that anybody who has been charged with or convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which sets out the situations in which a person can be considered to have entered this country illegally. That includes if they do so in breach of a deportation order; if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly came here without that leave; or if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly stayed here beyond the time conferred by that leave, among other specific conditions.
New clause 34 also seeks to ensure that the rules will be upheld in all circumstances and asserts therefore that the principle of removing criminals from this country is of utmost importance and must be prioritised above other legislation. That includes human rights legislation, for the reasons we have already set out.
I turn to new clause 42, which requires the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country proves to be unco-operative in the process of removing any of its nationals or citizens from the UK. Such a lack of co-operation may arise in verifying their identity or status or it may pertain to the process of removing people whose identity and status has not been established. New clause 42 seeks to do that by amending section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. That Act set out the idea of a visa penalty provision, effectively allowing the Home Secretary to suspend visa applications from countries that do not co-operate with the activity that the Government are trying to take to secure and protect the border. The new clause would strengthen that Act by changing that from an option for the Home Secretary to a duty and by adding explicitly the point about countries that are not co-operating with the process of verifying the identity or status of individuals whom we consider likely to be nationals or citizens of the countries in question.
Matt Vickers
We wish to divide on new clause 34.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 39—Restrictions on visas and grants of indefinite leave to remain—
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must by immigration rules provide for all visa grants, including spousal visas, to be conditional on the following—
(a) the requirement that the applicant or their dependents will not apply for any form of ‘social protection’ (including housing) from the UK Government or a local authority, where ‘social protection’ is defined according to the Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, subject to any further definition by immigration rules,
(b) the requirement that the applicant’s annual income must not fall below £38,700 (or six months or more in aggregate) during the relevant qualification period.
(2) Immigration Rules made under subsection (1) must ensure that any breach of the conditions set out in that subsection will render void any visa previously granted.
(3) The Secretary of State is not permitted to grant leave outside the immigration rules or immigration acts.
(4) A person is not eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom if any of the following conditions apply.
(5) Condition 1 is that a person is a ‘foreign criminal’ under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007.
(6) Condition 2 is that a person, or any of their dependents, has been in receipt of any form of ‘social protection’ (including housing) from the UK Government or a local authority, where ‘social protection’ is defined according to the Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, subject to any further definition by immigration rules.
(7) Condition 3 is that a person’s annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period.
(8) A person who has entered the United Kingdom—
(a) under the Ukraine visa schemes;
(b) under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme;
(c) under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy; or
(d) on a British National Overseas visa,
is exempt from the requirements of Condition 2 and Condition 3.
(9) For the purposes of subsections (1)(b) and (7)—
(a) the condition applies only to earnings that have been lawfully reported to, or subject to withholding tax by, HM Revenue and Customs; and
(b) the relevant sum of annual income must be adjusted annually by the Secretary of State through immigration rules to reflect inflation.
(10) The Secretary of State may by immigration rules make further provision varying these conditions, including by way of transitional provisions.”
This new clause would place certain minimum restrictions on the granting of visas or indefinite leave to remain. It would require migrants to be self-sufficient and do not require state benefits, and would deny ILR to foreign criminals.
New clause 40—Cap on number of entrants—
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must make regulations specifying the total maximum number of persons who may enter the United Kingdom annually across all non-visitor visa routes, with such regulations subject to approval by both Houses.
(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations also specify a maximum number of entrants for individual visa routes, subject to the overall total.
(3) No visas may be issued in excess of the total maximum number specified in subsection (1).
(4) Any visas issued in excess of the number specified in subsection (1) must be revoked.”
This new clause would provide a mechanism for a binding annual cap on the number of non-visitor visas issued by the UK.
Matt Vickers
New clause 35 would require the Secretary of State to specify a cap on the number of spouses or civil partners who may enter the UK and on the number who may enter from any one country. It would also amend the immigration rules to set a salary threshold. We know that there is abuse of the current provisions that allow spouses or civil partners to come to the UK. Our amendment is designed to tighten up the rules so as to make abuse less likely.
We believe that it is important for the Secretary of State to set a cap for the number of people who can enter the UK as a spouse or civil partner, and that the number of persons from any one country who enter as a spouse or civil partner of a sponsor should not exceed 7% of the maximum number specified. We seek to tighten up that route to entering the UK by ensuring that the applicant provides evidence that the parties under subsection (9)(a) were married or formed a civil partnership at least two years prior to the application; that each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as spouse or civil partner, and the marriage or civil partnership is subsisting; that the salary of the person who has a right to abode in the UK, or indefinite leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, equals or exceeds £38,700 per year; and that people cannot sponsor their first cousins under this route.
We believe those changes are necessary to ensure that the relationship is genuine and subsisting, and that the sponsor is able to support their partner once they arrive in the UK. That is part of ensuring that we treat living in this country as a privilege, not a right, and that those coming to the UK to live will contribute to our country.
New clause 39 would place restrictions on the granting of visas and indefinite leave to remain. That is another change to achieve our objective that those who come to the UK are able to contribute. The new clause would ensure that visas were granted only where an applicant or their dependants will not apply for any form of social protection, including housing from the UK Government or a local authority, and where the applicant’s annual income will not fall below £38,700 during the relevant qualification period. If either of those conditions fails to be met, the visa will be revoked.
The new clause also specifies that a person cannot qualify for indefinite leave to remain if they are a “foreign criminal” under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007; if they or any of their dependants have been in receipt of any form of social protection from the UK Government or local authority; or if their annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period. The new clause would not apply to those who have come to the UK through the Ukraine, Afghan or British national overseas schemes.
New clause 40 would introduce some accountability for this place in the overall numbers of migrants coming to the UK per year. It would establish a mechanism whereby Parliament would approve a binding cap on all non-visitor visa routes set out by the Secretary of State. We believe it is important that the House seriously considers the benefits and trade-offs to this country. The new clause is designed to give the House greater accountability for that decision.
New clauses 35 and 39 would build a wall against the quiet epidemic of immigration fraud that has been seeping through our spousal and visa routes—think of sham marriages brokered for £10,000 a pop, or visa overstayers masked by flimsy claims of support. The two-year marriage rule, the £38,700 threshold and the “no first cousin” clause are not just hurdles; they are detectors rooting out paper partnerships before they drain us dry.
The new clauses would anchor immigration to a bedrock of self-reliance, because a Britain that thrives does not prop up newcomers who cannot stand alone. In new clause 35, the £38,700 sponsor salary, which matches that for the skilled worker route, would ensure that thousands of spousal entrants yearly would not tip the welfare scales further. New clause 39 would double down, barring visas and indefinite leave to remain for anyone who dips below that level or taps social housing, for which 1.2 million people are already waiting. This is not exclusion; it is economics, tilting the balance towards those who lift us, not those who lean on us.
New clause 40 is not just a cap; it hands the House the reins of our migration system. The new clause would make Parliament the arbiter, through a binding cap debated here, voted on here, owned here and on which we are fully held to account by the electorate.
Katie Lam
There are few things in life and in human nature more powerful than the desire to be with those we love. To be separated from a husband or wife by a national border is no small thing. Indeed, for those it is happening to, it can feel like everything. But the role of Government is to determine what is right for the country, not for any one person, couple or family. We must place this discussion in its national context. For too long immigration has been too high, and the spousal visa route is increasingly being used by those who would otherwise not be able to come to Britain.
Over the past few years we have seen the number of dependent visas balloon. As of December 2024, 51,000 migrants, bringing 130,000 dependants with them, had come to Britain via the health and social care route over the previous year. That is over 2.5 dependants per health and social care worker—dependants who will access public services in their own right, including our already overstretched NHS. The dependant route for health and social care visa holders has since been restricted, but I mention it because it indicates the huge level of demand and desire there is for family members to come to Britain.
Matt Vickers
We think it is right that there should be limits on the number of people who can arrive here as a spouse or partner, a requirement on those bringing people to be able to support themselves, and a cap on the number of people entering the country. We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is vital to giving immigration enforcement the powers it needs to smash the gangs and tackle any criminality surrounding those who arrive here illegally. It would give immigration enforcement access to asylum accommodation centres. Currently, there are limitations around the detention of those arriving illegally on small boats. These limitations arise from a lack of statutory power, as well as a lack of state capacity to detain those arriving illegally.
In government, the Conservative Administration set up accommodation centres, which provided a plausible alternative to hotels. Because the centres were not used to make immigration decisions, in practice immigration enforcement officers did not find it possible to enter them for the purposes of examining, arresting and detaining persons residing therein for the purposes of refusal and removal.
Tony Smith, the former director general of UK Border Force, has powerfully argued that immigration enforcement teams must have clear authority to enter all places where asylum seekers are residing to examine, interview, arrest or detain them as appropriate. The Opposition agree wholeheartedly, for these would be proportionate powers for the state to use to enforce the law. Currently, centres housing thousands of small boat arrivals are not detention hubs. Instead, they are in effect halfway houses between the point of processing and where decisions can be made. Consequently, there is a substantial asylum backlog, which has created bottlenecks in the system. This is simply inadequate for everyone involved. It cannot continue, and it must stop.
The new clause therefore tries to end this predicament and failure in the system. Enforcement cannot be allowed to be bereft of action, unable to chase absconders who vanish into the ether without a trace. We need to empower officers to go into these sites to interview, arrest and detain where appropriate. That would allow faster decisions, faster refusals and quicker removals. The clause would not only mean a more efficient system that saves hardworking taxpayers’ money, but help decimate the business model of the people-smuggling trade. In just the last two years, traffickers have accumulated hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds in profit. We all know the tragic consequences of people who have made this life-threatening journey.
We must, at all costs, undermine the business model of the people smugglers. That is the truly compassionate thing to do, so I am proud to support clause 36 because it eliminates gaps in our asylum enforcement system, ends centres being off limits and hence makes it much more difficult for people to get lost in the system. So we have to act, and act now. As such, clause 36 appears to be common sense, allowing our enforcement agencies the access that the average person would probably assume they already have. Does the Minister think an amendment or power such as this would be of operational benefit to immigration enforcement, and if not, why not?
Pete Wishart
I do not want to detain the Committee for long with this amendment, but this is just another abhorrent amendment from the warped imagination of the Conservative party. I do not know where they come up with things like this. They would have to be very creative and very cruel to propose something quite like this. The amendment would allow immigration enforcement officers to visit accommodation centres at any time without prior notice. Asylum seekers and other residents at these centres are often fleeing persecution, war and violence and will have suffered severe trauma. The constant threat of unannounced visits from immigration enforcement will create an atmosphere of fear, making it even more difficult for individuals to feel safe.
Allowing immigration enforcement to visit any resident at any time is a clear violation of privacy. It undermines their dignity and wellbeing and could lead to harassment or increased surveillance, further marginalising already vulnerable populations. Vulnerable individuals should not be made to feel constantly watched or threatened by authorities, especially when they are seeking safety and stability. The presence of immigration enforcement officers may discourage asylum seekers and migrants from seeking support or reporting issues of abuse, exploitation or trafficking. All this could do is undermine the very support structures designed to help individuals rebuild their lives in the UK.
The amendment lacks any clear safeguards or accountability mechanisms for how immigration enforcement would operate, and I urge the Committee to reject it. I hope it rejects the rest of the Conservative party’s amendments, too.
Matt Vickers
I think the public will be stunned to hear that immigration enforcement officers have challenges in accessing asylum accommodation centres, as outlined by Tony Smith, the former director general of UK Border Force. We will therefore seek to press the new clause to a vote.
Dame Angela Eagle
The new clause talks about accommodation centres, which do not exist. What does the hon. Gentleman mean by accommodation centres?
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and the Asylum Support Regulations 2000 enable asylum seekers to obtain housing and funds to support themselves while they wait to find out whether they will get asylum. Their children can attend state schools and they are entitled to NHS care. We know that asylum seekers crossing the channel in small boats are often given bail and provided with asylum support. Those with no UK address will be allocated asylum housing, or placed in asylum hotels or accommodation centres. The National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of this to the taxpayer was around £4.7 billion in 2023-24.
Matt Vickers
We have had many alternative means of accommodation, including hotels. Accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels is through the roof—it is up 29%, with 8,500 more people staying in them—but the situation I am describing applies more widely than any accommodation centre or hotel.
The £4.7 billion tab for 2023-24 covered beds, meals and NHS visits while the backlog ballooned.
Chris Murray
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that number has “ballooned”—or gone up highly—not just in the aggregate but per asylum seeker? The hon. Gentleman wants to try to charge people, but his party let the system get completely out of control. Maybe it was the backlog that let it get out of control, rather than the kind of hotels that people were staying in.
Matt Vickers
The reality is that somebody is getting charged for it and paying for it, and at the moment that is the Great British public. There are ballooning costs. There are increasing numbers: illegal arrivals are up 28% since the election, there are 29% more people in hotels, and fewer of the people who arrive illegally are being removed. The number goes up, the cost continues to go up, and somebody has to pick up the tab. Making the person repay those costs once they are working—with, say, £10,000 over a decade—could claw back hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is not small change: it is classrooms built, potholes filled and nurses hired. Why are the Government content to let this sinkhole drain us dry when we could balance the books with a system that asks those who are successful to pay back some of these costs?
In his evidence, Tony Smith highlighted the knowledge that such support is available as a pull factor that encourages people to cross the channel. We share Tony Smith’s view that making it clear that the costs of asylum support and accommodation will be recovered once the applicant is economically active could help to disincentivise future crossings. That is why we have tabled new clause 37.
The proposed new clause would enable the Government to treat asylum support like a student loan, with asylum seekers able to pay back the cost of support when they are in paid employment. We believe that if someone’s asylum appeal is granted and they are allowed to remain in this country and they are able to work, they should be required to pay back to the state the costs of their maintenance, as and when they are able. State support is not a right.
Tom Hayes
This may be our last sitting day; I say this in hopes that it is. Over the last few sittings, having not known the hon. Member for Stockton West, I have grown in admiration for him, because he has had to defend very difficult things from the previous Government. It has felt like he is a goalkeeper standing in front of goal without any gloves on, and balls have been hit at him from every direction, so I do have admiration for him. But this is frankly absurd—it really is bonkers. Is this the hon. Member’s idea, or is it somebody else’s idea that he is having to make a case for? I really hope it is the latter.
Matt Vickers
To the hon. Gentleman’s electors and mine, these things come at huge cost. As we have set out, that money could be used by the people who pay in to the system, and have done for a very long time. We have drawn an analogy with student tuition fees and I think it is very relevant. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s well-hidden admiration in recent times, but I think this is the right thing to do, and I am well on board with it. State support is not a right, and if a person is able to contribute later by paying some of that back, we believe it is right for them to do so.
Katie Lam
We have spoken many times today, and over the course of this Bill Committee’s proceedings, about the fundamental principles of fairness upon which we believe that our immigration system should be built. We have also spoken extensively about the generosity of the British state, and how much it costs to support those who, according to our rules, cannot support themselves. But that generosity, while admirable in what it says about our approach to our fellow man, costs the British taxpayer dearly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, it costs many billions of pounds a year. It also causes additional pressure on infrastructure and public services, which is not covered by what we suggest here.
We consider that new clause 37, which would introduce the asylum support repayment scheme, is a totally fair way of proposing that people who come to this country are responsible for contributing for the services that they receive. That includes the accommodation that they live in. We do not see any reason why that should be viewed as a negative change, and we really hope that the Government include it in their Bill.
Matt Vickers
The big question is “Who pays?”. There is a huge cost here. I would never seek to get political about the political choices made with funding in recent times—I would not go into the winter fuel payment, or the increase in tuition fees. Tuition fees is an interesting comparator, though, because we ask those who are able to do so to contribute to the costs incurred in delivering them their education. We should be asking people who arrive in this country, who could go on to become very successful, to contribute to some of those costs.
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Lady will have noticed that I have not dismissed the idea completely, but I do not think the idea is anywhere near a position where one could talk about how it might be practicable, and certainly it is not at a stage where one could consider putting it into primary legislation.
Matt Vickers
State support is not a right and, if a person is able later to contribute by paying some of it back, we believe it is right for them to do so. We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 38 would require the Government to make changes to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. It would require the Secretary of State, within three months of the passing of this Act, to consult on reforms to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. The consultation must consider how best to ensure that leave outside the rules is granted only in the most exceptional circumstances, in which a reasonable person would consider it unacceptable to refuse entry to the United Kingdom. Within 18 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, by regulations, make changes to the immigration rules to implement the required reforms to leave outside the rules.
We have tabled this new clause because we are concerned about the Government’s response to the recent decision in the upper tribunal to allow a family from Gaza to obtain permission to come to this country using the Ukraine family scheme. The appellants were Palestinians who, at the time of the decision under challenge, were residing in al-Mawasi, the humanitarian zone of Gaza.
The first and second appellants were husband and wife, and had lived in Gaza since 1994. They were the parents of the remaining four appellants, who at the time of the decision were 18, 17, eight and seven years of age. The sponsor for the application was the first appellant’s brother, who had moved to the United Kingdom in 2007 and is now a British citizen.
The first-tier tribunal declined the application and the decision was appealed. The main issues to be decided by the first-tier tribunal were whether there was family life under article 8(1) between the appellants and the sponsor in the UK, whether the respondent’s decision interfered with any family life and/or any private life enjoyed by the sponsor, and whether any such interference was disproportionate.
The upper tribunal did not agree with the Home Office’s argument that the first-tier tribunal judge had erred in finding that there was family life between the appellants and sponsor. It found that there was family life and that the Home Office decision not to allow the family leave outside the rules was a disproportionate interference with the family life of the appellants and the sponsor.
When the Leader of the Opposition challenged the Prime Minister about this particular case at Prime Minister’s questions, he responded that he did not agree with the decision of the upper tribunal, and said that the Government were
“looking at the legal loophole that we need to close in this particular case.” —[Official Report, 12 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 249.]
The new clause makes a suggestion about what that “legal loophole” might be, but it is extremely important that the Minister is able to answer the following questions. Did the Home Office decide not to appeal the upper tribunal decision? If so, why? What is the legal loophole that the Prime Minister said the Home Secretary was closing? Can the Minister be extremely precise about that, please? Can she explain when the House will be updated on this issue? Finally, if there is a legal loophole to close, why is that not being done through this Bill?
Seema Malhotra
I find this a very interesting debate and an important one in a number of respects. New clause 38 would require a consultation on the Government’s approach to the exercise of discretion to grant leave outside the rules in what any reasonable person would consider to be the most exceptional circumstances to warrant such a grant, with a requirement for a change to the rules to follow, to regulate on the basis of what discretion may have been exercised.
The rules set out the main purposes for which a person may enter or stay in the UK, and the requirements to be met for them to be granted permission to do so. Exceptional circumstances are already considered. The rules are intended to apply, and be applied, in most circumstances to ensure transparency and fairness between individuals, but the existing policy approach recognises that there are some circumstances that they simply cannot cater for, and it is in the most exceptional circumstances that consideration is given to leave outside the rules under the Immigration Act 1971.
A period of leave outside the rules would usually be granted for a short, one-off period of permission to stay, suitable to accommodate or overcome the exceptional circumstance, if compassionate or compelling grounds are raised in the individual case. A person may request an exercise of discretion. Factors considered may be related to, for example, emergencies, unexpected events, a crisis, a disaster, an accident that could not have been anticipated, or a personal tragedy. The Government will continue to consider where and when there is need to exercise discretion outside the rules. By its very nature, that is considered only in the most exceptional of circumstances.
It is probably not appropriate for me to go into the case that the hon. Member for Stockton West raised, beyond what has been said in the House. He asked some very specific questions, and I am happy to come back to him with what I can in writing. It is important to say that this is not the correct legislation for a debate about the requirements for discretion to grant leave outside the immigration rules, nor is it the correct place to define the parts of immigration policy on which the Government should consult.
Matt Vickers
On that case and on the loophole, which Minister does not think is relevant to this legislation, what does she identify that loophole as, and why does she not feel that that broader issue is relevant in considering this Bill?
Seema Malhotra
The shadow Minister understands extremely well that the Bill is about ensuring we stop the criminal gangs and that it introduces new powers to do so. On other new clauses that he tabled, I have given the same response in relation to aspects of the immigration rules. This is not the correct legislation to define parts of immigration policy or to try to determine what the Government should consult on.
As I said, the Government continue to consider where and when there is a need to exercise discretion outside the rules. By its very nature, that is considered in only very exceptional circumstances. I have shared what some of those factors might be: unexpected events, a crisis, an accident that could not have been anticipated, or a personal tragedy. I am sure he understands those matters, considering that he has served in office.
Matt Vickers
This is a valuable and important debate because many people felt strongly about this issue. The decision in that case flew in the face of the values of the Ukraine scheme. It could undermine commitments to future such schemes, so it is of great consequence.
Katie Lam
I am a little confused by the Minister’s stating that several of our amendments should not be debated with this Bill. I fully concede that she is more experienced than I am, but my understanding is that any amendment considered in scope can be tabled, debated and voted on. Given the fact that these amendments were considered in scope, I am interested in why she thinks it is not appropriate for us to discuss them today.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the shadow Minister for asking what the Bill is about, but we are just at the end of scrutiny of it, so I am sure she is aware that it is about increasing powers, in particular, to be able to better tackle the criminal gangs that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk. We are making sure that we have bodies such as the Border Security Command on a statutory footing. We have had many other debates in the House about this.
Matt Vickers
Often with amendments we want to bring things out into the light. One thing I have not quite heard is what the Government are doing in the light of the issues with the Ukraine scheme, in particular to prevent what happened in the case I mentioned from happening again. We have this big borders Bill coming through, which will hopefully be the answer to the world’s problems and improve the situation, but are the Government doing anything about the misapplication of the Ukraine scheme to ensure that the case I mentioned will not happen again?
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Gentleman is right, and the Prime Minister laid out the view that it was the wrong decision. We do need to find a way to tighten up how Parliament understands the rules and how they are interpreted, but as I say, that scheme is not a matter for this Bill. We are at the very end of debating the Bill and now I am being asked what it is for. I am sure that the shadow Ministers do not want to go all the way through the line-by-line debate again. Suffice it to say that the matters they are seeking to extend the legislation to cover stray into broader aspects of immigration that in our view are not appropriate for inclusion in this Bill. There are other mechanisms for us to seek to debate and change immigration rules.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the revocation of asylum or refugee status, or leave to remain, in relation to an applicant who returns to their country of origin, either subsequently or while their application is being processed. It would also apply to people who make an immigration human rights claim.
If an individual has made a claim that being made to return to their country of origin would violate their human rights and put them in danger, then their choosing voluntarily to return to their home country would suggest that something does not add up. Fundamentally, no reasonable person would consider an individual’s returning to their home country to be compatible with their claim for asylum in such circumstances. If a person needs to remain in this country because they have a legitimate fear of persecution in their country of origin, a return to that country of origin fundamentally undercuts that claim.
Pete Wishart
I have studied this measure closely. Conditions change within the countries that people leave, and asylum status and human rights records change accordingly. Is the hon. Gentleman trying to say that there is no reason whatsoever that an asylum seeker may go back to their country of origin and then come back to the UK? What about family emergencies? Surely the Conservatives are not so callous as to suggest that people cannot go back to their country of origin for a family funeral, for example.
Matt Vickers
People arrive in this country out of fear of persecution. People come from the most awful, extreme circumstances. That is the bar that we put to asylum. We allow people to come here to claim asylum out of fear for their welfare, and if they are happy to pack their bags and pop back for a break, then that is on them. I believe, and I think the public would believe, that if someone comes here claiming fear of persecution in their country of origin then they should not be going back. It is not an opt-in or opt-out—it is not a holiday. If they are coming here out of fear of persecution in that country then they should not be going back.
We have tabled new clause 41 in order to address a loophole that people can and do exploit. The new clause would uphold British fairness—a value that welcomes those in need but rejects exploitation. As Members from across the House know, the United Kingdom has supported over 20,000 Afghans since 2021 through the Afghan relocations policy and over 200,000 Ukrainians since 2022 via visa schemes, alongside our Hong Kong friends with British national overseas visas, backed further by £4.7 billion in asylum costs in 2023-24. These commitments reflect our readiness to help those with genuine cases—those fleeing real danger who have ties to Britain. The value of fairness demands a fair system that is not abused.
Matt Vickers
We are talking about all sorts of circumstances, and I am sure that every one of these things would be pushed to the max, with lots of discussion and debate. The idea here is the principle that if someone cannot be in a country because it would be to their detriment and damage their wellbeing, then they should not be going back. If it is such a security threat that they need to come to the UK for asylum—
Matt Vickers
People who claim asylum arrive here from some of the most terrible, awful circumstances—their life is threatened and they are at real risk. If someone is at that level of risk, on the balance of probabilities, they would not be going back. If someone fears persecution in the way that many of the people who get asylum in this country do, then they would not be returning.
Pete Wishart
We really cannot let them away with this, because it is just cruelty personified. Would the hon. Gentleman not make every effort and take every risk to return to his country of origin if it were the funeral of his mother or father?
Matt Vickers
I hear what hon. Members are saying, but in the current system we allow people to pop back on holiday. Is that acceptable?
Matt Vickers
I am talking about those circumstances. We have heard one extreme; at the other extreme, we have people claiming asylum at huge cost. That is not a cost to well-heeled people, in particular, but to British taxpayers, some of whom are struggling to get by, but are contributing to this country and this system, which pays out for various other things. We want to be generous. We want to support the people who need that help. It is the right thing to do and, I have just outlined, we have done that. But we cannot allow that generosity to be abused; we cannot allow people to pop off on holiday back to wherever they came from and then come back. That is the principle that is at stake here. People out there feel that it is very unfair that people pop back, and use asylum here as something hotel-like. That is the other extreme. That is the abuse that we are seeing, and that is what the new clause aims to end.
Tom Hayes
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the Hongkonger population would be very disheartened to hear what he is saying? Does he think it is right for him to stick to what he is saying? Would it not be better to show some sympathy to that particular population who are here?
Matt Vickers
I show lots of sympathy. It is right that we have put all these schemes in place, and it is right that we are supporting these people in the way we are. I also think a little bit about what the British people would think about what I am saying, and the abuse they are seeing of these schemes that allow people to pop back to other countries for various reasons. The hon. Gentleman has given one extreme; I have given the other. I think that is a principle that the British public would be on board with.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 41 would require the revocation of protection status or leave, or discontinuation of asylum claims, where an applicant returns to their country of origin. The Government are in absolute agreement on the principle behind the new clause. Although we are committed to providing protection to those who genuinely need it for as long as it is needed, in accordance with our obligations under the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights, such protection status must be granted only when it is required. As such, I want to reassure Opposition Members that, under our existing policy, where an individual returns to their country of origin, we consider whether they have re-availed themselves of the protection of that country. Where that is the case, we seek to revoke their protection status under the appropriate provision set out in the immigration rules.
We are also clear that asylum claims may be discontinued and withdrawn where the applicant fails to comply with the asylum process, which includes leaving the UK before a decision is made on their claim. I hope Opposition Members are therefore assured that the immigration rules enable protection status to be revoked already and applications to be discontinued where an applicant has returned to their country of origin. As such, new clause 41 is not required.
Matt Vickers
We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsTuesday 18th March 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 March 2025 - (18 Mar 2025)
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I beg to move, that the clause be read a Second time.
It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The new clause would enable replacements of large portions of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 —in particular, sections on asylum, immigration control, age assessments and modern slavery—to ensure the upholding of the refugee convention, to provide for safe and legal routes to sanctuary for refugees and to help prevent dangerous channel crossings.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Liberal Democrat new clause 27 seeks to repeal provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 passed by the previous Conservative Government. By attempting to repeal section 29 of the Act, the Liberal Democrats are seeking to prevent the Government from removing people, including criminals, to a safe third country.
Rewind back to 2022 when 45,000 people crammed into small boats, flimsy rafts teetering on the channel’s unforgiving waves—a swarm, spurred by the hope of slipping through our borders, hammering coastal towns and stretching security to its limits.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
Did the hon. Gentleman really mean “swarm” in that context? That is quite emotive language.
Matt Vickers
Well, hot air is required in this room this afternoon, and I intend to provide it.
We fought back with the Nationality and Borders Act third-country removals, which helped the Government to deter crossings by 36% in 2023 from 45,000 to under 29,000—not by chance, but by design, sending a message to traffickers and migrants alike that Britain is no soft touch or guaranteed prize. Now, the Liberal Democrats barge in with new clause 27, desperate to repeal section 29 to shred that deterrent and plunge us back into chaos, flinging the channel wide open not just to the weary but to every chancer or criminal. That is not tweaking policy; it is torching a firewall, inviting all those to Dover’s cliffs and Deal’s shores and erasing every inch of progress that we have clawed from the crisis. The Lib Dems owe us hard answers. How many boats—50,000 or 60,000?
The Albania deal delivered a masterstroke of border control. That pragmatic triumph has turned a torrent of illegal crossings into a trickle through sheer diplomatic grit. Back in 2022, Albanians dominated the small boats surge. A 12,000-strong, relentless wave of young men were lured by traffickers with promises of easy UK entry for £3,000, clogging Dover’s processing centres and fuelling tabloid headlines of chaos. Then came our 2023 pact with Tirana—a no-nonsense agreement that flipped the script with fast-track returns, joint police operations and a clear signal: Albania is safe and you are going back.
By 2024, the results were staggering. Weekly flights were whisking deportees home, with each jet a nail in the coffin of the smuggling networks that once thrived on our porous borders. That was not luck or loud threats but cold, hard execution, bolstered by UK-funded cameras on the Albania-Kosovo frontier and Albanian officers embedded in Dover.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
I think that the hon. Gentleman is somewhat overstating the impact of the Albania policy. After the initial agreement was signed, we saw a massive spike in numbers coming from Albania, and the numbers had already started to fall before the communiqué was signed. The correlation and causation arguments that he is making on the Albania scheme do not add up at all.
Matt Vickers
What is effective? The deal reduced the number of people coming from Albania by more than 90%. If we could get a few more agreements like that, we would be on the way—that would be huge progress. The Albania deal represented huge progress; to suggest otherwise is wrong. It choked off routes before boats had even launched and had a real impact.
Chris Murray
Would the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the Albania returns were largely due to large numbers of foreign national offenders, who are a completely different category of people from those we are talking about in either this clause or this Bill?
Matt Vickers
We would want to return foreign national offenders; that is really positive. But the number of people choosing to cross because of that deterrent effect went down by not 10% or 20%, but by more than 90%. More than 90% fewer people arrived from Albania in small boats. That is huge progress. If we can replicate that elsewhere, I will be a very happy boy because we would see a huge impact on those crossings across the piece.
New clause 27 is hellbent on repealing that backbone, oblivious to how crossings from Albanians were successfully slashed, while the Rwanda threat kept smugglers guessing. If the Liberal Democrats prevail, every bilateral deal will be on the chopping block. Imagine Albanian numbers roaring back to 12,000, with other current surges unchecked. That is not progress; it is sabotage—a reckless bid to unravel a system that is finally biting back at the chaos. Do the Liberal Democrats not want to be able to remove people from this country who have entered illegally? Do they believe that any national of a safe country should be able to seek asylum in the UK? Can Liberal Democrat Members explain why that would not create a massive pull factor and encourage people to cross the channel in small boats?
The Liberal Democrats are also seeking to repeal sections 15 to 17 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which specify that the Secretary of State must declare an asylum claim made by a person who is a national of an EU member state inadmissible. Why would the Liberal Democrats believe that anyone from the EU needs to claim asylum here? Picture this scene, which is so utterly ridiculous that it strains the bounds of credulity: an EU citizen, perhaps some laid-back Amsterdamer, pedalling along the city’s picturesque canals one sunny afternoon, tulips nodding in the breeze, then suddenly deciding to chuck it all, hop on a ferry and pitch up on Dover’s pebbled shores, requesting asylum, as if the Netherlands’ orderly bike lanes and windmill-dotted horizons had morphed into a scene from—
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
We are witnessing some particularly theatrical prose, perhaps for the first time. Has Boris Johnson got a new job as the hon. Gentleman’s speechwriter?
Matt Vickers
His writing seems to be going quite well at the moment. I do not know that I have the cash for him.
What I have described is not asylum. We cannot pretend that the EU’s 27 nations and its vast tapestry of safe, stable and prosperous lands—we can take our pick of France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and so on, each a bastion of peace and plenty—somehow warrant the same desperate lifeline that we reserve for those fleeing real and genuine chaos. This is the same organisation that the Liberal Democrats supposedly want to build closer ties with. They also want the UK to grant asylum to people who come to this country having already been in a country where they have claimed and been granted asylum. Why are the Liberal Democrats encouraging people to cross the channel when they already have asylum or can claim asylum in a safe third country?
Just like the Labour Government, the Liberal Democrats want to remove sections of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 that allow local and public authorities to conduct an age assessment on an age-disputed person. As we discussed before when the SNP did not wish those who claim to be a child to be treated as an adult, every European country apart from ours uses scientific age assessment techniques such as an X-ray of the wrist. As we have said, there are also other methods. More than 50% of those claiming to be children were found to be adults after an age assessment in the quarter before the election. Without a scientific age assessment method, it is very hard to determine age. Given the horror stories in this area, why do Liberal Democrats want to put the people of this country at risk, and blindly allow unverified people into the UK?
Let us now talk about a nightmare unfolding right under our noses: one that the Liberal Democrats seem hellbent on making worse. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, 560 adults—grown men with stubble, receding hairlines and years behind them—had the gall to pose as kids, slipping through the cracks until scientific age checks, such as wrist X-rays and dental scans that every sensible European nation uses, caught them red handed and stopped them cold.
The Lib Dems’ new clause 27 would axe those checks and rip out the one tool keeping us from dumping people who are 25 years old or even older into classrooms alongside children. That is not some abstract risk. It has happened and it is real; it means men in their 20s sitting at desks meant for teens, all because we have let sentiment trump science. That would not protect children, but endanger them—a reckless gamble that would turn schools into hunting grounds and parents into nervous wrecks, all so the Lib Dems can pat themselves on the back for being compassionate. If they get their way, every classroom will have a question mark. How many 25-year-olds will slip through before the damage is done?
What do the Liberal Democrats believe should happen if the authorities believe a migrant who is claiming to be under 18 is actually an adult? Do they believe that such people should be placed in schools with schoolchildren? Again, it seems as though the Liberal Democrats want to strip the Government of any power to control who comes to the country. That would see net migration drastically increase.
The issue cuts deeper than policy, however; it is about what people expect, and the Liberal Democrats’ new clause pulls hard against that grain. Voters have signalled what they want loud and clear, with 68%—nearly seven in 10—backing tougher border controls in surveys: a call echoing from Dover to Folkestone, where residents live with the reality of arrivals day by day. That is not a passing opinion; it is a steady demand—rooted in years of debate, from the 2016 Brexit vote to the 2019 landslide—for a system that prioritises their say.
Dame Angela Eagle
I do not know what the hon. Gentleman had for lunch, but perhaps we should find out and get some of it ourselves. We can then all compete with the poet laureate and the virtuoso performance that we have just heard.
I am going to talk about the new clause, however, which is in respect of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire is proposing that numerous sections of the 2022 Act be repealed under the Bill.
I should start by making it clear that we are determined to restore order to the asylum system, so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly, and ensures that the rules are properly enforced. That is a financial necessity to deal with the backlogs that we have inherited—the permit backlog in particular, but also others, especially in the appeals space—so that the costs do not continue to mount up at the expense of the taxpayer. Getting the system moving again is an important part of what we have been doing.
Following the election, the Home Secretary acted rapidly to change the law to remove the retrospective application of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which allowed decision makers to decide asylum claims from individuals who arrived in the UK from 7 March 2023. Previously, there was a ban on that, because of the duty to remove, which was never going to be sensibly put into effect.
I am not going to speak to every section of the Nationality and Borders Act, but the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire wants us to repeal very large chunks of the Act under the new clause. I will mention only a few, and I hope that she will forgive me for not talking about every section.
The introduction of the national age assessment board, for example, in March 2023, relies on a piece of the Nationality and Borders Act that the hon. Lady wishes to repeal. In the interim, since that Act has come into being, we have introduced the national age assessment board and made it available across the country. It continues to offer significant improvement to our processes for assessing age, including creating greater consistency in age assessment practices, which can be very inconsistent in the practical delivery of Merton-compliant assessments in different local authorities—some are more experienced and some better at it than others. The national age assessment board creates a standard and a bar below which it is hard to go. It sets important standards in age assessment, improves quality and ensures that ages are recorded correctly for immigration purposes.
The Nationality and Borders Act also placed protections and support under the Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking in human beings on a legislative footing for the first time in the UK. That includes the right to a recovery period in the national referral mechanism, during which potential victims of modern slavery and trafficking are eligible for support and are protected from removal from the UK. The Act provides the means to disqualify individuals—I suspect that this may be the bit that the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire objects to—from protections or support on the grounds of public order or bad faith. However, that is in line with article 13 of the convention; that part of the Nationality and Borders Act put the convention into UK law. I am surprised she is suggesting that we should remove it.
The Act also sets out the circumstances in which confirmed victims of slavery and trafficking may be granted temporary permission to stay in the UK. The Government will be launching a public consultation, before summer recess, on how we can improve the process of identifying victims of modern slavery. We will provide details on that consultation in due course.
Susan Murray
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This new clause would make provision for leave to enter or remain the UK to be granted to the family members of refugees and of people granted humanitarian protection. Through the clause the Liberal Democrats seek to support refugee family reunion and to help people to integrate into the community, learn the language, make a home and work to contribute to society, exactly as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh discussed.
Matt Vickers
Liberal Democrat new clause 29 requires that within six months of the date on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State should lay before Parliament provision for leave to enter or remain in the UK to be granted to family members of people granted refugee status and of people granted humanitarian protection. In the new clause, family members include: a person’s parent, including adoptive parent; their spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner; and their child or sibling, including their adopted child or adoptive sibling, who is either under 18 or under 25, having been under 18 or unmarried
“at the time the person granted asylum left their country of residence to seek asylum”.
Further, it can be taken to mean
“other persons as the Secretary of State may determine, having regard to…the importance of maintaining family unity…the best interests of a child…the physical, emotional, psychological or financial dependency between a person granted refugee status or humanitarian protection and another person.”
If those provisions were not already incredibly vague, the Liberal Democrats have included a proposal that other persons can be determined by the Secretary of State. That could obviously result in a huge number of spurious claims made by family members who will say that they have a dependency on another person so they must be allowed to come to the UK under the provision. We already have judges completely stretching the definition of “right to family life” under article 8 of the European convention on human rights. The Liberal Democrat clause would be subject to even more abuse.
Beyond the vagueness, new clause 29 risks piling unbearable pressure on an economy already creaking under migration’s weight. Each new family member, however loosely defined, brings costs—in housing, where shortages already top 1.2 million units, in healthcare, with NHS waits stretching past 7 million, and in schools, where 9 million pupils squeeze into overstretched classrooms. The costs of supporting asylum for individuals run into the tens of thousands of pounds. Multiply that by thousands of dependants under this elastic clause, and we are staring at billions more siphoned from taxpayers, who have already seen their council tax spike. The Liberal Democrats do not set a cap; they fling the door open ever wider, ignoring how finite our resources are. Britain’s compassion has no bounds, but its resources certainly do. Our generosity must have limits. New clause 29 pretends otherwise, and working families will foot the bill when the system groans under the strain.
The new clause does not just invite claims; it opens a legal floodgate that could drown our courts in precedent-setting chaos by letting the Secretary of State define “family” on a whim. Whether we are talking about emotional ties or financial need, new clause 29 hands judges a blank slate to scribble ever-wider interpretations, building on the already elastic right to family life under article 8.
We have seen what has happened. As has been mentioned, an Albanian stayed because his son disliked foreign chicken nuggets. A Pakistani offender lingered, citing harshness to his kids. Let us now imagine dozens or hundreds of cases stacking up, each further stretching dependency—cousins, in-laws, distant kins—all cementing new norms that bind future policy. The Lib Dems would not just be tweaking rules; they would be unleashing a judicial snowball that would roll over border control for years to come. “Family unity” sounds noble, but the sprawl under new clause 29 could stall integration in its tracks—a challenge we cannot ignore when one in six UK residents was born abroad. Bringing in broad swathes of dependants, potentially with limited English skills or ties, risks clustering communities inward, not outward.
If we look across the channel, we see that Germany tightened family reunification after 1.1 million arrivals, capping it at 1,000 monthly for refugees’ kin, citing overload. We are not outliers for wanting clarity. Other nations prove it works, yet the Lib Dems chase a boundless model, ignoring how allies balance compassion with capacity, leaving us to pick up the pieces when this experiment fails.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire proposes an amendment that seeks to significantly change the current refugee family reunion policy, and to expand the current eligibility to include siblings, children under the age of 25 and any undefined family member.
The Government fully support the principle of family unity and the need to have provisions under the immigration rules that enable immediate family members to be reunited in the UK when their family life has been disrupted because of conflict or persecution. Accordingly, in recognition of the fact that families can become separated because of the nature of conflict or persecution, and because of the speed or manner in which people may be forced to flee their homes, communities and country, our refugee family reunion policy is extremely important and generous. The route enables those granted a form of protection in the UK to sponsor their partner or child to come to the UK, provided that they formed part of that family unit before they sought protection. Increasing numbers of visas have been granted through this route under the current policy, and indeed under the previous Administration. In 2024, 19,710 people were granted family reunion visas—twice the number in 2023, when around 9,300 visas were granted.
On the specific proposals in the new clause, it should be noted that any expansion of the existing approach without careful thought, including where such an expansion would allow an undefined family member to be brought to the UK, could significantly increase the number of people who qualify to come here, and runs the risk of abuse of those routes. That would have an impact on the taxpayer and could result in further pressures on public services and local authorities, which may have to accommodate and support the new arrivals.
We believe that introducing a rule that allows children to sponsor their relatives would risk creating incentives for more children to be encouraged or even forced, as we know can happen, to leave their families and risk hazardous journeys to the UK across the channel in small boats. That is a serious and legitimate concern regarding the best interests of those children.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
We believe that the right to remain in this country is a privilege, not a right. We also believe that to be able to stay in this country, a person must contribute to this country. As recent research by the Centre for Policy Studies has outlined, there is a risk that many of those coming to this country are either low-paid workers or have dependants who may or may not be working. Those individuals are likely to represent a long-term burden on the country’s finances rather than be net contributors. That sentiment has been reiterated by liberal publications such as The Economist, which only last week said in one of its leaders that
“governments must also learn from the policy mistakes that lend it credibility.”
Tom Hayes
It was remiss of me not to say earlier that I admire the hon. Gentleman’s tie—it is very nice. On the point he raises, I have said consistently that that particular report by the Centre for Policy Studies is flawed. As we move towards the Government’s new net migration White Paper, which will specify how we can bring labour into the country that is skilled only, rather than the low-wage labour that we saw under the previous Administration, there will not be that kind of burden in the future.
Matt Vickers
I aim to please with my tie. The hon. Gentleman can probably attach as much importance to the policy paper as he sees fit, as he does with anything else I might or might not say; it is for him, and for readers of the debate, to determine the value and weight they add to that. Another proposal we have put forward is on salary thresholds and what someone should be earning in order to remain in this country. I think that is a big deal; I will go on to outline why I think it is important, but yes—it is a big deal.
As I was saying, The Economist said only last week in one of its leaders that
“governments must also learn from the policy mistakes that lend it credibility. It was foolish to admit lots of newcomers without liberalising housing markets. Also, since migration flows to rich countries cannot be unlimited, it makes sense to favour highly skilled economic migrants over lower-skilled ones nearly all the time. Arguments for low-skilled migration built around supposed labour shortages are flawed.”
Interestingly, in countries outside the UK, research has shown the importance of income in long-term migration. A report in the Netherlands, which used detailed microdata on fiscal contributions and benefits to the entire population to calculate the discounted lifetime net contribution of the immigrant population present in 2016, was published in December 2024 and concluded:
“If the parents make a strongly negative net contribution, the second generation usually lags behind considerably as well. Therefore, the adage ‘it will all work out with the second generation’ does not hold true. High fiscal costs of immigrants are not that much caused by high absorption of government expenditures but rather by low contributions to taxes and social security premiums. We also find evidence for a strong relationship of average net contributions by country with cultural distance, even after controlling for average education and the cito-distribution-effect.”
Although we should acknowledge that the Netherlands is a different country with its own unique systems and that its situation does not necessarily apply to the UK, the finding highlights the need to examine the impact of migration decisions in comparable nations. New clause 32 takes steps to do that, ensuring that migrants contribute to our economy.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
This is a very different hon. Member for Stockton West speaking now from the one who spoke last week, when he spoke against and voted against the Liberal Democrat amendment to allow and encourage asylum seekers to work so that they could benefit our economy. Does he not remember last week? Where was his concern for the taxpayer then?
Matt Vickers
I would suggest that that is quite a creative interpretation of last week’s events. This debate is about what people contribute when they are legally able to, rather than creating anything that would draw more people to make that crossing and to turn up in this country.
New clause 32 would revoke indefinite leave to remain in certain circumstances: that a person
“is defined as a ‘foreign criminal’ under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007”;
that the person
“was granted indefinite leave to remain after the coming into force of this Act,”
but has not spent 10 years resident in the UK;
that the person or their dependants
“have been in receipt of any form of ‘social protection’…from HM Government or a local authority”;
or that the person’s
“annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period, or subsequent to receiving indefinite leave to remain.”
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing, because it is a cornerstone of this proposal and speaks volumes about who we are as a nation and what we stand for when the chips are down: anyone who has entered this country under the carefully crafted, well-designed and wholly principled safe and legal routes—those lifelines that we have extended through the Ukraine scheme, the British nationals overseas scheme or the Afghan schemes—would find themselves entirely exempt from the rigours of new clause 32, and rightly so. Those schemes are not just policies, but promises; they are solemn commitments that speak to our national character, and we stand by those we have pledged to protect.
Let us think of the more than 200,000 Ukrainians welcomed since 2022, fleeing Putin’s bombs—families clutching what they had, offered sanctuary through the Ukraine family scheme and Homes for Ukraine.
Chris Murray
Looking at the proposals set out in this new clause, how exactly is the hon. Gentleman proposing to calculate the £38,700? Is software available in the Home Office or in His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? What if someone was found to have overpaid taxes after they were found not to meet the amount? Would the Home Office go and find them overseas and bring them back? This proposal sounds absurdly unworkable.
Matt Vickers
Lots of processes are in place, but we are putting down a principle. It is the same as the skilled worker visa threshold of £38,700. We have to set a line that requires people to be self-sufficient and not a drain on resources. This is the line that we are setting.
There are also Hongkongers. By 2025, nearly 180,000 British national overseas visa holders had escaped Beijing’s iron grip—huge British talent. More than 20,000 Afghans have been resettled since the Kabul airlift. Those were the right things to do, and we would exempt them from this proposal. These are not random arrivals; they are people we invited, whose stories of sacrifice and loyalty resonate with the values that we hold dear, from duty to decency. We would not renege on those commitments and tarnish the trust that we have built.
Let us cast our eyes across the globe, because other nations are not just theorising about this; they are proving that it works, day in, day out, with systems that do not just talk a good game but deliver tangible, measurable results that we would be foolish to overlook. Take Australia, a land of vast horizons and sharper borders, whose points-based residency system does not mess around. If someone is pulling in less than 53,900 Australian dollars—£28,000—and they are dipping into welfare, Australia will show them the door, an approach that is saving taxpayers billions.
These are not quirky outliers or flukes; they are lessons carved in policy stone and shining examples that tying status to contribution is not some pie-in-the-sky dream but a practical, proven playbook that delivers real savings and sharper borders, and stands up to scrutiny. New clause 32 lifts straight from that script, making £38,700 the line in the sand, with no benefits to lean on and no criminal record to tarnish the deal. It is not radical; it is road-tested, and echoes what works elsewhere on the globe.
Critics might cry, “Unworkable!” but the conditions in new clause 32 are trackable. HMRC already logs income for tax. The Home Office flags criminals under the UK Borders Act 2007, and the Department for Work and Pensions tracks benefits down to the penny. We are not reinventing the wheel—just syncing data to enforce the rules, with £38,700 as a clear line, 10 years as a fair test, and exemptions for the Ukraine, Afghan and British national overseas schemes, showing that we can tailor it.
This is a framework that says, “If you’re here for the long haul, you’ve got to bring something to the table, not just pull up a seat.” Australia and Canada have shown us the path with lower costs and tighter controls; we would be stupid not to take it. I would like to know why the Government would disagree with the principles behind the new clause. Why do the Government want foreign criminals to remain in the UK with indefinite leave to remain? If the Government believe in the £38,700 amount for skilled workers to obtain a visa, why would that not apply to people remaining in the UK indefinitely?
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I was not going to speak to the new clause; I was just going to let the hon. Gentleman drone on, in the hope that we could possibly get away on Thursday morning, but I have been irked to my feet. I am not sure whether I prefer the new loquacious hon. Member for Stockton West. I do not know what he has done about his speechwriting, but I preferred the version that we had last week. That was probably more in keeping with the Conservatives’ contributions to this Committee.
This is a horrible new clause, which penalises lower-income workers, deters skilled immigration and harms vulnerable groups. The retrospective nature of some of the provisions is simply absurd, and would lead only to legal challenges and all sorts of administrative complications. The new clause would introduce retrospective punishments, taking ILR away from individuals who had received it under the previous rules simply because a future Government—thank goodness this will never be so—had later decided to raise the bar. People make long-term decisions to buy homes, raise families and contribute to communities based on the stability of ILR. Changing the rules after the fact destroys trust in the whole system.
The proposal sets an arbitrary income threshold of £38,700, meaning that a nurse, teacher or social worker—people the UK depends on—could lose their ILR. Many industries, including healthcare, hospitality and retail have workers earning below that level. Are we really saying that under no circumstances would they be welcome? The proposal also ignores economic realities. People face job losses, illness or temporary hardships. Should losing a job also mean losing the right to live in the UK?
New clause 32 states that ILR should be revoked if a person has received any sort of “social protection”, including housing support. This would punish people who have worked hard and contributed but who need temporary support due to circumstances often beyond their control. It targets families, disabled people and those facing financial hardship, effectively saying, “If you need help, you don’t belong here.” Skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs want certainty. If they fear that a downturn in income or a short period of hardship could see them lose their right to remain, they will choose other countries over the UK.
As we have also heard, how can this be enforced? Constantly monitoring ILR-holders’ income, benefits and job status would be an administrative disaster; it would be costly, error prone and unfairly target individuals. This new clause is simply cruel. It is unnecessary and unworkable, and I hope that it is rejected out of hand.
Matt Vickers
We feel strongly about the measures in the new clause, and we wish to press it to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 33 aims to help the Government by providing a way to put securing our borders above spurious human rights claims to frustrate removal. It would disapply the entire Human Rights Act 1998, as well as any interim measures of the Strasbourg court that prevent the effective operation of legislation relating to immigration and deportation. The result would be that those seeking to appeal deportation or other immigration decisions would not be able to make human rights claims under the Human Rights Act in British courts.
The new clause would apply that new power to all aspects of immigration control, including enforcement, deportation, the granting or removal of immigration and asylum status, and any other immigration entitlements. We would expect Parliament to legislate and the Home Office to decide immigration cases based on their reasonable interpretation of the European convention on human rights, but UK judges would be able to use only UK law passed by Parliament to decide appeals, and no longer make expansive and common-sense-defying interpretations of what they claim the ECHR means.
The Human Rights Act would still apply to non-immigration matters, so UK judges could continue to apply the ECHR directly to them. We would still be under the ECHR, so applicants would still be able to go to the Strasbourg court, but the new clause would stop UK judges expanding the definitions. In that scenario, it would be possible to deport people pending a Strasbourg appeal, and it would repeat the measure in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 to give Ministers the power to ignore an ECHR rule 39 interim order. We are not saying that the new clause provides the full answer to controlling our borders. Wider questions such as ECHR membership and wider immigration system reforms are to be addressed in longer-term pieces of work, but the new clause would be a step in the right direction.
The reason the new clause is necessary can be seen in recent decisions about immigration appeals. For example, an Iraqi drug dealer was saved from deportation from the UK after a judge ruled that he was too westernised to be returned to his home country. That man, who was jailed for more than five years after a conviction for dealing cocaine, had lived in Britain for 24 years and has a British-born daughter. Home Office officials attempted to have him deported, but a specialist judge in the asylum tribunal ruled that returning the man to Iraq would violate his human rights as he would be viewed with suspicion. The judge said that the man, who cannot be named, would face persecution in Iraq because he would be seen as westernised.
As we have already mentioned, an Albanian criminal was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son would not eat foreign chicken nuggets. An immigration tribunal ruled that it would be unduly harsh for the 10-year-old boy to be forced to move to Albania with his father, owing to his sensitivity around food. The sole example provided to the court was his distaste for the type of chicken nuggets available abroad.
Chris Murray
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could just assume that we are familiar with those two cases by now and either not bother citing them or think of some new examples to support his arguments.
Matt Vickers
I think they are relevant; they are things that both the public and I are bothered about. They show the failings of the system and why people are so concerned about the way that it is going.
As a result, the judge allowed the father’s appeal against deportation as a breach of his right to family life under the European convention on human rights, citing the impact that his removal might have on his son. An attempt to deport a Sri Lankan paedophile, who was convicted of assaulting three teenage boys, was delayed over claims that deportation would breach his human rights.
Matt Vickers
I am concerned about the consequences of the Human Rights Act for cases such as this and its role therein.
Matt Vickers
I am concerned, in the context of this new clause, about what the Human Rights Act means for these immigration cases. That is why the new clause proposes to remove its impact and disapply it.
Tom Hayes
I am still not very clear—I apologise, maybe I ate too much at lunch. Does the hon. Gentleman have issues with the Human Rights Act such that he believes that we ought not to be applying it generally? Is this the first step towards its disapplication, or is he more concerned that, while the legislation is fine, we have in what seems a minority of cases judges who are not applying it correctly? Could he also tell me whether what he has here is a snapshot of cases that he is concerned about or the totality of cases that he is concerned about?
Matt Vickers
We have talked about the relevance of disapplying the Human Rights Act with regards to immigration and the impact that it is having on these cases. I think I have been clear, and the hon. Gentleman can read Hansard.
As I was saying, the man was jailed for five offences of sexual activity with a child but has been able to stay in Britain since 2011, owing to a protracted dispute over his asylum case. In 2012, the man, who cannot be named, was branded in court a “danger to the community” over his offences against boys aged between 13 and 15. He then applied for asylum by claiming that his life would be at risk were he to return to Sri Lanka, because he is gay. Since his initial application, his case has been through several court hearings, as judges have assessed whether deporting the 50-year-old would breach his human rights. Those are just three examples of how ever-expanding interpretations of the Human Rights Act have been increasingly frustrating the removal of those who objectively ought to be deported.
Matt Vickers
I think if we allowed first-tier tribunals to go public, we would see a lot more. These things undermine public confidence in the legal framework and the institutions that uphold them, and I think they are terribly wrong. One of these cases is one too many. They are happening in ever-increasing numbers; that is why we have tabled this new clause, and the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to vote for it or otherwise.
Our new clause represents a first step to restore some common sense to immigration appeals. New clause 33 steps up to wrest back control from a judiciary that has wandered far from the reservation, turning the Human Rights Act into a sprawling, open-ended blank cheque for immigration status, a carte blanche that has left us all scratching our heads at the sheer audacity of it.
Tom Hayes
That is also a helpful clarification, because the hon. Gentleman’s concern is with the judiciary and its behaviours. Can I clarify what he has just said, exactly as I heard it: his concern is purely about the judge’s application of the Human Rights Act, and he himself is absolutely fine with the Act?
Matt Vickers
We allow our domestic courts to use it. We have created the framework and put it in place, and they do what they can with what is in front of them. I am concerned about the way in which it is applied, and we need to change that if we want to impact the outcomes of those cases and appeals.
Last year alone, we saw far too many appeals built on article 8, the right to a family life, flooding courts with ridiculously broad pleas. This Parliament is elected to decide the laws of the land. Judges are there to uphold that law, yet they have morphed into border gatekeepers, perched on high and second-guessing Home Office decisions with interpretations so elastic they would snap any thread of reason, and family life ballooning to mean whatever they fancy on any given day. The new clause yanks that power back to where it belongs: with MPs, who are answerable to the people who elect them.
New clause 33 is not just a legal tweak; it is a turbocharge for a deportation system bogged down by endless appeals, with removals stalled by Human Rights Act challenges. Each case drags on, costing tens of thousands of pounds per detainee in legal fees and housing, and clogging up detention centres that are already at capacity. Disapplying the Human Rights Act for immigration would fix the logjam, letting Ministers and officials act fast, deporting those our domestic legislation was created to deport and freeing up resources for border patrols and visa processing, which actually keep us secure.
New clause 33 would restore public safety—a lifeline for a priority that has been fraying at the edges and unravelling thread by thread, as dangerous individuals exploit Human Rights Act loopholes to cling to our soil like barnacles on a ship. In 2024 alone, thousands of foreign national offenders—thieves, drug peddlers and worse—languished in UK prisons, costing taxpayers millions to house. Nowhere near enough were bundled on to planes and removed, leaving thousands to stroll out post their sentence, free to roam our streets, because of Human Rights Act claims tying our hands and deviating from Parliament’s intended outcomes.
New clause 33 would cut through that mess. It would mean swift, no-nonsense removal of those who have shattered our laws—not endless hand-wringing debates over some nebulous right to stay that keeps them loitering in our towns. Public opinion, or the view of British law-abiding taxpayers, is clear—nearly three quarters call for foreign criminals to be removed—yet here we are. The current set-up lets threats fester when they should be gone. As the months go by, more of these bizarre judgments emerge, undermining public confidence in the entire system and our legal institutions.
Let us take a tour beyond our shores, because other nations are not fumbling in the dark; they are lighting the way, showing us that this is not some wild, radical leap but a steady, proven path that we would be daft not to tread. For starters, France increased its deportations by 27%, and is also seen to be deftly side-stepping ECHR interim measures, with domestic law overrides. Twenty-seven per cent. sent home—no faffing about with Strasbourg rule 39 edicts; just a clear-eyed focus on keeping France’s borders taut and its streets secure.
Then there is Australia, where the Migration Act does not blink. Rights claims bow to border control, and many are whisked out yearly with minimal fuss. The law, created by those elected to do so, determines who stays and who goes. These are not rogue states; they are democracies—proud and pragmatic, balancing security with sovereignty. New clause 33 strides right into that company. Parliament would lay down the law, not Strasbourg’s fleeting winds, echoing what has clicked abroad, from Paris to Perth.
I would be interested in the Minister’s thoughts on this proposal—in particular, whether she thinks that some of the recent examples of failed deportations are acceptable. We are apparently very familiar with chicken nugget-gate. If she agrees that some of these outcomes are unacceptable but does not feel that this approach is the way forwards, how will the Government end these cases, which are making a mockery of our justice system and undermining public confidence in our legal institutions?
Pete Wishart
I am compelled again to rise in opposition to what is probably the most egregious of all the new clauses that we are having to consider in today’s marshalled groups. The hon. Gentleman has laid some competition before us, but this new clause is by far the most disgraceful and appalling. The Human Rights Act is an important guarantee. It is what makes us good world citizens and provides rights that are universal. It protects fundamental freedoms such as the right to life, the prohibition on torture and the right to a fair trial—and the Tories do not like it one bit. The right-wing nonsense that we heard from the hon. Gentleman is a fundamental departure from the principle that human rights apply universally, not just to those the Government deem worthy. It is a dangerous precedent that undermines the UK’s long-standing commitment to justice, fairness and the rule of law.
Dame Angela Eagle
I am not sure how much of the debate we could have heard, Dr Murrison, had you made that observation at the beginning of it.
I do not think this Government wish to join Belarus and Russia among those who are not signed up to the European Court of Human Rights. The Government are fully committed to the protection of human rights. When we talk about human rights, that means all people who are human: everybody, applied universally.
As the Prime Minister has made clear, the United Kingdom is unequivocally committed to the European convention on human rights. The Human Rights Act is an important part of our constitutional arrangements and fundamental to human rights protections in the UK. To start taking those away on a bit-by-bit basis, particularly beginning with people who are very unpopular and have done difficult or bad things, could be the start of a very slippery slope if we are not careful. That is why I am proud that our Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has printed on its front cover that it is compatible with convention rights. This Government will always do things that are compatible with convention rights.
The paradox of some of what has been said in the debate we have just had is that it politicises decisions. That is a very different approach to judicial issues from the one we have seen for very many years, where, in effect, a lot of the powers on particular issues that used to sit with the Home Secretary have been taken by judges who are publicly accountable for their decisions. I do not think that this Government would want to see that reversed. The paradox of new clause 33 is that all those who potentially had a human rights claim, whatever their circumstances, could go straight to the Strasbourg court, which would clog up that court. As the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire pointed out, that is not taking back control, it is abrogating it, and would flood the Strasbourg court with decisions that could have sensibly been taken here.
That is not to say that any one of us would not be frustrated by particular individual decisions, but I caution against using decisions that have been only partially covered or talked about on the front pages of The Daily Telegraph, which often takes decisions in cases out of context. We have talked a lot about chicken nuggets, and I would just put on the record that that case is being appealed, and judicial activities on that case have not yet finished.
With that commitment to human rights and European convention rights, I hope that Opposition Members will think about some of the potential consequences of what they are suggesting in chopping up human rights and wanting to put us in the same company as Belarus and Russia; about the way convention rights were developed; and about the benefits that adhering to human rights frameworks has given us as a democracy over the years.
Matt Vickers
I am sure that the Minister must disagree with some of the examples that we have seen, and agree that they undermine public trust in the judiciary, legal institutions and the frameworks we have. What is the solution? Must we grin and bear the appalling outcomes of those cases or is there a solution? How does she propose to stop such things happening?
Dame Angela Eagle
I would respectfully say that the hon. Gentleman’s party had many, many years to think of a solution, and most of the cases that Opposition Members have raised today had their genesis in the years that they were in power. Close to the very end, as they became more and more frustrated, they started coming up with more and more outlandish approaches.
Obviously, one wants the entire judicial process to be used, as speedily as possible, and if the Home Office wishes to appeal a particular case, it will do so. We keep a constant eye on the issues and we think about reforms that we could make. Obviously the hon. Gentleman will be the first to hear if we decide to make changes, but we do not wish to abrogate from the Human Rights Act, the ECHR and the human rights framework. That is where we and other Opposition parties differ from him and his party. That is why I do not accept new clause 33 and I hope that the Committee will vote against it if it is pressed to a vote.
Matt Vickers
The public are appalled by these cases. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire does not want us to change legal frameworks over chicken nuggets: if the Human Rights Act creates a situation in which criminals, rapists and paedophiles are able to stay against domestic law and the intentions of the people charged with making that law, it is unacceptable. We feel strongly about this and wish to divide on the matter.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 42—Removals from the United Kingdom: visa penalties for uncooperative countries—
“(1) The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 70, omit subsections (4) and (5).
(3) In
(4) In section 72—
(a) subsection (1), after ‘A country’, for ‘may’ substitute ‘must’.
(b) In subsection (1)(a) omit ‘and’ and insert—
‘or,
(ab) is not cooperating in relation to the verification of identity or status of individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country, and’
(c) in subsection (1)(b), after ‘citizens of the country’ insert ‘or individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country’,
(d) omit subsections (2) and (3), and
(e) in subsection (4), omit from ‘70’ to after ‘subsection (1)(a)’ .
(5) Omit section 74.”—(Matt Vickers.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not cooperating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status.
Matt Vickers
Currently a prison sentence of one year is required before a foreign national who is a convicted criminal can be deported. Even then, removal can be frustrated by asylum and human rights claims. New clause 34 would prevent a foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK, as well as anyone who has been charged with or convicted of an immigration offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, and would disapply the Human Rights Act from those cases. We believe that the protection of British citizens is paramount and should be the overriding priority for Government. If a foreign national has been convicted of any offence, they should lose their right to remain in the UK.
Dame Angela Eagle
On that point we agree, so why was his Government so tardy at actually deporting foreign national offenders when they were in office?
Matt Vickers
We have just had a lengthy discussion about the Human Rights Act and the impact it has on deportations. However, if she agrees so wholeheartedly on the principle, I am sure she might consider backing our amendment.
There are a number of countries where the UK has a significant number of foreign national offenders currently serving in British prisons. However, we deport only a small number of those foreign national offenders each quarter. Our new clause 42 would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not co-operating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status. We have done this by amending the Nationality and Borders Act, so that the ability to impose visa sanctions is not discretionary but mandatory. We know that there are countries that are hard to secure returns to. We believe strongly that that should not be without consequences for those countries.
New clause 34 shifts the lens to where it belongs—on the victims left in the wake of foreign offenders, not the perpetrators gaming the system. In 2024, theft offences alone averaged just 8.1 months—a shopkeeper’s livelihood dented, a pensioner’s purse snatched, or a family’s peace of mind and sense of security destroyed. Public order crimes averaged just 9.6 months, with more huge consequences for the wellbeing of victims who are left with a fear of entering public spaces or unable to go about their ordinary lives. Yet the one year deportation bar enables those culprits to linger, post-sentence, free to reoffend while victims wait for justice that never comes.
This clause says, “Enough.” Any conviction, for shoplifting or worse, triggers removal—no Human Rights Act excuses—because every day a foreign offender is allowed to stay is another day a British victim’s trust in the system erodes. Why are the Government okay with that shadow hanging over our streets? New clause 42 would force nations to play ball uphill. We see too many countries dither and delay in refusing to take back offenders. Mandatory visa sanctions flip that script. No co-operation, no UK visas for their elite. Watch fast how passports materialise when there are real consequences. Why is Labour soft-pedalling when we could wield this stick, clear the backlog and reduce pressure on prison places?
Katie Lam
New clause 34 prevents any foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that immigration never makes the British public any less safe. Unfortunately, however, many of those who have come to the UK in recent years have broken our laws. According to Ministry of Justice figures, a staggering 23% of sexual crimes in the UK—almost one in four—are committed by foreign nationals.
The overall imprisonment rate for foreign nationals is 20% higher than that for British citizens. Of course, the trend is not uniform: some nationalities are more heavily represented than others. Albanian migrants are nearly 17 times more likely to be imprisoned than average; those from Algeria are nearly nine times more likely and those from Jamaica nearly eight times more likely to be imprisoned than average.
Those who seek to harm this country, to break its laws and to undermine what we hold to be fair and right should not be allowed to remain here. As the Government are well aware, our prisons are already overcrowded. We must not allow foreign criminals to continue exacerbating this problem and we must not endanger the British public by allowing foreign criminals to stay in this country.
Under our current system, too many of those who break our laws are being allowed to remain in the UK. Often, Home Office attempts to deport foreign criminals are blocked because of absurd and ever expanding human rights rules. In the interests of public safety, we must not allow foreign criminals to remain in Britain; that includes by making sure that the Human Rights Act cannot be used to prevent us from deporting those who break our laws.
How, specifically, does new clause 34 do that? It amends section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, which we have already mentioned today. Section 32 would be amended from its current form, which defines a foreign criminal as a person who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen, who is convicted of an offence that takes place in the United Kingdom and who is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of least 12 months, or is a serious criminal as defined in section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. What would replace section 32 would be much simpler; it would instead say that a foreign criminal was anyone who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen who is convicted of any offence in the United Kingdom, and explicitly include within that anybody who has been charged with or convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which sets out the situations in which a person can be considered to have entered this country illegally. That includes if they do so in breach of a deportation order; if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly came here without that leave; or if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly stayed here beyond the time conferred by that leave, among other specific conditions.
New clause 34 also seeks to ensure that the rules will be upheld in all circumstances and asserts therefore that the principle of removing criminals from this country is of utmost importance and must be prioritised above other legislation. That includes human rights legislation, for the reasons we have already set out.
I turn to new clause 42, which requires the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country proves to be unco-operative in the process of removing any of its nationals or citizens from the UK. Such a lack of co-operation may arise in verifying their identity or status or it may pertain to the process of removing people whose identity and status has not been established. New clause 42 seeks to do that by amending section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. That Act set out the idea of a visa penalty provision, effectively allowing the Home Secretary to suspend visa applications from countries that do not co-operate with the activity that the Government are trying to take to secure and protect the border. The new clause would strengthen that Act by changing that from an option for the Home Secretary to a duty and by adding explicitly the point about countries that are not co-operating with the process of verifying the identity or status of individuals whom we consider likely to be nationals or citizens of the countries in question.
Matt Vickers
We wish to divide on new clause 34.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 39—Restrictions on visas and grants of indefinite leave to remain—
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must by immigration rules provide for all visa grants, including spousal visas, to be conditional on the following—
(a) the requirement that the applicant or their dependents will not apply for any form of ‘social protection’ (including housing) from the UK Government or a local authority, where ‘social protection’ is defined according to the Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, subject to any further definition by immigration rules,
(b) the requirement that the applicant’s annual income must not fall below £38,700 (or six months or more in aggregate) during the relevant qualification period.
(2) Immigration Rules made under subsection (1) must ensure that any breach of the conditions set out in that subsection will render void any visa previously granted.
(3) The Secretary of State is not permitted to grant leave outside the immigration rules or immigration acts.
(4) A person is not eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom if any of the following conditions apply.
(5) Condition 1 is that a person is a ‘foreign criminal’ under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007.
(6) Condition 2 is that a person, or any of their dependents, has been in receipt of any form of ‘social protection’ (including housing) from the UK Government or a local authority, where ‘social protection’ is defined according to the Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, subject to any further definition by immigration rules.
(7) Condition 3 is that a person’s annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period.
(8) A person who has entered the United Kingdom—
(a) under the Ukraine visa schemes;
(b) under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme;
(c) under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy; or
(d) on a British National Overseas visa,
is exempt from the requirements of Condition 2 and Condition 3.
(9) For the purposes of subsections (1)(b) and (7)—
(a) the condition applies only to earnings that have been lawfully reported to, or subject to withholding tax by, HM Revenue and Customs; and
(b) the relevant sum of annual income must be adjusted annually by the Secretary of State through immigration rules to reflect inflation.
(10) The Secretary of State may by immigration rules make further provision varying these conditions, including by way of transitional provisions.”
This new clause would place certain minimum restrictions on the granting of visas or indefinite leave to remain. It would require migrants to be self-sufficient and do not require state benefits, and would deny ILR to foreign criminals.
New clause 40—Cap on number of entrants—
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must make regulations specifying the total maximum number of persons who may enter the United Kingdom annually across all non-visitor visa routes, with such regulations subject to approval by both Houses.
(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations also specify a maximum number of entrants for individual visa routes, subject to the overall total.
(3) No visas may be issued in excess of the total maximum number specified in subsection (1).
(4) Any visas issued in excess of the number specified in subsection (1) must be revoked.”
This new clause would provide a mechanism for a binding annual cap on the number of non-visitor visas issued by the UK.
Matt Vickers
New clause 35 would require the Secretary of State to specify a cap on the number of spouses or civil partners who may enter the UK and on the number who may enter from any one country. It would also amend the immigration rules to set a salary threshold. We know that there is abuse of the current provisions that allow spouses or civil partners to come to the UK. Our amendment is designed to tighten up the rules so as to make abuse less likely.
We believe that it is important for the Secretary of State to set a cap for the number of people who can enter the UK as a spouse or civil partner, and that the number of persons from any one country who enter as a spouse or civil partner of a sponsor should not exceed 7% of the maximum number specified. We seek to tighten up that route to entering the UK by ensuring that the applicant provides evidence that the parties under subsection (9)(a) were married or formed a civil partnership at least two years prior to the application; that each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as spouse or civil partner, and the marriage or civil partnership is subsisting; that the salary of the person who has a right to abode in the UK, or indefinite leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, equals or exceeds £38,700 per year; and that people cannot sponsor their first cousins under this route.
We believe those changes are necessary to ensure that the relationship is genuine and subsisting, and that the sponsor is able to support their partner once they arrive in the UK. That is part of ensuring that we treat living in this country as a privilege, not a right, and that those coming to the UK to live will contribute to our country.
New clause 39 would place restrictions on the granting of visas and indefinite leave to remain. That is another change to achieve our objective that those who come to the UK are able to contribute. The new clause would ensure that visas were granted only where an applicant or their dependants will not apply for any form of social protection, including housing from the UK Government or a local authority, and where the applicant’s annual income will not fall below £38,700 during the relevant qualification period. If either of those conditions fails to be met, the visa will be revoked.
The new clause also specifies that a person cannot qualify for indefinite leave to remain if they are a “foreign criminal” under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007; if they or any of their dependants have been in receipt of any form of social protection from the UK Government or local authority; or if their annual income has fallen below £38,700 for six months or more in aggregate during the relevant qualification period. The new clause would not apply to those who have come to the UK through the Ukraine, Afghan or British national overseas schemes.
New clause 40 would introduce some accountability for this place in the overall numbers of migrants coming to the UK per year. It would establish a mechanism whereby Parliament would approve a binding cap on all non-visitor visa routes set out by the Secretary of State. We believe it is important that the House seriously considers the benefits and trade-offs to this country. The new clause is designed to give the House greater accountability for that decision.
New clauses 35 and 39 would build a wall against the quiet epidemic of immigration fraud that has been seeping through our spousal and visa routes—think of sham marriages brokered for £10,000 a pop, or visa overstayers masked by flimsy claims of support. The two-year marriage rule, the £38,700 threshold and the “no first cousin” clause are not just hurdles; they are detectors rooting out paper partnerships before they drain us dry.
The new clauses would anchor immigration to a bedrock of self-reliance, because a Britain that thrives does not prop up newcomers who cannot stand alone. In new clause 35, the £38,700 sponsor salary, which matches that for the skilled worker route, would ensure that thousands of spousal entrants yearly would not tip the welfare scales further. New clause 39 would double down, barring visas and indefinite leave to remain for anyone who dips below that level or taps social housing, for which 1.2 million people are already waiting. This is not exclusion; it is economics, tilting the balance towards those who lift us, not those who lean on us.
New clause 40 is not just a cap; it hands the House the reins of our migration system. The new clause would make Parliament the arbiter, through a binding cap debated here, voted on here, owned here and on which we are fully held to account by the electorate.
Katie Lam
There are few things in life and in human nature more powerful than the desire to be with those we love. To be separated from a husband or wife by a national border is no small thing. Indeed, for those it is happening to, it can feel like everything. But the role of Government is to determine what is right for the country, not for any one person, couple or family. We must place this discussion in its national context. For too long immigration has been too high, and the spousal visa route is increasingly being used by those who would otherwise not be able to come to Britain.
Over the past few years we have seen the number of dependent visas balloon. As of December 2024, 51,000 migrants, bringing 130,000 dependants with them, had come to Britain via the health and social care route over the previous year. That is over 2.5 dependants per health and social care worker—dependants who will access public services in their own right, including our already overstretched NHS. The dependant route for health and social care visa holders has since been restricted, but I mention it because it indicates the huge level of demand and desire there is for family members to come to Britain.
Matt Vickers
We think it is right that there should be limits on the number of people who can arrive here as a spouse or partner, a requirement on those bringing people to be able to support themselves, and a cap on the number of people entering the country. We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is vital to giving immigration enforcement the powers it needs to smash the gangs and tackle any criminality surrounding those who arrive here illegally. It would give immigration enforcement access to asylum accommodation centres. Currently, there are limitations around the detention of those arriving illegally on small boats. These limitations arise from a lack of statutory power, as well as a lack of state capacity to detain those arriving illegally.
In government, the Conservative Administration set up accommodation centres, which provided a plausible alternative to hotels. Because the centres were not used to make immigration decisions, in practice immigration enforcement officers did not find it possible to enter them for the purposes of examining, arresting and detaining persons residing therein for the purposes of refusal and removal.
Tony Smith, the former director general of UK Border Force, has powerfully argued that immigration enforcement teams must have clear authority to enter all places where asylum seekers are residing to examine, interview, arrest or detain them as appropriate. The Opposition agree wholeheartedly, for these would be proportionate powers for the state to use to enforce the law. Currently, centres housing thousands of small boat arrivals are not detention hubs. Instead, they are in effect halfway houses between the point of processing and where decisions can be made. Consequently, there is a substantial asylum backlog, which has created bottlenecks in the system. This is simply inadequate for everyone involved. It cannot continue, and it must stop.
The new clause therefore tries to end this predicament and failure in the system. Enforcement cannot be allowed to be bereft of action, unable to chase absconders who vanish into the ether without a trace. We need to empower officers to go into these sites to interview, arrest and detain where appropriate. That would allow faster decisions, faster refusals and quicker removals. The clause would not only mean a more efficient system that saves hardworking taxpayers’ money, but help decimate the business model of the people-smuggling trade. In just the last two years, traffickers have accumulated hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds in profit. We all know the tragic consequences of people who have made this life-threatening journey.
We must, at all costs, undermine the business model of the people smugglers. That is the truly compassionate thing to do, so I am proud to support clause 36 because it eliminates gaps in our asylum enforcement system, ends centres being off limits and hence makes it much more difficult for people to get lost in the system. So we have to act, and act now. As such, clause 36 appears to be common sense, allowing our enforcement agencies the access that the average person would probably assume they already have. Does the Minister think an amendment or power such as this would be of operational benefit to immigration enforcement, and if not, why not?
Pete Wishart
I do not want to detain the Committee for long with this amendment, but this is just another abhorrent amendment from the warped imagination of the Conservative party. I do not know where they come up with things like this. They would have to be very creative and very cruel to propose something quite like this. The amendment would allow immigration enforcement officers to visit accommodation centres at any time without prior notice. Asylum seekers and other residents at these centres are often fleeing persecution, war and violence and will have suffered severe trauma. The constant threat of unannounced visits from immigration enforcement will create an atmosphere of fear, making it even more difficult for individuals to feel safe.
Allowing immigration enforcement to visit any resident at any time is a clear violation of privacy. It undermines their dignity and wellbeing and could lead to harassment or increased surveillance, further marginalising already vulnerable populations. Vulnerable individuals should not be made to feel constantly watched or threatened by authorities, especially when they are seeking safety and stability. The presence of immigration enforcement officers may discourage asylum seekers and migrants from seeking support or reporting issues of abuse, exploitation or trafficking. All this could do is undermine the very support structures designed to help individuals rebuild their lives in the UK.
The amendment lacks any clear safeguards or accountability mechanisms for how immigration enforcement would operate, and I urge the Committee to reject it. I hope it rejects the rest of the Conservative party’s amendments, too.
Matt Vickers
I think the public will be stunned to hear that immigration enforcement officers have challenges in accessing asylum accommodation centres, as outlined by Tony Smith, the former director general of UK Border Force. We will therefore seek to press the new clause to a vote.
Dame Angela Eagle
The new clause talks about accommodation centres, which do not exist. What does the hon. Gentleman mean by accommodation centres?
Matt Vickers
We have had provision for accommodation centres. We have had accommodation centres.
Matt Vickers
I know there are 8,500 more in hotels now, but this was a measure that was put in place to reduce that hotel dependency, to stop us increasing the number of people in those hotels by 29%.
Dame Angela Eagle
I want to put something on the record before we vote. There is a specific meaning in law for the phrase “accommodation centres” under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Since that law was passed, no Government have actually stood up accommodation centres under that specific meaning. Therefore, the shadow Minister in his new clause 36 is asking for powers to enter something that does not exist.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and the Asylum Support Regulations 2000 enable asylum seekers to obtain housing and funds to support themselves while they wait to find out whether they will get asylum. Their children can attend state schools and they are entitled to NHS care. We know that asylum seekers crossing the channel in small boats are often given bail and provided with asylum support. Those with no UK address will be allocated asylum housing, or placed in asylum hotels or accommodation centres. The National Audit Office has estimated that the cost of this to the taxpayer was around £4.7 billion in 2023-24.
Matt Vickers
We have had many alternative means of accommodation, including hotels. Accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels is through the roof—it is up 29%, with 8,500 more people staying in them—but the situation I am describing applies more widely than any accommodation centre or hotel.
The £4.7 billion tab for 2023-24 covered beds, meals and NHS visits while the backlog ballooned.
Chris Murray
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that number has “ballooned”—or gone up highly—not just in the aggregate but per asylum seeker? The hon. Gentleman wants to try to charge people, but his party let the system get completely out of control. Maybe it was the backlog that let it get out of control, rather than the kind of hotels that people were staying in.
Matt Vickers
The reality is that somebody is getting charged for it and paying for it, and at the moment that is the Great British public. There are ballooning costs. There are increasing numbers: illegal arrivals are up 28% since the election, there are 29% more people in hotels, and fewer of the people who arrive illegally are being removed. The number goes up, the cost continues to go up, and somebody has to pick up the tab. Making the person repay those costs once they are working—with, say, £10,000 over a decade—could claw back hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is not small change: it is classrooms built, potholes filled and nurses hired. Why are the Government content to let this sinkhole drain us dry when we could balance the books with a system that asks those who are successful to pay back some of these costs?
In his evidence, Tony Smith highlighted the knowledge that such support is available as a pull factor that encourages people to cross the channel. We share Tony Smith’s view that making it clear that the costs of asylum support and accommodation will be recovered once the applicant is economically active could help to disincentivise future crossings. That is why we have tabled new clause 37.
The proposed new clause would enable the Government to treat asylum support like a student loan, with asylum seekers able to pay back the cost of support when they are in paid employment. We believe that if someone’s asylum appeal is granted and they are allowed to remain in this country and they are able to work, they should be required to pay back to the state the costs of their maintenance, as and when they are able. State support is not a right.
Tom Hayes
This may be our last sitting day; I say this in hopes that it is. Over the last few sittings, having not known the hon. Member for Stockton West, I have grown in admiration for him, because he has had to defend very difficult things from the previous Government. It has felt like he is a goalkeeper standing in front of goal without any gloves on, and balls have been hit at him from every direction, so I do have admiration for him. But this is frankly absurd—it really is bonkers. Is this the hon. Member’s idea, or is it somebody else’s idea that he is having to make a case for? I really hope it is the latter.
Matt Vickers
To the hon. Gentleman’s electors and mine, these things come at huge cost. As we have set out, that money could be used by the people who pay in to the system, and have done for a very long time. We have drawn an analogy with student tuition fees and I think it is very relevant. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s well-hidden admiration in recent times, but I think this is the right thing to do, and I am well on board with it. State support is not a right, and if a person is able to contribute later by paying some of that back, we believe it is right for them to do so.
Katie Lam
We have spoken many times today, and over the course of this Bill Committee’s proceedings, about the fundamental principles of fairness upon which we believe that our immigration system should be built. We have also spoken extensively about the generosity of the British state, and how much it costs to support those who, according to our rules, cannot support themselves. But that generosity, while admirable in what it says about our approach to our fellow man, costs the British taxpayer dearly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, it costs many billions of pounds a year. It also causes additional pressure on infrastructure and public services, which is not covered by what we suggest here.
We consider that new clause 37, which would introduce the asylum support repayment scheme, is a totally fair way of proposing that people who come to this country are responsible for contributing for the services that they receive. That includes the accommodation that they live in. We do not see any reason why that should be viewed as a negative change, and we really hope that the Government include it in their Bill.
Matt Vickers
The big question is “Who pays?”. There is a huge cost here. I would never seek to get political about the political choices made with funding in recent times—I would not go into the winter fuel payment, or the increase in tuition fees. Tuition fees is an interesting comparator, though, because we ask those who are able to do so to contribute to the costs incurred in delivering them their education. We should be asking people who arrive in this country, who could go on to become very successful, to contribute to some of those costs.
Dame Angela Eagle
The hon. Lady will have noticed that I have not dismissed the idea completely, but I do not think the idea is anywhere near a position where one could talk about how it might be practicable, and certainly it is not at a stage where one could consider putting it into primary legislation.
Matt Vickers
State support is not a right and, if a person is able later to contribute by paying some of it back, we believe it is right for them to do so. We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 38 would require the Government to make changes to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. It would require the Secretary of State, within three months of the passing of this Act, to consult on reforms to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. The consultation must consider how best to ensure that leave outside the rules is granted only in the most exceptional circumstances, in which a reasonable person would consider it unacceptable to refuse entry to the United Kingdom. Within 18 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, by regulations, make changes to the immigration rules to implement the required reforms to leave outside the rules.
We have tabled this new clause because we are concerned about the Government’s response to the recent decision in the upper tribunal to allow a family from Gaza to obtain permission to come to this country using the Ukraine family scheme. The appellants were Palestinians who, at the time of the decision under challenge, were residing in al-Mawasi, the humanitarian zone of Gaza.
The first and second appellants were husband and wife, and had lived in Gaza since 1994. They were the parents of the remaining four appellants, who at the time of the decision were 18, 17, eight and seven years of age. The sponsor for the application was the first appellant’s brother, who had moved to the United Kingdom in 2007 and is now a British citizen.
The first-tier tribunal declined the application and the decision was appealed. The main issues to be decided by the first-tier tribunal were whether there was family life under article 8(1) between the appellants and the sponsor in the UK, whether the respondent’s decision interfered with any family life and/or any private life enjoyed by the sponsor, and whether any such interference was disproportionate.
The upper tribunal did not agree with the Home Office’s argument that the first-tier tribunal judge had erred in finding that there was family life between the appellants and sponsor. It found that there was family life and that the Home Office decision not to allow the family leave outside the rules was a disproportionate interference with the family life of the appellants and the sponsor.
When the Leader of the Opposition challenged the Prime Minister about this particular case at Prime Minister’s questions, he responded that he did not agree with the decision of the upper tribunal, and said that the Government were
“looking at the legal loophole that we need to close in this particular case.” —[Official Report, 12 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 249.]
The new clause makes a suggestion about what that “legal loophole” might be, but it is extremely important that the Minister is able to answer the following questions. Did the Home Office decide not to appeal the upper tribunal decision? If so, why? What is the legal loophole that the Prime Minister said the Home Secretary was closing? Can the Minister be extremely precise about that, please? Can she explain when the House will be updated on this issue? Finally, if there is a legal loophole to close, why is that not being done through this Bill?
Seema Malhotra
I find this a very interesting debate and an important one in a number of respects. New clause 38 would require a consultation on the Government’s approach to the exercise of discretion to grant leave outside the rules in what any reasonable person would consider to be the most exceptional circumstances to warrant such a grant, with a requirement for a change to the rules to follow, to regulate on the basis of what discretion may have been exercised.
The rules set out the main purposes for which a person may enter or stay in the UK, and the requirements to be met for them to be granted permission to do so. Exceptional circumstances are already considered. The rules are intended to apply, and be applied, in most circumstances to ensure transparency and fairness between individuals, but the existing policy approach recognises that there are some circumstances that they simply cannot cater for, and it is in the most exceptional circumstances that consideration is given to leave outside the rules under the Immigration Act 1971.
A period of leave outside the rules would usually be granted for a short, one-off period of permission to stay, suitable to accommodate or overcome the exceptional circumstance, if compassionate or compelling grounds are raised in the individual case. A person may request an exercise of discretion. Factors considered may be related to, for example, emergencies, unexpected events, a crisis, a disaster, an accident that could not have been anticipated, or a personal tragedy. The Government will continue to consider where and when there is need to exercise discretion outside the rules. By its very nature, that is considered only in the most exceptional of circumstances.
It is probably not appropriate for me to go into the case that the hon. Member for Stockton West raised, beyond what has been said in the House. He asked some very specific questions, and I am happy to come back to him with what I can in writing. It is important to say that this is not the correct legislation for a debate about the requirements for discretion to grant leave outside the immigration rules, nor is it the correct place to define the parts of immigration policy on which the Government should consult.
Matt Vickers
On that case and on the loophole, which Minister does not think is relevant to this legislation, what does she identify that loophole as, and why does she not feel that that broader issue is relevant in considering this Bill?
Seema Malhotra
The shadow Minister understands extremely well that the Bill is about ensuring we stop the criminal gangs and that it introduces new powers to do so. On other new clauses that he tabled, I have given the same response in relation to aspects of the immigration rules. This is not the correct legislation to define parts of immigration policy or to try to determine what the Government should consult on.
As I said, the Government continue to consider where and when there is a need to exercise discretion outside the rules. By its very nature, that is considered in only very exceptional circumstances. I have shared what some of those factors might be: unexpected events, a crisis, an accident that could not have been anticipated, or a personal tragedy. I am sure he understands those matters, considering that he has served in office.
Matt Vickers
This is a valuable and important debate because many people felt strongly about this issue. The decision in that case flew in the face of the values of the Ukraine scheme. It could undermine commitments to future such schemes, so it is of great consequence.
Katie Lam
I am a little confused by the Minister’s stating that several of our amendments should not be debated with this Bill. I fully concede that she is more experienced than I am, but my understanding is that any amendment considered in scope can be tabled, debated and voted on. Given the fact that these amendments were considered in scope, I am interested in why she thinks it is not appropriate for us to discuss them today.
Seema Malhotra
I thank the shadow Minister for asking what the Bill is about, but we are just at the end of scrutiny of it, so I am sure she is aware that it is about increasing powers, in particular, to be able to better tackle the criminal gangs that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk. We are making sure that we have bodies such as the Border Security Command on a statutory footing. We have had many other debates in the House about this.
Matt Vickers
Often with amendments we want to bring things out into the light. One thing I have not quite heard is what the Government are doing in the light of the issues with the Ukraine scheme, in particular to prevent what happened in the case I mentioned from happening again. We have this big borders Bill coming through, which will hopefully be the answer to the world’s problems and improve the situation, but are the Government doing anything about the misapplication of the Ukraine scheme to ensure that the case I mentioned will not happen again?
Seema Malhotra
The hon. Gentleman is right, and the Prime Minister laid out the view that it was the wrong decision. We do need to find a way to tighten up how Parliament understands the rules and how they are interpreted, but as I say, that scheme is not a matter for this Bill. We are at the very end of debating the Bill and now I am being asked what it is for. I am sure that the shadow Ministers do not want to go all the way through the line-by-line debate again. Suffice it to say that the matters they are seeking to extend the legislation to cover stray into broader aspects of immigration that in our view are not appropriate for inclusion in this Bill. There are other mechanisms for us to seek to debate and change immigration rules.
Matt Vickers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the revocation of asylum or refugee status, or leave to remain, in relation to an applicant who returns to their country of origin, either subsequently or while their application is being processed. It would also apply to people who make an immigration human rights claim.
If an individual has made a claim that being made to return to their country of origin would violate their human rights and put them in danger, then their choosing voluntarily to return to their home country would suggest that something does not add up. Fundamentally, no reasonable person would consider an individual’s returning to their home country to be compatible with their claim for asylum in such circumstances. If a person needs to remain in this country because they have a legitimate fear of persecution in their country of origin, a return to that country of origin fundamentally undercuts that claim.
Pete Wishart
I have studied this measure closely. Conditions change within the countries that people leave, and asylum status and human rights records change accordingly. Is the hon. Gentleman trying to say that there is no reason whatsoever that an asylum seeker may go back to their country of origin and then come back to the UK? What about family emergencies? Surely the Conservatives are not so callous as to suggest that people cannot go back to their country of origin for a family funeral, for example.
Matt Vickers
People arrive in this country out of fear of persecution. People come from the most awful, extreme circumstances. That is the bar that we put to asylum. We allow people to come here to claim asylum out of fear for their welfare, and if they are happy to pack their bags and pop back for a break, then that is on them. I believe, and I think the public would believe, that if someone comes here claiming fear of persecution in their country of origin then they should not be going back. It is not an opt-in or opt-out—it is not a holiday. If they are coming here out of fear of persecution in that country then they should not be going back.
We have tabled new clause 41 in order to address a loophole that people can and do exploit. The new clause would uphold British fairness—a value that welcomes those in need but rejects exploitation. As Members from across the House know, the United Kingdom has supported over 20,000 Afghans since 2021 through the Afghan relocations policy and over 200,000 Ukrainians since 2022 via visa schemes, alongside our Hong Kong friends with British national overseas visas, backed further by £4.7 billion in asylum costs in 2023-24. These commitments reflect our readiness to help those with genuine cases—those fleeing real danger who have ties to Britain. The value of fairness demands a fair system that is not abused.
Matt Vickers
We are talking about all sorts of circumstances, and I am sure that every one of these things would be pushed to the max, with lots of discussion and debate. The idea here is the principle that if someone cannot be in a country because it would be to their detriment and damage their wellbeing, then they should not be going back. If it is such a security threat that they need to come to the UK for asylum—
Matt Vickers
People who claim asylum arrive here from some of the most terrible, awful circumstances—their life is threatened and they are at real risk. If someone is at that level of risk, on the balance of probabilities, they would not be going back. If someone fears persecution in the way that many of the people who get asylum in this country do, then they would not be returning.
Pete Wishart
We really cannot let them away with this, because it is just cruelty personified. Would the hon. Gentleman not make every effort and take every risk to return to his country of origin if it were the funeral of his mother or father?
Matt Vickers
I hear what hon. Members are saying, but in the current system we allow people to pop back on holiday. Is that acceptable?
Matt Vickers
I am talking about those circumstances. We have heard one extreme; at the other extreme, we have people claiming asylum at huge cost. That is not a cost to well-heeled people, in particular, but to British taxpayers, some of whom are struggling to get by, but are contributing to this country and this system, which pays out for various other things. We want to be generous. We want to support the people who need that help. It is the right thing to do and, I have just outlined, we have done that. But we cannot allow that generosity to be abused; we cannot allow people to pop off on holiday back to wherever they came from and then come back. That is the principle that is at stake here. People out there feel that it is very unfair that people pop back, and use asylum here as something hotel-like. That is the other extreme. That is the abuse that we are seeing, and that is what the new clause aims to end.
Tom Hayes
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the Hongkonger population would be very disheartened to hear what he is saying? Does he think it is right for him to stick to what he is saying? Would it not be better to show some sympathy to that particular population who are here?
Matt Vickers
I show lots of sympathy. It is right that we have put all these schemes in place, and it is right that we are supporting these people in the way we are. I also think a little bit about what the British people would think about what I am saying, and the abuse they are seeing of these schemes that allow people to pop back to other countries for various reasons. The hon. Gentleman has given one extreme; I have given the other. I think that is a principle that the British public would be on board with.
Dame Angela Eagle
New clause 41 would require the revocation of protection status or leave, or discontinuation of asylum claims, where an applicant returns to their country of origin. The Government are in absolute agreement on the principle behind the new clause. Although we are committed to providing protection to those who genuinely need it for as long as it is needed, in accordance with our obligations under the refugee convention and the European convention on human rights, such protection status must be granted only when it is required. As such, I want to reassure Opposition Members that, under our existing policy, where an individual returns to their country of origin, we consider whether they have re-availed themselves of the protection of that country. Where that is the case, we seek to revoke their protection status under the appropriate provision set out in the immigration rules.
We are also clear that asylum claims may be discontinued and withdrawn where the applicant fails to comply with the asylum process, which includes leaving the UK before a decision is made on their claim. I hope Opposition Members are therefore assured that the immigration rules enable protection status to be revoked already and applications to be discontinued where an applicant has returned to their country of origin. As such, new clause 41 is not required.
Matt Vickers
We wish to press the new clause to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Use of Stop and Search
Matt Vickers Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
First and foremost, I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives so tragically to knife crime. Every life lost as a consequence of knife crime is a tragedy. As Members from all parties acknowledged during Monday’s debate on the Crime and Policing Bill, we owe it to the victims and their families to support police forces by ensuring that robust measures are in place to stop those crimes. Incidents of knife crime reiterate our responsibility to our constituents. We must support the police, and provide them with the powers and resources to intervene and take those horrendous weapons off the streets.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for securing this debate, and for rightly highlighting the need to remove offensive weapons from our streets if we are to save lives. He is right that we cannot have sensitivities around the issue; we must ensure that the police have the ability to stop and search any individuals they believe pose a danger. We must ensure that they have the power and the freedom to achieve that, if we want them to effectively protect the public.
As a number of Members have highlighted, stop and search remains a critical tool for the police in stopping crime. One figure alone underlines its necessity: the number of weapons being found. The data released covering the period until March 2024 showed that 16,066 stop and searches resulted in an offensive weapon or firearm being found. That statistic alone is sufficient to justify the use of stop and search.
In London, stop and search has taken 400 knives a month off the streets in the past. We have consistently seen a significant number of weapon seizures in London—seizures that would not have happened without stop and search. Over the past four years, 17,500 weapons were seized as a result of stop and search, including at least 3,500 in 2024. However, the issue is not confined to London. In 2023-24, in the west midlands there were over 6,000 resultant arrests, while Greater Manchester reported 5,620 resultant arrests.
Rightly, we focus on the impact that stop and search can have in apprehending those who carry dangerous weapons. However, I appreciate that weapons are not always the most common reasons for stop and searches. That should not undermine the need for the police to stop individuals when they have reasonable grounds to suspect that they are carrying illegal drugs or stolen property. Both of those activities are illegal, and the police should be able to intervene to prevent them. Drug offences remain a flagrant breach of the law, undermining our communities.
Members will be aware that PACE code A sets out stringent criteria regarding stop and search. It is appropriate that the extensive guidance in its 39 pages ensure that it is conducted properly. However, historically a number of officers have raised concerns that stop and search numbers are down due to misplaced concerns about community tension. I echo the words of the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and encourage the Government to ensure that police forces use stop and search more. Where appropriate they should amend legislation, including PACE code A, to make its use easier for officers. We cannot be in a situation where officers have significant concerns about intervening.
Moving forward, we should all be able to agree on the need to improve the effectiveness of stop and search. In the past, police forces have had to make changes to ensure that it is used more effectively. We should always strive to make searches more efficient and increase the number of positive outcomes. Research suggests that when police communicate effectively with the public, the stop and search process can become significantly smoother. Although there may be occasions when attempts to communicate are met with undesirable outcomes, such as hostility, that does not mean that fewer searches should be carried out, but rather that we should conduct them even more effectively.
It was welcome to hear the Minister speak, on Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill, about the Home Office’s continued work with industry partners to develop systems capable of detecting concealed knives from a distance. The shadow Home Secretary was correct to allocate funding to such projects in his former role, to ensure that we develop the necessary resources. Phase 1 of that Innovate UK project is expected to be completed by the end of May, resulting in the first prototype systems, so it would be interesting to hear whether the Minister believes that the work produced by the Innovate projects can help the police act more effectively in this area.
It will be essential to integrate technology with the available stop and search powers. In parts of London we have already seen how effective that technology can be. For example, deployments of facial recognition technology in London across January and February this year recorded a maximum false alert rate of just 0.008% in a single deployment. That demonstrates how we can enhance police effectiveness with technology and how crucial it will be to use these tools alongside stop and search to strengthen policing capabilities. Police forces, including the Met, have worked with a range of stakeholders to develop a stop and search charter. Communication from Met officers clearly highlights their strong support for stop and search.
I think that everyone in this debate would welcome attempts to build trust in the system, particularly by fostering an open dialogue with local communities. However, that must be balanced with ensuring that police forces, such as the Met, retain the freedom to operate effectively. Across the country, other forces have implemented similar measures. Will the Minister commit to monitoring the impact of community involvement to ensure that police forces are not unduly influenced by a vocal minority opposed to stop and search and instead listen to the broader community, whose main concern is reducing crime?
Like other hon. Members, I want stop and search to be applied as extensively as necessary. Given the prevalence of knife crime, we must recognise that an increase in the use of stop and search can have serious benefits. However, such an increase is contingent on the availability of police officers. The funding pressures facing police forces in the coming financial year amount to approximately £118 million more than the funding increase they are set to receive. As the National Police Chiefs’ Council has warned, that funding gap will
“inevitably lead to cuts across forces”.
The 43 police forces of England and Wales may have to cut as many as 1,800 officers to make up for the shortfall. It would be valuable to hear whether the Minister believes that funding gap will impact the police’s ability to conduct essential activities such as stop and search.
Everyone who has participated in this debate has recognised the need to make our communities safer. We believe that stop and search plays a vital role in enabling the police to take the action necessary to achieve that. I hope that the Government will commit to ensuring that stop and search remains a key tool in the fight against crime.
Matt Vickers
In terms of the big concerns around redeployment in that space, does the Minister think there is any risk that the redeployment of police officers from response policing could affect the response times when people dial 999?
Dame Diana Johnson
Of course we want to see all parts of policing properly staffed and funded. That is why there is more than £1 billion going into the policing settlement for the coming year, over and above what was in the 2024-25 Budget. This Government are committed to making sure we have officers in our neighbourhoods and communities. Equally, response is something that PCCs and chief constables will be very mindful of, but it is clear that policing can walk and talk at the same time. We are saying that neighbourhood policing needs to be built up again after the decimation that we have seen, but that does not mean that other parts of policing will not be business as usual. Policing will be able to deal with that.
There was mention of the Metropolitan police and their stop-and-search charter; I think that was raised by the shadow Minister. I welcome that charter, with its emphasis on respect, training, supervision and oversight. I look forward to seeing how its delivery plan progresses, and what impact it has on the work of building public trust that my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill referred to.
On violence reduction, we recognise the valuable work and significant progress made by violence reduction units, which were set up under the previous Government to understand what is going on with serious violence. The police funding settlement for next year includes £49.7 million for the continuation of their work to prevent serious violence, delivered through their VRU programmes. The VRUs bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area and facilitate the sharing of data across organisational boundaries to build a shared understanding of the root causes of violence locally. In response to those programmes, VRUs are delivering a range of early interventions, doing preventive work to divert young people in particular away from a life of crime. That work includes mentoring, trusted adult programmes, intensive behavioural therapies and sports-based diversionary activities, which are all really positive.
We want the Young Futures programme to build on the work of the VRUs to improve how we identify, reach and support young people at risk of being drawn into violence. That is why we will be asking them to play a leading role in the establishment of the Young Futures prevention partnerships programme, which builds on the existing partnership networks and their considerable experience and expertise to test and develop a model before moving to national roll-out.
It is also worth mentioning the coalition to tackle knife crime. We have an ambitious target of halving knife crime over the next 10 years, but we will not be able to achieve that in isolation; we need to work together with those who share our vision for safer communities. That is why the Prime Minister launched the coalition to tackle knife crime in September, bringing together campaign groups, community leaders, the families of those who have tragically lost their lives to knife crime—James Brindley’s family are involved with the coalition—and young people who have been impacted, united in their mission to save lives. From the west midlands, we have Pooja Kanda, Lynne Baird and, as I said, Mark Brindley as members of the coalition. Having the lived experience of young people is critical to the coalition, and we are keen to ensure that they have a platform to share their views, ideas and solutions to make Britain a safer place for the next generation.
I also want to mention serious violence reduction orders, because they are pertinent to the west midlands. Four police forces, including West Midlands police, are currently piloting serious violence reduction orders, as part of a two-year pilot that began in April 2023 and is due to finish in April this year. These are court orders that can be placed on adults upon conviction of a knife or offensive weapons offence, and they provide police with the power to automatically stop and search individuals convicted of knife offences, with the aim of deterring habitual knife-carrying behaviour. The pilot is being robustly and independently evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in tackling knife crime, as well as any disproportionality in its use, and I look forward to seeing the results.
Finally, I want to talk about gangs, which a number of Members referred to. It is crucial that we tackle the gang culture that lures children and young people into crime and runs county lines through violence and exploitation. As we committed to do in our manifesto, we are introducing a new offence of criminal exploitation of children in the Crime and Policing Bill. That new criminal offence is necessary to increase convictions of exploiters, deter gangs from enlisting children and improve identification of victims.
Alongside the new offence, we are creating a new regime for child criminal exploitation prevention orders, to prevent exploitative conduct committed by adults against children from occurring or reoccurring. We all know that county lines are the most violent model of drug supply and the most harmful form of child criminal exploitation. Through the county lines programme, we will continue to target exploitative drug-dealing gangs and break the model of organised crime groups behind the trade.
We know that through stop and search, police may come into contact with children who they suspect are victims of criminal exploitation, and it is vital that police take an appropriate safeguarding approach to potential victims and ensure they receive appropriate support. We are providing specialist support for children and young people to escape county lines and child criminal exploitation, and we will be delivering on our manifesto commitment to roll out further support through the Young Futures programme.
I repeat my thanks to the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East for securing the debate, and to all Members who have participated. This is a sensitive issue, and I am grateful for the constructive and insightful nature of the discussion today. The Government’s position is clear: stop and search is an important tool, but it must be used fairly and effectively. Getting that balance right is key, and I am keen to carry on working with the police to achieve the best outcomes we can.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsTuesday 11th March 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 11 March 2025 - (11 Mar 2025)
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
It is a pleasure once more to be in this delightful room doing line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill.
The clause repeals in full the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The Act, which requires that decision makers treat Rwanda as a safe third country for the purposes of removing individuals there, and disapplies sections of the Human Rights Act 1998, was passed by the previous Government in an attempt to facilitate removals to Rwanda under the migration and economic development partnership. Despite that, the Act has served no practical purpose since it became law: no decisions were made that were affected by its provisions, and, as we have stated repeatedly, only four individuals were ever relocated voluntarily. No enforced removals to Rwanda ever took place under the partnership.
The Government have been clear from the outset that we will not proceed with the partnership. There is no evidence that it was successful in deterring small boat arrivals, nor has it delivered value for money for the British taxpayer. On the contrary, nearly 84,000 people arrived on small boats between 14 April 2022, which was the date the partnership was announced by the former Government, and 5 July 2024, which was the day after this Government were elected.
The Government have been clear that we will not make further payments to Rwanda, saving £100 million in upcoming annual economic transformation and integration fund payments, and a further £120 million that the UK would otherwise have been liable to pay once 300 individuals had been relocated to Rwanda. That is without even considering the additional staffing and operational costs, which would have been substantial. We will also exit the UK-Rwanda treaty as part of ending the partnership. It is therefore appropriate for the Government to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act so that the legislation, which relies on the provisions of the treaty, will no longer be on the statute book. That is what clause 37 achieves.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Clause 37 repeals the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. In doing so, the Government are removing the only deterrent, and indeed the only place where we can send people who have arrived from a safe third country. It is well established that it is extremely difficult to return people to some countries. In addition, the lack of documentation can frustrate the process of removal to someone’s home country. That is why a third country deterrent is needed: if people cannot be removed to their home country, they can and will be removed to a third country.
The logical consequence of repealing the Safety of Rwanda Act is that a greater number of migrants will arrive from countries that are harder to return them to. Without some form of agreement to send the migrants to a safe country, they will continue to come and to stay. Section 80AA of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 contains a list of safe countries, but the list is limited to countries that contribute very few illegal migrants, save for Albania. The last Conservative Government cut the number of Albanian illegal migrants coming to the UK by small boat crossings by over 90%, showing that our returns agreement with Albania worked. As the former director general of Border Force said:
“If we cannot send them back, we could send them to another safe country—ergo, Rwanda—where they could be resettled safely without adding to the continuing flow of arrivals by small boat from France.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 41, Q43.]
Channel boat crossings are up 28% since the election, with more than 1,300 people crossing in the week commencing 1 March 2025. This Labour Government have smashed farmers, small business owners and pensioners, but it seems that the people-smuggling gangs are the only ones who are safe. The only thing that will stop the gangs is a strong deterrent that means that people do not board small boats because they know that they will be deported if they reach the UK, and they will not be allowed to stay.
The additional offences and powers in this Bill are welcome as far as they go, but, with the scrapping of the Conservatives’ deterrent—that if someone has no right to be in this country, they will not be able to stay—this Bill is just window dressing. It will not, and cannot, stop people crossing the channel in small boats. The Government know that, because their own impact assessment shows that only a handful of people each year would be imprisoned because of the new offences created by this Bill.
Since the announcement that our deterrent would be scrapped, there are almost 8,500 more people in asylum hotels. That is the Government’s failure.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I was trying to count the number of times the hon. Member used the word “deterrent”, and I ran out of fingers. Could he please define what a deterrent is?
Matt Vickers
Does the hon. Gentleman want me to use my fingers to help him to count? The deterrent is preventing people from getting in those boats. If people know that they will be detained and removed when they arrive in this country, they will stop coming.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the crossings have risen from 299 in 2018 to more than 150,000 since then, the majority of them on the Conservatives’ watch? Does he also acknowledge that deportations have increased by 24% under this Government?
Matt Vickers
Does the hon. Gentleman know what has happened with global migration? If we compare the movements that have been made in the last week, those into Europe and those into this country seem to be slightly misaligned. The number of people arriving in this country is up 28%. The number of people put into hotels in communities across this country is up 29%; that is 8,500 more people. The number of people who have arrived in this country illegally and been removed is down significantly since this Government came to office.
It is clear that a new approach is needed. The National Crime Agency said that stopping channel migrants is not possible without a Rwanda-style scheme. It was a terrible mistake for Labour to cancel our deterrent before it had even started. The Labour Government like to point out the cost of the Rwanda plan, but a deterrent that stops illegal migrants from making the crossing and settling in the country will save the state billions in lifetime costs.
As Karl Williams from the Centre for Policy Studies pointed out,
“the Office for Budget Responsibility’s analysis last summer…estimates that a low-skilled migrant, or low-wage migrant as the OBR puts it, will represent a lifetime net fiscal cost to the taxpayer of around £600,000.”
Williams then pointed to
“analysis from Denmark, the Netherlands and other European countries that asylum seekers’ lifetime fiscal costs tend to be steeper than that” ––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 43, Q49.]
The evidence therefore suggests that if 35,000 people cross the channel a year—that is roughly where we were last year—at that sort of cost range, the lifetime costs will probably be £50 billion or £60 billion.
Tom Hayes
I ask the hon. Member to desist from referring to that report. In oral evidence, I asked two experts whether they thought it was possible to make such assessments on the basis of the available evidence, and they declined. In fact, the author of that report said that the available evidence was fairly lacking in robustness and integrity. When I asked him whether he had considered certain key counterfactuals, he admitted that he had not. Later, in response to my question about whether it was appropriate for MPs to brandish such research, Professor Brian Bell said that it would be “foolhardy” to do so because the report itself made “very brave” assumptions.
Will the hon. Member now desist from using that report, given that we are in a democracy, we are striving for accountability and truth, and we should not be using fake information?
Matt Vickers
I will not desist from using those figures, but I would be happy to hear the hon. Member’s alternative figures when the time comes. I am sure this is not cost-neutral; I am sure it is very expensive.
As I was saying, that is why an effective removals and deterrent agreement is needed. I ask the Minister whether the Government are looking at a removals and deterrent agreement. If not, why are they repealing the UK’s only deterrent? How does she think we can control our borders without one, when it is clear that this Bill will not be effective in doing so? Does she agree with the National Crime Agency that a removals agreement is the only way to stop channel migrants, as happened with Operation Sovereign Borders in Australia?
The Government say that they are clearing the backlog and returning people who arrived on small boats. That is just not the case. The most recent immigration figures show that the asylum backlog is higher than when Labour came into office, and returns of small boat arrivals were down again in the most recent quarter, with only 4% of arrivals being removed. In fact, of the total returns between October and December 2024, only 16% were enforced; in the three months before, only 13% were. Does the Minister think that allowing 96% of illegal immigrants who arrive by small boat to stay in the UK is a deterrent?
Tom Hayes
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, and I promise that I will be briefer. Does the hon. Member agree that the overwhelming trend under the last Conservative Government in the balance between enforced and voluntary returns was in favour of voluntary returns? In fact, in 2023, only 24% of returns were enforced, in 2022, 25% were and in 2021, 27% were. Does he not agree that the trend over the last years has been one of voluntary returns?
Matt Vickers
I would say that the big issue around deterrence is how many of those who arrive in small boats are removed. Despite the fact that the number of those arriving illegally is up 28%, the number who are being returned is down significantly. That is the big question at play here.
Tom Hayes
I thank the hon. Member for his patience. Does he agree that he is moving the goalposts slightly to manufacture a political argument that, as he knows, would not be supported by the evidence available? Furthermore, will he look back into history at the record of the last Labour Government? I invite him to comment on their success—I know that he will want to jump at that. In 2004, 85% of people reaching our country were removed through enforced returns; in 2005, 73% were. Where there was a trend of enforced returns, it was actually under the last Labour Government.
Matt Vickers
In terms of the political arguments, what people out there want to see is the number of people arriving illegally in this country going down. They are not seeing that; it is up 28%. They want to see the number of hotels in communities across the country going down. It is not, although it was. The number of people arriving was also going down, but it is now up 28%, and there are 8,500 more people in hotels. That is the reality of the situation.
Dame Angela Eagle
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Of course, that is what Committee debates are meant to be about; it is easier to have a bit more to and fro in Committee than it often is on the Floor of the House, when we have two and a half minutes and we have had to rewrite our speech and discard most of what we were going to say.
Will the hon. Gentleman admit that the way in which the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act meant that nobody could be processed at all; they were just stuck, and there was a build-up in hotels of small boat arrivals and other asylum claimants who could not be processed? That meant that there was a big backlog, and we have had to restart decision making. That inevitably means that there will be a slowdown in sending back people who have arrived by small boat until we can get on top of the backlog that the Conservative Government created.
Matt Vickers
The principle at stake is that if someone arrives in this country illegally, they will be removed. We were not processing people who had arrived illegally and were meant to be removed, but we were returning more of them before the election than we are now. However, I will get through my comments, and there will be plenty of time then for debate—we have a full morning ahead of us.
Does the Minister think that allowing 96% of illegal migrants who arrive by small boat to stay in the UK is a deterrent? At the moment, people know that if they come here on a small boat, they are 96% likely to be allowed to stay. That is a strong pull factor. The only way to remove that pull factor is to reinstate a strong deterrent. People need to know that if they arrive here on a small boat, they will not be able to stay. Can the Minister explain how she will increase the number of removals without a third country to which migrants can be sent? If it is not Rwanda, where will they go? Will it be Redcar? Will it be Romford? Will it be Richmond? Where will these people who cannot be removed to a safe country go?
As Alp Mehmet said,
“repealing the Rwanda Act will encourage illegal immigration… 240,000 people were declared to have entered”
the EU “illegally last year” and will likely end up coming to the UK. The Government have confirmed with this Bill and the repeal of the Safety of Rwanda Act that there is no deterrence, because once people arrive here, the likelihood is that they will be able to stay. Mehmet also echoed the comments from the National Crime Agency, saying,
“the only deterrent is to restrict arrivals, and to contain and remove quickly. That will send the right message.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 39-40, Q43.]
As he pointed out, there is not “anything in the Bill” that would suggest that people will be removed quickly. Why has a removals agreement not been included in the Bill? The EU is now looking at offshore processing and deportation centres. There is also a growing consensus in the EU that the 1951 refugee convention is not fit for purpose. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of these changes on the UK? Why have the Government scrapped the Rwanda plan, leaving the UK as an outlier? We wish to oppose the repeal of the Act by way of a Division.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity to examine the failed Rwanda scheme. The Israeli scheme, which was set up more than a decade ago, provides stark evidence that the previous Government should have considered before recycling an idea that has cost taxpayers £700 million. In Israel, asylum seekers were given a stark choice: be sent home, go to a migrant detention facility or take $3,500 on a one-way flight to Rwanda. One such asylum seeker quickly found that he was not welcome on arrival. No sooner had he landed in Kigali than he was told he had to leave again for Uganda, and for a fee. He said that he quickly left for Greece on a small boat and then travelled over land to Switzerland, where he is now settled. Another used a $5,000 payment that he received to catch a flight to Amsterdam, where he then claimed asylum status.
The previous Conservative Government entered into the agreement with Rwanda with full knowledge of the previous failings there and offered individuals a personal payment of £3,000 to resettle their lives. Figures have been bandied about on how many asylum seekers Rwanda was willing to take, with the previous Government saying 1,000, and Rwanda saying between 100 and 200. It is not clear who was right, but a question that has often been repeated to me is: how can that be regarded as a deterrent? Indeed, our witnesses from the refugee support organisations made the point that people will continue to come and try their luck, and 84,000 took that risk. I welcome the fact that we have our common sense back and we are repealing the Act, but I despair at the waste of taxpayers’ money on pursuing a fantasy that had already failed elsewhere.
Matt Vickers
I have asked this question a few times and never quite got to the bottom of it. We were sending people to Rwanda who could not be returned to their home country because it was not safe. Where will those people go now, if not Rwanda? Does the Minister fear that, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire said, the Government might end up coming back to this issue in a few years when they realise that things are continuing to go the wrong way?
Dame Angela Eagle
First things first: the hon. Gentleman was not going to send to Rwanda only those whom we could not return to their own country; in theory, he was going to deport to Rwanda absolutely everybody who arrived to claim asylum after March 2023—that was what we were told. In reality, those people all ended up in hotels, unable to be processed and growing in number, while the Conservative party indulged in its expensive gimmicks and fantasies of how the world should be.
As many Committee members have pointed out, the day job was not being done while that parallel universe policy was being developed. It took all the attention away from running what is a complex enough system as it is. Many resources were diverted to try to create that new reality, resulting in the neglect of the system, and huge backlogs were built into the system because of how the Illegal Migration Act interacted with the Safety of Rwanda Act. That made it impossible to run the current system or to move to a new system that was remotely workable, thereby landing this country with a huge, dysfunctional series of backlogs, and a system that we have had to literally start up again from scratch to try to get working coherently.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Clause 38 repeals sections 1 to 6 and schedule 1, sections 7 to 11, sections 13 to 15 and schedule 2, sections 16 to 28, sections 30 to 5, sections 53 to 58, section 61 and section 66 of the Illegal Migration Act.
Section 2 of the Illegal Migration Act placed a duty on the Home Secretary to make arrangements to remove persons to their home country or a safe third country who have entered or arrived in the UK illegally. Let me point out to those people who are concerned about genuine asylum seekers that section 2(4) of the IMA makes it clear that the provision does not apply if someone comes directly from a place of danger, which is consistent with article 33 of the 1951 refugee convention. However, people who come here directly from France, a safe country where no one is being persecuted and which has a perfectly well-functioning asylum system, should not illegally enter the United Kingdom.
I ask the Minister why the Government are repealing this duty. Is it because they do not think they are able to remove those who have arrived illegally? Is it because the Government think people who arrive in this country illegally should be allowed to remain?
Section 5 of the Illegal Migration Act provides that asylum claims are automatically deemed inadmissible for those who have arrived illegally. One of Labour’s first actions in government was to allow illegal migrants to claim asylum. Can the Minister explain how allowing illegal migrants to claim asylum is providing any deterrent? Surely it will help the smuggling gangs, by providing a stronger incentive for people to make those dangerous crossings of the Channel in small boats.
Matt Vickers
There is a lot to do in the way of commencement; the Bill is there and could be commenced at any time, if the Government felt it was of help. In fact, in a few years’ time, when they come back to the drawing board to try to find a deterrent, they might well want to do that.
Sections 31 and 32 of the Illegal Migration Act prevented people who have entered the country illegally from obtaining British citizenship. The Labour Government are repealing this provision. Their position is hardly surprising when the Prime Minister does not think that British citizenship is a pull factor, but that does not mean it is the right thing to do. Why are the Government repealing this clause, allowing illegal migrants to get British citizenship?
Do the Government not believe that British citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, especially for those who have entered the country illegally? If so, why have the Government not included measures to stop illegal migrants obtaining British citizenship, and instead only issued guidance stating that
“applications made after 10 February 2025 that include illegal entry will ‘normally’ be refused citizenship, regardless of when the illegal entry occurred.”?
Section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act states:
“The Secretary of State may make regulations about the effect of a decision by a relevant person (“P”) not to consent to the use of a specified scientific method for the purposes of an age assessment…where there are no reasonable grounds for P’s decision.”
This means that, if a migrant refused to undergo an age assessment, they would be considered an adult. Labour have removed age assessments for illegal migrants who claim to be under 18, resulting in the risk that grown men may end up in schools with teenage girls. In fact, the most recent data on age disputes shows that more than 50% of migrants claiming to be under 18 were actually adults. How do the Government therefore intend to ensure that migrants claiming to be under 18 actually undergo age assessments, and why is that not included in the Bill?
The SNP’s new clause 2 would repeal the Illegal Migration Act entirely, so the SNP must be agreeing with the Labour Government that illegal migrants should be able to get British citizenship and should not have to undergo age assessments. Therefore, I ask the same questions: does the SNP not believe that British citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, especially for those who have entered the country illegally? How would the SNP ensure that migrants claiming to be under 18 actually undergo age assessments, and why is that not included in new clause 2?
By repealing the Illegal Migration Act in its entirety, the SNP want to stop the seizure of mobile phones from illegal migrants, something that helps to establish identities and obtain evidence of immigration offences. As Tony Smith said:
“Passport data, identity data, age data and travel history data are often held on those phones—all data that would be useful when considering an asylum application.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 40, Q43.]
The Liberal Democrats’ amendment 9 would have repealed section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act, which requires the Secretary of State to remove people who have sought to use modern slavery protections in bad faith. Do the Liberal Democrats think that people using modern slavery protections fraudulently should be allowed to stay in the UK? If so, do they believe that people who make fraudulent immigration claims should be allowed to stay in the UK? We believe that the effect of repealing the majority of the IMA and the entirety of the Safety of Rwanda Act will be an increase in the number of people arriving in this country illegally and remaining.
I have therefore asked the Government whether they would be prepared to be transparent about the numbers. If they are convinced that the approach set out in the Bill will be successful, let us measure it. Will the Minister commit to publishing all the numbers, and the nationalities, of all those who might have been excluded from the UK asylum system on grounds of connection with a safe third country or a late claim, but have not been—with reasons why not—and to setting out the obstacles to returning them to their country of origin and what steps are being taken through international agreements to overcome that, as recommended by Tony Smith in evidence to this Committee? We will oppose the inclusion of this clause in the Bill by way of a Division.
Pete Wishart
I must say to the hon. Member for Stockton West that he really does not want to know my views on British citizenship, because they are likely to blow his head—but we will leave that one at that.
It is disappointing to note the absence of our Liberal colleagues. Back in the day—the good old days, Mr Stuart —when we had an effective, efficient, diligent and conscientious third party, there would always be someone present to ensure that the views of the third party were represented. I am sure that the Liberal Democrats have good excuses, but I hope they start to take a bit of interest in this important Bill, because it has been disappointing thus far.
I say to the Minister, “‘Useful clauses?’ Come on!” We are talking about sections 29, 12, 59, 60 and 62, some of the nastiest and most pernicious parts and aspects of the Illegal Migration Act. I cannot believe that this Government want to continue that horrible and heinous Tory set of proposals and clauses in this Bill. This was their great opportunity to wipe the slate clean of the previous Government’s hopeless and useless crackpot Rwanda scheme and their heinous and horrible Illegal Migration Act.
I will give the Minister a few quotes from some of her colleagues, some of which I wish I had come up with myself. The now Prime Minister said at the time that the Illegal Migration Bill would drive “a coach and horses” through protections for women trafficked to the UK as victims of modern slavery. The now Home Secretary said that that IMA does the “total opposite” of providing support for those who have been trafficked, and that it was nothing other than “a traffickers’ charter”. There are other prize quotes from the Home Secretary and various Ministers within the Home Office—absolutely and totally correct, right and true—about the horrible Illegal Migration Act. Now we have a Labour Government inconceivably standing by large swathes of an Act that they so rightly and widely rubbished and wanted rid of only a short while ago.
It would be different if the Government were maintaining some benign, useful or helpful parts of that Tory Act, but they are maintaining some real, pernicious nasties. Provisions that were damaging, dangerous and contrary to human rights under the Tories are just as damaging, dangerous and contrary to human rights under this new Labour Government. I remind the Minister what the then Home Secretary said on that Bill when introducing it:
“I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”
The previous Government could not care less about our obligations under international law or about human rights, and they were quite happy to set them aside. Now we have a Home Secretary who stands by certain provisions of that Act, with all its difficulties concerning its relationship with convention rights.
Matt Vickers
Is there any reason we cannot introduce provisions in this area as part of the Bill, and when can we expect to see them?
Dame Angela Eagle
Work is going on in the Department to assess the accuracy of the various methods of age assessment, which ministerial predecessors from the hon. Gentleman’s party commenced, but which has not yet been finished. As soon as we have more idea about how reliable scientific age assessment can be, how expensive it is and all those things, I will either come to Parliament or make a statement about how we intend to proceed. The hon. Gentleman must not assume that because these sections have been repealed we are not interested in scientific age assessments and their potential per se. They were simply unworkable because they were attached to the duty to remove, which was such a feature of the Illegal Migration Act.
The six measures that the Government intend to retain, including where provisions are in force, have been identified as having operational utility and benefit. These powers are all ones that the Government see as important tools to allow for the proper operation of the immigration system and to achieve wider priorities alongside the powerful measures set out in the Bill.
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire talked about section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act. The public order disqualification under the Nationality and Borders Act is currently in operation. It enables decisions to disqualify certain individuals from support and protections afforded by the national referral mechanisms on grounds of public order and bad faith. Public order grounds include serious criminality and threats to national security. Such decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, considering the individual’s vulnerabilities. That is the sole modern slavery measure in the Illegal Migration Act that is being retained. It would, if commenced, amend the public order disqualification to allow more foreign national offenders to be considered for disqualification from modern slavery protections on public order grounds. Disqualification will continue to be assessed on an individual basis.
Crime and Policing Bill
Matt Vickers ExcerptsMonday 10th March 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Crime and Policing Act 2026 View all Crime and Policing Act 2026 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I take this opportunity to thank our brave, hard-working police officers, PCSOs, police staff and volunteers for the huge sacrifices they make to keep our streets safe. I thank all hon. Members across the House for their considered and concise contributions.
The Bill covers a wide array of offences, and we all welcome that. Tackling criminality means equipping the police and enforcement agencies with the powers that they need to lock up dangerous perpetrators to make our streets safer. The Bill contains meaningful and impactful provisions, particularly in relation to knife crime, car theft, retail crime, the sharing of intimate images, child sexual abuse, drug testing and cuckooing among many others.
It is generous of the Government to hold the previous Conservative Government’s work in such high esteem: in fact, about two thirds of the measures in the Bill are copied straight from the previous Government. As was said—I think on several occasions—it is a copy-and-paste job that even the Chancellor would blush over. I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), alongside many other past and current Members of the House, for their significant work in ensuring that those offences are included in the scope of the Bill. That work will ultimately have a positive impact on the lives of all our constituents. Time does not allow me to talk through all the measures in the Bill [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] I know that hon. Members are disappointed, but I will focus on a few important provisions.
First, let me turn to retail crime. As hon. Members across this House may know, having served as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the future of retail and as a former Woolies worker—no one ever questions whether I am old enough—I have been very involved in the campaign to protect our retail workers. I have joined the likes of the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), Paul Gerrard from the Co-op, Helen Dickinson and the team at the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores, USDAW, numerous retailers and others who have worked to deliver more protection for our retail workers.
Back in 2021—during my slightly rebellious phase—I tabled an amendment that helped us to make an assault on a person providing a service to the public a statutory aggravating offence. More recently in April 2024, alongside a suite of measures designed to tackle retail crime, we saw the last Government agree to the creation of a stand-alone offence of assaulting a retail worker. I am glad that that will be taken up by the incumbent Government and hope that it will have a real impact and improve the lives of these important key workers in high streets and stores across the country.
I have two concerns, however, about the Bill regarding retail crime. First, the previous Government’s plans had proposed to make it mandatory for the courts to impose at least a curfew requirement, an exclusion requirement or an electronic monitoring requirement on repeat offenders convicted of shoplifting or the new offence of assaulting a retail worker and sentenced to a community order or a suspended sentence. That had been welcomed by retailers, but the Bill does not include any provisions to this effect. I urge the Government to look again at this, to ensure that we are doing all we can to protect retail workers and avoid what appears to be the watering down of potential protections.
Secondly, on the plans to remove the £200 threshold for shoplifting, while the rhetoric sounds positive, it is untrue to say that theft under £200 was ever decriminalised. In fact, the Government’s own impact assessment tells us that 90% of charges for shoplifting relate to property worth less than £200. There is a fear that measures will lead to further delays to justice being done while not leading to tougher or longer sentences. Victims of retail crime deserve swift justice, not year-long delays while perpetrators continue to offend.
I turn now to further legislative steps that I hope Members across the House will find difficult to oppose. One hugely important measure is the introduction of a statutory aggravating factor, requiring sentencing courts to treat grooming behaviour as an aggravating factor when considering the seriousness of child sexual offences. The Opposition believe that the Government should go further and establish a national statutory inquiry, but it is right that they have brought forward this measure from the Criminal Justice Bill. It recognises the severity of the offence and ensures that third parties involved in the heinous practices of these rape gangs face justice and punishment. We must take every step possible to protect the most vulnerable and ensure that stronger laws are in place so that the terrible crimes of the past cannot be repeated.
Another key measure in the Bill, contained in clauses 96 to 100, expands the ability to conduct drug tests upon arrest. The expansion of the drug testing on arrival programme, introduced by the previous Conservative Government, has already demonstrated the sheer number of individuals found to be under the influence of substances when arrested. Between March 2022 and September 2024, police forces reported a total of 154,295 tests to the Home Office. Of these, 86,207, or 56%, were positive for cocaine, opiates or both. It is therefore right that we expand the drug testing programme to cover as wide a range of class B and C drugs as possible, allowing the police to access the information they need to manage offenders appropriately within the criminal justice system.
I also welcome the efforts to tackle off-road bikes. Having seen their impact on my constituents, I hope that during the passage of the Bill we might consider going even further, maybe even considering suggestions made by Government Back Benchers. We must use this opportunity to ensure that the police have the powers they need, and to examine where further powers are required to ensure that the law truly serves the victims of crime and provides a level of openness and transparency for our police forces so that people can have confidence in our justice system.
Additionally, we should all want to see the police doing what they do best: on the beat, preventing and investigating crime. Their time should not be wasted on matters that the public do not consider a priority. Time and again, we see reports of police officers being sent to respond to incidents that are not criminal in nature while serious offences on our streets go unchallenged. The measures in this Bill to tackle antisocial behaviour signal an understanding that removing crime from our streets must be a priority. However, we must consider whether more can be done legislatively to ensure that police time is used effectively.
I must stress that all the well-meaning measures contained in the Bill are meaningless without a well-funded police force. Forces are—[Interruption.] Forces—some led by Labour police and crime commissioners—are raising legitimate concerns about the level of funding they will receive from the Government. Any reduction in police numbers undermines every element of this Bill, weakening the police’s ability to tackle crime across the country. The head of the Metropolitan police has raised his concerns about potential job losses in our capital city—a city where 30% of England and Wales’s knife crime occurs.
I should note at this point that it is very welcome to see the Government reintroducing many of the measures on tackling knife crime put forward in the Criminal Justice Bill by the previous Conservative Government, including a power to retain and destroy bladed articles on private property and to increase the maximum penalty for the sale of dangerous weapons to under-18s. Given that the financial pressures faced by police forces amount to an estimated £118 million shortfall, there is a real concern that the Government’s actions will contribute to a decline in police numbers. The Government’s police funding increase masks the Chancellor’s national insurance hike on our police forces and their failure to build police pay awards into the baseline.
Moving forward, we will have ample opportunities as a House to scrutinise the legislation and consider potential improvements. Reading the impact assessments and economic notes accompanying the Bill reveals uncertainty about the effects of its various measures. Notably, there is a lack of clarity regarding the number of individuals expected to be imprisoned for certain offences, with significant variation in the estimates provided. The Government must back our police over the criminals and demonstrate the political will to do so. They must provide police with the resources and robust powers they need to keep officers on the beat, deliver swift justice for victims and, in turn, make our streets safer. This Bill is a step forward. Across the House, we all need to support our police officers to tackle the heinous crimes—
Neil Coyle
Thank you. On swift justice, will the Opposition Front Bench bring forward amendments regarding the shadow Home Secretary’s position on citizen’s arrest? How many amendments can we expect to see about how the police should respond to citizen’s arrests?
Matt Vickers
What the shadow Home Secretary was doing in office was putting more police on the country’s streets than ever before—149,679 police officers. We hope the Government will maintain that as we move forward, but there are lots of question marks around that.
We all need to support our police officers to tackle the heinous crimes that we have heard about in the debate. I hope the Government remain open to considering measures proposed by Opposition and Government Members who are committed to robustly tackling the very behaviours that this legislation seeks to prevent.
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)
Matt Vickers ExcerptsThursday 6th March 2025
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 View all Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 March 2025 - (6 Mar 2025)
The Chair
Would all Members ensure that electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent? We now continue line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The grouping and selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room, as well as on the parliamentary website. I remind Members about the rules on the declaration of interests, as set out in the code of conduct.
Clause 18
Endangering another during sea crossing to United Kingdom
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 18, page 11, leave out lines 24 to 26 and insert—
“(c) the vessel in which the person travelled could not reasonably have been thought to be safe for the purposes of reaching the United Kingdom.”
This amendment would apply the new offence of endangering another during a sea crossing to the UK to any individual who tries to enter the UK illegally and makes their journey in an un-seaworthy vessel, removing the requirement for the individual to have done an act to cause or create a risk of death or serious injury.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 5, in clause 18, page 11, line 36, at end insert—
“(E1C) (a) For the purposes of subsections (E1A) and (E1B), a person cannot commit an offence if the person is an asylum seeker.
(b) For the purposes of this subsection, ‘asylum seeker’ means a person who intends to claim that to remove them from or require them to leave the United Kingdom would be contrary to the United Kingdom’s obligations under—
(i) the Refugee Convention (within the meaning given by section 167(1) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999), or
(ii) the Human Rights Convention (within the meaning given by that 35 section).”
This amendment would specify that the offence created by clause 18 (“Endangering another during sea crossing to United Kingdom”) cannot apply to asylum seekers.
Amendment 15, in clause 18, page 12, line 5, leave out “six” and insert “fourteen”.
This amendment would increase the maximum penalty for the offence of endangering lives at sea to fourteen years.
Amendment 16, in clause 18, page 12, line 9, leave out “five” and insert “fourteen”.
This amendment would increase the maximum penalty for the offence of endangering lives at sea to fourteen years.
Clause stand part.
Matt Vickers
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Clause 18 creates a new offence of endangering others’ lives during a sea crossing from France, Belgium or the Netherlands to the United Kingdom, which results in the commission of an existing offence under section 24 subsection (A1), (B1), (D1) or (E1) of the Immigration Act 1971. Proposed new subsection (6) to section 24 of the 1971 Act states that this offence
“applies to acts carried out inside or outside the United Kingdom.”
The provision is necessary for this offence. Can the Minister explain whether partner countries have comparable offences to this one that can be used to apprehend people in France, Belgium and the Netherlands?
The former director general of Border Force, in his evidence to the Committee, was clear that clause 18 would be more effective if operated by French enforcement agencies, rather than in the UK, as most of the offences occur in French territory. Can the Minister reassure the Committee that, in order to successfully prosecute these offences in the UK, UK Border Force will be able to gather evidence collected outside the UK? Can the Minister guarantee that French support in providing that evidence will be forthcoming? What guarantees has the Home Office been given?
In order to be prosecuted under clause 18 for offences committed in French territorial waters, people would need to be transported to this country if they are not already here, which would have the rather perverse outcome of more people coming and being able to claim asylum. As I have not been able to find any reference to that in the impact assessment, I would like the Minister to share with the Committee what the justice impact tests showed for this new offence. How many new prison places are going to be required at steady state? In other words, how effective does the Minister think the new offence will be?
The Opposition tabled amendment 17 as we suspect that the new offence is not going to be greatly used. Amendment 17 would apply the new offence of endangering another during a sea crossing to the UK to any individual who tries to enter the UK illegally and makes their journey in an unseaworthy vessel, removing the requirement for the individual to have done an act to cause or create a risk of death or serious injury. If a person has crossed to the UK in a small boat, they have by definition endangered both their lives and the lives of others at sea. Those boats are unseaworthy, overcrowded and everyone who gets on board is responsible for that position. It is not just the lives of people on those dangerous vessels that are placed in danger, but potentially the lives of those who rescue them.
We have tabled amendments 15 and 16 to increase the sentence for the offence to 14 years. Before the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was passed, section 25 offences attracted a prison sentence of up to 14 years. The 2022 Act increased the penalty to life imprisonment in order to discourage unlawful facilitation of migrants to the UK, so why are the offences in this Bill for endangering lives at sea so much lower?
Since the Government have scrapped the Rwanda deterrent, we would like to help them to make this damp squib of a Bill a bit more of an effective deterrent to those considering making such a dangerous crossing from a safe third country. That is why we have tabled amendments 17, 15 and 16: to demonstrate that if an individual gets on an unsafe boat to cross the channel, thereby committing an immigration offence, they will be found guilty of endangering lives at sea. Then, as a foreign criminal, their deportation should be easier for the Home Office.
If the Minister is not going to accept our amendment, which would ensure that everyone arriving on a small boat should be found guilty of endangering lives at sea, I would like her to explain how people who cram themselves into overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels have not endangered themselves, others on that vessel and those who have to come to their rescue.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairpersonship today, Mr Stuart.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that on average we are seeing the number of people per boat increasing each year? He alluded to that earlier, and it means that more and more people are crowding into each small boat—he is nodding, so he seems to agree. Does he also agree that, because we are seeing more and more people crowded into these small boats, it is accounting for a rise in the number of people who are crossing the channel in small boats?
Matt Vickers
Yes—it is the case that more people are coming on fewer boats. Equally, however, there is also a rise in the number of boats that are coming across. I think that both those things are problematic. One thing that we know about these boats being filled with yet more people is that they become ever more dangerous, and we have seen some of the horrible consequences and fatalities as a result of that.
Amendment 5, tabled by the Scottish National party, specifies that the offence created by clause 18—endangering another during sea crossing to the United Kingdom—cannot apply to asylum seekers. Surely, that would render the new offence even more ineffective, as it will not be possible to charge people until their asylum claim has been determined. Someone is perfectly capable of endangering lives at sea, whether they are an asylum seeker or not.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
I will respond to some of the points that the hon. Member for Stockton West has just made, starting with the point about the French. Under the last Government, we saw what amounted to Twitter diplomacy, continuous bashing of the French online and in the papers, and a breakdown of that relationship. Since we came into Government, we have seen that Keir and Yvette, who was out there in France recently, have looked to reset that relationship and rebuild it. I believe that recent visits that Yvette has made to France, including one that involved a meeting with the French Minister of the Interior, have been very productive. The French are looking at their laws and considering how they can improve things on their side—[Interruption.] I apologise, Mr Stuart. I mean the Home Secretary, not Yvette. The smaller Committee Rooms sometimes result in some informality.
As I was saying, the French are looking to readdress their laws, including things such as intercepting boats in shallow water, which to date has been neglected. That adult approach to politics and working with the French will help us to reduce the number of these boat crossings.
Dame Angela Eagle
In general, it is not expected that parents will be criminalised, but there is not a total ban on that. It will depend on what has happened and what the circumstances were. That will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. It is difficult to be more explicit about that, given that the nature of the offence represents a stricter law that is meant to deter people from making small boat crossings. It is a signal to smugglers and passengers that fatalities and injuries at sea are taken extremely seriously, so there may well be consequences for particular unacceptable behaviour of the sort that I have talked about. I would not want there to be an absolute exclusion, but I would not expect a large cohort of people to fall within the purview of the new offences.
Matt Vickers
I thank Members for their considered contributions. Effective international partnerships can be useful, but I would not want to deny anyone the right to scrutinise a partner on Twitter, particularly one to whom we pay so much money. The previous Government were right to toughen up on sentences for the worst offences. They were right to restrict prisoner release during the pandemic. That put pressure on the prison system, and that that is why the previous Government were also right to undertake the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. I realise that the Labour party did not agree, but it was right that the previous Government used the Nationality and Borders Act to increase the penalty for people smugglers to a life sentence.
Tom Hayes
I was going to allow that statement to go by, because lunch is near and I am quite hungry, but I am hungrier still for the truth. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept the validity of independent assessments of our prison system—the system that this Labour Government inherited—as near to collapse? For him to claim otherwise is farcical, and I hope he will withdraw that.
Matt Vickers
I repeat exactly what I said: the previous Government were right to toughen up those sentences and make those who are guilty of some of the worst offences stay longer in prison. They were right not to release people during the pandemic, and therefore they were right to have the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorian era; that is a fact. It was also right that the previous Government used the Nationality and Borders Act to create life sentences for people smugglers. The vile criminals who profit from the peril of others deserve nothing less. That is why it is right to increase the sentence for this offence, as set out in amendments 15 and 16, to deter people from engaging in this awful, vile and inhumane trade. I will press amendments 17, 15 and 16 to a vote—
Matt Vickers
As I said in my opening remarks, that has to be a deterrent. This is a damp squib Bill. If people come to this country illegally—if they break in—there should be real consequences. If they put other people’s lives at risk, there should be real consequences. I think we have proposed the right sentence, and Committee Members can now have their say on it.
Question put, That the amendment be made.