Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings

Debate between Mike Tapp and Angela Eagle

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Those asylum seekers who have not had their claims processed within a year through no fault of their own are allowed access to work. I am unconvinced that allowing access to work earlier would do anything other than create more demand for people to come here.

[Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)]

It is widely accepted across the whole country, including in my constituency, that the Conservatives left us with open borders, with 150,000 people crossing on their watch and the opening of 400 asylum hotels, costing our taxpayers £9 million per day. This Government have already established Border Security Command and have deported 19,000 people; that is record numbers, up 24% from what the Opposition could achieve. We are also bringing in counter-terror powers to take on the smuggling gangs. Does the Minister agree that the Opposition need to get behind our Bill, so that those counter-terror powers can empower the National Crime Agency to take out the smuggling gangs?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend is correct that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which has been through Committee and is awaiting its Report stage, will create counter-terror-style powers that will help us prevent some of these crossings and disrupt the sophisticated criminal smuggling gangs that were allowed to take hold across the channel, unabated by the Conservative party. It will enable us to tackle this problem at source by working across borders with colleagues in other countries, tackling the people-smuggling routes as well as the gangs.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Mike Tapp and Angela Eagle

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The hon. Lady implies that total independence from the machinery of government would somehow assist in the job that we wish the Border Security Commander to do. I do not agree with her in that analysis. The job of the Border Security Commander is to convene and cohere and to strategically focus, across Government Departments, with a focus on checking that our border security is as effective as it can be. I do not think that total independence is going to add to effectiveness in that context. In fact, we believe that having the commander operating out of the Home Office at a director general level, but appointed by the Prime Minister with a special place in primary legislation, is a more effective way to ensure that the commander’s basic role has the biggest-percentage likelihood of being effective.

[Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)]

The Minister has been clear that we can of course recruit from outside the civil service, and that being within the civil service equips the person with the powers, the tools and, of course, the access to be effective in the role.

I am slightly concerned that the hon. Member for Stockton West tabled the amendment off the back of oral evidence from Tony Smith, who—with full respect—retired from his role 13 years ago. The director general of the National Crime Agency gave evidence on the same day as Tony Smith, and he said:

“For me, I have worked really closely with Martin Hewitt already, and it works well. It allows me to focus on the operational leadership of tackling the organised crime threat and Martin to have the convening power and to work across Whitehall on a range of issues. It provides clarity, and we have more than enough to get on with in the NCA in tackling…organised crime”.

Jim Pearce, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on organised immigration crime, then said:

“I sit on Martin’s board, so strategically I am heavily involved, and members of my team sit within the operational delivery groups. Speaking from a personal point of view, his strategic plans over the next few years make absolute sense in terms of what he is seeking to achieve for the Border Security Command.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 38, Q42.]

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for—is it Dover?

[Mike Tapp]

Yes, Dover and Deal.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I was just checking that I had my hon. Friend’s entire constituency name. They have all changed, Dr Murrison, which can be a bit disorientating because I am used to the old names.

My hon. Friend is exactly right. He demonstrates, through the evidence we heard—particularly from the NCA, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police chiefs last Thursday—that there is and was a strategic gap. Everybody is doing fantastic work in the NCA, the police, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the security services, but nobody had taken a focused look at how border security could be delivered most effectively. From the meetings I have had since Martin Hewitt took up his post, it seems there is almost relief that somebody is convening a board that can look at analytics on where the threats are, how they are developing and how we can best deal with them, and do the legwork to come up with a strategy focused on border security. That is the whole point of creating the command.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is fairly astonishing to have a new clause that puts the Border Security Commander in charge of the entire asylum and deportation systems and asks him, in legislation, to achieve processing times that the Conservative party never achieved when they were in Government. It falls into the trap of empowering the Border Security Commander to such an extent that he seems to have to take over most of the Home Office. That is not really what we intend to do with this Bill. New clause 21 would result in a fairly astonishing increase in not only the power, but the reach of the Border Security Commander. That would be massively disruptive and would probably lead to an outcome similar to the collapse of the asylum system, of which we have had to clean up the mess.

[Mike Tapp]

I think the new clause is more of a political point than a constructive addition to the Bill. I am new to Parliament, but I think Bill Committees can be really useful. This new clause is far from useful, however, and there is nothing constructive in it. It is unrealistic and feels like political point-scoring.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Not for the first time today, I agree with my hon. Friend. When the time comes, we will be voting against this new clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

As I said earlier, the Border Security Commander and the Border Security Command will work within the confines of international obligations and human rights law.

[Mike Tapp]

I apologise for my lack of timely bobbing earlier, Dr Murrison. I draw attention to the Home Secretary’s statement at the very top of the Bill:

“In my view the provisions of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.”

That adds to what the Minister has said: that those in public office have an obligation to abide by the law. If they were not to do so, there would of course be legal challenge.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Mike Tapp and Angela Eagle

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Mike Tapp]

I will quickly talk about this clause, because it is one of my favourite clauses in the Bill. Having worked in a counter-terror role in the past, I know that one of the most effective ways of preventing terror attacks on the streets of the United Kingdom is by identifying hostile reconnaissance, whether it is physical or online. That is why I am so happy to see this clause in the Bill, because it gives our authorities the opportunity to get to these vile criminals before they take to the seas.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. This clause is very much about being able to capture preparatory work for any effort to evade our immigration laws and bring people over in small boats, illegally putting their lives at risk and potentially costing lives in return for money.

This clause is about a wide range of potential research, but there are also explicit safeguards within it that are sufficient to protect individual migrants and refugees, or families of refugees, trying to help family members to flee danger or serious harm. The defence that a person is conducting these activities exclusively in preparation for their own journey protects individuals from falling foul of this law. The clause is explicitly focused on and aimed at the work done by gang-affiliated facilitators of immigration offences.

The express reasonable excuse of

“carrying out, or preparing for the carrying out of, a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”

may—depending on the circumstances—protect the families of refugees wanting to help their loved ones flee. There is also an express reasonable excuse for a person

“acting on behalf of an organisation which…aims to assist asylum-seekers, and…does not charge for its services.”

The list of reasonable excuses in the Bill is not exhaustive, so it is very much a question of looking at the information that has been gathered and making a judgment, knowing that the idea of this offence is to focus specifically on organised immigration criminality, not the individuals who may be asylum seekers or may be being trafficked.

Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation

Debate between Mike Tapp and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We have a relatively new Government in France just bedding in. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are working closely with them to see how we can strengthen and deepen our co-operation and partnership.

[Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) who raised the urgent question appears to be suffering from some memory loss. Under the Conservative Government, we saw 130,000 small boat crossings and record backlogs at the Home Office. The Conservatives opened 400 hotels—that is, 21,000 places costing £8 million per day to the taxpayer. Does the Minister recall him raising that issue under the previous Government?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

No, I do not. I noticed the revelations at the weekend about why the Conservatives decided to call the election earlier than some of us had perhaps thought. One reason set out in Tim Shipman’s book “Out” was that illegal migration was a problem,

“with a new armada of small boats predicted and the issue of whether they would be able to get a repatriation flight to Rwanda in the air before polling day.”

They evidently decided that they could not. We are now hearing this complete fiction from Conservative Members that somehow the Rwanda scheme was just about to work before we scrapped it, when they had spent £700 million on an increasingly futile and ridiculous attempt to get the scheme off the ground.

Small Boat Crossings

Debate between Mike Tapp and Angela Eagle

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)]

In 2018, 400 crossed the channel. Since then, more than 140,000 have crossed, the majority of them on the Conservatives’ watch. All they could introduce were ridiculous gimmicks, such as Rwanda, which cost taxpayers millions of pounds. Does the Minister agree that the new injection of cash into border security command is a better use of taxpayers’ money than the gimmicks that the Conservatives introduced?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. The issue here is dealing with cross-border organised immigration crime. To do that, we have to talk to our international allies and co-operate with them across borders. That is exactly what the creation of the border security command will do, both operationally and politically, and we will see the results.