Nationality and Borders Bill

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Daly]

It is better to move on from such an appalling speech.

Amendment 12, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which would remove clause 9, is a quite straightforward legal matter. However, as I have listened to the debate, I have thought on occasion that hon. Members have been debating a clause that does not exist or is not in the Bill. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), the Labour Government, through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002—as well as through further legislation in 2016—codified and ensured that a Home Secretary of whatever political party had the power to exclude or take away somebody’s citizenship in certain circumstances. If there was an objection to that principle, an amendment should have been tabled. Anyone in the House had the opportunity to do that. However, the only amendment tabled on this measure concerns the notice period—that is it. Let us therefore have a debate on the notice period. If the Labour party opposes in principle what the previous Labour Government did in 2002 and 2016, I am certain that its Front-Bench team would have tabled an amendment.

Let us get to the notice period and what we are arguing about, on which important issues were raised. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made a point that I hope the Minister will address. If an order is made without notice, does the appeal process start when the order is made or when the order is received, as is currently the norm and the law?

I could read out some of the scaremongering and appalling things said about the Bill, but I do not want to go down into that. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) gave a magnificent speech on that. I find it surprising, because if this or any other Government wanted to do things of which they are being accused, they could do them now. What does it matter whether people have notice or not? There was the genuinely unbelievable suggestion that the Bill could be used to address climate change activists. The Opposition are genuinely scraping the barrel when it comes down to that level. I am here to tell my constituents that that is scaremongering. There is a requirement for exceptional circumstances in clause 9, which are there to protect them, and no one has anything to fear from the clause at all.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I am deeply concerned by and opposed to the great majority of the proposals in this inherently authoritarian Bill. Much of it appears to be written to satisfy front-page tabloid headlines rather than to fix the broken asylum system. It amounts to a fundamental rejection of our international obligations under the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees and does nothing to resolve these complex issues at all. Even the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that measures in the Bill could lead to an increase in unsafe journeys across the channel rather than a reduction in them. The Bill originally tried to criminalise not only asylum seekers but those who try to help and rescue them. I cannot recall a more immoral and wicked piece of UK legislation.

I am disturbed by clauses 9 and 10, which enable a Home Secretary to deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice and restrict stateless children’s access to British citizenship. As a British citizen with dual nationality, I personally feel the ice-cold chill of those proposals. It looks and feels like a ramping up of the hostile environment. I will not support a set of clauses that create a hierarchy of British citizenship. The Government are trying to reframe citizenship as a privilege, not the right that it is. The message this sends is that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants, so that their citizenship and therefore all their rights are permanently insecure.

This Bill clearly disproportionately targets those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other racial groups, regardless of their country of birth. The racialised nature of this tiered system is obvious: the citizenship of those like myself, many of my constituents and millions of others of minority and migrant heritage is less secure and less important than those who belong to majority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom. It is a shameful piece of legislation that we should all be concerned about. Much of the Bill appears to be written to satisfy the front pages of tabloids, as I have said. It is not in favour of all the communities such as those of our parents, who came here years and years ago and worked hard to rebuild this country, and they are facing this because of this Tory Government.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

There have been some powerful speeches, and I want in particular to pay tribute to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), whom Conservative Members would have done better to listen to rather than shout at.

I want to address the Government’s clause 9, which proposes removing people’s citizenship without notice and, in effect, removing their rights of appeal. When people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds raise concerns—deep concerns—about this proposal, the response from the Government is, “Trust us”. “Trust us”—the people who deported black citizens in the Windrush generation? “Trust us”—the people who sent “Go home” vans around working-class estates? “Trust us”—the people who authored the hostile environment? “Trust us”—the people who are talking in this legislation about offshore detention centres? “Trust us”—the people who have created an atmosphere in which others are trying to demonise those going into the waters off our country to try to save lives and prevent death? “Trust us”? It is no wonder that the people at the sharp end of this Government’s hostile environment and at the sharp end of this racist legislation do not trust this Government.

It is absolutely appalling that people are being made to feel as if they do not belong in their own country and as if they are somehow second-class citizens. Let me contrast that—[Interruption.] No, they are not being made to feel that because of Members of Parliament raising these concerns. It is because of the legislation—the racist, divisive, scapegoating legislation—that this Government are bringing in.