Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Let me start by correcting some misinformation that has been shared throughout the debate by Opposition Members— unintentionally, I am sure. Those who speak about illegal immigrants, or people seeking asylum illegally, should bear in mind that everyone, under international law, has a right to seek asylum from persecution. That is enshrined in international law. There is also the right not to be penalised for entering the country without permission when it is necessary to seek asylum. Those who use the word “illegal” should remember that it is only illegal because the last Government made it so, just as Rwanda was only considered safe because the last Government legislated to make it safe. The vast majority of people need to cross the channel by irregular means because there are very few safe routes. The UK requires them to do that, and then criminalises people who do it.

The Government’s scrapping of the Rwanda plan, and the repealing of some of the most extreme elements of the Conservative Government’s legislation, are very welcome. It is essential for this performative cruelty to be wiped from the statute book, and I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Home Office team on doing so. However, I must admit that I am disappointed that many inhumane policies have been left to stand. For example, the Home Office will still be allowed to operate a two-tier asylum system: some refugees will be penalised for the route by which they arrived; some victims of modern slavery will continue to be denied protections; and some people’s claims will still be automatically inadmissible on the basis that they have come from so-called safe countries, a number of which are anything but safe for minority groups.

I am particularly worried about certain new elements of the Bill. It expands offences, and gives the state additional powers to investigate and prosecute people. I know that the Government’s target is the organised criminals running these operations, but I am deeply concerned about the possibility that many more people seeking asylum will also be criminalised as an unintended consequence. We must ensure that people who just want to start a new life in safety after being forced from their homes are not punished. We need to combat the dehumanising, false narrative that desperate people fleeing war and persecution are criminals, and we must not treat them as such. Instead, we should be properly reforming our broken asylum system. An improved system should include safe and legal routes, a fair and efficient decision-making process, the lifting of work restrictions, the closure of all large sites, and increased asylum support rates.

It is appalling that 138 people—138 human beings—have died attempting to cross the channel since the summer of 2019. I have no doubt that my party is united in wanting to save lives, but I fear that the Bill, no matter how well-intentioned its aims might be, will not succeed, and that more people will die attempting to reach our shores because it does not tackle the lack of alternative options for claiming asylum, which is driving people on to those dinghies. I worry that our approach, which does not differ drastically enough from that of the last Government, will continue to add to the suffering that so many people seeking asylum have already experienced. When sector organisations such as Asylum Matters, Asylum Aid, Médecins Sans Frontières, the Refugee Council and Migrants’ Rights Network have expressed serious concerns about the Bill, alarm bells should be ringing.

Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member makes an important point. Alongside pursuing perpetrators—which must always be the greatest priority because it is about protecting victims and ensuring that those who commit vile crimes face justice—there must be a responsibility on people for their public roles, whether in policing, local councils or other institutions. We have seen issues around the Church of England, the Catholic Church and other institutions that were investigated as part of the inquiry. One reason why we are so keen to change the law—indeed, it is something I raised back when the hon. Member was working in the Home Office—is the importance of the duty to report. That then makes it an offence for public officials to cover up or fail to report. It is so important that we do that so that we can have proper accountability as well.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I sincerely commend the Home Secretary’s statement. The independent inquiry into child sexual abuse was extremely comprehensive. Over the course of seven years, it examined 2 million pages of evidence and heard from over 7,000 survivors, every single one of whom we should pay tribute to today. They relived the most horrific trauma, only for the previous Government to drag their heels in implementing the report’s recommendations. Calls for a fresh inquiry from the Conservatives and Reform are a shameful attempt to stoke division at the expense of victims, survivors and children. I thank the Home Secretary for refusing to give in to that deeply harmful and offensive political point scoring. Will she set out a timeline for when she expects to have fully implemented the IICSA recommendations?

[Yvette Cooper]

The clear point is, as my hon. Friend says, that victims and survivors need to be at the heart of the work to take forward the implementation of reforms and changes, and we want to work with the new victims and survivors panel to draw up timelines. I recognise that some of the issues around reform are difficult and that we need extensive work with victims and survivors on how they can be dealt with, but there are other areas in which we can move really swiftly, such as changing the law on the duty to report, overhauling the way in which we collect information and data, and putting in place proper monitoring systems in local areas in respect of child sexual exploitation and abuse. I hope we can build a sense of consensus on our objective, which is to protect children. That is what this should all be about, and I hope that everyone will sign up to it.

Migration and Border Security

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome many of the points that the hon. Member has made. She is right to point to the lack of trust and confidence in the system as a result of the chaos of the last few years, as well as to the loss of controls and practical measures in place. She raised migration for work, which quadrupled in the space of four or five years, at the same time as we had drops in the number of adults in training and apprenticeship starts. That is a system that is broken. I agree that we should support fair pay agreements in social care and a proper workforce strategy around that, to ensure that we can better recruit and support care workers who are UK resident. I have also asked the Migration Advisory Committee to look particularly at the engineering and IT sectors. We have had persistently high levels of recruitment from abroad in those sectors, and frankly we should have had far better and longer standing training here in the UK.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that the public are right to be angry about the state of public services, and that the blame lies squarely with 14 years of cuts and mismanagement by Conservative Governments, not with migrants who contribute to their new home? Will she stand up to attempts by Conservative Members to distract from their own failures and divide the country by scapegoating people who just want a better life for themselves and their families, as we all do?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that in 14 years the previous Government did deep damage not just to our public services but to our economy, and they have to take responsibility for that. We have a history going back through generations of people who have come to the UK to work, study, and get protection from persecution, but it is because those systems are an important part of who we are that they also need to be controlled and managed. That is why alongside the damage that the previous Government did to our economy and public services, we have also seen damage to the relationship between the migration system and the labour market, which has ended up with a loss of control.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. Those conversations are ongoing; later this month, conversations will take place on what more can be done to ensure that the manufacturers take their responsibility seriously and do everything they can to stop the trade in parts, which is a particular issue with mobile phones.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

12. If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of removing Georgia from her Department’s list of safe countries for removals, in the context of the recent passage of legislation on LGBT rights in that country.

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

Mr Speaker, I suspect I might be coughing almost as much as you, but for a completely different reason.

We constantly update our assessment of LGBT rights and other factors affecting the safety of different countries, working closely with the Foreign Office and informed by regular independent reports from the chief inspector of borders and immigration. The latest update for Georgia was published last month and is available on the gov.uk website.

[Nadia Whittome]

The safe state designation that the previous Government introduced was intended to allow Georgian and Indian nationals to be returned without any individualised assessment of the safety of the country for each person. In both countries, persecution of certain minorities is on the rise; that makes their inclusion on the list particularly wrong, but also highlights the wider dangers of blanket inadmissibility of asylum claims based on nationality. What steps will the Government take to ensure that individuals’ asylum claims are always properly assessed?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and bringing her concerns—concerns that I share—to the attention of the House. We regularly monitor and review the situation in countries of origin, working closely with the Foreign Office, and our resulting country policy and information notes are published on the gov.uk website. Should we assess that the troubling new law to which my hon. Friend refers, or any other changes, fundamentally affect the justification for Georgia’s designation, we will seek to remove it from the list, using the correct parliamentary process.

Violent Disorder

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the hon. Member’s support for the speedy response from the police and criminal justice system to the violence that we saw on our streets. I agree that it is a serious problem that we have inherited such long delays in the criminal justice system and problems getting cases swiftly to court. Knife crime has substantially increased in recent years, which is why the newly elected Labour Government have made halving knife crime part of our mission for safer streets across this country. We want stronger action against young people who are caught and get drawn into knife crime. We want a stronger Young Futures prevention programme, and stronger action against online companies that continue to make it far too easy to get hold of knives. We have to take stronger action across the board to speed up processes and ensure that there are consequences for knife crime.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

The appalling racist riots may be over for now, but the ideology behind them is a growing threat, both here and internationally. In Germany, for example, the far right has just won a state election for the first time since the second world war. Does the Home Secretary agree that to prevent more people being won over by the far right, our Government must deliver proper improvements in living standards in order to combat disillusionment, and refuse to march to the beat of the far right’s drum on immigration and Islamophobia?

[Yvette Cooper]

Clearly, we want to see increasing living standards right across the board. That is immensely important. We also need a serious and sensible debate on a range of policies, including on crime, immigration and other issues that the Home Office is responsible for. We have to take much stronger action to counter the kinds of online radicalisation that we have seen, whether we are talking about far-right extremism or Islamist extremism. That is why we are setting up a new review on countering extremism. We also have to ensure that those committing disorder and violent crimes take responsibility, because there is no excuse. No policy issue or living standards can ever excuse the kind of violence, racist attacks and disorder that we saw.