Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Neil Coyle and Stephen Kinnock

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 18th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree with every word my hon. Friend says.

Just imagine if the amount of time, money, resource, energy and political capital burned on this hare-brained Rwanda scheme had been used to do things that might actually deliver, and just imagine if the Government had listened to Labour’s plan for delivering the change we need to see. We might have made some progress and seen things working. By the way, we supported what the Government have done with Albania. Why do we not see more of that, rather than this utterly ridiculous government by gimmick? What a waste of time and money.

The level of waste and this Government’s cavalier attitude to taxpayers’ money are utterly staggering. Where, oh where, is the plan for the remaining 99% of cases that the Government say will be inadmissible? Tens of thousands of people who are now ineligible to be processed and ineligible to claim asylum cannot be sent to Rwanda either. That backlog, the so-called perma-backlog, currently stands at 56,000 people, with most of them living in one of more than 300 taxpayer-funded hotels across the country, costing millions of pounds every single day.

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful argument against this Government’s wasteful policy. Is he aware that the £2 million cost of sending each person to Rwanda would cover 67 new police officers or 72 new nurses in my constituency to fix the horrendous backlog created by this shambolic Government?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend has done his maths on the £2 million. I particularly enjoyed his analogy with the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which shows that the Rwanda plan is a galactically wasteful policy. He is right that so much of this is about choices and priorities, and the Government’s choices and priorities are simply wrong in wasting valuable taxpayers’ money that would be much better focused elsewhere.

That is why we support Lords amendment 8, a Labour Front-Bench amendment in the name of my noble Friend Lord Coaker. The amendment would require the Government to report on the timetable for removing inadmissible asylum seekers under the Illegal Migration Act 2023. We need to see accountability on the inadmissibility provisions that have created the perma-backlog of 56,000 small boat asylum seekers who are stuck in limbo and are unable to be processed.

If 99% of the people crossing in small boats are not likely to be sent to Rwanda, perhaps the Minister can tell us what will happen to them. Will he admit that, despite all his bluff and bluster, they will simply be let into our asylum system after all? No? The premise of inadmissibility was always that it is a one-way street to limbo and shambles, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, and I have continually warned Ministers in this Chamber over the past two years.

Of course, there is an alternative. I hope that Conservative Members have been listening because, for the past 18 months, my right hon. Friend and I have been absolutely clear from this Dispatch Box how Labour will prevent the dangerous and life-threatening channel crossings, and how we will fix our broken asylum system. I have already mentioned how we would redirect the money set aside for the Rwandan Government into a cross-border police unit, an intelligence-sharing security partnership with Europol, in order to smash the criminal smuggling gangs upstream.