Illegal Immigration

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered illegal immigration.

I must start by saying that our numbers in this debate are more select than they might otherwise be, were it not for the fact that many Members are taking part in the vital debate on the Government’s decision to take the winter fuel payment away from 10 million needy pensioners.

Since 1971, it has been a criminal offence for a person who is not a British citizen to knowingly enter this country without leave to do so. Yet since the start of 2021, more than 125,000 people have come to the UK illegally in small boats—about 94 people every day. In the period since Labour came to power alone, about 8,400 people have come—about 137 every day. Of course, people also come via other illegal routes, and, for obvious reasons, it is difficult to estimate the total number of people in the country illegally. However, the numbers are clearly significant. A 2020 report for the Pew Research Center estimated that at the end of 2017, 800,000 to 1.2 million people were already living in the UK without a valid residence permit, which is about 1.2% to 1.8% of the whole population.

Illegal immigration is unfair on those who have played by the rules and come here legally. It undermines attempts to get the kind of high-skill, high-wage migration that all politicians say they want and it blows a hole in our attempts to keep dangerous people out of the country. It is a huge issue.

Many of the people coming here in the small boats are, in reality, economic migrants—not all, but many. At present, the No. 1 country of origin is Vietnam, which is a friendly and peaceful country. However, as the University of Oxford Migration Observatory pointed out, it is also a country where there are lots of strong connections to organised crime for those crossing from Vietnam, or being trafficked from there.

Most of the people in the small boats are young men—nine out of 10 are men, and about three quarters are aged 18 to 39. Few have any documentation, with only about 2% having passports, which makes it difficult to prove who they are or where they are from, and, coached by the people smugglers, most destroy any evidence —pocket litter, SIM cards and the like—that would tell us where they are from.

The overwhelming majority of these people will claim asylum. They know that if they can make it to the UK, they will be able to stay by one means or another—most will be granted asylum, and, of those who are not, very few will be removed. Looking at the period 2019 to 2022, we see that only about a fifth of applications were refused, and only one in 20 people was actually made to leave the country through enforced or voluntary returns.

Asylum grant rates have steadily climbed in recent decades, from less than a third in 2004 to around four fifths now, while the proportion of people who are ultimately removed has dropped sharply over the past 10 years. Previously, around a quarter of those who claimed asylum were returned; now, the figure is only around one in 20. Many of those who are not granted asylum simply disappear. In November 2023, the Home Office admitted that it does not know the whereabouts of around 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been discontinued. Those coming in the small boats know the bottom line: if they can get to the UK, they can stay. As long as that is the case, more and more people will come.

The Government say they are trying to address the issue in a variety of ways, which I will work through. First, they are trying to process people faster, which, in practice, means granting more people asylum more quickly. That means that the costs of the asylum system disappear into the costs of the wider welfare system, but, of course, the costs in the real world do not go away. A number of local councils are concerned that people will shift from asylum accommodation to presenting as statutory homeless and in need of council housing.

These trends are quite difficult to get a handle on in the UK, because, while lots of other Governments are publishing more and more data, we in the UK are publishing less and less. The Department for Work and Pensions has stopped publishing data on welfare claims by nationality, and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has stopped publishing tax paid and tax credits received by nationality. The Home Office will not answer questions on the immigration status of prisoners, such as whether a prisoner is here illegally—although it has the data, it does not publish it—and it does not collect data on the nationality or immigration status of those who are arrested.

When asked basic questions such as how much it spends, on average, per night on hotel accommodation, the Home Office says such information is commercially confidential. When asked about spending programmes such as the refugee integration loan scheme, the Home Office says it does not know how much it has spent, it does not know how many loans it has made, and it does not know how many have been repaid. That is a pretty shocking way to handle taxpayers’ money and it all breeds huge mistrust, meaning that we cannot have a sensible debate about the costs and benefits of different migration policies. The first question that I hope the Minister will answer is this: will she publish the data, so that we can at least have a sensible discussion about the facts?

The second thing that the Government say they are trying to do is to increase deportations of those who should not be here, which is obviously an idea I welcome. In some ways, however, this is surprising because when the Prime Minister was campaigning to be the leader of the Labour party, he signed a letter calling for the suspension of a flight to deport 50 offenders to Jamaica and the suspension of all such future charter flights. In total, 151 Labour MPs and peers signed that letter.

Among those who escaped deportation that day were Ikiva Heaven, a heroin dealer who had already served four years in prison and who went on to be jailed again in May 2021 for dealing cocaine and heroin. If that was not bad enough, one of the other criminals who Labour Members so generously campaigned on behalf of, Ernesto Elliott, went on to commit murder.

The Prime Minister has previously claimed that there is a

“racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.

None the less, I take it on trust that a new leaf has been turned over and that the Government really do want to increase deportations. However, we need some clarity about exactly what the Government’s target and promise are. The Home Secretary has said that she will

“reverse the collapse in removals that has taken place since 2010”. —[Official Report, 22 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 386.]

As the Minister will know, I was quite critical of the last Government on this issue so I would welcome an increase in deportations. However, my question to the Minister is this: what will the Government achieve, by when? Are we talking about enforced returns or all returns? By when will we reach what level of deportations? For background, the number of enforced returns was 21,425 in 2004; by 2009, that figure had declined to 13,938. It declined further to just 9,236 by 2018. It then ran at about 3,000 a year during the pandemic, when no one was flying—fair enough. However, it then went back up to 7,119 in the year ending June 2024.

What is the Government’s ambition regarding enforced returns? Is it only to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels? If so, that would leave the figure substantially below 2010 levels and at about half the rate that we had in 2004. That would not be very ambitious. Will the Government figure also include voluntary returns? If that is the case, the Home Secretary’s recent announcement that she wanted to raise levels up to the “highest level since 2018” involves a very odd target, because returns have already increased to above that level. In 2018, they were 24,938; in the year ending June 2024, they were 29,551. She could go backwards and still hit her target, which is hardly a stretching ambition. The second question that I hope the Minister will answer when she responds to the debate is about what exactly the Government are promising, by when, and on what kind of deportations. We urgently need clarity.

That brings me to my third question for the Minister. For some countries of origin, such as Albania, we have already secured returns agreements; that has been very effective. Given that the number of people coming from Vietnam is now very high, I am sure that the Government will quickly secure a returns agreement with that country. However, what do the Government plan when it comes to countries that will not take their nationals back or countries that the Government will not want to send nationals back to—such as Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, which account for a very large share of illegal immigration to the UK? I take it that the Government will not negotiate returns agreements with the Taliban, the ayatollahs of Iran or Assad in Syria.

To solve the problem, Governments across Europe are negotiating deals with safe third countries. Last week, we got the news that a senior Minister in Germany was looking to take up the relationship with Rwanda that the Labour Government have rashly abandoned without putting any alternative in place. It is not just Germany that wants to do this; two camps will be built in Albania to house migrants rescued at sea by Italian boats while Italy processes their asylum claims. The EU has ruled that that is legal under European law. Denmark passed legislation allowing for the processing of asylum claims in third countries in 2021. The Chancellor of Austria praised the last Government’s agreement with Rwanda, saying that it was a

“pioneer for us being able to put asylum proceedings in safe third countries”.

In May, 15 EU member states wrote to the European Commission to back the creation of centres in third countries. The signatories included Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania.

Lots of Governments are looking at this issue and responding. In a recent letter, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, noted that

“Many Member States are looking at innovative strategies to prevent irregular migration by tackling asylum applications further from the EU external border”.

She promised to look at the issue during the current European Parliament cycle.

The use of safe third countries is not a new idea. Outside Europe, Australia has been intercepting boats at sea and putting people in safe third countries since 2001. Here, Tony Blair’s Government worked to get a deal with Tanzania to send failed asylum seekers there, and that Government also worked to get a deal with other EU member states that would have seen asylum processing in third countries—an idea that is clearly coming back again. Of course, there are differences between the schemes: between sending failed asylum seekers to other countries, processing asylum claims offshore or doing both the processing and accepting of asylum claims in other countries. They have different merits, but all stop failed asylum seekers from remaining here illegally.

It seems certain to me that this Government must and will end up negotiating similar agreements with third countries of their own, which is why it was so rash of them to trash the Rwanda scheme with no alternative. My third question is: having rashly handed over all the work we did with Rwanda to Germany, will the Government now U-turn and start working on third-country deals of the kinds that many other countries now have or are setting up?

I have already mentioned Australia’s policy of intercepting boats at sea, and my fourth question relates to that. What will the Government do to ensure that people intercepted at sea are towed back to France rather than the UK? That is an increasingly important point because the small boats crisis has entered a new and more dangerous phase. The average number of people in each boat has been increasing, and partly because of the success of the last Government in increasingly intercepting engines—the most difficult element of the people smugglers’ kit—we are seeing very large and increasingly overcrowded boats putting out to sea with really small engines. Those things are death traps by design; they are not even intended to get across the channel but purely to get a few miles out to sea and then rely on being rescued. Other innovations by the criminals, such as taking the hard floor out of the boats, have already had deadly and tragic consequences.

The legal argument has always been made that, under the law of the sea, those things are by definition a risk to life at sea. It has got even stronger, which shifts the argument for us to turn more of them back to France. I know that the French have occasionally allowed those boats to be towed back to France when the circumstances have been acute enough, but the argument has got stronger. Will the Minister commit to doing just that? Everything we do at every stage to disrupt the people smugglers’ business model helps to make it unviable and to stop this evil trade.

That brings me to my final question for the Minister: what will the Government do about the underlying reasons why people come from safe third countries to the UK? I said at the start that people know that, as long as they can make it to the UK, they will be able to stay. As long as they know that, they will continue to come. Successive Governments since 2018 have worked with France and other allies to improve enforcement. There have been some results from that, but on its own, it is not going to be enough. We need people to realise that crossings are futile so that they do not step into a deadly boat in the first place.

Some people think that we can solve the problem by just granting more visas for people to come here legally—so-called safe and legal routes. They are saying, “Just make illegal immigration legal, and the problem is solved”. The problem is that, unless we are prepared to have completely open borders and to impose no limits at all, there will always be people who come illegally. For example, 2,233 people from India have come on small boats. India is the world’s largest democracy with a booming economy and an impressive space programme, but we have given—over the same period that the boats have been operating—1.3 million non-visitor visas to people from India. There are loads of opportunities to come here legally from India, and yet thousands of people have still come here illegally. That shows us that we can never solve this problem by having slightly more or slightly bigger safe and legal routes.

It is true that we have created, quite rightly, a number of additional routes on top of the asylum system. Through those humanitarian routes, plus the asylum system, we have taken about half a million people over the last five years; some of them lived in my house—I had Ukrainian refugees living in my house. But sadly, we cannot have an unlimited scheme for every country in the world that is poorer or more oppressive than the UK, because that is a very large share of the world’s population. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, about 16% of all adults worldwide say that they would leave their own country permanently if they could—that would be about 900 million people. They are not wrong to want to move to a richer country, but we simply cannot take all those who would like to move here. Doing things that simply increase the acceptance rate in the asylum system to “clear the backlog” is likely only to increase the pull factor and encourage more people to take that dangerous journey across the channel.

If we look at the countries of origin that account for most of those crossing the channel, we can see that the grant rates have been increasing dramatically over recent years. Even on initial, first-round decisions, acceptances from Vietnam have gone up from about 20% to 60% in recent years. From Eritrea and Sudan, the rates have gone up from 20% to about 100%, and from Afghanistan and Syria, they are about 100%. The figures on final decisions, and on the proportion of people who are actually removed, are even starker. The share of those coming from Vietnam who are returned has declined from about two thirds in the mid-noughties to just 1%. For Turkey, it has gone from 0.5% to 1%. From Iran, from one in five to just 1%. Even for friendly countries like India—booming economies, superpowers in the making—it has gone from half to just one in 10.

There are multiple reasons why someone’s chances of remaining in the UK having come here illegally have increased so much over time. Case law has gradually broadened the definition of groups that are at “risk of persecution”, allowing more and more people to come to the UK if their own countries do not meet the very high standards of western liberal norms. The expansion by the courts of the concept of persecution has left immigration officers facing almost impossible questions of judgment: is someone really a member of this political party or this religion, do they practise their lifestyle or faith openly or quietly, or are they a prominent target? Often there is variation within countries and between time periods.

In some cases, people are not being persecuted in their own country, but they argue they would be persecuted if they returned. For example, military men from Eritrea who have left without permission can be made to do military service, which is then used as an argument to stay in the UK. Should we have to accept any young man who comes here from Eritrea for that reason? I do not think that just because someone’s country is poorer or more oppressive than the UK that gives them a right to come to the UK, but that is the direction that judicial activism has taken.

To create some accountability and transparency around this, I have pushed for the decisions of the first-tier immigration tribunal to be published rather than kept secret, as at present, but that still has not happened. Hand in glove with judicial activism, the Shaw review and the decline of immigration and detention have made the practicalities of deporting people much harder.

Far and away the biggest legal change is the growth in case law associated with the European convention on human rights, signed in 1950. While the 1951 refugee convention had no court or enforcement mechanism at the start, the convention of course has its own court in Strasbourg. Unlike Germany, the UK has a dualist legal system, meaning that treaties do not directly apply, so historically it was able to ignore rulings of the European court. However, in 1998, the Blair Government incorporated the convention into domestic law, meaning people could use their ECHR rights in the domestic courts, directly. I think Tony Blair regretted that very quickly, because in 2006 the courts ruled on the case of nine Afghans who hijacked an airliner in Afghanistan and held its occupants at gunpoint for four days at Stansted airport in 2000. The court granted them leave to remain in this country in a claim heavily based on ECHR rights.

Case law has shifted the meaning of some of the very vaguely defined rights in the convention in a way that would have stunned the original signatories. As an example, a Government consultation listed some cases showing how the balance has shifted. I will mention some of those in this debate. Take case X, a foreign national who had leave to remain in the UK, who committed a series of crimes including common assault, battery, destruction of property and grievous bodily harm. The immigration and asylum tribunal found it would be a disproportionate interference with the appellant’s rights to deport them, given their relationship with their child. If we take case AD, a Turkish national who was convicted of an offence of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to 54 months’ imprisonment, in September 2019, the first-tier tribunal allowed his appeal against deportation on human rights grounds. After protracted litigation relying on his period of lawful residence and marriage to a UK national, the upper-tier tribunal allowed the appeal on article 8 ECHR grounds.

In the case of OO, a Nigerian national convicted of intent to supply crack cocaine and heroin and two offences of violence, in 2020, the first-tier tribunal allowed his appeal against deportation, again on article 8 ECHR grounds, and the upper-tier tribunal upheld these findings, relying on what it called OO’s “significant obstacles” to integrating back in Nigeria.

I do not think that any of these decisions were what Winston Churchill intended when he set up the Council of Europe. Jonathan Sumption, one of our leading jurists, is right to say that these incredibly vaguely defined rights are “dangerous for democracy”. ECHR rights are being used to block us from doing many of the things that we need to do to prevent people who arrive here illegally from lying about their age.

A recent freedom of information response released by the Home Office makes it clear that many people are lying about their age. We can now see that supposedly there are 50% more 16-year-olds arriving here than 18-year-olds, and there are also 50% more 20-year-olds than 18-year-olds, leaving a suspicious dip in the numbers around the age of 18. However, the medical examinations that would enable us to stop people lying about their ages are often barred by ECHR rights. We saw a tragic case of a dangerous person lying about their age with Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, who claimed to be 14 when he was 19, and went on to kill Tom Roberts, an aspiring Royal Marine. That awful and dangerous case showed in multiple ways how the system elevates the rights of dangerous people over the rights of people in this country who just want to stay safe.

Enforcement is very important, and I hope the Minister will let us know when the head of the new border security command is going to be appointed, as several months have passed now. It is essentially a rebadging of existing measures, but it is still not good that the post has remained vacant for so long. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that someone has finally been appointed.

There are, however, limits to what enforcement can do. Tony Smith, the former head of Border Force, has pointed out that just relying on enforcement alone is like playing whack-a-mole. One gang can be shut down, but another one will always pop up. That is why he calls the decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme “rash”. Those who come on the small boats know the bottom line. If they can get to the UK, they can stay. Until we change that, more and more people will force their way into this country illegally. That is not fair on British citizens and it is not fair to legal migrants to this country. It brings significant costs to the British taxpayer and lets dangerous people into our country.

During the election I met many people who were in despair about the small boats. They felt it was profoundly unfair, and that the rights of people who forced their way into this country were considered more important than their rights. They are right to feel that way. I was critical of the previous Government, but I am not optimistic about the current Government fixing any of these things. Perhaps the Minister will prove me wrong when she responds to the debate.

At the very least, I hope that the Minister will answer some questions directly. First, will the Government publish the data that the DWP and the Home Office keep secret? Secondly, will the Government set out a clear, measurable and specific target for removals with a date on it? Thirdly, will the Government U-turn and start talks to create third-country agreements of the kind that they have just abandoned? Fourthly, will they start to tow boats back to France, given the overwhelming risk to public safety and the clear legal arguments for doing that? Finally, and above all, will the Government start to address the deeper reasons why illegal immigrants and people-smugglers know that, if they force their way into the UK, they will be able to stay?

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s observations. Rather than clutching on to something that was clearly very expensive and has not worked, the important thing is to get down to doing the day job. While the Rwanda scheme was being developed, the Home Office stopped doing a lot of other things that it should have been doing. Returns completely plummeted: the Illegal Migration Act 2023 made it impossible to process a range of people, so they were literally sitting in hotels, costing £8 million a day.

There are no easy answers—I am not the first Minister for illegal immigration and asylum to say that there are no easy fixes, and I will not be the last—but we have to be able to administer the system, deal with returns and do all the things we have to do to make asylum system outcomes meaningful. If a person’s asylum application fails and their country is safe, they should be returned; there should be a consequence to the asylum decision. The Government have a duty to speed up the asylum system and make it fair, but there must be a consequence if the outcome is not what the asylum seeker wants.

[Neil O'Brien]

I want to press the Minister on the question I asked about third countries. Tony Blair has advocated third-country agreements, and many other European countries are signing them, although there are countries that we would not, for obvious reasons, want to return even failed asylum seekers to. Are the Government ruling out any such third-country agreements?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am unsure what sort of third-country agreements the hon. Gentleman is talking about. There are various agreements that might be relevant, such as the return agreement with Albania, and hopefully work we are doing with Vietnam to return people. Returns for failed asylum seekers and those who have no right to be here are an important part of ensuring the system works properly. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is going down another path, so I will give way if he wants to come in again.

[Neil O'Brien]

I thank the Minister for giving way again; it is kind of her. The question is not about return agreements but about third-country agreements, whereby those seeking asylum in this country are sent to a third country that is not their home country if their application fails or to have their processing done. That is the kind of agreement that Tony Blair argued for. The Italians, for example, already have one up and running, and many European countries are setting them up.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

At this stage, eight or nine weeks into the job, I would not want to rule out any such thing, but tests would have to be applied to it. It would certainly have to be in keeping with international law, and we would have to ensure that it provides value for money and has a reasonable chance of working. I do not want to come here at this stage of the Government’s life and rule anything out, but we would have to think about certain issues—such as schemes according with international law and being good value for money—which would apply to any such potential scheme. However, the Government’s key priority at the moment is to deal with the channel crossings in small boats. That is why we are focusing on creating the border security command, which will help us to get a grip on this difficult but important issue.

Border Force maintains 100% checks for scheduled passengers arriving into the UK and facilitated 129 million passenger arrivals last year. The UK is recognised as a global leader in the use of automation at the border, embracing innovation to simplify processes for legitimate travellers, including families, alongside improving the UK’s security and biosecurity. As part of the ongoing development of the entire system, we will extend the use of automation, such as passport gates and e-gates at the UK border.

However, we also need to stop those who come here in an irregular manner. Border security command will bring together our intelligence and enforcement agencies, with hundreds of new cross-border police, investigators and prosecutors. It will be equipped with new powers to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks upstream and to prevent the boats from reaching the French coast in the first place. That will be led by a new border security commander, who will provide cross-system strategic leadership and direction across several agencies. That includes the National Crime Agency, Border Force, policing, our intelligence community, immigration enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Work is advancing on the planned border security, asylum and immigration Bill, which will be introduced to this House at the earliest opportunity—I am sure I will see some hon. Members here taking part in the Bill Committee and other processes as the Bill makes its way through this place.

The Sandhurst agreement, signed by the last Government, is important, and we have always supported it, but it does not go far enough. It focuses on the French beaches, but we should be stopping the gangs and the boats long before they get that far. This issue is a threat to our security, and that should be reflected in our approach. Our co-operation with key international partners must be as robust as it is for terrorism and other security threats. We will therefore be looking for closer partnerships, with different and better ways of making these criminals pay.

We have already spoken to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, and to interior Ministers in Italy, Germany and Turkey, about how to strengthen operations against criminal gangs. We have begun supplying other European countries with more intelligence gathered by the UK on people-smuggling into their countries. We also support Italy in its Rome process, and irregular arrivals to Italy decreased by 17% in the year ending June 2024 compared with the previous year. But we lack important information and are seeking much stronger data-sharing agreements with partner countries. That is how we can actually ensure that the intelligence we share deals with some of the cross-border threats.

Those with no right to be here must be removed. The Government have established a new returns and enforcement programme to ensure that asylum and immigration rules are properly respected and enforced. By the end of the year, more of those with no right to be here—including foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers—will have been removed than in any other six-month period over the past five years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal said, we have also had 13 bespoke return flights, which have been chartered since 5 July, returning individuals to a range of countries, including Albania, Poland, Romania, Vietnam and Timor-Leste.

[Neil O’Brien]

Can I press the Minister on my specific question about what the Government’s target is? The hon. Lady talked about getting to the highest six-monthly rate by the end of this year. What is the Government’s longer-term target? If we were to believe what the Home Secretary said when she was the shadow Home Secretary, they are going to reverse and get back up to the level of deportations we had in 2010—that is the logical reading of what she said. Is that the Government’s target? Are they going to get deportations back to 2010 levels?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

We certainly have the ambition to do so. If we have a look, returns plummeted during the period when the last Government were in office. In 2023, 3,225 returns were made; in 2010, we returned 7,157, and of course, in the meantime, levels of illegal immigration have grown exponentially, so we certainly have the view that we want to return to those kinds of levels and do much, much more to ensure that if someone gets to the end of the asylum system and they have failed, there will be consequences and they will be returned.

We have also, at the same time, been taking some time to invest in intensive immigration enforcement operations. Over the last few weeks, we have targeted rogue businesses suspected of employing illegal workers. More than 275 premises have been targeted, with 135 receiving civil penalty referral notices for employing illegal workers; 85 illegal migrant workers were detained for removal. We are rapidly expanding this kind of work and certainly have the ambition to continue to do so. We also have voluntary return schemes, which we will continue to use.

In order to reduce the foreign national offender prison population and support the Ministry of Justice in alleviating current prison capacity issues, we are also focusing on those who are serving custodial sentences and on maximising returns directly from prison. We are taking rigorous action against foreign national offenders living in the community by actively monitoring and managing cases and resolving barriers to removal. So it is our intention, I emphasise again, to make certain that we can do a lot better than the previous Government did in removing foreign national offenders, which is why immigration removal centres, which can play a vital role in controlling our borders, need to be strengthened and we are increasing our estate capacity to ensure that we have enough detention space for swift, firm and fair returns.

The Government are working at pace to optimise the use of the current immigration return estate in the immediate term, and expect to deliver an extra 200 male beds by the end of September. A further 78 beds are expected to be delivered by March 2025. Alongside that uplift, we are increasing vital ancillary provision such as healthcare, legal services and welfare facilities, so that we can expedite returns.

I think this is probably the first of many such debates we will have. Actually, I think there is quite a lot we can agree about in terms of the requirement to secure our borders. I can see the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston leaping up and down, so I am happy to give way.

[Neil O'Brien]

The Minister is kind to give way in the middle of her peroration. I just wondered whether I could press her on the point about towing more of the boats back to France. The legal arguments are so strong: the chances of us saving lives at sea are so strong that the legal arguments are absolutely crystal clear. Is it the Government’s ambition that a greater share of these boats will be towed back to France rather than towed to the UK?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Well, it is difficult—a difficult thing to do. I think that part of what we need to do in our relations with France is do things in co-operation. It is quite difficult to try to work across the border if you alienate the people that you are working with, so any such things have got to be done operationally with agreement. The co-operation from that point of view is crucial, as is, obviously, saving life at sea. If there is any danger with respect to towing boats, it is very, very difficult to intervene in what is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, in a context where the boats that are being put to sea at the moment are extremely flimsy and are actually falling apart in the water and often, as we saw tragically last week, contain people with no effective lifejacket and no way of staying afloat. So we have to be very, very careful.

We have to work with our colleagues in France and co-operate operationally on where we take those in the water; many are returned to France, as it happens, when rescues happen in French territorial waters. It is a balance. I will certainly keep it under review, and I am happy to keep the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston in touch with thinking as it develops.

I was on my peroration when I was interrupted very politely by the hon. Gentleman. I congratulate him once again on securing this debate, and congratulate and thank all Members who have contributed to it. I know this is an issue to which we will return.

[Neil O’Brien]

I thank all Members who have taken part in what I thought was a good-tempered and interesting debate, in which many made good and important contributions. I actually agree with many of the things that the Minister said, such as her point about the powerful link to wider criminality from the criminal gangs that operate the illegal trade across the channel. Her comments also give me the opportunity to thank our European partners with whom we have been working intensely, over the last couple of years, particularly in Bulgaria, to stop the flow of boats and engines to the criminal gangs. This is a shared European challenge and it can only grow over time, because of the growth of the population—particularly the young population —in the countries of origin. So there are things we do agree on.

We got some interesting answers to the five questions that I asked. I am afraid we did not hear much on data. There are lots of interesting pieces of data that the Government really should be—but are not—publishing at the moment. I encourage the Minister to start publishing things that the public really deserve to know. On the deportations target, which has the ambition to get back to 2010 levels, I will support anything that will increase levels of deportations. It was interesting that the Minister did not rule out signing third-country agreements of the kind that other European countries have. I encourage her to get on with that, and to go as fast as she can towards doing that. On the question of towing boats back to France, the Minister said it was tricky and that she was thinking about it. I encourage her to really go for it, because that will help us profoundly to disrupt the people smugglers’ business model.

However, what we did not really get into—I thought this was interesting in some of the comments made by Labour Members—was the point about the underlying causes, pull factors and reasons why so many people come, which is because they know they will be able to stay. There were some interesting and important contributions on enforcement, but I encourage the Members present to listen to three Tonys: one is a Labour politician, one is a Liberal and one is a civil servant. One is Tony Smith, the head of UK Border Force, who said that enforcement on its own will never be enough; he is right about that. He has said it is rash to scrap the Rwanda scheme. The second Tony we have to listen to is Tony Blair, who was trying to set up third-country agreements. I hope that will persuade Labour politicians that they need to be doing the same thing—even Tony Blair agrees that it is the right thing to do. The third is Tony Abbott, the former Australian Prime Minister, who pioneered interception at sea and ended Australia’s small boats crisis by towing the boats back to third countries, as we should be doing here between the UK and France.

There are things we can agree on. But I think there are things the Government say about enforcement that imply that no one has thought of enforcement before, and that we have not worked with lots of European countries before—we have; we have been doing this for years. However, that on its own is not enough. At some point—perhaps it has already happened—the Minister will realise that is the case. I hope that when she does so, she will join us in thinking about how we can tackle the underlying reasons that so many people are getting into these deadly boats and putting money in the hands of dangerous criminals to risk their lives crossing to this country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered illegal immigration.