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.

Legal Migration

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

We have increased the pace of decision making in our asylum processing system tenfold. I remind the hon. Gentleman that in recent years we have made very generous offers to the people of Hong Kong and Ukraine. I know the British people will recognise which of our two parties will grip immigration, and it certainly is not his.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

This excellent package is a big step in the right direction, towards a higher-skill, higher-wage economy with less pressure on our housing and infrastructure. Will my right hon. Friend put in the Library the analysis behind his statement that this package, plus the previously announced reduction in student dependants, will mean that more than 300,000 people who came last year would no longer be able to do so? It would be interesting to understand how much of that is the previously announced reduction in student dependants, how much of it comes from each of the announcements made today and how it compares with the forecast for future migration laid out by the OBR in the most recent economic and fiscal outlook. Will he put that in the Library? A previous Government were rightly mocked for saying that only tens of thousands of people would come from eastern Europe, and they were completely wrong. As well as having a better policy, can we also have more transparency?

[James Cleverly]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I am more than happy to put in the Library our estimates of the impact of these announcements and the previous announcements.

Illegal Immigration

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

My understanding is that officials from my Department meet regularly on these issues. If there are specific cases, the hon. Member should please bring them to my attention.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend to his place, and I welcome his comments on the unfairness of illegal immigration for those who have come here legally. However, the Supreme Court’s verdict this morning is extreme comprehensive, and it reveals not just one obstacle, but multiple obstacles to deporting people from this country. If we want to deter the small boats, we need to be able to remove significant numbers of people extremely quickly. Given the comprehensive nature of the judgment this morning, can I encourage my right hon. Friend against an incremental approach? It is clear from the ruling that we need to do something stronger now. We chose in the Illegal Migration Act not to include “notwithstanding” provisions, but I think we do need them now.

[James Cleverly]

I hear the point my hon. Friend makes about a powerful deterrent—we are absolutely committed to that—but I do say again that, in circumstances as challenging as this, there are rarely silver-bullet solutions. In my whole time in government and in politics, I have never yet come across one. We have to pursue all our lines of effort, and I give him my assurance that we will continue to do so.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con) [V]]

The reason we need to take action through this Bill today is not, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said, because the country is overwhelmed, but because the system is both broken and unfair. It is obvious it is broken to everyone who sees on TV every summer large numbers of people risking their lives as they are trafficked from France, a safe country, to the UK. The system is broken because it is leading to people profiting from putting others’ lives at risk and to people putting to sea in dangerous vessels. It is unfair to those who have played by the rules. They have often jumped through a lot of hoops, paid a lot of money and done everything right, and then they see other people pushing to the front of the queue as economic migrants, despite not following all the rules. Ultimately, we have to insist on a system that is rule-based and set our own rules on who comes to this country. If we are to do that, we have to crack down hard on illegal migration and those who profit from it.

Therefore, I welcome the measures in the Bill. I welcome the extra resources for Border Force to police channel crossings. I particularly welcome the extra life sentences for people traffickers—it is amazing that that is not the case already. It is right to bring those in for people who are profiting from others’ misery and from others being put in extreme danger as they cross the channel. It is right to bring in those tougher penalties and in the legislation to increase the penalties for those who return after being the subject of a deportation order. Those who break the rules in that way again should clearly be the subject of stiffer penalties.

I also welcome, as many of my constituents will, the measures to reduce the vexatious claims that see people potentially taking legal action, even though on the steps of a plane, with the endless appeals and poorly merited cases that people use to clog up the system, slow things down and waste lots of people’s time and taxpayers’ money. We have to have a decision-making system that is not only fair, but makes clear decisions and does not lead to endless legal processes of a kind that many of my constituents are certainly frustrated by. It is also right that we have tougher measures to limit visas for those third countries that are not co-operating with us. If other countries do not want to help us and are not taking back their nationals who are being deported—they are not taking back their own citizens from this country—we have to be more symmetrical about things and look again at the visa rules we have for those countries.

I am proud to support this legislation, which ends a broken system, reduces the chance of people having their lives put at risk and ends some basic unfairnesses in the system that have gone on for far too long. It is a Bill that I am very proud to support.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Helen Hayes.

Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

Of course.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the statement and the lead that my right hon. Friend is taking on this hugely important issue. What steps is she taking to make sure that Wendy Williams’s recommendations are taken forward as quickly as possible?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend will know that there are a vast number of recommendations. Wendy emphasised the need to ensure that we did not just fulfil them all immediately, but that we had the time and space to give all the recommendations the right consideration. That is why we are taking this phased approach right now.

I am focusing on two particular elements. One is the compensation; it is right that we go through case by case and look at the complexities behind individual cases. The second significant area is the culture and the Department. That is the focus and, as I have said repeatedly, I will continue to share updates on the recommendations with the House. I have also spoken about the Department now being open to more scrutiny. That will play into the review that Wendy will undertake next year with regards to the Department.

Public Order

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I am saddened by the hon. Lady’s tone. I thought that she would welcome an attempt to combat the inequalities in our society and end what has been a great disservice to many communities across our nation who are subject to real and pressing inequalities. I think it is right that we should all work together in a measured, responsible and reasonable way. I am just sorry that the hon. Lady is not of that persuasion.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

There was widespread revulsion in my constituency the other day when the news emerged that somebody had defecated on a war memorial in Market Harborough. I strongly welcome my hon. Friend’s commitment to introduce legislation to protect such memorials. While my constituents are doing everything they can to fight this deadly virus, they see on TV far-right thugs coming here to urinate on a memorial to a fallen police officer—they do not speak for the people of this country. The weekend before that, they saw hooligans disrupting the important Black Lives Matter protests by injuring dozens of police officers—they do not speak for Black Lives Matter, and they do not speak for this country either. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the people who really represent this country are our brave police officers, who are putting themselves in the line of danger to protect innocent people? Will she do everything she can to back them to the hilt, accelerate the work on the police covenant and ensure that the hooligans who injure our police officers end up where they belong—in jail?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on every level, and I thank him for the passion with which he spoke. I pay tribute to our police and our public service personnel who were supporting them over the weekend. They worked flat out, selflessly, to try to protect the public from the thugs and hooligans who were perpetrating the most appalling criminality, violence and disorder and the most aggressive and revolting behaviour. Racism, thuggery and that kind of hooliganism should never be tolerated at all. My hon. Friend speaks for the nation when he says that those individuals should face the full force of law, and that is effectively what will happen to them.

Automated Facial Recognition Surveillance

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important and useful point. He is quite right that the acceleration of technology needs to be embraced by the House in a way that perhaps it has not been in the past. Both he and I stood on a manifesto that contained a commitment to the enabling of technology in a strict and controlled legal framework, and we will be thinking about that over the next few months. Some years ago, I came across a company that was working on online financial security. It had a system that identified someone not only from their password when they entered it, but from the way in which that person typed their password, because apparently the way we type is very characteristic. Those are the sorts of technologies we can deploy to great effect, but with democratic control.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

This technology is potentially a very powerful tool to fight crime, including serious crimes like knife crime where deprived and minority ethnic communities are, sadly, disproportionately likely to be the victims. It could also help to clear up cases like the awful recent murder and aggravated burglary in my constituency. However, will the Minister reassure the House that we will use this powerful new technology only in a proportionate way?

Emergency Summit on Knife Crime

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The hon. Lady is saying that I do not like speaking to the House. Come on, let us not be silly about this. This is such an important topic and it requires collaborative work. Frankly, urgent questions and press releases may be very helpful to the hon. Lady’s profile, but that is not what the hard work of tackling serious violence is about.

The hon. Lady wants to know what the Government have been doing. Last autumn, we set up the national county lines co-ordination centre, which has seen more than 1,000 arrests and more than 1,300 people safeguarded. Last week, there was the latest iteration of Operation Sceptre, as part of which every police force in the country adopts knife crime investigation methods appropriate to their areas to tackle knife crime. I do not have the figures for the latest iteration, because it ends at the weekend, but the previous week of Operation Sceptre resulted in more than 9,000 knives being taken off our streets.

We are funding Redthread to offer services in accident and emergency departments in hospitals with a particular problem with knife crime. We are funding projects across the country through the £22 million early intervention youth fund and smaller projects across communities through the anti-knife crime community fund. We have a long-running social media campaign—#KnifeFree—targeting young people most vulnerable to being ensnared by criminal gangs or to being tempted to leave their homes with knives and walk up the street with them. Only last week, I met the Premier League, which is working with us to get the message out through its vast network of contacts, including through its Kicks programme.

We are working with the Department for Education to publish best practice guidance for alternative providers, because we are well aware of the problems that seem to be arising with alternative provision. We are about to consult on a new legal duty to require a multi-agency public health approach to tackling serious violence. We have launched an independent review into drugs misuse because we know that the drugs market is the major driver of serious violence. We are launching the youth endowment fund: £200 million over 10 years for intervention on young people at various stages of their lives to move them away from gangs or prevent them from being ensnared by them.

We announced in the spring statement last week a further £100 million. That came about because chief constables told the Home Secretary they needed help with surge policing. They need it. We have delivered it. I remind the House that we are about to welcome back the Offensive Weapons Bill next week from the House of Lords. I urge—I implore—the shadow Minister to support the knife crime prevention orders that the Metropolitan police have asked us for to help that small cohort of young people who can be helped through those orders. I hope that the Labour party will stand by its words at the Dispatch Box and help us to pass those orders into law so that we can help exactly the young people I think we all want to help.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I welcome the plan the Minister has set out and the vital work she is doing. In 2015, we legislated for a minimum jail sentence for repeat offenders who carry a knife, yet more than a third of offenders are still being spared jail—more than 500 last year. Why is this; what can we do to review the situation so that we can enforce the law; and does my hon. Friend agree that we need to review the area more generally to ensure clarity and honesty in sentencing and to end the soft sentencing culture?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising mandatory minimum sentences. I note that they are not universally accepted. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition voted against them—I think—when they were first introduced. The point of mandatory minimum sentences is to send out a clear public message that people will go to prison if they are twice caught carrying a knife. We have also ensured—this is important—that the judiciary, which of course is independent and must be able to sentence on a case-by-case basis, has flexibility if the facts of a particular case require it. I note, however, that since mandatory minimum sentences were introduced, the number of people going to prison on the second occasion of carrying a knife has increased, despite the statistic he just cited. The message must be consistent. We do not want young people leaving their homes with a knife because it is more likely to be used against them than against others.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

As I think I said rather unfairly to one of our colleagues who made a not-dissimilar slightly technical point on Report, nobody likes a smart-arse. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend and I are very good friends, Mr Speaker, and I am grateful to him because he raises a good point. I have had a number of emails from people who live abroad or who have had ceremonies in other jurisdictions, and part of the consultation and final details that need to be added to the Bill are on such matters. The principle is to replicate absolutely the rights and opportunities that are available for same-sex couples. If the Bill does not try to achieve complete equality, or as close to it as is physically possible, it will not have achieved what it tries to achieve. This is all about equalities and equal opportunities.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

Having heard my hon. Friend’s observations on my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), I am loth to ask a question, but I wonder if he will reflect on the Lords debate on civil partnerships between siblings, and say how he feels about that.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend, who attended previous debates as assiduously as my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), raises a good point. I think it is the noble Lord Lexden who has a private Member’s Bill in the Lords, and, in the past, other Members in this House have tried to change legislation so that a formal civil partnership would be available to sibling couples, typically two sisters who have lived together in a jointly owned property over many, many years. When one dies, the other is faced with a large inheritance tax bill and all sorts of other things that are clearly disadvantageous. I have a great deal of sympathy with that, but my response—Baroness Hodgson spoke to Lord Lexden and others about this—is, first, that the Bill is not the place to address that situation, because it is essentially a financial matter.

The Bill is about families and partnerships; that situation is about fair financial treatment between blood relatives who are committed to each other. If it were to be addressed in a finance Bill or a similar measure, I would have some sympathy for it. I think it should be judged on that basis. I am talking about couples who come together and may have children. I know there are some special circumstances, for example where a couple of sisters may be looking after a niece or nephew of a deceased sibling. It is complicated, but essentially it is a matter of financial unfairness and I would like to see it dealt with in financial legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

It is a great pleasure to stand up as an anointed smartarse and talk on this important subject.

Before I do so, I want to echo all the words that have been spoken today about what has happened in New Zealand. It is a terrible, terrible tragedy. If I may say, Mr Speaker, as the Foreign Secretary’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, it is possible—I hope this is not the case and I have no information—that, given the links between our two countries, family members will be worried about loved ones who may be abroad. As always, the consular service is there and available. I am sure all colleagues know that there is a private number they can use if constituents who are concerned about family members in New Zealand contact us. Let us hope that that is not the case.

It is a great pleasure to speak in support of the Bill and I very much agree with the principle behind it. When I spoke on Second Reading, I said that if there was one question that it raised in principle—this goes to the core of the amendment we are discussing—it was whether, in effect, this was a commitment-light choice; we were saying to people that they could have a civil partnership if they did not want to make the full commitment of, shall we say, a conventional marriage. I reflected on that and came to the conclusion that, on the contrary, civil partnerships were a way for people who, for many reasons, would not have wanted to go down the traditional route, to show commitment to a far greater degree.

One very real case reinforces that and underlines the point of the Bill, which I think will have huge use and ramifications for our society. It is the case of a councillor in Babergh District Council in my constituency. It is her personal testimony and it just so happens that she is also my parliamentary researcher. She is Councillor Harriet Steer and she has given me this testimony to share with my hon. Friend. She will be getting married in May. She says:

“We would have chosen a civil partnership if the option was available to us. The main reason being that traditional marriage carries a lot of archaic rhetoric that does not sit comfortably with us as a couple, or with me as a woman and Gustaf as a Swedish man brought up to believe fully in equality. This in no way diminishes our desire to commit ourselves to the relationship and each other.”

This is key. She goes on to say:

“We want to cement our commitment for a number of reasons, including that if we were to have children, they would be part of a committed family structure. I have grown up with the security of knowing that my parents are committed to one another and our family, and that provides a level of security that I would wish to afford to our children in the future. It is also a celebration of the fact that we have spent nearly a decade with each other, and provides legal benefits to the relationship. For example, if I were in an accident I would want Gustaf to decide what happens rather than my parents, as he will have a much clearer idea of my wishes.”

She concludes:

“A civil partnership would provide us with the elements of a traditional marriage that we are seeking without the heavily sexist sentiments and history. It would not diminish our commitment to the institution that we are joining but result in a better fit.”

[Neil O’Brien]

Does my hon. Friend agree with his researcher that marriage has sexist connotations?

[James Cartlidge]

I am reading out her personal and passionately held views. I certainly would not make any judgment on them. The interesting thing is that when my researcher passed me this note, she said that she was discussing the Bill last night with friends. She is in her mid-20s. They all said that they would prefer this route than marriage. I think that that is profoundly interesting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I thank colleagues and everybody attending our proceedings today for that demonstration of support and solidarity. As I indicated earlier, I will write to my opposite number in New Zealand conveying the sympathies and the sense of outrage felt in this House. Nothing will bring back those who have perished; I hope simply that what we have said and done today will offer some modest succour to those who are having to live with the daily reminder of the evil that has been perpetrated. Wherever we are and whatever our ethnicity or faith, by virtue simply of our common humanity we resolve, because we can do no other, that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated or go unpunished. It will never prevail for it is, in simple terms, fascist conduct. Wherever they are in the world, people who think that “might is right”—that if you are bestial enough, you will get your own way—will have to be disabused of that notion. It will not happen.

[Neil O’Brien]

I start by agreeing with your extremely wise words on the evil that was done in New Zealand, Mr Speaker. I also send my thoughts to my constituents at Oadby mosque as they gather for their Friday prayers. I want them to know that they should not be afraid and that we will always protect them. The evil done in New Zealand will not be allowed to happen here, and the ideas that it represents will not prevail in this country. I was recently at Oadby mosque for Visit My Mosque Day, learning things such as how my name is written in Arabic. It was wonderful to see everyone, and the thought that someone on the other side of the world could inflict an act of such wickedness on people just like them going about their daily basis is abhorrent.

I rise to speak with some trepidation, because this Bill does two wonderful things—some of the best things that we will do in this Session—but it also does one thing that I do not agree with. I will say why I do not agree with it, but I am somewhat cautious because I am surrounded in this place by good friends and great fountains of wisdom who take a different view.

First, starting with the things that I do agree with, the inclusion of mothers’ names on marriage certificates is a wonderful improvement. When I got married up in Northumberland in the wilds of College Valley, I was amazed that we were unable to put my mother’s name on the certificate. It seemed implausible that that should still be the case, and the unbelievably powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) underlined why that reform is so important.

Secondly, the opportunity to commemorate the life of unborn children is another hugely important reform that will offer some closure to a large number of people. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and for Colchester (Will Quince) on their work raising the issue of baby loss in this House. They have been tireless champions, and this Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is another step towards achieving an important objective. Someone may not realise how often this happens until it happens to them; they then find out that other people have had similar experiences.

[Victoria Prentis]

It is important while discussing this issue that we pay tribute to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has spoken passionately about her experiences.

[Neil O’Brien]

My hon. Friend is right to add that.

As I said, this Bill does two wonderful things with which I completely agree, but I will now talk about my dog in the manger. There is no point in having a Parliament if we cannot have disagreements in it, and this is the whole point of the exercise. I start my remarks on this by putting on the record my support for equal marriage for gay people. I always have done, including when that hugely important reform was made. Despite the fact that this country has made a huge amount of progress, there is still a large amount of discrimination against gay people, and it is easy not to notice it if one is heterosexual. For example, I read not that long ago about a man who was kicked to death by a gang of wicked people in Trafalgar Square—the centre of our capital city—just for being gay.

I was a strong supporter of equal marriage for gay people because it marked another step towards just treating gay people like everybody else. I support the goal of equivalence for heterosexual and homosexual couples, but I would rather achieve it in a different way. I thought that civil partnerships were a useful stepping stone towards equal marriage for gay people, but now we have got there, I would prefer simply to have equal marriage for heterosexual and homosexual couples.

When this Bill was previously debated in Parliament, two different arguments were made for having two different types of marriage, and I use “different types” advisedly. The first argument was that a lesser type of marriage was being created—a sort of “try before you buy”—but that argument was strongly objected to by other supporters of the Bill, including the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who said that the two types of marriage were equal. There was no consensus on that argument, and it has not been one of the main arguments made today.

The second argument is that marriage is in some way a religious, paternalistic or sexist institution. Some Members have alluded to that with references to people getting in touch with them to say that that is how they feel about marriage, which is why they would like a civil partnership instead. It is important to note that the Lords made a clear, adamantine distinction between religious and civil marriage and that this House cannot regulate religious marriage. As my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) pointed out, the two are completely different. We cannot put a window into men’s souls, and it was important during the passage of the legislation for equal marriage that we made the huge distinction between civil and religious marriage, which continues in this Bill. There is no question of religious ministers being forced to do anything, but they are welcome to choose to do so if they want. That is the right balance.

Several Members have described how people have suggested to them that marriage is a religious or sexist institution, but if there is anything sexist about it, we should change that and ensure that it is not. It would surprise my wife if I told her that she had agreed to take part in a patriarchal or religious institution. We are both atheists, and we were not allowed Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” as a wedding song because it is religious, so we missed out on that opportunity because of the important distinction. One of the reasons why I do not agree with this measure is that I do not want to endorse that argument. If people feel like that, they are wrong. We must do everything we need to do, because they are wrong. Let us change it if there is a problem, but the onus is on those who want the change to make the case for it.

I believe that a single institution would be better for equality. It would be a simpler story. Gay people can get married and straight people can get married. We can all get married—simple. There will not be different types of things for different types of people. I am nervous, as the House can tell, about some of the arguments made for extending civil partnerships, not least this “try before you buy” argument about it being a softer thing. I find that particularly concerning.

I have put my concerns about this measure on the record, and my eloquent hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) is right that this will be a popular measure and that a lot of people will take it up. I think it will be widely used, and he is right about that, but I am concerned.

[James Cartlidge]

Forgive me if I am wrong, and I imagine that it would be hard to measure, but many of the people who go down this route would not have got married. This is an additional choice, rather than something that removes a choice. We should open our eyes to the fact that people see this is as something different that suits them, and we should embrace it as a positive new development.

[Neil O’Brien]

That is probably the strongest argument for it, but my hon. Friend has already said that his constituent was going to get married in the absence of this measure. I am nervous about the argument, “I would prefer something else because I feel that marriage is sexist.”

[Tim Loughton]

I completely respect my hon. Friend’s view, but the reality is that there are 3.2 million opposite-sex cohabiting couples who have no protections within the law, and half of them have children. One of my local registrars is running a waiting list for people waiting for this legislation. There is a lot of demand for it, and it can only bring about greater family stability, greater commitment and greater benefits in safe, healthy, loving upbringings for those children. That is why this is really important.

[Neil O’Brien]

We will find out in due course when we pass this Bill whether that is the case. My fear is that the dissolution rate may be higher if people believe that civil partnerships are a softer institution.

[Tim Loughton]

I assure my hon. Friend that where there are different options—in France for example—the divorce rate among those who are conventionally married is rather greater than it is for those who have entered an opposite-sex civil partnership, so the data does not support that assertion.

[Neil O’Brien]

At the moment, the dissolution rate for civil partnerships in the UK is higher than for marriages. Of course my hon. Friend is correct that it is not a good example, because there are a lot of other pressures on gay people. We will not know, in the unique circumstances of the UK, who is right until we do it, and I hope he is right.

I have said my bit on this subject, and today we will be passing some measures that I hugely welcome, that put right some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull and that give comfort to grieving families, who are much larger in number than is often realised in this country.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) again on introducing this important Bill. He said that this was about complete equality, and the Bill is about some basic principles, including equality, fairness, choice and freedom, which I believe in very much. The UK has a proud record in all those areas, and there are many examples of equality that we have championed, whether it be disability, equal pay, same-sex marriage—I was not in this place when the House voted for same-sex marriage, but I certainly would have supported it—race and, most importantly today, religion.

All our thoughts today are with the loved ones of those connected with these horrendous crimes in New Zealand. Everyone who believes in peace and peaceful co-existence just does not understand what could possibly drive someone to perpetrate these terrible, terrible acts.

International Women’s Day

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I have to inform the House of corrections to the results of some of yesterday’s deferred Divisions. In each case, there was one power Aye vote than previously announced. On the motion relating to electricity, the Ayes were 301 and the Noes were 44; on the motion relating to gas, the Ayes were 299 and the Noes were 44; on the motion relating to food, the Ayes were 302 and the Noes were 44; on the motion relating to electronic communications, the Ayes were 300 and the Noes were 257; and on the motion relating to road traffic, the Ayes were 300 and the Noes were 251.

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just want to understand the reason for the change in the number of votes. I am curious about what caused it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

A name was recorded in error, I gather.