Channel Crossings in Small Boats

Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the channel crossings in small boats.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

The number of people coming into our country illegally on small boats is unacceptable. It is the result of a global migration crisis. Just last week, I met my counterparts in the US, who are grappling with similar diplomatic, legal, legislative and operational issues. It is fair to say that in all my dialogues with counterparts and Interior Ministers, including the Polish Interior Minister this morning, similar feedback is taking place across the board.

We would be in a much worse position if it were not for the work already untaken by the Government. We have ensured that the National Crime Agency has the resourcing it needs to tackle and go after the people-smuggling gangs, resulting in 94 ongoing investigations, 46 arrests and eight convictions this year. We have also: reached two new deals with France, putting more police officers on French beaches and introducing new groundbreaking technology to better detect migrants; set up a joint intelligence cell with France to target migrant interceptions on French beaches; introduced new and tougher criminal offences for those attempting to enter the UK illegally; laid statutory instruments to stop asylum claims being made at sea; and agreed returns deals with India and Albania—and had discussions just last week with Pakistan—to take back more foreign national offenders and failed asylum seekers, with more returns deals imminent.

All these measures form part of the new plan for immigration, which I launched in this House in February this year. The remaining components of that plan are currently making their way through Parliament in the Nationality and Borders Bill, and I look forward to working with all colleagues to ensure that it receives Royal Assent as soon as possible. The Bill introduces a range of measures, including but not limited to: a one-stop appeals process; the ability for asylum claims to be heard offshore in a third country; the ability to declare those who arrive in the UK having passed through safe countries where they could have claimed asylum inadmissible to our asylum system, meaning no recourse to public funds and limited family reunion rights; visa penalties for countries refusing to take back their nationals; quicker returns of foreign national offenders; and a new age verification to prevent adult asylum seekers from posing as children.

If any hon. or right hon. Members have concrete proposals that are not already featured in the new plan for immigration, I would be happy to meet to discuss them. My door is always open, particularly to those from the Opposition Benches because of course they attack the new plan for immigration. They have not supported it and they voted against it, not because they are genuinely frustrated at the number of illegal migrants entering our country, as those on this side of the House and the British public are, but because they will always stand up for unlimited migration and free movement. They have always said that and always will do. That is why they have voted against the new plan to tackle crossings, with the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) opposing the development of operational solutions to turn back the boats. He even refuses to say if his ambition is to reduce the number of illegal migrants coming here. Can he do so today?

Those on the Government Benches will continue to confront this difficult and complex issue, no matter how controversial or complex others may deem it to be. We will find legislative and operational solutions, and we will treat this with the same grit and determination with which we have treated all the other challenges our country has faced, including leaving the European Union and delivering a points-based immigration system. Let me restate, as I did in February and have done repeatedly, that this will take time. The only solution to this problem is wholesale reform of our asylum system, which the new plan delivers.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Some 25,700 people have risked their lives in these most dangerous shipping lanes this year alone. As the Home Secretary knows, the Government have already spent more than £200 million of taxpayers’ money on deals with the French authorities that are not working. The situation is getting worse. Will the Government commit to transparency on how the money is spent?

On 9 August, I asked the Home Office to facilitate a visit for me to Calais so that I could scrutinise what the money was being spent on. I eventually had a response last month from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), referring me to the Foreign Office. I still have no substantive response. What do Ministers have to hide? I am conscious that I am being challenged about our position on the Nationality and Borders Bill, so let me make it absolutely clear: a Bill that breaches the refugee convention, that reduces protections for victims of modern slavery and that will not help the situation in the channel is not worthy of the Opposition’s support.

The Home Secretary has repeatedly made pledges that the route across the channel will be made unviable, but, as usual with this Government, it is all empty rhetoric and broken promises. The Home Secretary has blamed everyone but herself, and now we know that the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) has been brought in to look at this. Can we have some clarity from the Government? Who is actually in charge of immigration policy? Is it the Home Secretary or the Cabinet Office? Is not the fact that another Cabinet Minister has had to be brought in evidence that the Home Secretary has lost control of this dangerous situation?

[Priti Patel]

Of course, this would be the time of the week where we hear complete and utter nonsense coming from the Opposition Benches—for a change, I should add. Let me start with a number of facts. The right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) asks about the Cabinet Office’s involvement; that is because—to restate something I have said again and again—this is a whole-of-Government effort. There is no single solution to fixing a global migration crisis. He speaks about a visit to Calais; from my last record, the United Kingdom is not responsible for visits to Calais, but I will happily take him to some of our processing sites around the country.

However, let us be very clear. The right hon. Gentleman has stated yet again that his party will not support the new plan for immigration or the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is the long-term solution to breaking the model, to reforming the asylum system, to deterring illegal migration and to addressing the underlying pull factors of the UK’s asylum system. It will introduce a one-stop appeals process, which clearly he and his party are against; it will ensure that asylum claims can be heard offshore in a third country and it will ensure that those individuals who come to our country not as genuine asylum seekers, but as economic migrants, can claim asylum in first safe countries. That is on top of a raft of operational and diplomatic work that is taking place—not just in France, by the way, but in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Greece and Italy. We still speak to our European counterparts, and it is important that the Labour party acknowledges that Interior Ministers collectively have recognised a global migration problem.

I have said from the outset that this problem will take time to fix and that there is no silver bullet. The only solution is wholesale reform of our asylum system. Labour has consistently voted against the plan to do that. Instead of making practical suggestions, the Opposition are totally divorced from reality. They do not have a viable plan. The right hon. Gentleman constantly says that I should deepen my co-operation with France, while also criticising the Government for giving money to France to patrol its beaches. He has suggested the problem is down to reduced aid—failing to note that France is not a recipient of UK aid.

All the while the Nationality and Borders Bill is in Committee in the Commons, yet the Labour party continues to defend the rights of foreign national offenders, including murderers, rapists and those involved in the drugs trade—criminals, Mr Speaker. Labour has objected to provisions designed to prevent late submissions of evidence used to block removals of the very people we are trying to remove from our country, as well as to the one-stop-shop appeals process; it has opposed measures to tighten up immigration bail and to stop illegal migrants absconding. I come back to my opening remarks: we have a long-term plan to address these issues, while the Labour party will do everything possible to stop that plan from coming together.