MOD Bicester and Illegal Migrants

Debate between Pete Wishart and Helen Maguire

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Look at them! The appalling behaviour from the Conservatives on sensitive issues such as this and the language that they have used today is an absolute and utter disgrace. No wonder communities up and down this country are concerned about their very safety, given the language that these Conservatives use.

The issue that most concerns me is the Conservative proposal to leave the ECHR. That would send a deeply troubling message to communities across the country and to our partners internationally. It would deprive our citizens of valued and essential human rights and diminish our very sense of ourselves. The new Reform and Tory hostility towards human rights is well established. Their disdain for international co-operation and consensus is now a defining characteristic. Yet the fact that they would drag us out of the ECHR tells us something reassuring about the ECHR, because when the likes of the new right Tories and Reform want to do that, that shows that the ECHR is doing its job properly and defending us from the likes of them. That tells us why we actually need it. Let us remind ourselves of the company we would keep if we were to leave the ECHR: Russia and Belarus—bastions of human rights and freedoms. Let us remind ourselves about this document.

The ECHR was born from the ashes of the second world war, when the horrors of the Holocaust still cast a shadow over the world. The UK was at the heart of its creation. It was Winston Churchill, a giant of a Prime Minister—a Conservative Prime Minister—who was the designer and who ensured that we got it in place.

Leaving the ECHR, as the Conservatives suggest, would do absolutely nothing to stop the boats coming to the UK, as it would do absolutely nothing to end irregular immigration. However, what it would do is put a huge statement to the rest of the world that Britain is closing down, does not value international co-operation and has become more insular. I loathe the idea of a world that is going to be run under that type of culture and language under a Conservative-Reform coalition.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

A friend of mine recently told me about her mother, who is British born but is a person of colour, who now feels unsafe on the streets of Britain. Does the hon. Member agree that despicable rhetoric like this contributes to making certain individuals feel unsafe?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. Whole communities across the United Kingdom are now concerned about their safety. They are very anxious about the type of culture that is evolving and developing in every constituency and community. They are right to be concerned, because I hear it in my constituency myself.

On the subject of the small boats, the truth is that there are more National Lottery millionaires each year than there are foreign nationals who have won human rights appeals due to the ECHR in the United Kingdom. If the ECHR were removed, it would deprive us in Scotland of our basic fundamentals in the Scottish Parliament, which is that every part of our legislation has to be ECHR-compliant. It is not just the devolution process in Northern Ireland that will be compromised; it will be my Parliament and our democracy in Scotland, which the Conservatives care not a jot about, and they would pursue our leaving the ECHR without giving it a second thought.

For all of these reasons, this is a thoroughly bad motion—an abhorrent motion—and I despair of the language that has been used. I hope when the Conservatives sum up we will hear a little bit more about decency and the common values that we could all buy into, but I doubt that very much—