Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome this important Bill, which will introduce new counter-terror-style powers to identify, disrupt and smash the people smuggling gangs. I take this opportunity to commend the Home Secretary on the work the Government have already done to remove foreign criminals and immigration offenders at the highest rate since 2018. By restarting asylum processing to clear the backlog and redeploying 1,000 staff to work on immigration enforcement, the Government have been able to deport more than 16,000 people, while the previous Government deported just four volunteers.

I want to focus on an extremely important aspect of the Bill that has gone largely overlooked, and on which I have been campaigning for change. Clauses 43 and 44 will introduce new offences to clamp down on the rise of 3D-printed firearms, which is a serious threat. Such firearms present a new challenge to law enforcement because they can easily be made at home and are untraceable and undetectable by magnetometers in places such as airports and courthouses. While the UK has been successful in policing gun crime, law enforcement agencies have warned that they are underpowered to tackle this rising threat, so I am glad that the Bill addresses it.

Birmingham, the city I represent, has regrettably become the gun capital of the United Kingdom, with nearly 600 firearm offences recorded in the West Midlands police area last year. In 2023, a local man was convicted of possession of a range of home-made assault rifles manufactured using a 3D printer in his home. That is why last year I introduced my Firearms (3D Printing) Bill, which would make it an offence to possess and share the blueprints to build these deadly weapons and to possess part of a 3D-printed firearm.

I worked with Channel 4 and Middlechild TV on a documentary about this issue, and I was shocked to learn that files containing IKEA-like step-by-step guides to 3D print firearms at home can be downloaded from the web in as little as three clicks. That is putting the public at risk. I am therefore delighted that Ministers have wasted no time in closing this loophole, introducing much-needed legislation and backing my Bill.

The horrors of the Dunblane massacre in the 1990s mean that the UK has got much right on gun control. Our constituents see mass shootings in other countries and are thankful for the strong gun controls we have here. However, that has never been a reason to be complacent, and the rise of 3D printer technology in recent years has presented a novel threat. Someone can buy a 3D printer for £150. As we saw in the Luigi Mangione case in the United States, 3D-printed firearms are not toys, but deadly weapons. Some might look like Nerf guns, but 3D-printed weapons can kill.

In the United Kingdom, 3D-printed firearms are growing in popularity, with several cases in recent years. In 2023, a man from Bradford was held in possession of a FGC-9 home-made automatic sub-machine-gun, magazine and bullets. In May 2023, two men from Bradford and Hull were convicted of plotting to build and supply home-made weapons to criminal gangs. In the same month, National Crime Agency officers uncovered a factory in south London that was converting blank-firing guns into lethal weapons using 3D-printed parts. Earlier this year, an Islamist extremist was jailed for seven years after being found with instructions on how to build 3D-printed weapons. I mentioned the case in Birmingham, where a man was convicted of making assault rifles in his own home similar in size and scope to the AK47. The point of this legislation is to limit the accessibility of blueprints and prevent dangerous people using them to undermine gun control in the United Kingdom, and to send a strong message that the law will come down on those who want to do harm to our country. In conclusion, the Labour Government came to power promising safer streets. I am proud that we are taking stronger action to deliver on that pledge. In a weaponising world, legislation must keep pace with new technology and the rise of new novel threats. My call for a change in legislation has meant that those seeking to undermine our gun controls to commit criminal acts under the radar by downloading and sharing blueprints to make 3D-printed guns will now face criminal charges. I thank the Government for that.

Finally, turning to other measures in the Bill, I commend the Government for taking a practical approach to Britain’s border security. The previous Government’s efforts were a disaster. They stopped processing asylum cases while failing to deport people with no right to be here, with the result that thousands upon thousands of asylum seekers have been left to languish in hotels and B&Bs across the country, costing the taxpayer billions. Even more self-defeating was the previous Government’s decision to write a blank cheque out of Britain’s aid budget to pay for that mess, taking away funding to tackle the crisis that many people are fleeing in the first place. There is no solution to the global displacement crisis without international development. The Bill is right to focus on the smuggling gangs. We need to break the business model of the vile criminals who are still shipping families across the channel, even in the freezing cold, with no concern as to whether they live or die. The Bill will equip our law enforcement agencies with the powers they need to stop them, disrupt their supply chains and bring most of those who profit from this human misery to justice. The new counter-terrorist powers—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.