Nationality and Borders Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to welcome as Deputy Speaker one of my former neighbours from Cross Gates in my constituency of Leeds East. It is good to see you in the Speaker’s Chair. What it is not good to see, however, is this vile Bill.

I have been a Member of Parliament for six years, and in that time I have seen some vile legislation—legislation that punches down and attacks the poorest and most vulnerable, from the bedroom tax to the slashing and denying of benefits for disabled people, and welfare caps that force children into destitution—but this dreadful Bill is up there with the worst of it.

I find the Bill stomach churning. I cannot help but feel sick reading it, reading the Government’s plans and reading what they want to do to vulnerable people, including children fleeing war, rape and torture. The Bill will criminalise people seeking asylum simply because of how they get here. That is not only immoral; it is in breach of international law, although that is not all. The legislation—this rotten, sick legislation—opens the door to offshore detention centres. What kind of dystopian society do the Government want to create? They want offshore detention centres where, hidden from public view, people seeking asylum can be subjected to the mistreatment the Government are already known for, without any accountability.

[Mr Goodwill]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the most vulnerable and needy people are from Syria? Would he be surprised to hear that when the camp at Sangatte was cleared, of the 750 migrants who came here, only eight were from Syria? No one in Syria can afford the cost of the people smugglers.

[Richard Burgon]

It appears that there is a twitching of a conscience one Bench back from the Tory Front Bench. If the hon. Gentleman has a conscience on these matters, if he cares about the people he purports to care about from Syria or from anywhere else, I would urge him to vote against the Bill, because this reactionary Bill should be killed off today.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

To bring things a little more up to date, if we are looking at the statistics about who is in these boats crossing the channel, the nationalities are Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Eritrean and Sudanese. People from almost all those countries have success rates when they claim asylum of about 60% or 80%. The vast majority of people crossing the channel are refugees. Instead of locking them up, let us look at their applications.

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and brings some reality to this debate. This reactionary Bill should be killed off today.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Burgon]

No, I will not give way. I will only give way if the hon. Gentleman wants to stand up and say he will vote against this dreadful Bill.

The Bill is not a one-off. It is the latest in a long list of racist interventions from the Government—a Government who have already deliberately stoked division and hate over the past decade. From the “go home” vans touring working-class communities to the Windrush scandal that saw black citizens deported, to the hostile environment policy and the attacks on Black Lives Matter, hatred, division and racism are used as weapons of mass distraction to try to shift the blame for Tory policies that hurt the majority of society. Rather than to blame the Government for the lack of school places and council houses, or the underfunding of our health service, the Government want to encourage people to blame their neighbours and other people in their community. The good news is, however, that the working class in all its diversity in this country is better than that and better than this Government.

Listening to speeches from the Government Benches, they remind me very much of speeches by Donald Trump. I think that, like Donald Trump, the Government’s approach will be thrown into the dustbin of history before too much longer. The policies that this divisive approach seeks to distract from and shift the blame from mean that people’s wages have not improved in over a decade. These are policies that have slashed key local services and ripped the heart out of many communities.

This Bill comes at a time when millions and millions of people have been having a long-overdue debate on racism in our society. Last week, England footballer Tyrone Mings rightly called out the Government for stoking the fire, because racism starts from the top. We have seen, of course, Tory MPs make themselves look like complete mugs, attacking footballers for being opposed to racism and showing their opposition to racism. The Bill that we are looking at today is exactly the type of legislation that we end up with when we have a Prime Minister who has labelled black people piccaninnies with watermelon smiles and Muslim women letter boxes. [Interruption.] Conservative MPs can groan and shake their heads all they want, but they should save their outrage for the people who will be criminalised, demonised and abused by this legislation, should it pass.

The Tories have a low view, as I have said, of working-class people and hope that they can whip up anti-immigrant sentiment to distract from their own failures. I do not share that view, and the response we have seen over the last week in this huge national conversation about racism shows that, while racism starts from the top, anti-racism and solidarity start from below. This legislation is about fear. It is about division. It is about hate. In the diverse, multicultural communities across the country that have come together over the last week we have seen a far better country than the one that this Government imagine—a country full of the spirit of community, the spirit of unity, the spirit of hope, and I encourage anyone, regardless of their political party, with an ounce of humanity in them to reject this Bill today.

I make this speech thinking of the asylum seekers I have met in my immigration surgeries at the Bangladesh centre in my constituency, and thinking of the sons and daughters of asylum seekers who go to school at Bankside Primary in Harehills in my constituency—a school where over 50 languages are spoken. I make this speech thinking of them, and this is just a small part of my effort to speak up for them, because those in power, those in government, are not speaking up for them; they are sticking the boot into them. They are chasing favourable headlines from the disgraceful individuals that run newspapers like The Sun that seek to divide the working class, but those views, I am glad to say, are going out of date. Our country is a far better, far more decent place than this Government imagine. That is why this rotten, racist, divisive approach is, in the long term, bound to fail. So I urge everyone who is appalled by the idea of offshore asylum seeker processing centres and everyone who is opposed to this to do what is right and vote against the Bill.

[Jonathan Gullis]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice. The hon. Gentleman has thrown the slur of racism at the Conservative Benches throughout his speech, yet he was a key leading member of the Labour party that was found to be institutionally racist at its core due to the antisemitism that took place. I ask for your ruling on whether that—

Nationality and Borders Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

I am deeply concerned by and opposed to the great majority of the proposals in this inherently authoritarian Bill. Much of it appears to be written to satisfy front-page tabloid headlines rather than to fix the broken asylum system. It amounts to a fundamental rejection of our international obligations under the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees and does nothing to resolve these complex issues at all. Even the Government’s own impact assessment suggests that measures in the Bill could lead to an increase in unsafe journeys across the channel rather than a reduction in them. The Bill originally tried to criminalise not only asylum seekers but those who try to help and rescue them. I cannot recall a more immoral and wicked piece of UK legislation.

I am disturbed by clauses 9 and 10, which enable a Home Secretary to deprive UK nationals of citizenship without notice and restrict stateless children’s access to British citizenship. As a British citizen with dual nationality, I personally feel the ice-cold chill of those proposals. It looks and feels like a ramping up of the hostile environment. I will not support a set of clauses that create a hierarchy of British citizenship. The Government are trying to reframe citizenship as a privilege, not the right that it is. The message this sends is that certain citizens, despite being born and brought up in the UK and having no other home, remain migrants, so that their citizenship and therefore all their rights are permanently insecure.

This Bill clearly disproportionately targets those of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other racial groups, regardless of their country of birth. The racialised nature of this tiered system is obvious: the citizenship of those like myself, many of my constituents and millions of others of minority and migrant heritage is less secure and less important than those who belong to majority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom. It is a shameful piece of legislation that we should all be concerned about. Much of the Bill appears to be written to satisfy the front pages of tabloids, as I have said. It is not in favour of all the communities such as those of our parents, who came here years and years ago and worked hard to rebuild this country, and they are facing this because of this Tory Government.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

There have been some powerful speeches, and I want in particular to pay tribute to the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), whom Conservative Members would have done better to listen to rather than shout at.

I want to address the Government’s clause 9, which proposes removing people’s citizenship without notice and, in effect, removing their rights of appeal. When people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds raise concerns—deep concerns—about this proposal, the response from the Government is, “Trust us”. “Trust us”—the people who deported black citizens in the Windrush generation? “Trust us”—the people who sent “Go home” vans around working-class estates? “Trust us”—the people who authored the hostile environment? “Trust us”—the people who are talking in this legislation about offshore detention centres? “Trust us”—the people who have created an atmosphere in which others are trying to demonise those going into the waters off our country to try to save lives and prevent death? “Trust us”? It is no wonder that the people at the sharp end of this Government’s hostile environment and at the sharp end of this racist legislation do not trust this Government.

It is absolutely appalling that people are being made to feel as if they do not belong in their own country and as if they are somehow second-class citizens. Let me contrast that—[Interruption.] No, they are not being made to feel that because of Members of Parliament raising these concerns. It is because of the legislation—the racist, divisive, scapegoating legislation—that this Government are bringing in.

[Alexander Stafford]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Richard Burgon]

I am not going to give way. The hon. Member talked enough rubbish before.

I want to draw a contrast with a community event that I attended in the most ethnically diverse ward in my constituency, Gipton and Harehills, in Leeds on Friday. Young people were there reading poems about their experiences, and one poem read by a local resident was about how the community has welcomed asylum seekers and welcomed refugees. Rather than using the issue of migration as a weapon of mass distraction to distract people from the responsibility that the Tory Government and their policies have for the misery in their lives, this Government would do better to listen to the message of hope and unity from diverse communities and stop peddling this legislation of division, racism, scapegoating and hate—and I make no apologies for this speech.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I just want to put on record four things. First, this Bill is an appalling piece of legislation. It is designed to appease the most backward elements in our society and it is designed to chase headlines in the popular media. The attacks on refugees and the attacks on people who support refugees are nothing but appalling and disgusting. The idea that this country has always been a welcoming place for refugees is simply not true. Often, it has been very hostile towards refugees. If we were that welcoming, we would not have so many people who have legitimately sought asylum in Britain living in desperate poverty, because the Home Office cannot be bothered to process their applications, and they are living in penury as a result. It would not be criminalising people who are trying to save lives on our shores, or prosecuting people in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, or anything else. We should all be very proud of people who demonstrated in memory of those who died off Calais, including the 250 people who attended a demonstration at the Stade in Hastings a couple of weeks ago.

I wish to refer to three parts of the Bill. I absolutely support new clause 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). I have been a member, and in the past chair, of the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory) all-party group for many years, and I worked with Olivier Bancoult, and many other Chagos islanders. We did wrong to the Chagos islanders in the 1970s and ’80s when they were driven off their land, and we have done wrong by them many times since then. The reason British nationality was offered was that the late Tam Dalyell and I tabled an amendment to previous legislation, to try to get recognition of the rights of Chagos islanders. Unfortunately, the Foreign Office and the Home Office collectively got it wrong, and the new clause corrects a mistake—let us be generous and call it a mistake—that was made many years ago, and will grant security to Chagos islanders living in this country.

I strongly support new clause 8 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). Nationality fees should be based solely on the cost of processing, not on the Home Office making a vast amount of money out of that. The new clause would help to right what is an intrinsic wrong.

In my remaining 39 seconds, I strongly support amendment 12, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), about the removal of British nationality. Many of us in the House—probably everybody—has at some point been to a citizenship ceremony at our town hall. They are nice; they are moving occasions. But all that could be for naught. The Home Secretary could simply remove the right of citizenship from someone who has gained it in this country or gained it through their heritage. Such a removal requires the agreement of another country, but people will not get that, and we will end up with stateless people as a result.