Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Richard Fuller and Tim Loughton

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

I am very glad that I sat in on this debate today to learn the origins of the hostile environment. We learned today that the author of the hostile environment was none other than the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), the Labour candidate to be Mayor of the West Midlands. That is right. He is the author of the hostile environment for immigration. We have learned that today.

The second reason I wanted to contribute today was to be able to say thank you to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for bringing forward the points-based system for immigration. Like her, I felt that the opportunity to bring forward an immigration system that did not discriminate based on the origins of where someone came from was one of the strong reasons to support Brexit in the referendum. I am pleased that she has confounded her critics by coming forward so quickly in this Parliament with a new Bill that does precisely that. She knows, and many Members here know, that many areas of the Home Office do not work well, and I am pleased she has started there. Now let us turn to some other areas.

I will turn to what I can only describe as a shameful briefing note on immigration detention put out by the Home Office earlier today. In that note, the Home Office claims that 97% of the people in immigration detention were foreign national offenders. Do they think we are stupid? Do they not think we understand that most of the people in immigration detention have been put out of the detention estate during covid-19?

The note goes on to describe in the most lurid details what may be the case about the backgrounds of individuals, forgetting all those other people who have been put through immigration detention who have perfectly legitimate cases to remain in this country and who may have been victims of communal rape or child trafficking. It is a shameful document that was put out by the Home Office today, and that is why I am very pleased to support the new clauses in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that deal with 28 days as a limit on detention.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend gets it absolutely right about the misinformation that has been dispatched this morning. Is it not the case that a six-month grace period would be the result of the new clause? Those people would not be put out on the streets from the detention centre. The problem is that 63% of those in detention centres are released back into the community because the process has failed, and that includes serious sex offenders, rapists and other serious criminals, so it is happening now and not as a result of what the new clause would achieve.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, particularly in stressing that the issue is not the people but the process: it is the process that does not work. An immigration detention estate is a manifestation of a completely failed process that fails the person coming to this country right from the start. We should not have an immigration detention estate; we should not have it at all. We only have it because of the accumulated errors of the Home Office going back well over a decade, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said.