Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Sarah Bool and Katie Lam

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

I do not think I missed it in the Minister’s speech, although I apologise if I did. Can she advise on how many people have applied for and been granted settled status under the EU settlement scheme?

[Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I have another question for the Minister. I believe that she said that the true cohort had about 5.7 million applicants, but I wanted to understand more about the numbers of those who would fall under the extra cohort, given that they will be benefiting from rights. Can she give a little more of an explanation as to why the issue has come to light at this point, and was not in the original drafting?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Bool]

The Minister says that the professor is a eugenicist, but he actually explained a different relationship. It is important that that is put on record, because it is taking away from his role as emeritus professor for demography.

[Katie Lam]

I am a little surprised to see the suggestion from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire because my sense, from the rest of what he said in the debates we have had over preceding sessions, is that he would like to see less of a distinction between British people and those who come to this country as migrants. Indeed, his new clause 5, which we will debate after this, will explicitly set this out, particularly on the question of British citizenship. A scheme like the one he proposes in new clauses 3 and 4 would have the opposite effect, since any citizen of the United Kingdom can freely move between England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, living and working wherever they choose, and can change the location of their home or employment without permission or notice from any authority. We can pass from one area to another without being stopped or questioned, without having to evidence who we are, where we are from and going, and if and when we might return.

A specifically Scottish visa programme would presumably only work if none of those things were the case. Whatever the details, it would surely involve people coming to Britain but promising only to live and/or work in Scotland, over and above the situations where such things are already implied by the specific conditions of their visa—like the university at which they are studying or the company employing them, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh already laid out.

How would this be evidenced, tracked or enforced? Would individuals moving from a few metres into Scotland to a few metres into England be deported? Why would this be a specialist visa programme? If our friends north of the English-Scottish border are especially keen to attract people of working age, be they migrants or not, why would this be the right solution? What steps are already being taken to attract such people, or to make it easier for them to move to or work in Scotland?

Finally, I am interested in the view of the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire on why Scotland currently has within its borders so few asylum seekers within the system. Given what he has previously said, it would be interesting to understand why he thinks that the number of asylum seekers—either in hotels or in dispersed accommodation in Scotland—is less than half of what it should be, proportionate to population of the rest of the United Kingdom.