Illegal Migration Bill

Simon Lightwood Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said that we should add sexual orientation to that list. I completely agree with her on that because of what has happened in Uganda in particular, but there are many other countries in the world where it is not legal to be gay. It is not legal to be gay in Iran. They still hang people from cranes in Iran for being gay. So I think we need to think about that. The Minister may say that membership of a particular social group is traditionally interpreted to include LGB and trans people, but it does not include sex. We need to add sex to the list and be clear that it includes LGBT people as well. I will just leave it there for now.

[Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise in support of new clauses 22 and 27 tabled by the shadow Front Bench. Just before my election last year, the Nationality and Borders Act became law. The Government claimed that it would resolve the asylum backlog, with the then Home Secretary promising a

“long-term plan that seeks to address the challenge of illegal migration head on.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 445.]

Here we are, nearly a year on, with no real progress on tackling this crisis. In fact, things have only got worse.

I strongly welcome new clause 22, which would enshrine the Home Secretary’s accountability in law. It would require her to regularly report on how her Department is eliminating the huge backlog of cases. It should not be a controversial amendment. The initial decision backlog has increased by 60% compared with 2021, rising to a record high of 160,000. Shockingly, less than 1% of last year’s claims from those arriving on small boats have been decided. We would not think so given the Home Secretary’s rhetoric, but asylum delays are getting even longer and the Home Office is taking 10,000 fewer decisions a year than in 2015. That has led to a record number of asylum seekers being housed long term in hotels and contingency accommodation.

That brings me to new clause 27. Some 37,000 people now reside in hotels, at a staggering cost to the taxpayer of £5 million every day. Decisions are still being made to use more. Local authorities, which have already faced significant funding cuts under successive Conservative Governments, are having those proposals forced on them without any say. That is the story in my own constituency. Two hotels are currently being used to accommodate asylum seekers, with plans for a third. New clause 27 would finally tackle this issue, placing a legal requirement on the Home Office to consult the local authority when considering new sites. Increasingly cash-strapped councils are having to step in to provide intensive support for vulnerable asylum seekers. They cannot plan to do that if there is no interaction with the Home Office.

There is no doubt that the asylum system is in chaos, and that this is a mess of the Conservative Government’s making. Tory MPs who vote against new clause 27 tonight will make the situation even worse for our councils. We need new clauses 22 and 27 for some much needed accountability, because of this Government’s woeful track record: promising to speed up claims, but delivering the opposite; promising to end the use of hotels, but instead seeing their use soar; and promising to return those deemed inadmissible, but returning only 21 people. We cannot accept yet another Bill that promises to do one thing but in practice does the opposite. That why I support new clauses 22 and 27, for accountability and transparency.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It will surprise no one to know that the Liberal Democrats will eventually vote against the Bill. In Committee it feels as if we are polishing the absurd. We do not want to do it, and we do not want to be talking about this Bill. That is not the same as saying that we do not want to solve these problems.

I would like to start by trying to take a little of the heat out of the issue if I can. The suggestion that Members on the Opposition Benches do not want to tackle the small boats problem is categorically not true. I have heard no one on the Opposition Benches say that they agree that a criminal should be allowed to stay here. No one here is defending the traffickers or not supporting the Home Office in deporting people who deserve to be deported. In fact, we are saying that the Home Office should be doing it better and faster. We should start by recognising that.

We should also recognise that this Bill is partly about the local elections. People have asked, “Why are the Government so scared of scrutiny?”. I do not think they are; I think they just want to get the Bill out now, because otherwise it will not make the printers for the local election leaflets that will drop in the next few weeks. I am sorry to be cynical, but that, I think, is what is happening here.