Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Stella Creasy and Alistair Carmichael

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

“Unconscionable” is one of the more polite and measured terms that we could use about it. I reflect on the fact that when I visited Dungavel in 2007 or 2008, my own children were about six and 10 years old. The staff in Dungavel did a phenomenal job to mitigate the horrors of what they were dealing with, but at the end of the day, we were keeping children behind a razor wire, lockdown institution, and that was downright inappropriate and unacceptable. Nobody will ever persuade me that we should treat any child differently from the way in which we would want to treat our own.

[Stella Creasy]

The fact that the Minister has just said on the record that it is okay to incarcerate minors—another word being “children”—because we think some of them may not be children reflects why we need to clarify the safeguarding and welfare responsibilities of all public agencies that deal with these children. Everybody is a child until the age of 18 in international law. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he supports new clause 18, to ensure parity in those responsibilities and put beyond doubt the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State and Ministers to look after every child equally well in this country?

[Mr Carmichael]

It will come as no great surprise to the hon. Lady that I do. That brings me to thinking about what we do here. There is a danger that those of us who follow the evidence and actually care about what will happen if this dreadful piece of legislation is ever implemented disappear down the rabbit hole of trying to improve, amend and mitigate it. We have all tabled dozens—hundreds, some of us—of amendments, but this piece of the Bill has simply to be excised. I will be seeking to divide the House on clause 11 stand apart, because, frankly, there is no mitigation and no polishing of this—I avoid the vulgarity, but everyone knows what I am talking about. There is no way we can polish and improve on something that is so fundamentally removed from the way we would tolerate our own children being treated.

Earlier, we were talking about returning people. I was privileged yesterday to meet a group of Hongkongers, who are among that privileged group of people who came here by a safe and legal route. They still have their problems, of course: their journey did not end when they arrived at Heathrow, and they still have to deal with the trauma of leaving friends, family and others behind in circumstances where they would ordinarily have chosen not to do so. However, I heard a quite remarkable story from one person who did not come through the safe and legal route because her arrival predated that visa scheme being opened up. She told me that her twin sister had been here, but had left the country, and now she was being told that she would need to leave because the Home Office had confused her biometrics with those of her twin sister. That is the sort of ruthless efficiency of which the Home Office is capable. Are we seriously hearing now that we are going to start sending people back to Hong Kong because they happen to have come here before the start of the British national overseas visa scheme?

Dame Rosie, I feel that I have detained the House for long enough—that is probably a matter of consensus among Members—but when it comes to Divisions, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches will do everything that we can to improve the Bill. However, ultimately, there are pieces of it that simply cannot be left to stand.