Nationality and Borders Bill

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I have given way to the hon. Gentleman a few times and I want to conclude my remarks.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tom Pursglove]

I will give way to the shadow Minister.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Minister is being very generous. He gave detailed numbers on how many visas had been granted in all the schemes that he read out. I note that he did not include the number of visas granted under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Will he update the House on how many visas the Home Office has issued under that scheme as of today?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am afraid that I do not have those figures to hand, but we hope to be able to say more on that very soon. It is the early days of that scheme but we have seen an overwhelmingly generous response from people offering sanctuary in their homes, and we want to take up those offers. I look forward to being able to say more about the figures on early implementation as soon as we can.

I understand the concerns raised by right hon. and hon. Members, but I hope that those schemes speak of our willingness to respond to international crises with compassion and to support higher numbers of refugees and people in need of protection when necessary. That is our approach, so we do not think that it is necessary to put a number in statute.

I understand the rationale behind Lords amendment 12, which relates to grants of asylum connected with cases of genocide. We, of course, stand by victims of genocide. Whether or not a determination of genocide is made, the UK is committed to seeking an end to serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. We are also committed to preventing the escalation of any such violations and alleviating the suffering of those affected, but it is not practical for us to be bound to consider asylum claims in British missions from the very large number of individuals overseas who might like to come here. Even with a cap on the number of individuals, we can expect many thousands of applications, which UK caseworkers would need to assess individually to determine whether each individual belongs to the specific group found to be at risk. We do not think that is practical.

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[Stephen Kinnock]

May I associate myself with the Minister’s comments about PC Keith Palmer, who died in the line of duty and whose tragic passing this House will never forget?

The Bill has been introduced against the backdrop of an asylum and immigration system that is simply not fit for purpose. The British people want and deserve a system that is fair, compassionate and orderly, as has been made abundantly clear by the fact that more than 150,000 households have signed up to house refugees fleeing the horrors of Putin’s barbaric war. But from the Windrush scandal to the botched Afghan resettlement scheme and the shambolic response on Ukraine, the Home Office has consistently failed to live up to the standards that the public rightly expect from their Government, so we should not really be surprised that the Bill not only fails to meet any of the challenges that our migration system faces, but actively makes the situation worse. That is why the Opposition rejected the Bill in its entirety on Second Reading; it is why we support every one of the Lords amendments, each of which seeks to mitigate the worst excesses of this dreadful legislation. The fact that the Government were defeated fully 19 times in the other place is proof positive that this appalling legislation is not fit for the statute book.

I turn to the specific reasons that our asylum and immigration system is so comprehensively broken. Let us start with the most visible example: the small boats crisis in the English channel. The number of desperate asylum seekers risking their lives by crossing the channel on small boats has increased from 299 in 2018 to an eye-watering 28,526 in 2021, of whom more than 3,000 were children. Yet Conservative Ministers have failed to engage constructively with their French counterparts to tackle the people traffickers, so the Home Secretary has now resorted to criminalising vulnerable refugees who are fleeing war-torn countries such as Ukraine.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I have spoken to asylum seekers who have told me about how children come to this country: it is often their parents who are giving the money to traffickers, and they have no idea how the journey will commence. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government simply seem totally unaware of that point and have not included it in their consideration at all?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are many dreadful aspects to the whole story, but the impact on children who are utterly innocent and deserve nothing but our compassion and care, but who are not being treated with either of those values and principles, should make the Government hang their head in shame.

[Tim Loughton]

I completely agree that the situation with boats coming across the channel is wholly unsatisfactory, but the hon. Gentleman has just accused the Government of failing to engage satisfactorily with the French authorities. Giving £54 million to the French to do something about this; making constant requests, which have been rebuffed, for meetings with the French Interior Minister and others—where have the Government not tried to engage constructively? How would the hon. Gentleman’s party have engaged constructively? What are his practical suggestions to do something about this, rather than the grandstanding that he does every time he is at the Dispatch Box?

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[Stephen Kinnock]

I guess what matters is results and outcomes. The Government’s attempts to engage have clearly failed; the hon. Member will have his own view of why that may be, but I gently suggest that gratuitously insulting our European partners and allies on a regular basis, as the Prime Minister does, is probably not helping very much.

A particularly disturbing aspect of the Bill is that it seeks to criminalise a person who is seeking asylum for

“arriving in the United Kingdom without…clearance”.

That means that a Ukrainian person who had brought their elderly parents to our country in the early days of the war would have been criminalised under the Bill. Do the Government not comprehend the horrors from which refugees are fleeing? We should not seek to criminalise refugees who are desperately looking for a new home; we should go after the people traffickers. The Opposition therefore fully support Lords amendment 13, which removes the new offence.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making very good points. Is it not the case that the only way to apply for asylum in Britain is to come through an irregular route, because someone has no possibility of applying for asylum if they are not in Britain? Criminalisation is shutting off almost all legal routes to applying for asylum. In effect, the only way to get to the UK would be to make a false application first via a tourist route or another route, but the Government would then say, in a Kafkaesque way, “You have falsely applied, because you came in via the wrong route.” That is particularly pernicious, is it not?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The whole thing smacks of a kind of bureaucratic trickery whereby every option is blocked off by some additional piece of bureaucracy. The Bill should have been an opportunity to unlock some of that, but instead it leaves us in stalemate.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Appositely to the remarks of the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) about where people claim asylum and how it is processed, the Bill will allow a claim to be processed elsewhere before people get here. Based on what the hon. Gentleman says, that will be a positive move, will it not? It will also mean that people who are travelling through safe countries where they could claim asylum can do so there and have their claim processed there.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to offshoring, but as we have seen, offshoring does not work: it is costing millions and millions in Australia and every expert is panning the idea. If I have understood his intervention correctly, I am afraid that it is simply a non-starter.

The Opposition support Lords amendment 6, which removes the Government’s attempt to introduce differential treatment of refugees based on method of arrival. For instance, if a Ukrainian citizen were to flee and travel here across Europe while waiting for a Government visa office to open or a safe route to be provided, clause 11 would make them a second-class refugee. To be a first-tier refugee, they would have to have taken an aeroplane directly from Ukraine. That absurd technicality shows just how unjust the proposal is.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am getting rather confused. The Labour party seems to be saying that we should not remove pull factors that mean that people are willing to risk their lives crossing the English channel and put money into the hands of the people smugglers. What has happened to the Labour party? Back in 2004, Baroness Scotland, a Labour Minister, said that

“a person should seek protection in the first safe country where they have the chance to do so.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 April 2004; Vol. 659, c. 1684.]

What happened to that Labour party?

[Stephen Kinnock]

What is required is a properly resourced and competent processing system, so that when people come here they can be processed quickly. That would resolve many of the issues to which the hon. Gentleman referred.

Arguably even more astonishing is the fact that clause 38 appears to criminalise the good Samaritans who want to save lives in the channel by removing the “for gain” clause, meaning that it is not just profiteering people traffickers who are deemed criminals, but good, honest people trying to rescue drowning refugees. Lords amendment 20 reintroduces the “for gain” wording, a move that we fully support.

That brings me to the so-called pushback policy. Pushing back dinghies may well mean condemning refugees, including innocent children, to their deaths. This is an utterly barbaric proposal which, again, contravenes the law of the sea. We therefore support Lords amendment 54, which adds language to schedule 6, stating that these enforcement powers must never put lives at risk.

Profound concern has been expressed about the Bill’s failure to comply with the United Nations refugee convention. The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, among others, has criticised the legislation for undermining the human rights of refugees in a range of different ways. At a time when authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China are riding roughshod over international laws and norms, we must show that Britain, as a leading liberal democracy, is ready to lead by example. Britain must show that we stand with refugees and stand up for international law. We therefore support Lords amendment 5, which would add a new clause stating that nothing in the Bill must authorise policies which do not comply with the refugee convention.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to tell the House what safe and legal routes the then Labour Government opened up after the second Iraq war? I may be able to help him with the answer: I do not think there were any.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The safe and legal routes are not working properly, and they need to be made to work more effectively. We currently have thousands of Afghan refugees stuck in hotels. Let us put in place a system that actually works. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that looking forward is more effective than looking back.

Another stark failure of this Government has been the asylum waiting lists that are keeping refugees in limbo and costing the taxpayer dear. There are now over 100,000 people awaiting initial decisions on their asylum applications, with an astonishing 61,864 having had to wait for six months or longer. These failures are less about capacity and more about a distinct lack of competence. The numbers of asylum seekers are fewer than the UK’s recent peak, so the Home Office should be able to cope. However, under this Home Secretary the system simply is not working.

Lords amendment 7 offers a sensible proposal which could minimise the damage caused by the backlog, as it would give asylum seekers the right to work if their case was taking longer than six months. That would allow dignity to asylum seekers, who could then earn their way and contribute rather than being completely disempowered and excluded from the labour market. The Lords amendment would also prevent asylum seekers from being forced into the dangerous net of the black-market economy just to survive, which is so often more attractive to them than relying on £38 per week from the Government. Moreover, the Government have already said that all Ukrainians can work here as soon as they arrive, so why is it a problem to allow other individuals and families fleeing terror the same opportunity? If the Government are worried about being seen to give asylum seekers work, they should fix the system so that applications are processed within six months. We are pleased to see that more than 66 Conservative parliamentarians, including 27 members of this House, have signed a letter to the Home Secretary expressing support for Lords amendment 7, and we encourage Ministers to see the light and follow suit.

The introduction last year of “inadmissibility’’ has only led to further delays. Because the Government have failed to renegotiate a single returns policy with any country, labelling asylum seekers as “inadmissible’’ for processing is effectively meaningless, as the asylum seeker in question cannot be returned. This simply adds six months of bureaucracy, uncertainty and confusion for the refugee, and a huge cost to the British taxpayer. Of the 8,593 “notices of intent” to deem people inadmissible that were issued in 2021, incredibly, only 64 were upheld. This policy simply increases the enormous backlog further and is a complete waste of money, so we support Lords amendment 8.

Let me now turn to perhaps the most unhinged element of the Bill, the so-called offshoring provisions which allow—theoretically at least—asylum seekers to be sent to faraway lands for processing. The latest ludicrous suggestion is that Ascension Island, 4,500 miles away in the South Atlantic, should be used for the purpose. That is utter nonsense. It is operationally illiterate because it is utterly impractical, and it is economically illiterate because it would cost an eye-watering amount of taxpayers’ money.

[Tom Pursglove]

May I make it clear, for the benefit of the House, that the suggestion about Ascension Island is untrue?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the Minister for that intervention.

Offshoring in Australia costs roughly $1 billion a year, for about 300 people. Experts in Australia have also said that it is not effective as a deterrent, and that the vast majority of those offshored are now back in Australia as a result of mental and physical suffering.

[Tom Hunt]

The shadow Minister has said that only 300 people have been linked to the offshoring. That is partly because the message has gone out to all the many hundreds of thousands who might have been tempted that it is not worth trying.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I do not think we are in control of which messages get out and which do not. This is about results and consequences, not about the process. If the process is not working, it needs to be fixed.

Rather than being fair, compassionate and orderly, this process would be cruel, demeaning and costly. This is why the Labour Party supports Lords amendment 9, which removes offshoring from the Bill. While we are on the topic of fairness and compassion, I should note our long-standing support for Lords amendment 10, which would allow unaccompanied children in Europe to join family members who are living lawfully in the UK. At this point I should also note my personal dismay at the Bill’s approach to victims of modern slavery, which, again, utterly contravenes the principles of fairness and compassion. I look forward to hearing the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on that subject later today.

What is abundantly clear is that little to no resilience is built into Britain’s asylum system. It is simply failing to adapt and keep pace. It is also utterly inflexible at each point in the process. Ukrainian refugees are having to fill in 50 pages of paperwork in order not to be turned away; that is far beyond the necessary security checks. We have 100,000 person-long asylum waiting lists, and 12,000 Afghan refugees are stuck in hotels. Lords amendment 11 is a useful first step and one that we support, but with Putin’s barbaric actions moving the goalposts almost every day, we suggest that the Government should move further and faster in delivering a resilient system with the capacity that is required to adapt. A Government who fail to plan are a Government who plan to fail, and Lords amendment 11 would at least go some way to forcing this Government to plan and to build capacity.

Finally, while we feel that the concessions given on clause 9 are a welcome step forward, we remain unconvinced that the fears of innocent citizens who feel at risk from this policy have been allayed. It is still too vague, and we will be pushing Lords amendment 4 to a vote.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Only after outrage over pushback have the Government been forced to concede on some of the most chilling aspects of this racist, divisive and discriminatory Bill, including through the removal of some of the carte blanche powers that were previously given to the Home Secretary. Does my hon. Friend agree, however, that there are still similar concerns about due process, and in particular about the notion that people can be stripped of their citizenship just because of our relations with another country?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I congratulate and pay tribute to my hon. Friend and other colleagues who have led a passionate and powerful campaign on this issue. There are 324,963 signatures to a petition about clause 9, and I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned on it. We will be voting for Lords amendment 4 today.

[Tim Loughton]

At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, I asked him what practical solutions his party had put forward, particularly to combat the journeys across the channel. He has skipped through a great many Lords amendments, in each case opposing Government suggestions and putting nothing in their place. May I give him one final opportunity, before he sits down, to tell us what practical measures his party is proposing to deal with the illegal and dangerous boats coming across the channel? So far, he has not come up with a single practical suggestion.

[Stephen Kinnock]

We are supporting every one of these amendments, almost all of which contain practical suggestions. That is the policy of the Labour Front Bench. On the broader point, one thing we would do is not have a party leader who regularly and consistently insults our democratic partners and allies. On that basis, we would negotiate a successor to Dublin and get constructive engagement with the French on security in relation to people smugglers. This is about grown-up politics, as I am sure the hon. Member would agree.

I would like to end by paying tribute to the noble Lords and Baronesses Coaker, Stroud, Lister, D’Souza, Rosser, Judge, Pannick, Kerr, Kirkhope, Dubs, Alton, Neuburger and Ritchie for working cross-party in such a constructive and effective way to win so many votes in the other place. Let me be clear: this Bill reflects and represents a catalogue of failure on immigration policy and a combination of incompetence and indifference from a Government who are presiding over a system that is neither fair, compassionate nor orderly. It is a desperate attempt to distract from the Home Secretary’s failings, and it solves none of the challenges our immigration system faces. We know that many Members on the Government Benches are deeply uncomfortable with the content of this legislation. The British people want and deserve an asylum and immigration system that is fair, compassionate and orderly. Today, Members on the Government Benches can stand up for decency by joining us in the Division Lobby later this afternoon. Let us hope that they will do so.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I rise to support Lords amendment 11, but I want to start by thanking Ministers for their flexibility in accepting the logic of the amendment I moved at an earlier stage to extend the benefits of the British national overseas scheme to younger Hong Kong residents born after 1997. I thank all those on both sides of this House who supported it, and those in the other place who did so, notably Lord Alton, Lord Patten of Barnes, Lord Falconer and the Bishop of St Albans, as well as the non-governmental organisation Hong Kong Watch. Most of all, I thank the Ministers who have taken it on board and acted on it. That is a good result, so in the same spirit of pragmatic and sensible co-operation, let me try again with the Lords amendment that would set up a permanent safe route that crucially, from the Government’s own perspective, would remove a significant driver of the traffic in small boats across the channel.

I absolutely get that one of the Government’s key aims is to minimise and hopefully stop altogether this dangerous route of illegal immigration. I support them wholeheartedly in that aim. Been there, done that, when the traffic was in the backs of lorries, which was equally dangerous and also led to the deaths of innocent people fleeing trouble. It can be done; we can stop these routes. So why Lords amendment 11? The Government, and indeed the Minister in his opening remarks, have correctly asserted that people in need of protection must come to the UK via safe and lawful routes rather than making an illegal journey. However, those routes need to be available to people, and for far too many people, they are simply not available under the current system.

The Minister went through the details of the resettlement pathway, and in the explanatory notes to the Bill the Government assert that they intend

“to enhance resettlement routes to continue to provide pathways for refugees to be granted protection in the UK”.

But this resettlement route can be an effective response to the challenge of the channel crossings, of which there were about 28,000 last year, and break the model of the criminal people smugglers, only if it achieves two things. First, it must be accessible to meaningful numbers of people. Secondly, it must not be restricted to one geographic area. However, the Home Office data confirms that 87% of those arriving by small boats in 2021 comprised nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, for whom there is currently no alternative legal and safe route by which they can apply to get to the UK, so it is pointless the Minister saying that he believes in accessible routes. The people coming across the channel—he and I, and I suspect everyone in this House, want them to stop putting themselves at risk—do not have those routes available to them, and that is why we need this Lords amendment and a change to the Government’s proposals.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Our country deserves an asylum system that offers the public confidence that the Government are in control of it, that is fair and consistent, and that is based on showing compassion to those who are fleeing for their lives. The legislation before us today fails not only to meet those basic principles, but to address the specific challenges we face.

The Bill will not deter dangerous journeys across the English channel. Indeed, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and top police chief have said repeatedly that it will make it harder, not easier, to prosecute people smugglers. It will not tackle the 12,000-long queue of Afghan refugees loyal to Britain who are currently languishing in hotels, alongside a further 25,000 asylum seekers, at an eye-watering cost to the British taxpayer of £4.7 million daily.

Frankly, that is a shameful state of affairs, exacting an awful cost on communities and placing an awful financial burden on the taxpayer. It is caused by this Home Secretary, on whose watch we have seen a staggering 60% drop in processed claims. Since the Bill was last before this House, the amendments have changed, but so has the context. The legislation before us today must now be debated against the backdrop of the Government’s Rwanda offloading agreement, which was announced last week in a desperate attempt to distract attention from all the lawbreaking in Downing Street.

[Jacob Young]

Can the shadow Minister give us a simple yes or no on whether the Labour party supports the Rwanda plan?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I can give a very simple answer: the Labour party does not support the Rwanda plan, for reasons that I am about to set out.

Labour supports all the amendments before us today that seek to mitigate the worst excesses of this profoundly inadequate and mean-spirited piece of legislation, which reflects the toxic combination of incompetence and indifference that we have come to expect from this Home Secretary. The reality is that this Bill is an exercise in damage limitation—in essence, an attempt by the Home Secretary to deal with the awful mess she has been making since she was appointed in 2019.

The clauses on offshoring, inadmissibility, differential treatment and offence of arrival are symptomatic of a shambolic Government who have completely lost control of our asylum system to the extent that they are now seeking to dump their problems on a developing country that is 4,000 miles away and has a questionable record on human rights. The Rwanda offloading plan enabled by this Bill is extortionately expensive, unworkable and un-British.

Looking first at the price of what is being proposed, it is quite extraordinary that the Home Secretary is either unwilling or unable to provide any clarity on this point by publishing the forecast cost, but the Rwanda plan is estimated to cost in the region of £30,000 per person—and that feels optimistic. Contrasting that with the £11,000 that it costs to process an asylum seeker here in the UK, we start to see the impact on the public purse.

The Prime Minister has said that he expects to send “tens of thousands” of asylum seekers to Rwanda per year, so we are looking at around £1 billion of taxpayers’ money spent by a Government who are doing absolutely nothing for British people hammered by the cost of living crisis. Then there is the £120 million in development aid. What, precisely, is that going to be spent on? Apparently it will not go towards paying for Rwandan caseworkers, so is it just the eye-watering price that the Home Secretary has paid for a press release?

Hon. Members should not just take my word for it. The Home Secretary’s own permanent secretary, Matthew Rycroft, stated:

“Value for money of the policy is dependent on it being effective as a deterrent. Evidence of a deterrent effect is highly uncertain and cannot be quantified with sufficient certainty to provide me with the necessary level of assurance over value for money.”

Labour agrees wholeheartedly with Mr Rycroft. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the Rwanda plan will deter the people smugglers or the small boats, and there is therefore not a shred of evidence to demonstrate that it will deliver value for money.

To understand value for money, the Government must provide forecasts for a range of scenarios. That is why we are supporting Lords amendments 53B to 53D. The amendments provide that in order to offshore refugees to a third state, the Secretary of State must lay regulations specifying the identity of that state and have them approved by Parliament. Before the Home Secretary may lay those regulations, costings must first be laid before both Houses. It is critical that Parliament is given the opportunity to scrutinise both the offshoring and the offloading plans for value for money, particularly at a time when our constituents are facing a cost of living crisis.

If the Rwanda offloading agreement does not serve as a deterrent, then it is failing on its own terms and therefore also failing to provide value for money. But there is also a chance that the scheme may not even get off the ground as it will end up getting bogged down in the legal system. There can be absolutely no doubt that the Government’s claim that Rwanda is a safe country for refugees will be challenged in the courts given that thousands of Rwandans seek asylum in Europe every year, with 76 Rwandan citizens granted asylum here in the UK since 2017. It is well worth noting that in 2019 Israel cancelled its offloading agreement with Rwanda after it emerged that the vast majority of refugees sent to Rwanda left within days of arriving there and after it was revealed that it had led to immense suffering, including subjecting vulnerable people to human trafficking.

It is highly likely that the Rwanda offloading plan will unravel because it is both eye-wateringly expensive and unworkable, but it is also deeply un-British—because the decision to outsource our problems to a developing country halfway across the globe with a questionable record on human rights just does not feel right. It is just not the way we do things in this country. That is why we are supporting a number of amendments to bring the Bill closer to reflecting our values as a nation. Labour Members have continually made the case that the Bill must meet Britain’s obligations under the 1951 UN refugee convention, and we are supporting Lords amendment 5B, which secures this.

Our country’s historical commitment to offering safe haven to refugees leads us to support a number of the other amendments before us today. First, we support Lords amendment 6B, which seeks to ensure that all refugees are given their convention rights and that family unity is maintained, even if the Government are determined to introduce the utterly inappropriate differential treatment aspect of this Bill, which, shamefully, contravenes the UN convention.

Secondly, we support Lords amendment 13B, which, if accepted, rather than criminalising Ukrainians and other desperate refugees who arrive here without clearance, would criminalise only those who have already been deported. We should not be seeking to create a second class of refugee. Many of these people are desperate when they arrive on our doorstep, and the Government would do well to remember that.

Thirdly, we support Lords amendment 11B, which calls on the Home Secretary to set targets for taking in a number of refugees each year and would force her to finally do some medium-term planning rather than constantly scrambling to make it up as she goes along.

Fourthly, we support Lords amendment 10B, which provides for family reunion of unaccompanied refugees in Europe.

[David Simmonds]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware, as I am, that the experience of local authorities involved in the resettlement of refugee children is that the majority of those brought to the UK on the basis of reunion with family are in fact coming straight into the care system because the relations in the UK are not able to look after them? It therefore seems to me that the Government are right to resist on this point and to seek an alternative and better way of managing the resettlement of unaccompanied children coming to the UK.

[Stephen Kinnock]

There are two dimensions to what the hon. Gentleman is questioning. The first is about the capacity and the capability here in the UK. There are of course examples of where families are not able to take care of children, but I do not believe that those are the majority, and where that is the case we need to ensure that local authorities are adequately resourced to be able to deal with the issue. The second is about the Government’s approach on this. The Minister argued that it is about taking a global approach, but we can clearly see that it is much more about the hostile environment and the basic mindset in the Home Office. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That is why the amendment in the name of Lord Dubs is absolutely the right way to go.

Fifthly, we support Lords amendment 25B, which seeks to undo the Government’s unlawful bid to, in effect, criminalise modern slavery victims who have been pushed into crime by human traffickers. We are clear that only criminals who have committed serious public order offences such as terrorism or other serious offences, as established via a Government consultation, should have their protection withdrawn.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

The hon. Lady can shout from a sedentary position, but perhaps she will listen to the answer, which is that we believe not only that it is very important that those who require sanctuary get it as quickly as possible, but that it is right that those with no right to be here are removed as soon as possible and without needless delay. That is why we are reforming the broken system. We have a Home Secretary and a ministerial team who are committed to doing just that. Again, I encourage the hon. Lady to be in the Division Lobby to support our measures tonight.

The Bill is an essential element of the plan, and the sooner it passes, the sooner we will be able to deliver the longer-term solutions we need to protect vulnerable people. I note again the lack of alternative being offered from other parts of the House. I therefore commend our Bill to the House.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Last week, the Home Secretary told the House that our asylum system is “broken”. Yesterday, her Minister, who is sitting before us today, again stated clearly that our asylum system is “broken”. We on the Labour Benches completely agree, but what Conservative Members seem to continually miss is the fact that the Conservative party has been in power for 12 years. The problem is that they never stand up and take responsibility; they always try to blame others—the civil service, the courts and even the media. It was revealed this week that the Home Secretary banned the Financial Times, The Guardian and the Mirror from the press delegation accompanying her to Rwanda. That was a truly Orwellian move—cancel culture at its worst.

The truth is that, with every decision this Government make and every ill-conceived scheme they put in place, they make fixing our broken asylum system ever harder. The first of these failures is on the asylum waiting lists. Under this Home Secretary, the Home Office is processing 50% fewer cases than five years ago—the result: 37,000 asylum seekers languishing in expensive hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £4.7 million per day. Labour would invest to save by increasing the number of caseworkers and decision makers so that processing times and hotel bills are radically reduced. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Come on, let us have a bit of reasonable behaviour. I appreciate that it is late, but it is simply rude to shout to such an extent that we cannot hear the hon. Gentleman. It is not reasonable. There is nothing wrong with a bit of banter, but it should not be at such a level that I cannot hear him.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is in this context that we are supporting Lords amendment 7F today, which would give the 60,000 asylum seekers on waiting lists the right to work, to be reviewed after two years, thereby reducing the burden on the British taxpayer and boosting the Exchequer.

Secondly, during his negotiations with the EU, the Prime Minister completely failed to replace the Dublin III regulation, which means that we can no longer return refugees to the country in the EU where they would have first sought asylum. Numbers have increased because this Conservative Government lost control of our borders by losing our long-held power to send people back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

Well, of course, but they are not doing that. The reality is that if we had a returns agreement in place, which this Prime Minister completely failed to negotiate, that would be the deterrent effect that we all want to see. The deterrent effect of a returns agreement would be so much stronger than the threat of being offloaded to Rwanda, because it would mean that every small boat refugee would be returned rather than just a tiny percentage, which is the most we can hope for from the Rwanda deal.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how many of those asylum seekers who came from France were returned to France in the period before we fully left Brexit?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it will be a hell of a lot more than what will be returned under the Rwanda scheme. He knows that it is forecast that 23,000 people will seek to make that dangerous journey. The Rwanda scheme will not even scratch the surface. That is the reality. The only way to deal with this problem is through a proper removal agreement.

Only the Labour party can reset the UK’s relationship with France and the EU, and from there strike a robust removal agreement that would truly act as a deterrent against the criminal people smugglers by breaking their business model. A Labour Government would also engage with Europol and the French authorities to create effective co-operation in the pursuit and prosecution of the criminal gangs who are running the people smuggling and human trafficking, rather than the constant war of words with our European partners and allies, which is all we ever get from this headline-chasing Government. Cheap headlines are all they care about, as everybody on the Labour Benches knows.

Thirdly, absolutely none of the Government’s safe and legal routes seems to work. The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is not even off the ground. The Syria route has been ditched. The Dubs scheme for unaccompanied children has also been cancelled. The Ukraine scheme today had a queue three hours long in Portcullis House of MPs’ staffers fighting for Ukrainians on behalf of their constituents, because the visas simply are not getting processed. Somehow, the Home Secretary has managed to turn an inspiring tale of British generosity into a bureaucratic nightmare. Labour would make safe and legal routes work, which in turn would strike another blow against the people smugglers.

[Mr Bone]

I have a lot of time for the shadow Minister, but he is on a really sticky wicket here. Can he just answer these two questions? Is it the Labour party’s policy that we should not take any migrants to Rwanda? Secondly, is he not then scared that by not doing that it will encourage the evil people smugglers in their work?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Home Secretary’s top civil servant has said that the Rwanda scheme will not work as a deterrent and it delivers no value for money whatever for the British taxpayer. What matters is what works, and that scheme will not work.

[Jacob Young]

The hon. Gentleman explained to me last week that he did not support the Rwanda scheme and he has just reiterated that. I am curious to learn. What is Labour’s plan to deal with illegal immigration in the channel?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman has clearly not been paying attention. I set out Labour’s plan last week. I have just told him about the returns agreement and giving more resources to caseworkers and decision makers. If he would care to listen to the rest of my speech, he may not need to make another meaningless intervention.

Fourthly, in respect of the Government failures that I touched on earlier, the Bill is emblematic of the Home Secretary’s tendency to make the challenges of our asylum seeker system even harder to overcome. She claims that the Rwanda offloading plan will solve the challenges that our immigration system faces, but her Minister for Refugees dismissed the plan as impossible just a week before the announcement, saying:

“If it’s happening in the Home Office, on the same corridor that I’m in, they haven’t told me about it…I’m having difficulty enough getting them from Ukraine to our country. There’s no possibility of sending them to Rwanda.”

Up and down the country, the British people are counting the cost of this Government—£4 billion of failed or overrunning defence contracts under this Prime Minister since 2019 alone; £16 billion of covid fraud; and a £7-a-year increase on energy bills without any meaningful support whatsoever—and now British taxpayers are told that they have to foot the bill for this pie-in-the-sky Rwanda plan, which will cost at least three times the amount we currently spend on asylum seekers, and possibly even 10 times more.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposal to ship asylum seekers to Rwanda is not only extremely expensive but almost certainly ineffective? It is also inhumane. The evidence from Australia shows that offshore detention often has a massive impact on the mental health of people who are already vulnerable, and can lead to self-harm and suicide if no adequate support services are available. How can we, as a fair-minded and generous nation, stoop to this?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As we know, the Australia scheme ended up costing approximately £1 million per person. The Israel scheme on which the Rwanda scheme is based failed completely, with just about every single person who was sent to Rwanda leaving the country within days and many of them trying to come back to the place from which they were sent. It is an absolute farce.

[Tom Pursglove]

It would be useful, for the benefit of the House and of the country more generally, if the hon. Gentleman could confirm whether an incoming Labour Government—in the eventuality that there were to be one—would cancel the Rwanda plan?

[Stephen Kinnock]

What I would contend—[Interruption.] I am going to tell him. What I would contend is that with the Rwanda plan the wheels are going to fall off the bus very soon, so we will not need to answer that question. It will completely fail. Rather than chasing headlines, the Minister should be doing the nitty-gritty work of negotiating a returns agreement, giving resources to caseworkers and sorting out safe and legal routes. It is about not the razzle-dazzle of Daily Mail headlines but getting the job done.

At Home Office oral questions yesterday, the Minister could not answer a single question that I asked him about the cost of the Rwanda plan. I asked him: how many refugees does he expect to send to Rwanda each year? The Prime Minister says “tens of thousands”; is that correct? What will the cost be per single refugee going to Rwanda? What will the £120 million sweetener being paid by the UK to Rwanda actually be spent on? How many asylum seekers can Rwanda’s detention centres house at any given time? Finally, given that the top civil servant at the Home Office refused to sign off on the Rwanda plan, citing concerns over value for money, when will the Minister publish a full forecast of the costs?

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has outlined his opposition to the Government’s proposal, but will he confirm, in answer to the Minister’s question, whether an incoming Labour Government would cancel the plan or go ahead with it?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We have made it absolutely clear that the plan is going to fail, as the Home Office’s top civil servant said, so the question will not arise. We will not need to deal with it; the wheels will fall off the bus. We certainly would not be spending £120 million on a press release.

The Rwanda offloading plan is not only a grotesquely expensive gimmick that is unlikely to deter people smugglers in the long-term, but deeply un-British. Dumping this challenge on a developing country 4,000 miles away, with a questionable record on human rights, raises serious concerns about whether this legislation complies with the UN refugee convention. That is why we will back Lords amendment 5D.

Another deeply un-British part of the Bill was the idea that the rubber dinghies could be pushed back out to sea. Yesterday, we witnessed the Home Secretary’s latest screeching U-turn—this time reversing a particularly unhinged part of the legislation. The Home Secretary’s pushback policy was almost completely unworkable, as she was told by the Border Force, by the French, by the Ministry of Defence and even by her own lawyers. As we learned from court documents published yesterday, she had actually agreed that pushbacks could not be applied to asylum seekers in the channel, but she tried to keep that secret so that she could keep up the bravado and tough talking. We hope that she will correct the record.

I have already pointed out—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I want to let the House calm down for a moment. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who is an experienced and efficient Member of this House, will know that he should not be making a general speech at this stage; this is not Second Reading. This debate is very narrow: we are discussing only the amendments that have just come back from the Lords, not general issues. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will now stick to the narrow matter before us—and so will everybody else.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thank you for your wise counsel, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I have already pointed to the work and refugee convention amendments, but we also need to address differential treatment. Lords amendments 6D, 6E and 6F provide that a person can be a tier 1 refugee if they have travelled briefly through countries on their way to the UK, as somebody from Kabul or Kyiv would have to, or if they have delayed presenting themselves to the authorities for a good reason. They would also require compliance with the refugee convention and state that family unity must be taken into account. The Government should get behind the amendments. What in them can there possibly be to disagree with?

The channel crossings have been taken out of the Home Secretary’s hands and handed to the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy. The Ukrainian refugee scheme has been handed over to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. This Sunday, the former director general of borders and immigration called for a new immigration Department to remove responsibility from the Home Office. With her Department now effectively in special measures, will the Home Secretary not just for once do the right thing and accept the amendments today, so that we can begin to repair some of the damage done by this deeply counterproductive legislation?

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I will not delay the House unduly; my colleagues would not want me to. I just want to make two points. The first is that the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) is right: these matters should have been addressed earlier, by successive Governments—including Labour Governments, by the way. Our immigration policy has not been planned strategically, as it might have been. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point.

The hon. Gentleman also said that the system needs to be efficient. I spoke about Edmund Burke on Second Reading; he said that the test of civil society and the policy that relates to it was justice, and that when a policy ceased to be just it was barely a policy at all. For a policy to be just, it has to be ordered, efficient and consistent. Immigration policy has struggled with order, efficiency and consistency for a very long time. On that, the hon. Gentleman was also right.

However, the hon. Gentleman is fundamentally wrong about the amendments for the following reasons. First, the Lords seem unwilling to grasp a nettle that, as he described, previous Governments have also failed the grasp. That nettle is sorting out and amending a broken system to ensure that we can continue to give safe refuge to people in desperate need, and that the system cannot be routinely and persistently gamed—by people traffickers and, actually, by economic migrants pretending to be asylum seekers. That is the fact, and we have to face it and reform the system so that we can differentiate between the two. The Government are trying to do that. It is not an easy process, but the Lords seem to me to misunderstand the Government’s intention, which is to create a consistent, ordered and effective system.

In specific terms, the amendment pertaining to the Refugee Council is unnecessary because part 2 of the Bill is already in line with the Refugee Council. I am amazed to hear the hon. Gentleman say that asylum seekers should be allowed to work. What sort of signal does that send out to legitimate migrants who have come to this country seeking to perform a role in our economy to serve this country? What sort of signal does it send out to indigenous Britons—of all types and races, by the way—who are unemployed and seeking a job, when they are told they must compete with people arriving in the country as asylum seekers? That seems to be a nonsense, yet that is what the Lords amendment suggests.