Stuart C McDonald
Main Page: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)Department Debates - View all Stuart C McDonald's debates with the Home Office
Monday 19th July 2021
(3 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Nationality and Borders Act 2022 View all Nationality and Borders Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Priti Patel
I will shortly, but I am going to make a bit of progress. It is important to reflect on the fact that when it comes to reforming the immigration system and tackling many of these complex issues, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. I think it is important for all right hon. and hon. Members to recognise that we would be kidding ourselves if we thought there was a silver bullet and said, “There is one thing that could be done.” There are a range of cumulative issues that this legislation seeks to address.
When we launched our new plan for immigration, Labour effectively spoke out about many of the measures in the Bill and in the new plan for immigration. I think it is fair to say that the Opposition seem to think that the British people have the wrong priorities when it comes to tackling issues of migration and illegal entry.
Priti Patel
I will give way shortly, but I want to make progress first. The Opposition argue that it is wrong to deport murderers, rapists and dangerous criminals—[Interruption.] It is a fact. They think that border controls are wrong. They think that ending free movement is wrong. Well, Labour Members can sigh and shake their heads, but the fact of the matter is that over the last 12 months, when it has come to ending free movement and having discussions about reforming immigration and our points-based system, they seem to think that open borders are the answer. They obviously do not support our new plan for immigration. They do not like the people’s priorities when it comes to these issues, yet they have no plan.
Priti Patel
No, I will not.
For years, people have risked their lives to enter our country, such as those crossing the channel in dangerous boats to claim asylum. [Interruption.] I have been generous in giving way and I will give way again shortly, but I would like to make progress.
If there were simple and straightforward solutions to many of these challenges—my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has touched on this—issues such as illegal migration to the UK would have been resolved by now, but illegal entry to the UK and the subsequent claims of asylum have become complex because of the nature of cases that arise. But I am absolutely clear that no one should seek to put their life, or the lives of their family, in the hands of criminals to enter the UK illegally, and I would like to think that that is an important point that this House can unite on.
The Bill will finally address the issues that over a long period of time, cumulatively, have resulted in the broken system that we have now. It is a system that is being abused, allowing criminals to put the lives of the vulnerable at risk, and it is right that we do everything possible and find measures to fix this and ensure that a fair asylum system provides a safe haven to those fleeing persecution, oppression and tyranny.
Priti Patel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I will shortly address some of these wider issues, but obviously, along with our work on safe and legal routes, we have to provide the right pathways and a secure environment for children to rebuild their lives. That is at the heart of our work in being humane, compassionate and fair.
Our system is overwhelmed, and it is a strong point of reflection that, because of the trends we have been seeing in organised immigration crime and gangs that are effectively exploiting vulnerable individuals, we now need to be able to provide support and to understand where those needs are coming from. Genuine people are being elbowed aside by those who are paying traffickers to come to our country.
Priti Patel
I will not give way.
As a nation, we have always stepped up to support refugees in need, and rightly so. This is a great source of national pride for our country, and of course that will never change.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is right, and that is where the system becomes conflated and there is no separation between the two. He is absolutely right to make that point.
Priti Patel
I will not give way. [Interruption.] I have been very generous in taking interventions, and I would like to make some progress.
It is important to reflect on the fact that, when it comes to anyone claiming asylum in the UK—this is established in long-standing legislation—we have a statutory duty in relation to accommodation, subsistence, cash and transportation. The system, as I have already mentioned to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), is currently costing the taxpayer more than £1 billion a year. It is right that we look to reform the system, and not just to make it efficient but to ensure that we do the right thing. The very principle of seeking refuge has clearly been undermined by those who are paying to travel through safe countries and then claiming asylum in the UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) said, many of those are economic migrants and not just those fleeing persecution. People should be claiming asylum in the first safe country that they reach and not using the UK as a destination of choice. That is why our intention is to work—
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Nationality and Borders Bill, notwithstanding the need to address the increasing number of dangerous boat crossings in the English Channel, because the Bill breaches the 1951 Refugee Convention, does not address the Government’s failure since 2010 to competently process asylum applications which has resulted in a backlog of cases and increased costs to the taxpayer, fails to deal with the serious and organised crime groups who are profiteering from human trafficking and modern slavery, does not address the failure to replace the Dublin III regulations to return refugees to safe countries, fails to re-establish safe routes and help unaccompanied child refugees, and fails to deliver a workable agreement with France to address the issue of boat crossings.
We on these Benches will be opposing this Bill. It is a Bill that is wrong and will make the dangerous situation in the English channel worse. We on these Benches do not want to see people risking their lives making a sea crossing in some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, often in boats that are unfit for purpose, but the measures proposed will not address that.
By judging claims on the type of journey people make, Ministers will create
“a discriminatory two-tiered approach to asylum”.
Those are not my words but the words of the United Nations Refugee Agency. That must be our starting point today. Any proposals—I will come to some in a moment—to address this profoundly serious issue must be compliant with the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees.
We should in this House remember the circumstances in which that convention was created. Drafting began in 1946, after the end of the second world war, as the full horrors perpetrated in that conflict had been brought into public view. It was a noble ideal for nations to work together to prevent such awful things from happening again. Countries came together to ensure that, across the world, we would offer a new protection to those who suffered persecution. Countries would not look the other way when there was systematic persecution in other parts of the world. We all bore a responsibility in our common humanity to help others.
The convention was signed under the post-war Labour Government in July 1951, but the document became one of the foundation stones upon which all post-war British Governments stood—a matter of pride to our country and a sign of the values we stand for around the world. It sent a clear signal that Britain was a force for good and was setting a strong moral example that gave it the authority to argue that other countries take responsibility as well. It is to this Government’s shame that they stand outside that fine British tradition. Seventy years after the 1951 convention was signed, this Government have decided to renege on its commitments. [Interruption.] I hear what the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), the Minister for immigration compliance, says, but do not take my word for it. This is what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says about the proposals:
“The international refugee protection system, underpinned by the 1951 Convention, has withstood the test of time and it remains a collective responsibility to uphold and safeguard it. If States, like the UK, that receive a comparatively small fraction of the world’s asylum-seekers and refugees appear poised to renege on their commitments, the system is weakened globally and the role and influence of the UK would be severely impacted. UNHCR is concerned that the Plan, if implemented as it stands, will undermine the 1951 Convention and international protection system, not just in the UK, but globally.”
If the Minister doubts that, this is what the United Nations Refugee Agency had to say ahead of this Second Reading debate:
“Plans to create a new lower class of refugees are discriminatory, breach commitments in the Refugee Convention and should be dropped”.
They are breaching commitments in the refugee convention that a past British Government who truly believed in a global Britain had signed.
In fact, the UN Refugee Agency said the two-tier approach is:
“a recipe for human suffering, social problems, inefficiency and greater cost to the taxpayer.”
Frankly, it is a dangerous and ill-thought-out proposal with profound consequences.
Stuart C. McDonald
Given that there seems to be unanimity that the Bill should be interpreted in the light of the refugee convention and apparently the Government intention is to follow the refugee convention, surely there could be no possible objection to an interpretation clause in the Bill. We can all work together to put that in there to ensure that all the provisions follow refugee case law and the refugee convention as it is.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. In reality, this is a Bill based on an immigration plan that is harmful. Just listen to the story of Waheed Arian, now an NHS doctor who escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan as a child. These are his words:
“When I arrived alone in London, a bewildered 15-year-old with nothing to my name but $100 and my hopes and dreams, I had no idea I’d end up two decades later working as an NHS doctor fighting Covid-19 on the frontline in A&E. As a former child refugee from Afghanistan, under the UK government’s so-called New Plan for Immigration, it is doubtful I would be here at all.”
I repeat:
“It is doubtful I would be here at all.”
We also know the serious concerns that have been raised by campaigners across the LGBT+ community about the Bill. The way it is so badly drafted risks us turning our back on people fleeing persecution. This is particularly chilling when we know the scale of the dangers faced by so many LGBT+ people across the world, including state-sanctioned persecution. The plan is wrong and it is wrong-headed.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I am afraid that I regard this as a dreadful Bill, and the Refugee Council was absolutely right to characterise it as the “anti-refugee” Bill. There are eight welcome clauses on nationality, but thereafter what we see risks trampling international convention after international convention, and vulnerable children, stateless children and victims of trafficking will all pay a penalty. Nowhere is the retreat from international law, international co-operation and basic human decency more apparent than in the absolute trashing of the refugee convention as it approaches its 70th birthday. A convention that has saved and protected countless millions of people is being undermined by one of its first champion countries.
Refugees and asylum seekers—we have skirted over this so far—will be criminalised, stripped of their rights and offshored. That is true whether they are Uyghurs fleeing atrocities in China, Syrians fleeing war crimes or persecuted Christians seeking refuge here. The Bill does absolutely nothing to stop them getting in boats in France; what it does is punish them when they get here. That is morally reprehensible.
It is not just the Bill’s awful ends that justifies the Scottish National party refusing it a Second Reading and stopping it in its tracks but the means by which it seeks to pursue those ends. We are talking about a unilateral rewriting or reinterpretation of our obligations under international law. That is, once more, a hugely dangerous precedent to set. It will make our international partners query whether this country gives two hoots about international law and keeping its word.
Secondly, to put it directly, what we have here is a deliberate policy decision to inflict harm on people seeking sanctuary by criminalising them, splitting them from their family, forcing them into destitution, putting them in legal limbo and offshoring them. That is not just ineffective and dangerous, but morally outrageous.
Not only is the Bill the opposite of the right solution, but it wrongly identifies the problem that needs solving. The problem in the asylum system is simply down to the incompetent management of it by this Home Office and this Government. We live in a world in which 80 million people have been forcibly displaced, and 30 million of them are outside their country of origin and are therefore refugees. Four million of them are asylum seekers pursuing recognition as refugees. Some 86% of them are hosted in developing countries, 73% in neighbouring countries.
What we are asking of wealthy western countries barely scratches the surface of their share of responsibility. In European terms, what has been asked of the UK is very little at all. I applaud and support everything that has been achieved through the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and other resettlement programmes, but none of it justifies what the Government propose today.
The Government regularly trot out that they have resettled more Syrian refugees than other European countries. In absolute terms that is true but, per head of population, neighbours such as Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland and Ireland have all resettled more. Yes, although the UK resettled a few thousand more Syrians than Germany and France, those two countries have offered sanctuary to more Syrians through their asylum systems by massive margins.
In 2019, the UK received around five applications for asylum per 10,000 people, compared with the European average of 14, putting the UK 17th in the table of member states, just behind Italy, Finland and Ireland. Similarly, the UK granted roughly two applications per 10,000 people, compared with the European average of 13, putting it 16th in the table. Yes, although by international standards the UK has a decent history of offering protection, let us not pretend that it has been bearing an unbearable burden that entitles it to rip up the refugee convention and start trying to pass refugees back up the chain to those that already do much more.
The real problem, as we have heard, is that the Home Office’s handling of asylum cases is abysmal. We have heard the extraordinary figures on how long it is taking, and it is not just the length of time it takes to make a decision but the number of decisions that it gets wrong. We are at record levels of successful appeals—it is almost 50:50.
It is not just statistics that cause grave concern but the regular stories of life inside the Home Office: impossible targets, a culture of fear, ill-treatment of staff, high staff turnover, a shortage of skilled asylum caseworkers and administrative chaos. Asylum decision making is a matter of life and death, and it seems clear to me that it should no longer be entrusted to the Home Office, a Department that has again shown itself to be unfit for that purpose. Such decisions should be removed from political interference and entrusted to an independent body, as they are in Canada. That would be a sensible approach.
Stuart C. McDonald
Absolutely, as there is in Canada.
Members from all parties in this House, sitting on the Front Benches and the Back Benches, regularly speak up for some of the most oppressed people on the planet. We have seen brave interventions on Uyghurs fleeing atrocities in China. The plight of Syrians fleeing a decade-long conflict has been championed, and Christians around the world, including Christian converts, have numerous ambassadors in this Chamber, but we have hardly come to terms with what this Bill means for them.
This Bill prompts a question: why speak up against persecution abroad only to say, when they come knocking at our door seeking shelter, “You are not our responsibility. Go somewhere else”? France seems to be the popular answer among Conservative Members. What if France and the rest of Europe say the same thing? We would end up with the system of international protection of refugees breaking down, as the UNHCR points out.
If the Bill passes, that is exactly what it means. Prior to the Bill, we would have sheltered people fleeing persecution. The Bill expressly seeks to discourage them from coming here by making life miserable for those who do. Today, if a Uyghur, Syrian or persecuted Christian convert arrives in the UK to seek asylum, life will be far from plain sailing, precisely because of the outrageous waiting times, the dreadful asylum accommodation, the prohibition on work and the dreadful levels of financial support. They get here and, thanks to our amazing non-governmental organisations and charities, they slowly start to rebuild their lives.
But next year, if this Bill passes, for many of those Uyghurs, Syrians or persecuted Christian converts claiming asylum here, things will be infinitely bleaker, and that will be a deliberate policy choice of this Parliament. Arriving next year, the Uyghur, Syrian or persecuted Christian will be much more likely to be criminalised, regardless of arguments about whether they had come here directly or not.
Section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 already punishes illegal entry by those without leave to enter. Sensibly, however, those who claim asylum on arrival are granted immigration bail, which does not count officially as entry. Clause 37 of the Bill changes all that. It would essentially criminalise the very act of arriving to claim asylum, because, as the explanatory notes acknowledge, the majority of asylum seekers will not have the ability to secure entry clearance. Despite the Home Secretary’s protestations last week, as the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, this criminal offence will apply to Uyghurs, Syrians, persecuted Christian converts and anybody else, and the penalty is up to four years in prison.
The next problem for the Uyghur, Syrian or persecuted Christian convert is that although they are absolutely obviously in need of international protection, this Government, in their wisdom, are not even going to consider their claim for protection for six months. The Government are trying to pretend that that is some sort of replication of the Dublin regulations that the UK was party to prior to Brexit, but of course it is not, because, as we have heard, there are no returns agreements with any remotely relevant country and little indication at this stage that there will be any time soon. Any such returns agreement would have to be carefully circumscribed so as to be consistent with the convention and to have carefully considered the circumstances of the individual, including any ties to the UK, such as family members here.
By contrast, the powers in the Bill will allow the Home Secretary to remove a Uyghur, persecuted Christian or Syrian to any country at all, even if there is no connection, and with very little by way of restriction. Today, the Uyghur, Syrian or persecuted Christian faces outrageous delays in asylum protection systems, and the Bill simply adds another six months.
Where will the Uyghur, Syrian or persecuted Christian be during that time—during that limbo—while the Home Office goes through the futile motions of seeking to remove them? Just now, for those who seek asylum we have a struggling, privatised, over-concentrated system of dispersed asylum accommodation. Numerous Committees have told the Home Office how it could be improved, only to be ignored. Under this Bill and this plan, that is not where the Home Secretary envisages the Syrian, the Uyghur or the persecuted Christian going. Instead, the grim future for these refugees appears under this Bill and this plan to be the disgraceful, disreputable open prison-like conditions that we have already witnessed at Napier or Penally.
Even worse, as we have heard, they may face being removed to an offshore centre to have their claim resolved. Here is the real asylum shopping: the British Government grubbing around to find a country to palm off their responsibilities on to. Let us think of the outrages and the lack of accountability we have seen in relation to immigration detention and the Napier open prison—the abuses that have been meted out there and the harm done. As we know from the Australian experiment, that will be as nothing compared to the hell that is likely to await at an offshore asylum facility. How on earth have we gone from having a Parliament where there was widespread support for time-limiting and restricting the use of detention, to imposing a form of it that is infinitely worse?
Having endured their limbo period, these three groups of refugees will finally have their case assessed by the Home Office. But instead of working to improve asylum decision making, the Bill seeks to make it harder for them to prove their case. It seeks to alter the long-established test set out in the refugee convention that the standard of proof required is a lower, but far from negligible, standard of real risk. That standard is clearly justified by the possible consequences of getting decisions wrong and the huge challenges of proving circumstances that happened thousands of miles away in a country the person has fled.
The Bill seeks to muddy the waters by applying a higher legal threshold. The claimant now has to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that they do belong to one of the protected convention groups and that they fear persecution based on that characteristic. That not only undermines the cautious approach in the convention, justified by the dangers that exist for asylum seekers, but pays no regard to just how difficult it is to prove events that happened in faraway countries.
In addition, by having two different standards of evidence in the same proceedings, it makes life harder for already struggling caseworkers. The judge or decision maker may be certain that the proselytising Christian convert will face the death penalty or torture on return, but now the “real possibility” that the claimant is such a proselytising Christian convert is not enough. If the judge is only 49% satisfied that the person is a proselytising Christian convert, the claim is going to be rejected, even though the risk of torture or death is absolutely certain if the decision maker has got that assessment wrong. I find that deeply troubling, and it is clearly inconsistent with the refugee convention.
Let us imagine that the persecuted Christian, the Syrian and the Uyghur have survived their limbo period and made it through the asylum system, and the Home Office refusal of their application has been overturned on appeal. Unbelievably, the harms inflicted on them by the Bill have barely started. On the contrary, the repugnant programme of disincentives is ramped up further, even after they navigate that system. Because they have stopped temporarily in a European country, they are to be treated as a second-class refugee. Regardless of what any Minister says, that is absolutely contrary to the refugee convention and, more importantly, it is simply disgraceful. It is not just nasty, but sickening—
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that on many occasions, particularly for those seeking asylum on the basis of their sexuality, those in the LGBT+ community are the most likely to be adversely impacted by this new legislation? Does he agree that more should be done to protect them and ensure that they can come here as a safe haven?
Stuart C. McDonald
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are all sorts of problems with provisions in the Bill that penalise late disclosure of information, which can very often be the case in modern slavery or LGBT cases, or even religious conversion cases.
Having established that these people are refugees—and the Government have had to recognise that—the system should allow them to rebuild their lives after the trauma of their persecution, their journeys and their asylum claim, but instead this Government still want to turn the screw. Instead of the stability and permanent residence refugees were once provided with, today they are given five years’ leave, with a review that is fairly light-touch, before settlement. But this Bill and the Government’s plan propose endless 30-month cycles of review and ongoing attempts to remove. Nobody can rebuild their lives in those circumstances—and I do not know how on earth the Home Office is going to cope with having to revisit every single asylum case every 30 months.
These refugees will not be entitled to public funds unless they are destitute. So if, say, the Christian convert finds some part-time, low-paid work—a big ask, given the language and cultural barriers, the enforced years out of work, and the trauma—there will be no universal credit to cover housing or income shortfalls, and if he or she was able to bring a child, there will be no support for that child. Their refugee family reunion rights will be diminished, according to the plan, meaning that they cannot be joined by a spouse or perhaps a child. The detail is not in the Bill, but that is what the plan suggests and the Bill enables.
That inevitably gives the Christian convert a choice: does the family stay apart or do other family members—often the women and children that the Home Secretary professes to be protecting—then have to follow and make their own dangerous journeys? Without the family, without state support and without stability, the Uyghur, the Syrian and the persecuted Christian convert have no hope of rebuilding their lives. That amounts not to a place of sanctuary, but to a place of punishment—and the Home Office has the audacity to claim that it is in their best interests. This is, in short, an outrageous way to treat refugees, and it is why the Bill is rightly being called the anti-refugee Bill.
There is so much that could be said about the undermining of efforts to support trafficking victims, the total absence from the Bill of protection for children, and the undermining of rights of stateless children. We need to know what the placeholder clauses will give rise to. We do not even have the chance to debate them here on Second Reading, and there are six or seven of them. The whole of the dentistry profession is up in arms at the suggestion that the discredited and unethical dental X-rays system could return as an inaccurate method of assessing age.
Stuart C. McDonald
Well, the dentistry profession and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees say that it is not accurate and it is entirely unethical.
The Home Secretary is also making it harder to identify victims of modern slavery and cutting their recovery period to the minimum allowed in international law.
There is so much that should be in the Bill that is not. I mention just one thing: the failure to end the disgracefully painful 10-year route to settlement that many essentially British kids face and the outrageous fees that others are charged for registering their entitlement to British citizenship. When will that finally be done? This is an abysmal and, indeed, shameful Bill. It does not remotely deserve a Second Reading.
Sir John Hayes
Absolutely, it does not, nor is it just to pillory the public and those who speak for them when they argue that we should enforce the law and that migration should be controlled. As a number of hon. Members have said, legal migration has been out of control for some time, and illegal migration, by its very nature, is both unjust and unfair because it breaks the law. It breaches that principle that people who arrive here and pursue legal routes are doing the right thing and that those who do not are simply doing the wrong thing and should be deported. That is what the public think, and that is what we should say very clearly.
Stuart C. McDonald
Is no one on the Conservative Benches remotely concerned that the Bill would see a Uyghur fleeing persecution in China, a Syrian fleeing disastrous war crimes in that country or a persecuted Christian seeking sanctuary on this shore criminalised with an offence that could see them in prison for up to four years, stripped of their family reunion rights, offshored and whatever else? Does nobody on those Benches have any qualms about that whatsoever?
Sir John Hayes
Surely the hon. Gentleman must realise that while the principle of granting asylum—of giving sanctuary to people in desperate need—is a noble one, it is being gamed, day after day and month after month, with people travelling through many safe countries before claiming asylum, repeated claims on a whole range of different grounds, and even modern slavery, which we all deplore, being used as a justification to stay here when it is invented. That is to insult—to besmirch—those who are really suffering persecution and who come here in genuine need. It is being gamed, frankly, by a combination of unscrupulous civil rights and human rights activists, and people-traffickers. Although they do not work together in an organised fashion, the combination of the two is damaging public faith in our ability to control our borders. If “take back control” means anything, surely it means taking back control of our sovereign borders.
When the average Briton sees the asylum system being played, it leaves them bewildered, frustrated and angry that we should be taken for such fools. British people do not want to pull up the drawbridge to the world’s needy. What they want is a consistent system that helps the right people in the right way: one that will remove those with no right to stay in Britain just as it protects those we ought to be protecting, not one that grants favour to those who manage to successfully break our laws when they first arrive here.
Jack Brereton
Glasgow is the only official asylum dispersal area in Scotland. Other authorities have the opportunity to come forward as dispersal areas, but SNP-controlled authorities in Scotland have failed to do so. All the pressure has fallen on the minority of authorities that are dispersal areas, while numerous authorities have failed to resettle a single asylum seeker.
The west midlands is currently accommodating 12.26%, an increase on 2019, but all of this is falling on only half of the authorities in the region. In Stoke-on-Trent it is having a significant impact on our overstretched local services.
Stuart C. McDonald
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can join our delegation tomorrow, because what we seek and what the cross-party Home Affairs Committee has advised is that the Home Office properly fund the dispersal system. Every single local authority in Scotland got involved in the refugee resettlement scheme because it was properly funded. I am more than happy to join him in seeking more money for dispersal areas, and we will all then happily sign up to do the job properly.
Jack Brereton
What the hon. Gentleman is actually saying is, “We are happy for authorities like Stoke-on-Trent to continue to pull their weight, and we in Scotland will just sit here, not pull our weight and continue not to support asylum seekers in this country.”
Richard Fuller
My right hon. Friend speaks very wise words.
Let me just say to Opposition Members that there is no monopoly on compassion, and that it does not mean saying that the system must apply to everyone in a particular process. Compassion applies to an individual claim. The importance of our system is that we get to that individual and do not lose sight of him or her. In a previous life as a Member of Parliament, I spoke in a debate on another immigration Bill and bemoaned the lack of compassion in our immigration system. It was encouraging to hear the Home Secretary use the word “compassion” so often, and to hear stories of compassion from other Conservative Members, whether they were about how a council looks after the people who are claiming asylum or about people’s feelings about the system. So there is no monopoly on compassion here, and I look forward to working with Opposition Members in finding ways in which we can make it work more deeply in the Bill.
Stuart C. McDonald
I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member, particularly for his stance on immigration detention and his campaigning for time limits on it. The Home Secretary talks about compassion, but at the end of the day—I have said this a few times, but people do not seem even to acknowledge it—the Bill would criminalise people it recognises as refugees, strip them of their family reunion rights, strip them of recourse to public funds, limit the amount of leave that they are allowed here and never let them even apply for settlement. That is not remotely compassionate. We are talking about refugees.
Richard Fuller
I look forward to the hon. Gentleman talking about specifics, because again there was a bit of broad generalisation there. However, one thing that I will say for SNP Members is that at least they have some ideas, whereas 10 minutes into the shadow Home Secretary’s speech he said, “Let me tell you what the Labour party will do”—and in the rest of his speech he came up with one idea, which was to set a legal target for how quickly asylum claims get processed. Is that it? Is that all the Labour party has to offer? I see that it is, so let us work with the SNP.
Let me tell the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East where I think we can work together. Let us have some compassion for victims of slavery; there is plenty of support on the Conservative Benches for that. Let us have some compassion in how we treat children in the Bill; there is lots of support on both sides of the House for that. Let us have some compassion for how the particular issues of women will be affected by the separation of regular from irregular routes. And let us have some compassion, Minister, by ending indefinite detention once and for all.