Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Sorry, Dame Diana. You are the next one to speak from your party, and I have made a faux pas. I should call Stuart C. McDonald.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I absolutely forgive you for that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I offer my apologies to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. I look forward to hearing her remarks shortly.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and I echo everything she said about modern slavery. I would like to say it is a pleasure to be taking part in a debate on this Bill again, but unfortunately it most definitely is not. Members will not be surprised to hear that the position of my party is that this remains a rotten, utterly misconceived and cruel Bill that will not stop boats but will cause immense human suffering to people who have fled persecution and harm. For the reasons we have just heard, it is a traffickers charter. It has been rushed through Parliament in a most appalling way, without consultation or proper scrutiny.

Although the House of Lords has done some decent work to date, forgive me if we are not popping the champagne corks at this stage. The 20 Lords amendments add a bit of polish, but they barely scratch the surface of the problems with the Bill, and experience tells us, unfortunately, that their lordships will be bargained down to three or four moderate concessions. They have already passed up the chance to refuse the Bill a Second Reading, with Labour peers abstaining for utterly unconvincing reasons. If it was a revising Chamber with any sort of teeth or credibility, it would at least be using its powers to delay this Bill and let voters decide this issue for themselves at the next election.

In that context, it is vital that we remember during today’s debate and the whole ping-pong process that only one solitary sentence in the Government’s 2019 manifesto referred to asylum. It was a very benign sentence:

“We will continue to grant asylum and support to refugees fleeing persecution, with the ultimate aim of helping them to return home if it is safe to do so.”

That was it. This Bill, and every single one of the Government’s motions to reject the Lords amendments, is completely and utterly contrary to that pledge. Without the amendments, the Bill will essentially stop the grant of asylum to almost anyone. Instead of offering support or an assisted return home to most refugees, it will enforce unlimited detention at the whim of the Home Secretary, permanent limbo, or threatened removal to Rwanda. Even children and trafficking victims are not to be spared, and the consequences for them will be horrendous.

This outrageous Bill, which rides roughshod over international law without any electoral endorsement, is precisely the sort of Bill that the House of Lords should be voting down and delaying. We can make that less necessary by agreeing to all the Lords amendments. That is the least we should do, and it really should not be too much to ask.

As we have heard, we are talking about amendments that will ensure compliance with our international obligations under vital international treaties such as the refugee convention, the European convention on human rights, the trafficking convention and the convention on the rights of the child. We are talking about basic respect for the rule of law, and my party wholeheartedly endorses Lords amendment 1, which incorporates those obligations into the Bill.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Thank you for allowing me to speak again, Mr Evans.

What we have had today is an absolute disgrace of a debate. The timetabling of this really important Bill has been absolutely shocking. Whatever side of the debate we are on, we must understand that it is of incredible constitutional significance. There are questions here about whether we are breaking some absolutely fundamental treaty obligations, yet we have been treated to nothing more than a few slogans and not a single effort to address any of the amendments we tabled in good faith. Those amendments were not just tabled off my own bat, but in consultation with the Law Society, the Law Society of Scotland, Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association—lots of respected organisations that deserve to have their voice heard here and deserve to be treated with respect by this Government. The whole process has been an absolute embarrassment to Parliament. Where is the impact assessment we should have had before the Bill? That is just as disgraceful as the lack of respect for the amendments tabled today.

What we have had today is not a serious debate. We have had slogans and dog-whistle rhetoric. We have a Government who have shown that they are all slogans and absolutely no respect for Parliament.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am anticipating four Divisions and I will try to assist the House as to when they are likely to happen. First, we go to Sir William Cash.

National Security Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Report stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will now announce the results of the ballot held today for the election of the Chairs of the Education Committee and the Transport Committee. Due to the compressed time in this Report stage, I will not take any points of order until just before the Adjournment at the end of business today. I hope everybody will be happy with that.

In the Education Committee Chair election, 452 votes were cast, one of which was invalid. The counting went to two rounds. There were 436 active votes in the second round, excluding those ballot papers whose preferences had been exhausted. The quota to be reached was therefore 219 votes. Mr Robin Walker was elected Chair with 228 votes.

In the Transport Committee Chair election, 448 votes were cast, none of which were invalid. The counting went to five rounds. There were 369 active votes in the final round, excluding those ballot papers whose preferences had been exhausted. The quota to be reached was therefore 185 votes. Iain Stewart was elected Chair with 192 votes.

Both Chairs will take up their posts immediately. I congratulate Mr Robin Walker and Iain Stewart on their election. The results of both counts under the alternative vote system will be made available as soon as possible in the Vote Office and published on the internet. Congratulations once again.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). He has our full support, both in relation to amendment 14 and to what he said about clause 83.

A Bill of this nature is absolutely necessary and overdue, but I share the concerns of colleagues about the amount of time provided for debate and scrutiny. So short of time do we appear to be that the Minister, much as I respect and like him, did not actually even seem to speak about any of the amendments he has tabled today, including Government amendment 60, which is, frankly, absolutely outrageous, but I will come on to that shortly. It is essential, yes, that we update our espionage laws, but it is also essential that we update them correctly. If we do not do it correctly then: first, we risk severely criminalising behaviour that was not intended to be criminalised; secondly, we leave loopholes to be exploited by those who mean us harm; and thirdly, we confer powers way beyond what is reasonable or required. Our amendments seek to address all three dangers.

First, we have concerns about behaviour that should not be caught in the provisions. We have concerns about the impact of the legislation on protesters, journalists, non-governmental organisations, whistleblowers, those acting in the public interest and, now, victims of trafficking. In some cases, that is because of how some of the specific offences have been framed. For example, by catching someone who might

“approach or be in the vicinity of”

a prohibited place, clause 4 risks seriously criminalising protesters at Faslane for example, assuming the Government still consider nuclear weapons as essential to the

“safety or interests of the United Kingdom”.

Similarly, the National Union of Journalists is concerned that clause 5 risks a chilling effect on its photographers by criminalising any photo of a prohibited place as “inspecting” it. We tabled amendment 120 to protect protesters who are simply in the vicinity of a prohibited place, and amendment 133 to ensure that taking a photograph of a prohibited place is not automatically considered an inspection of it and therefore an offence.

Other groups risk being caught in the Bill, because some of the overarching terms and the framework for deciding when there is foreign influence is perhaps not as tightly drafted as it should be. For example, the very important notion of the

“interests of the United Kingdom”

is central to quite a few offences, yet that is a nebulous concept and appears to be whatever the Government of the day choose it to be. Depending on which day of the week it is and which Prime Minister is in office, fracking might be something the Government think is in the

“interests of the United Kingdom”.

That is an unsatisfactory way to describe a criminal offence, so we have offered a way to try to fix it. Amendments 116 and 118 list specific critical interests, above day-to-day political agendas of the Government, which need protecting. The Minister complained in Committee that the list was not long enough, so we added the ones he complained were missing. It is important to say again that the reason why we included those particular interests is that we are mirroring a scheme under the Official Secrets Act 1989, where specific interests requiring protection are set out: security and intelligence, defence, international relations and crime. The key point is that

“interests of the United Kingdom”

is too broad and too wishy-washy.

We also have concerns about the “foreign power condition”, which is pivotal to deciding whether behaviour is caught by some of the new offences. In particular, as we have heard, there are many NGOs and other institutions with financial links to other Governments. That is why we tabled what is now amendment 124 in Committee to propose that the condition is made out only where the finance was specifically for the act that will be criminalised. However, we welcome Government amendments 48 and 49, which aim to address a similar problem.

Ultimately, like others, I think that the best answer to all these questions is not to make various tweaks here and there. If anything, our scrutiny of the Bill has convinced us more than ever of the need for an overarching public interest defence. We share the regret that we will not have that chance today.

Finally on this group of amendments, we also need to worry about trafficking victims who could be prosecuted as spies or foreign agents. I agree that it is outrageous for the Government to have introduced amendment 60 less than one week before the final stages of the Bill without explanation or evidence. Frankly, I dread the modern slavery legislation that seems to be coming down the track if this is a foretaste of it. People trafficked, enslaved and coerced into activities under this Bill, such as photographing a prohibited site or stealing information, could be punished as though they are guilty of espionage.

I alerted various trafficking charities and experts to the amendment on Monday. They were all completely and utterly unaware of it and certainly had not been consulted on it, despite some of those organisations being on Home Office working groups and the like. They have a million questions to ask about it. Frankly, I am so irritated about how the amendment has been sprung on us that I am absolutely determined that we have the chance to vote on it this evening.

Turning to the loopholes for those who would seek to harm us, I will mention a couple of amendments. On clause 2, on the theft of intellectual property and so on, we queried why that should be an offence only outside the UK in very limited circumstances, even though UK trade secrets were being protected and stolen under the offence. We tabled amendment 117 to ensure that there is also an offence not just when a UK citizen is a victim, but when a UK resident or person in the employment of a UK person is. Government amendment 40 addresses that point insofar as people who live in the UK, but it does not cover employees.

Most significantly, we worry about the rules on registration in relation to the foreign influence registration scheme. If a specified Government seek to direct activities directly in the UK, the operation of the foreign activity regime seems clear. However, it is hard to imagine that that is how things will generally operate. Surely intermediaries will be used much more often. If that intermediary is in the UK, again, the scheme should work, but what if the intermediary is still in a specified country? In theory, it seems as though the intermediary will be under an obligation to register the agreement, but that will not happen. Meanwhile, those doing the activities in the UK seem to have no obligation to register anything, as they have no direct agreement with the specified Government. That seems a possibly significant loophole, so we tabled amendment 130 to flag up the issue of how we deal with intermediaries.

Thirdly and lastly, let me turn to amendments that seem to grant excessive powers to the Government. Amendment 121 places restrictions on the additional sites that the Home Secretary can deign to be prohibited. Prohibited places have always previously related to security, so we think that new sites should also relate to security and that the nebulous concept of “interest” should not be enough to justify allowing a Home Secretary to add extensively to that list.

Clause 70, which is part of the registration scheme, creates ludicrously broadly drafted powers for the Secretary of State to ask for pretty much any information that she wants from any body or organisation that is or should be registering a scheme. That will be a huge number of bodies. However, if we look at clause 70, we see that there is no limit on the type of information that can be requested or the purpose of the request. There is no means to challenge or appeal against a notice. In Committee, the Minister said that the clause’s purpose was to allow the Home Secretary to seek such information as is necessary to make sure that people comply with the registration requirement. None of that is in the Bill, however, so amendment 131 would put that restriction in it. It is the bare minimum protection that we require.

The major overreach has been described by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden: clause 27’s carve-out for the security services in relation to the Serious Crime Act. I echo what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), said. We approached this with an open mind. Officials and staff have been successful in persuading us of the need for many parts of the Bill, but not here. As was remarked on Second Reading, other protections are in place. I have not heard any suggestion that members of the Intelligence and Security Committee have been persuaded by the services, so we, too, remain concerned that the proposal provides an enormous and unwarranted protection from prosecution, even where Ministers or officials provide information that leads to torture overseas.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden has also addressed the powers provided to courts in relation to the award of damages, which rather stink of Ministry of Justice virtue signalling and politics. There are already powers to deal with those dangers, as the Minister sort of accepted today in his letter to members of the Bill Committee. Amendment 132, which is directly informed by the comments of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, would at least mean that there has to be proof on the balance of probabilities before damages can be permanently confiscated—a modest proposal, and one that the right hon. Member has advocated. We are also sympathetic to the right hon. Member’s amendments to take the relevant provisions out altogether.

The Bill’s legal aid provisions are, frankly, utterly farcical. It is the criminal justice system that should be used to punish people, not the civil justice system. Our amendments 125 to 127 would clip the wings of the state threat prevention and investigation measures by ensuring that the normal civil test applies before they can be imposed, by reducing the number of times they can be extended, and by taking out provision for polygraph testing.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Scottish National party, Stuart C. McDonald.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

The SNP remains totally opposed to the dreadfully drafted and totally excessive restrictions on protest contained in part 3 of the Bill, and we do so for all the many reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) has set out in previous stages, so I can be relatively brief.

The truth is that the Government know they have comprehensively lost the arguments on this, so they are left reassuring us that the powers will not actually be used and that noisy protest will not be banned altogether, and providing a hotchpotch of examples, many of which would already be caught by existing public order provisions. The Minister even made reference to discos. While I would love there to be a fundamental right to disco, or whatever the modern terminology is, that is not remotely comparable to a protest and the fundamental right to protest.

We just cannot legislate in this way. We cannot hand over draconian powers on the basis that Home Office Ministers reassure us that they or the police will use these powers exceptionally, rather than ubiquitously. Any restriction on fundamental rights must be carefully justified, carefully set out and carefully circumscribed, but the protest provisions in the Bill are as far from careful as could be imagined. They remain vague, confusing, opaque and incredibly subjective, and they trigger police powers to intervene in protest at an unbelievably inappropriate and low level. They make it hard for people to understand what they might or might not be able to do.

For the reasons that the shadow Minister set out, the powers are verging on the absurd. We have seen Ministers being drawn into debates about whether the presence of double-glazing might impact on whether a protest could be subject to restrictions. Even this evening, we have been drawn into debate about next-door neighbours and whether a protest at the Russian embassy would be okay if the next-door neighbour was a bunch of officers, but might not be okay if it was an old folks’ home. That is the level of absurdity.

All of these powers are dreadful from the point of view of the rule of law, of human rights and of democracy itself. On the other hand, the powers might also prove to be a poisoned chalice for police forces, which will struggle to justify any of their decision making on objective grounds or to defend themselves against charges that they are being political in their decision making, and that will be true whether or not they actually use the powers.

As the shadow Minister said, it is welcome that the concept of serious unease is being removed, but the point I made to the Minister was not properly addressed. The expression in the Bill as it stands is

“serious unease, alarm or distress”.

The Government are not just taking out the word “unease”; they are taking out the word “serious” alongside it. That means that the threshold is not “serious” alarm or “serious” distress, but just “alarm or distress”. As I said in my intervention, the Home Secretary has made a concession on the one hand, but she is taking much more away with the other, and that point has not been answered in any way, shape or form.

Frankly, these provisions are beyond saving. They are a botched, rushed job, just so that the Home Secretary could say that she was doing something about certain protests that she did not like—no matter to her, it seems, that her legislation significantly impacts on the fundamental right to protest more generally. There is nothing left for it but to continue to insist that the whole lot comes out. The Government’s arguments have fallen to pieces, and I regard it as dreadful that they continue to try to bulldoze these provisions through Parliament. We will vote against the relevant Government motion to disagree, and I hope that the other place will continue to resist these utterly unjustifiable restrictions on the right to protest.

EU Settlement Scheme

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I think the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point, but as I say, there are many different ways we could do this, and all I ask is that people engage with these ideas, rather than just dismiss them out of hand. At the very least, the Government should think again about the remote areas pilot scheme recommended by the Migration Advisory Committee, which the Government just promptly ditched without any sort of explanation at all, otherwise it will be clear that there is no prospect of Scotland having any real influence over these vital powers while it is part of the UK.

In the meantime, I believe we all want to protect EU citizens. We have offered our proposals. We believe that the status quo is fraught with a million problems. There needs to be action and significant changes if protection of EU citizens is to be a reality.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

While there will not be a time limit to begin with, that is clearly open to review if people go wildly over five or six minutes in their contributions, depending on how long we take on the opening speeches.

Covid Security at UK Borders

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Nigel Evans

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) [V]]

If the Government do not learn from mistakes they make during this pandemic, those mistakes will be repeated, with the same terrible consequences. Let us be clear: this Government have made significant mistakes on covid security at the border. I accept that some of those mistakes are easier to see now with hindsight, but others should have been and were apparent at the time. Indeed, the UK approach to borders stood out like a sore thumb for significant parts of last year, compared with the actions taken by even neighbouring countries. It is not just me saying that, because the Home Affairs Committee has said it. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) has repeatedly pointed out the flaws in the Home Office response over the past year, as one would expect from such a distinguished and knowledgeable home affairs shadow. I pay tribute to her for that work and look forward to maintaining the challenge she posed to the Home Office on this issue and on many, many others.

Of course, the Home Secretary herself has accepted that the Government got it wrong, saying that she argued for border closures last March. That raises questions about why she stayed in post when she was overruled, rather than arguing for essential border closures from outside the Cabinet. Last week, she accepted that there were

“still too many people coming in”—[Official Report, 27 January 2021; Vol. 688, c. 406.]

to the country. That is a stark admission so far into a pandemic. The new measures announced last week by the Home Secretary just about amount to a step in the right direction, but, as is typical of much of the Government’s response to this crisis, it is not a decisive step; it is a hesitant half-measure, when what we needed was bold action.

The Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, has said that the Scottish Government and the SNP believe that

“a comprehensive system of supervised quarantine is required”.

“Comprehensive” is certainly not how we would describe the very limited scheme that the UK Government have drawn up, so we support the Opposition motion. If the Government really want to persuade us that this tentative hotel quarantine policy will genuinely make a difference, Ministers must tell us what estimates they have made of the numbers who will be impacted by these new requirements? How many hotel rooms do they believe will be required? On the other hand, how many thousands of people will continue simply to pass straight through the airports, and out on to public transport and into our towns and cities?

Put simply, we support a more comprehensive scheme because that is what the evidence points to. Professor John Edmunds of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Home Affairs Committee:

“The places that have had very effective quarantine measures do not ask people to quarantine in their homes.”

So why is the UK not learning more quickly from international best practice? Instead, the UK has offered a half-baked measure that does not bring comfort to the disastrously impacted aviation industry; nor is it decisive enough to appear capable of making any real difference to covid in this country. The Government have tried to operate a timid middle-way compromise, and instead have helped neither public health nor industry. In relation to the South African strain, the stable door was closed half-heartedly, and only after the horse had well and truly bolted.

Both the Scottish and Welsh Governments have expressed concerns that the measure does not go far enough. Although public health measures can take the devolved Governments so far, with border powers and passenger data in the hands of the Home Office, co-operation is required. The preference would be to have strong and consistent quarantine rules across the UK, so I ask Ministers and the Home Secretary to listen and engage very carefully; as and when the devolved Governments seek to go further than the half-baked UK measures, I hope that they will co-operate and provide support.

We need a more comprehensive scheme to protect from covid arrivals at the border. At the same time, we need a bespoke and comprehensive package of support for the aviation industry. From the outset of the pandemic, it was clear that one of the sectors that would be most impacted was aviation. The UK Government clearly felt the same and promised sector-specific support, but the one Government who jumped into instant action to support the sector were the Scottish Government, who provided 100% rates relief for a full year, which has now been extended by at least three months, with the aim of extending it longer. It took the UK Government six months to do anything similar.

With the vast majority of flights grounded, the situation facing the sector is still absolutely dire. Tens of thousands of jobs have gone in the sector, and many that remain have been forced to accept lower terms and conditions. I ask the Government again to support the Employment (Dismissal and Re-employment) Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) to outlaw that practice. The sad truth is that, without further support, tens of thousands more jobs will go, so the Chancellor must deliver urgent help, including: action on furlough extension; reversing the decision on tax-free shopping; extending rates relief; and much, much more.

Finally, it is important to emphasise that all these issues will be of increasing importance in the months ahead. As we look forward, with some guarded optimism, to getting cases back under control and as vaccines are rolled out, declining domestic transmission means that preventing transmission from international arrivals becomes more important, not less—if we really are serious about suppressing this virus. I dearly hope that the Government are serious about that. If so, they should support this motion.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There will be a three-minute limit on all contributions from now on, apart from the Front-Bench contributions at the end of the debate.