Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

This refugee ban Bill is nothing but an abhorrent dog whistle, and my colleagues and I on the SNP Benches do not support it. We do support, however, the refugee convention, the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, and a functioning and fair immigration system, which is a million miles away from what we have just now.

A mosaic based on a Norman Rockwell painting hangs at the United Nations. It features the faces of people of all backgrounds and is inscribed with the caption:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It is called “the golden rule”. Britain fails completely and utterly in the application of that golden rule.

I ask hon. Members and everyone listening to close their eyes. Place yourself in the shoes of a person so terrified that they must flee for their lives—a person of faith who finds themself in the wrong country, perhaps; or a woman activist facing repression in Iran; a mother desperate to protect her daughter from female genital mutilation; a boy hiding after seeing his family murdered, and facing forcible recruitment or death. You leave the world you know, travelling across mountain and desert, in trucks and cars, or on feet bleeding and sore. You face setbacks, abuse and exploitation, and use every resource you have.

Finally, you step into a flimsy dinghy, because it is the only way to cross the English channel to get to the uncle who you know lives in the UK. He is your only family member who is still alive. There is no other route. When you arrive—so close to him—what happens? You are seized, imprisoned, not permitted access to a lawyer or given the chance to plead your case. You are whisked away from sanctuary so close that you can almost touch it. This Tory Government are prepared to ignore the plight of that persecuted person of faith, those women, that child, and so many others in circumstances such as theirs. Those people will have no chance of ever finding sanctuary in the UK. The door will be closed permanently. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The Bill is being rushed through with no proper impact assessment, on the back of legislation that is barely even in place—barely even cold—brought in last year. The Home Secretary clearly declares on the front page of this Bill:

“I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”

This is the illegal Illegal Migration Bill. It is not legal, not just, and not compatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, which gives effect to the European convention on human rights.

As much as the Government would have us believe it, the ECHR is not a Eurocratic creation but a system championed by Winston Churchill. One of its key drafters was David Maxwell Fyfe, a former Conservative Home Secretary and one of the prosecutors at Nuremburg. The Bill is bang on form for a UK Government who have previously sought to break international law in “specific and limited ways”, but it is even more dangerous than that. The Bill undermines the fundamental international obligations that the Government’s predecessors established under the 1951 refugee convention following the horrors of world war two. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has condemned the Bill, stating:

“The legislation, if passed, would amount to an asylum ban—extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”

I am sure that we have all been inundated with briefings and contacts from constituents and organisations on this despicable piece of legislation. I will try my best to reflect the many concerns that have been raised with me. Overwhelmingly, I thank the constituents of Glasgow Central, who—as one would expect from the city that gave us the Glasgow Girls, the Glasgow Grannies and the neighbourhood solidarity of Kenmure Street—are resolutely opposed to this cruel Bill.

The Bill is unfair in many respects, but particularly in having retrospective effect. Parliament has only just begun the process of debating this hideous legislation, yet it will impact on people who arrived from 7 March, when the Bill was introduced. People cannot yet know for certain what the Bill will look like, yet they are already severely impacted by it.

The provisions affecting children are among the more disturbing parts of a very bad piece of legislation. Clause 3(2) states:

“The Secretary of State may make arrangements for the removal of a person from the United Kingdom at a time when the person is an unaccompanied child.”

An unaccompanied child. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Children and Young People’s Commissioner Bruce Adamson has stated his clear opposition to this Bill. He said:

“The UK is required to ensure that children seeking refugee status receive appropriate protection and humanitarian assistance, under Article 22 of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRC also requires the UK to ensure that children are protected from exploitation and abuse, and afforded support for recovery. This Bill violates those obligations and many others. Its enactment would place the UK in clear breach of its international law obligations under a range of human rights treaties.”

The Bill reaches into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Clauses 15 to 18 seize powers and undermine the clear protections that Scotland’s devolved institutions have established to protect all our weans.

Barnardo’s has rightly queried why the Bill gives the Home Office the power to accommodate children when hundreds of children are currently missing from Home Office accommodation and unaccounted for. It also wants to know whether an unaccompanied child who has arrived in the UK irregularly will be routinely placed into specialist foster care as a matter of policy or whether they will be eligible for adoption. If two siblings are trafficked into the UK when one is 12 and the other is 18, will both be detained and removed from the UK and denied any protection? If an unaccompanied child is trafficked into the UK and granted protection through the national referral mechanism, and a family member who they may not even have met arrives in the UK irregularly at a later point, will that disqualify the child from modern slavery protection? This whole area is deeply problematic, and even more so as the Bill allows for removal as soon as an unaccompanied child turns 18.

It is clear that the inadmissibility rules in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 do not work. Expanding inadmissibility creates a situation where there is no right of appeal: “Do not pass Go. Do not collect a meagre £8 a week in an overcrowded hotel. Go directly to immigration jail and await removal.” There are some very tight grounds for a technical appeal, but the potential for people to be removed to places where they will be at risk of persecution is real. I would love to know how the Home Secretary will know the details of a person’s claim if it is not going to be fully assessed.

The Bill talks in clause 6 about the potential for a person to be at risk of persecution due to their sex, their language, their race, their religion, their nationality, their membership of a social or other group, their political opinion or

“any other attribute or circumstance that the Secretary of State thinks appropriate.”

Yet if there is no application, declaration or assessment, no ability to seek legal advice, and a presumption of inadmissibility, how will she know?

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who I often disagreed with when she was Home Secretary and Prime Minister, is correct to be concerned about many of the mechanisms in the Bill. It is beyond all logic and reason that the Home Secretary should rip up these important protections. The Bill will also override the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015, against our will.

The Immigration Law Practitioners Association says that clauses 21 to 28, concerning modern slavery and trafficking, clearly breach the UK’s obligations to victims of trafficking under article 4 of the ECHR and the European convention on action against trafficking. The provisions will deprive victims of their right to recovery, expose them to re-exploitation and facilitate the work of trafficking gangs. I have met people who have been supported through TARA—the Trafficking Awareness Raising Alliance—in Glasgow, and I have seen how damaged some of them have been. It breaks my heart to think that this Government would lock them up and give them no support whatsoever.

Amnesty International has stated that the Bill creates a “charter for human exploitation”, placing many of the most marginalised people firmly in the hands of human traffickers, modern-day slavers and other abusers. The Bill widens the power imbalance between those being abused and their abusers, and it makes it far more difficult for people ever to break free. In so doing, they would risk being removed from the UK permanently, and you can bet that their abusers will use that threat over them. Why on earth would the Home Secretary consider this a sensible idea?

The clauses on entry into and settlement in the United Kingdom are brutal. There is no entry and no chance of settlement, permanently—forever. A person can never enter the UK if they once met the four conditions the Home Secretary is setting for illegal entry, or if they are a family member of that person. Talk about holding the child accountable for the sins of the father. I understand that that applies even if the child was born here. That will surely have the wider impact of hitting people well into the future who may wish to come as tourists, to work or to study. They may have no knowledge of the previous banning order. Why would the Home Secretary wish to deny them that opportunity? What message does she thinks this pulling up of the drawbridge sends out to the world?

Clause 51 outlines the capping of safe and legal routes. These proposed routes are to be brought forward in regulations. The Home Secretary is dangling a carrot that that may happen at some point in the future—maybe, perhaps, in the fullness of time, when parliamentary time allows. Aye, right. We need those safe and legal routes now. They are part of the solution to the small boats crisis. People who come by that route do so because there is no other option. People cannot claim asylum from abroad; they literally need to place their feet on this island. It is not by some coincidence that there are no Ukrainians paying people to come by dinghy; they can get on a plane from Poland and fly to the UK without the risk of being returned there. It is cheaper. It is safer. It is humane.

The Glasgow solicitors firm McGlashan MacKay mentioned that it was dealing with some people from El Salvador, for which there was a visa waiver scheme, so those people could get here safely. The Home Office shut it down.

Afghans do not have the privilege of getting on a plane and coming here. Just 22 people, including eight children, have been resettled in the UK under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, via referral from the UNHCR. Pathway 2 is the only route open for resettlement for Afghans who are not already in the UK.

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

The hon. Lady mentions safe and legal routes. I am very keen that we need greater definition in the Bill, and I am also keen that we need greater safeguards for vulnerable children. Like the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the hon. Lady has focused exclusively on extreme cases of people who may fall foul of the Bill, and that is why we need those additional criteria. However—again, just like the shadow Home Secretary—the hon. Lady has made no mention of people who come across the channel who are not genuine asylum seekers and have no genuine, credible claim to come to the United Kingdom. She seems to assume that everybody coming across the channel is one of those vulnerable people. They are not, so what would she do about those people genuinely abusing our hospitality?

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the vast majority of people who come over are accepted as asylum seekers and get their refugee status. He also knows that without those safe and legal routes, the question that he asked the Home Secretary at the Home Affairs Committee remains unanswered. Under the Bill, the Home Secretary will not even ask to find out whether these people are genuine; everybody is deemed to be some kind of fake.

Returning to the Afghan scheme, which does not work, I spoke on Friday to my constituent Zakia, who has been trying to reunite with her sister since the fall of Afghanistan. Her sister has had the Taliban enter her home and beat her. She has played by the rules—as the Home Secretary set out and says that people should—and she has made an expression of interest, yet still nothing. If the Home Secretary was in that woman’s shoes, would she really sit tight in Afghanistan and wait for the Taliban to murder her? Because that is what happens to women in Afghanistan. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Capping safe and legal routes—routes that do not even exist right now—would suggest that if you are person x+1, well that is just too bad for you. It is not based on need. A few years ago, I was made aware that the visitor visa scheme for Iranians was essentially being run as a lottery, with the names being drawn of lucky winners. This Government could not run a raffle, and I do not trust them to establish this scheme in a timely or fair manner.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Forgive me: I should have reminded Members at the beginning of the debate that when we are in Committee, it is customary to either call me by name or address me as Madam Chair, rather than Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a very common mistake, don’t worry; I should have reminded Members at the beginning of the debate.

I call Tim Loughton.

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

Thank you very much, Dame Rosie. I rise to speak to six amendments that stand in my name and those of right hon. and hon. colleagues: new clauses 13 and 19 and amendments 72 to 75. I am glad to hear the Minister refer to his support for safe and legal routes, because that is the basis of these amendments. I look forward to some warm words from him later on.

This is a very heated subject and a very controversial Bill, so I will start with something that I hope we can all agree on: coming across the channel in small boats is the worst possible way to gain entry to the United Kingdom. We need to be ruthless against the people smugglers who benefit from that miserable trade. We want to continue to offer safe haven for those genuinely escaping danger and persecution, and in a sustainable way. That is why safe and legal routes are the obvious antidote to that problem. The migration system, as it stands, is broken. Whatever we think about this Bill, it is only one part of the solution that we need to bring forward, and the Home Office needs to beef up the processing times and the removals of those who do not have a legitimate claim. We also need more return agreements.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

The reality, as the Home Affairs Committee found when we were last in Calais in January, is that the French authorities do not arrest a lot of the people trying to cross the channel; they turn a blind eye. These people are therefore not registered and the authorities do not have a record of who many of them are. They only show an interest in arresting and recording somebody who has come from a country with whom they have a returns agreement, where there may be a reasonable chance to return them. Otherwise—surprise, surprise—the French authorities’ problem becomes our problem if those people then get into boats.

Those are things that I hope we all agree with across the House, whatever our stance on this Bill. We also need to challenge some assumptions. Not all asylum seekers coming across the channel have a credible asylum claim. We are told, “Other countries do more,” but when we look at the totality of the issue, and the amount of people to whom we offer safe haven and support outside of the United Kingdom in refugee camps—those people who just want to go back to their own countries—it is more generous than virtually any other country in the world. We need to look at the totality.

Coming to the UK is not always the appropriate solution for many people. The resettlement schemes that we have generously operated already, particularly with regard to Ukraine and Hong Kong passport holders, are potentially huge. In the case of Hong Kong, it could be up to 2.9 million people. We have also heard the criticism from the French that we are too generous. They describe us as “El Dorado”, which is why so many refugees apparently want to come across to the UK.

The other reality is that even if we wanted to, we cannot take an unlimited number. The fact that almost 10,000 Afghan refugees legally brought here after the airlift from Kabul in the summer before last—more than 18 months ago—are still in hotels is testament to the fact that we have an accommodation problem. Whatever we come up with, we need a system that is disciplined, orderly and sustainable so that we can make sure that people are processed quickly and put in appropriate accommodation, because hotels for young children for a sustained amount of time, be that with their families, let alone on their own, are frankly just not the most appropriate place for them to be.

[Wayne David]

Is it appropriate, in the hon. Gentleman’s view, that former RAF camps are now being used and planned to be used for migrants?

[Tim Loughton]

None of this is ideal, but when people arrive in their hundreds—one day last summer it was more than 1,000—and all of a sudden become the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government, there is a practical limitation on what accommodation is available physically to house them. That is why our hotels are being taken over and are full and why various military bases have been used, with mixed success. It is why the Government are having to look at other solutions. However, we have a serious problem accommodating our own constituents, as we all know, because of the shortage of local authority accommodation, and we just have to be realistic about how we can properly look after people coming across the channel.

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

This is not just about illegal migration. The population of this country is growing in net terms, as a direct result of illegal and legal migration, by something like a quarter of a million a year. That cannot long be sustained. Over 10 years it is 2.5 million people, which is the size of many significant cities. That cannot go on, because the housing situation for all of those people is an insuperable challenge.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have made the point that whatever migration system we run needs to be effective, efficient and sustainable, but at the same time we need people to fill job vacancies in this country, and many of the people who have come here are self-sustaining. I had a meeting this afternoon with about 60 Hong Kong British national overseas passport holders who came here in flight from Hong Kong, and they are making a good go of starting a second life in this country. However we think we should operate migrant numbers, the numbers are not the important thing. It is being able to look after people safely and sustainably for all of our community that is the major consideration.

The other truth that is put about that we need to challenge is that the European convention on human rights is everything. If we look at the record of the judgments issued under the ECHR by the European Court of Human Rights in the last 10 years, we see that 47% of them—almost half—have not been complied with. In certain countries that figure is higher. For example, 61% of judgments again Spain from the European Court of Human Rights have not been complied with, and for Italy it is 58%, while for Germany it is 37%. In many cases—particularly France, where the figure is a little bit lower—they are mostly for non-compliance with immigration laws. So let us not try and kid ourselves that the measures in this Bill are in some way completely absurd and out of court compared with what other countries have been doing.

Having said all that, doing nothing is not an option. It allows people smugglers to continue the human misery. It is condoning bogus asylum seekers, and it is allowing those bogus asylum seekers to bump the queue of genuine asylum seekers to whom we do have a duty of care that the vast majority of people in this country want to see carried out. So we need to get the balance right on continuing our generous tradition of allowing safe haven for genuine asylum seekers escaping danger with much more robust action to clamp down on those who have no legitimate claim to be resident in the UK. They are gaming our system, taking advantage of the UK taxpayer’s generosity and, worst of all, queue-jumping over the genuine asylum seekers who need help.

This is where safe and legal routes and the main amendment I am putting forward today come in, and I will be prepared to press it to a vote unless I have some substantial reassurances from the Government, because this is nothing new and it is not rocket science. It is actually something that the Prime Minister has quite rightly committed to in principle. My new clause 13, which is the basis of the safe and legal routes amendments, would require safe and legal routes to be part of this legislation. The regulations referred to in the Bill would have to set out specific safe and legal routes by which asylum seekers can enter the United Kingdom in an orderly and sustainable way.

The routes specified must include any country-specific schemes that we have already. Specifically, we have routes for Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong, but we need additional ones. Additionality is key to this, because as the Bill stands, the Government could just say, “Well, we’ve got those safe and legal routes, and we can just tinker with those.” However, let us take the example of the 16-year-old orphan boy from east Africa —he is not from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong—who has a single relative legally settled in the United Kingdom. There are precious few opportunities for him to be able to come to the UK on a safe and legal route. It is in such cases that we need to offer an opportunity, capped in numbers and capped with all sorts of considerations. We need to offer such people a realistic opportunity that they may be able to get safe haven in the United Kingdom.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I very much support what the hon. Gentleman says. Indeed, I support the need for such amendments to this Bill, probing or otherwise, to clarify what a safe and legal route is and how such routes will operate, because that seems to be at the heart of whether this legislation can actually achieve anything that it claims to set out to do. Does he therefore agree with me that we need clarity, because this Bill does set out where it considers it is safe to be from and, by definition, everywhere not listed in proposed new section 80AA is unsafe? We therefore need clarity about what would be a safe and legal route from the locations not listed in that proposed new section, because otherwise we will end up with “safe” or “unsafe” being ill-defined in legislative terms, and that does not help anybody.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I have drawn up new clause 13 and the accompanying amendments in a way that is not overly prescriptive. It puts the onus back on the Government to come up with schemes, some of which will be safe and legal route schemes that we have run before. The family reunion scheme is something we have run for a long time, although it needs to be adapted outside of the Dublin conventions. I have also suggested a Dubs II scheme and, again, the Dubs scheme was very successful in bringing 483 unaccompanied single children from genuine danger zones safely to the United Kingdom. Those are the sorts of examples I mean. They do not need to create something completely new. We need to adapt what we already have.

That is why additionality is key. These need to be routes on which people from outside the four existing resettlement or asylum schemes can come here. The Government must set out those routes for both adults and children—I think most of us would agree that children need to be dealt with slightly differently—and the means by which those people can access those routes. It may be from the countries from which they are fleeing or from refugee camps, in a scheme like those we have had before jointly with the UNHCR. I think that is what has been mooted in the newspapers—it did not come from me—about 20,000 people being able to come here through agreement with the UNHCR, and that is another possibility. It may be through using reception centres that we have in other countries, including France, where a limited number could possibly apply, subject to a cap. Again, that is all for the Government to decide—I do not want to be overly prescriptive.

[Bob Seely]

As ever, my hon. Friend is making an incredibly interesting and important speech. There have been, in the last decade, 10 safe and legal routes, six of which are country-specific and four of which are general. Of the six, the Syrian one is now shut, but there are two for Afghanistan, two for Ukraine and one for Hong Kong, and there are four other non-specific safe and legal routes. If I understand correctly, he is arguing for a fifth safe and legal route. Can he explain and delineate how that fifth safe and legal route would be different from the other four that we already have?

[Tim Loughton]

Those four existing routes are country-specific for certain emergency situations that arose—for obvious reasons, Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and the rather prolonged emergency we are seeing unfold in Hong Kong. There will be other such cases that come up, and I believe the Bill as it stands gives the Home Secretary the power to determine, if there is a new emergency in a certain country and a sudden wave of refugees genuinely fleeing danger to whom the UK Government may want to give a commitment, to enable us to take some of those people, and I think everybody would agree with that. However, in between such a country-specific scheme and the four existing country-specific schemes, the numbers able to come here are minimal. If we look at the just under 500,000 who have come here since 2015, we see that almost 400,000 of those are accounted for by those from Hong Kong and Ukraine alone.

[Bob Seely]

Apologies if I was not making myself clear. Out of those 10 schemes in the last decade, four are non-country-specific safe and legal routes. My hon. Friend is arguing for a fifth, an additional safe and legal route. While I am not arguing against his case, I am asking how his fifth safe and legal generalised route will be different from the other four we currently have, which are non-country specific. We also have six country-specific schemes, one of which—Syria—has been shut.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have given my hon. Friend two examples. The family reunion scheme, certainly in the terms in my new clause 19, is non-country specific. A Dubs II-type scheme is non-country specific. At the moment, if you are not country specific, you have had it, largely, particularly for young children. The numbers, I am afraid, do not add up.

There is another consideration that I should have mentioned earlier. We are told that everything used to be great and fine in terms of us being able to return failed asylum seekers to the EU and that it has all gone pear shaped since Brexit. In the last year that we were covered by the Dublin regulations and still within the terms of the EU, the UK tried to return 8,500 failed asylum seekers to the EU. Of those, 105 were admitted. So it did not work before. This is a long-standing problem, which we have not had any help in solving from our EU partners. That is why we need to take more proactive and robust action now and why the Bill, controversial though it is, is so necessary.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and then I will finish my comments.

[Dr Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument for additional safe and legal routes, but the Bill is designed to try to prevent illegal migration. Although I understand that those few people affected by his new safe and legal route may be deterred from illegal migration by the fact that they are part of that scheme, there will still be many other people who will not be. How will creating a few more safe and legal options for a small number of people prevent people coming across the channel who are not affected by those schemes?

[Tim Loughton]

We are not going to eradicate people coming in boats across the channel totally, unless the French agree to intercept and return them. However, we can limit it to those people who do not stand a credible chance of claiming asylum in the United Kingdom. One problem in the courts at the moment, with the many failed asylum claims that then go through the appeals process, is that there was no other way of getting here, other than on a boat. If the safe and legal route amendment, and everything that goes with it, goes through, that will not be an excuse because anybody could apply through a safe and legal route and, if they are turned down and then turn to a boat, that is not a defence.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend indulge me?

[Tim Loughton]

I will be very indulgent, but I know many other people want to speak.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am very grateful. My hon. Friend makes the most important point in this debate. Judges and tribunal chairs are looking for factual reasons on which to refuse applications. I cannot think of a better one than the availability of, in a controlled way, more safe and legal routes. At the moment, without further action, and without concurrent action from the Government in passing this Bill and creating safe and legal routes, we are opening ourselves up to the risk of more people making those claims and of not being able to control the situation in the way we all want.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful for that intervention from my right hon. and learned Friend, with his huge legal expertise and experience from his former roles. That is the point. We need to isolate the bogus asylum seekers who are paying people smugglers. We do that by making it clear that we are open to genuine cases of people fleeing danger, and there is a legitimate, practical, and usable route for them. If people do not qualify for that, they should not try to get in a boat because they stand no chance of having their claims upheld if they make it across. I am just trying to achieve a balance. If Members want the Bill to go through, we need to have safe and legal routes in it to make it properly balanced. If you do not like the Bill but you want safe and legal routes, you need to support the Bill to get those safe and legal routes. This is mutually beneficial to those on either side of the argument on the Bill.

New clause 19 outlines how a refugee family reunion scheme would work. It includes a wide definition of close family members, including people who are adopted. Again, this is nothing new but it is a generous scheme that would do what it says on the tin.

Amendment 74 is an important consideration. The Government have said that they want the Bill to go through to be able to clamp down on the small boats. I have no problem with that. There are some things in here that are not quite as moderate as I would like, but I think it is necessary for the Bill to go through so I am trying to improve it. However, the Government have said that they will consult on safe and legal routes—we need to consult on safe and legal routes because local authorities, and others, will bear the brunt of how we accommodate many of these candidates—and then come up with some safe and legal routes. That is not good enough. The two sides of the Bill must be contemporaneous. We must not to be able to bring in these tough measures until those safe and legal routes are operational so people can have the option to go down the safe and legal route, rather than rely on people smugglers.

The Government will say, “We need to consult.” Well, start that now because we need to consult with local authorities about how we get more people out of hotels now and into sustainable accommodation for the long term. The Government should be getting on with the consulting now, so that when the Bill eventually goes through—I suspect it may take a while to get through the other place—those safe and legal routes are up and running and ready to go. So amendment 74 is important.

Amendment 75 would add safe and legal routes as one of the purposes of the Bill in clause 1. Clause 1 is all about clamping down on illegal migration—quite right—but it should also be about the balance of providing those safe and legal routes. I want to put that in clause 1, at the start of the Bill. Amendments 72 and 73 are contingent on all of the above.

That is all I am trying to do. Lots of people are trying to misrepresent and cause mischief about the Bill, and in some cases on safe and legal routes. I will end on my own experience when I appeared on the BBC “Politics South East” two weeks ago. I was talking about safe and legal routes and I was challenged, “Why are you supporting this Bill when you were so keen on safe and legal routes and challenged the Home Secretary?” I said, “Because this Bill contains provisions for safe and legal routes.” It does. It talks about “safe and legal routes”, capping numbers and everything else. The following week on the same programme, with no recourse to me, the presenter read out an email from the Home Office, having got in contact with it, unbeknownst to me, to ask about my claim on safe and legal routes. The Home Office apparently replied:

“Nothing in the Bill commits the Government to opening new safe and legal routes or increasing the numbers.”

That was news to me, news to Home Office Ministers—[Laughter.] Hold on, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) may not be laughing in a minute. I was accused of being misleading. When I challenged that, it turned out that the Home Office communiqué actually said that the routes to be included as part of the approach set out for the new Bill would be set out in the regulations, which would depend on a number of factors, including the safe and legal routes that the Government offered at the time the regulations were prepared and, that, as the Prime Minister said, we would “get a grip” on illegal migration and then bring in more safe and legal routes. So actually that is provided for in the Bill.

The BBC completely misrepresented my comments and, I am glad to say, yesterday issued an apology and gave me a right of reply. Let us stick to the facts. Let us not get hung up on all the prejudice about this. We have a problem in this country, which is that last year just under 46,000 people came across in the most inappropriate and dangerous manner. We do not have the capacity to deal with people in those numbers, many of whom have unsustainable claims, and we have to get to grips with it. The Bill is a genuine attempt to get to grips with that issue. It would be much more palatable and workable if it contained a balance that has safe and legal routes written into it that come in at the same stage. I would challenge the Opposition to say that they have a better scheme for how we deal with this dreadful problem. Simply voting against all the measures in the Bill is not going to help anyone.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

The Bill, in its current form, does nothing to protect refugee children. The Minister did not mention children yesterday, yet there are children out there whom we can and must help and whose voices are missing from this Bill. I hope he will look closely at my amendments and ensure that the rights of refugee children are firmly protected.

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

I declare my registered interest as chairman of the safeguarding board of a children’s group.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), the Chair and fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee. I agree with many of her observations, particularly on the recommendations that have come out of various Home Affairs Committee reports.

The right hon. Lady mentioned the specific conundrum in which children—perhaps even babies—who are brought here by their parents, clearly beyond their own power if they are very young, will fall foul of the proposed regulations because they have entered illegally. They will effectively carry a black spot for life, through no making of their own. What would happen if that baby, when he or she grows up, marries a UK citizen? They would effectively not be able to come to their spouse’s country of origin.

These are not completely hypothetical scenarios. They are very real problems that could occur. I was about to say that we should not throw the baby out with the bath water, because the Bill has unintended consequences that could seriously harm a young person’s prospects, for a crime they had no part in committing.

I want to speak for a rather shorter time than I did yesterday, because I will focus on two aspects—how children are still able to be deported as children, and the problems around detention. I think there is a problem in the Bill with trying to adultify children. I acknowledge that there is a difficult situation regarding families and I have concerns about their treatment, but I have also seen—as has the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—cases of people smugglers using children by matching them up with supposed relatives, so that they can come across. When we were last in Dover, we saw such a case; the supposed uncle and the child did not even speak the same language. We have to be cognisant of the fact that these criminals will use children to try to help the passage of other people who are paying them large quantities of money.

I am absolutely in favour of a much more robust and efficient age verification system, because it is a safeguarding issue. We have seen instances of people claiming to be children, who later turn out to be adults and who have actually attended school alongside school-age children—in positions of responsibility, alongside children. This is an important safeguarding issue. Many other European countries already have age verification techniques, which involve various medical interventions. We need to look seriously at age verification if we are to get this one right—but, again, it is a sensitive issue.

I have a good deal of sympathy with the concerns regarding the impact on modern day slavery legislation, which were mentioned by my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I hope the Minister will look carefully at how we can preserve those principles while clamping down on some abuses that may have been happening.

Let me concentrate on amendments 139 to 145—those in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends—which would amend clauses 2, 3, 7 and 11.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend made some very good points yesterday. Will he confirm how happy he was with the Minister’s confirmation that safe and legal routes would, “if necessary”, be brought forward

“with our intention being to open them next year”

while

“launching the local authority consultation on safe and legal routes at the same time”?—[Official Report, 27 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 777.]

Does that give him and those of us who supported his amendment the reassurance needed on that score?

[Tim Loughton]

Sir Roger, if I do too much back-jobbing to yesterday’s business, I am sure you will call me out of order, but let me tell my hon. Friend that there were some intensive discussions with the relevant bodies to get assurances. They were on the basis that I need to see some fairly convincing and robust action in the next few weeks before we get to Report, otherwise we will revisit those amendments and new clauses with a vengeance then. I have given the Government the benefit of the doubt at this stage, so I hope we can work constructively to achieve what I think the Prime Minister wants to achieve. It is what he has put on record that he wants to achieve, but some of us want to see more urgency and some clear undertakings on the face of the Bill.

That was yesterday’s business; let us return to today’s business. I do not intend at this stage to force my amendments to a vote, but I do want some assurances from the Minister. These are very important principles regarding very vulnerable children, and I want to see some concrete action when it comes to proceedings on Report. Frankly, if we do not get that, as with my case yesterday for safe and legal routes, the Bill will be much less easy to defend, and much more vulnerable to being pulled apart in another place and by lawyers. I want the Bill to go through, but I want it to be a balanced Bill that can work and that does not fall at the first hurdle.

The clauses that I am concerned with are those that place a duty on the Home Secretary to remove people, and those with an impact on children and that contain details on removal procedures. I am also concerned with the clause on the powers of detention: here, we must absolutely make sure that we do not adultify children; and they must be subject to the same safeguarding considerations as any other child already legally in the United Kingdom who is taken into custody or subject to some form of restriction on his or her liberty.

It is also worth repeating, and it has been said by several people, that no child rights impact assessment has been undertaken on the Bill, which is of concern. It would benefit the Government if they could back up the legislation with that sort of analysis. We also need justification for the removal of the duty to consult with the Independent Family Returns Panel. Those are the reasons why many children’s organisations and, indeed, the Children’s Commissioner have been vociferous on various aspects of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. In his point about the interaction with the Children Act and Home Office responsibility, this is where we get to the nub of the problem. The characterisation of this debate has become extremely unfortunate, especially when we talk about issues such as detention, which I am sure that, in practice, the Government do not mean. This is really an issue of safeguarding first and foremost and of identifying genuine cases that require all the safeguarding measures that are underpinned by the Children Act. Does he agree that it is a shame, to say the least, that we are not focusing on children in that context, rather than in the context of detention, internment or whatever we want to call it? That language is not helpful.

[Tim Loughton]

I shall come on to detention in a minute, but I entirely agree with the principle of the point that my right hon. Friend is making, which is that, whatever we think about our immigration and asylum system, a child should be treated no differently, however he or she arrived in this country, than one who was born here and is in the care of parents or whatever. There are times in the Bill where it is unclear that that is the case.

All these terms need to be subject to the child welfare prioritisation in the Children Act 1989 and also have regard to the 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child of 1989. Under article 3.1, it says that

“the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration”.

That has been upheld in UK legislation, not least in the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009.

In giving the Home Secretary the power to remove unaccompanied children when they reach the age of 18—and potentially before—the Bill could see a child arriving alone in the UK aged 10, for example, having fled war and persecution, and be allowed to integrate into UK society, develop friendships and attend school only to be forcibly removed from the UK as soon as they turn 18. There are concerns that a child approaching 18, a 17 and three quarters-year-old, could be encouraged to go under the radar and go underground for fear of that knock on the door when they reach 18. We need to treat that sensitively, because otherwise we are creating a greater problem and putting some of those children at greater risk than they might have been. A decade ago, the majority of unaccompanied children were granted temporary leave to remain, rather than refugee status, until they turned 18, and we know that the fear of removal forced many of those children to go underground and go missing, at extreme risk of exploitation.

My amendment 139 inserts a fifth condition in the Bill that must be met on the duty of the Home Secretary to remove someone from the United Kingdom. Amendment 140 details that the additional fifth consideration is that the person to be removed is either over 18 or a minor in the care of an adult, typically a family member. That would have the effect of ensuring that the Bill does not capture unaccompanied children. Amendments 141 and 142 are consequential amendments, due to the rewording of clauses 3 and 7. Amendment 141 removes subsections 3(1) to 3(4), and the anomalies in subsections (1) and (2) that still give the Home Secretary unrestricted powers.

Now, Ministers—[Interruption.] I am not sure if those on the Front Bench want to listen to this, Sir Roger; it is a little difficult to try to make a speech with people having conversations right in front of me. Ministers claim that there are exceptional circumstances only in which children would be removed from the United Kingdom, and have given examples of those exceptional circumstances, such as to reunite a child with family overseas. Okay—but a child who is to be reunited with family overseas can leave the UK of his or her own accord, or subject to the ruling of a judge, in the same way as we would release a child from care into adoption, for example. I do not see that as a necessary exceptional circumstance.

If the Government are really convinced that there are exceptional circumstances where that needs to be done, there should be more detail on the Bill, or at least explanation in the explanatory notes, because there is none. As things stand, the Home Secretary has the power to remove any child, at her whim, for reasons not specified in this Bill. That is a concern. If the Government have good reason for that, we deserve an explanation of those reasons, and it is for this House to judge on how credible and necessary those reasons are.

Under the amendments, children who arrive in the UK on their own and seek asylum would continue to have their asylum claims heard here, rather than being left in limbo until they reached 18 when, under the Bill, they would face detention and then removal. The amendments do not mean that every child who arrives here on their own will go on to get permission to stay. Instead, they mean that the Home Office must process their claims and, crucially, treat them as children rather than punishing them.

Amendments 143 to 145 deal with the issue of detentions and, along with the amendments I have already described, maintain the safeguards that were put in place under Conservative-led Governments to protect children from the harms of immigration detention. In 2009, more than 1,000 children were detained in immigration removal centres but, following changes made by the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, over the next decade the average was 132 children per year.

What was more, those children could not be detained for longer than 24 hours if they were unaccompanied, or 72 hours if they were with their family members, extendable to a week if a Minister agreed it was necessary. We then legislated for those limits in the Immigration Act 2014, under a Conservative-led Government. Amendments 143 and 145 ensure that those safeguards continue to apply.

I am not asking for a change in the law; I am just asking that the safeguards that were deemed to be sensible and necessary back in 2014 still apply to the same sort of vulnerable children. They would prevent unaccompanied children from being locked up for more than 24 hours. Amendment 145 would ensure that children who were with their family members could still only be detained for a week at the very most and, when they were, that it would be in specific pre-departure accommodation, rather than anywhere the Home Secretary might wish, as the Bill envisages.

Under clause 11, the Home Secretary has wide powers to detain anyone covered by the four conditions in clause 2, which, without my earlier amendment, still includes unaccompanied children. There is no time limit for how long a child can be detained. That amounts effectively to indefinite detention of children of any age anywhere that the Home Secretary considers it appropriate. Under clause 12, the Home Secretary will have a significantly expanded power to decide what a reasonable length of detention is. It is all subject to the definition of what is reasonably necessary and severely restricts court scrutiny of whether that is reasonable or not. Surely that cannot be right for children. I am not seeking to challenge the increased restrictions on adults, but surely we are not going to throw all that out of the window—particularly after all the controversy on how we age-appropriately detain children who are already in this country—by adultifying migrant children, and some very vulnerable children at that.

There is also a practical consideration. If everyone who crossed the channel last year had been detained for 28 days, on 4 September 2022, no fewer than 9,161 people, including children, would have been detained. That amounts to four times the current detention capacity available in the United Kingdom. Where do the Government intend physically to place them—especially minors who need to be in age-appropriate accommodation?

I am also concerned about how the four Hardial Singh principles from 1983 apply to this part of the Bill. Those principles are that a person may be detained only for a period that is reasonable in all the circumstances, and that, if it becomes apparent that the Home Secretary will not be able to effect removal or deportation within a reasonable period, she should not seek to exercise the power of detention. The Government have to make up their mind about the grounds on which they think they need to detain children. Again, I understand the sensitivities—people claiming to be children may later turn out not to be and may abscond—but the Government need to have a clear idea about what they will do in a short space of time to justify detention when those people arrive. We do not have that level of detail or clarity in the Bill, so it is entirely incumbent on the Minister to give assurances to the Committee that children will not be disadvantaged in that way.

Amendment 143 would remove the provision enabling a person “of any age” to be

“detained in any place that the Secretary of State considers appropriate”,

and would reapply the existing statutory time and location restrictions on the detention of unaccompanied children. That was good enough in 2014; I do not think that the way we should regard and treat vulnerable children has changed so that we need to change the law through the Bill.

Amendment 145 would remove the provisions that disapply the existing statutory time and location restrictions on the detention of children and their families. I do not think that unreasonable, but if the Government want to take issue with me, it is incumbent on them to say why they want to make the changes. I have gone along with most of the rest of the Bill. I have given the Government the benefit of the doubt on what they are going to do, on the detail that they will provide, and on the timing of safe and legal routes, but we need serious assurances by Report, and, I hope, some good signage from the Minister when he gets to his feet shortly, on why law on protections that children have been entitled to—safeguards that we have been proud to give them—needs to be changed in the way that the Government are proposing.

We all want to do the right thing by vulnerable children. Most of us would like to see safe and legal routes that, as I said yesterday, involve something equivalent to a Dubs II scheme, whereby genuinely unaccompanied minors in places of danger are brought to and given safe haven in the United Kingdom. I want to continue in that tradition. I want to ensure that we are offering safe passage and safe haven to genuinely vulnerable children. I do not want them to be penalised by the wording of the Bill in the way that they could be. I am happy to take assurances, but if I do not get them by Report, I do not think that I will be alone in wanting to press various amendments to force those assurances into the Bill.

[Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)]

I stand today on behalf of the hundreds of constituents who have sent me emails and letters and on behalf of the children at St Dunstan’s Catholic Primary School, which is a school of sanctuary.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which I will use as a prompt to also talk about the Israel scheme. Of course, Israel and Rwanda did a deal. What happened with that scheme? Every single one of the people who was sent from Israel to Rwanda had left Rwanda within a matter of weeks and was on their way back to Europe, so it is a very expensive way of giving people a round trip, and I would not recommend it as a deterrent.

Then, just to add to the general sense that the Government have lost the plot, we had the bizarre and frankly appalling spectacle of the Home Secretary jetting down to Rwanda with a carefully vetted gaggle of journalists to indulge in a photo shoot that was akin to a “Visit Rwanda” tourist promo. I may have missed something, but I thought the idea was to deter the channel crossings by using Rwanda as a threat. I am not quite sure how that tallies with the Home Secretary likening Kigali to the garden of Eden. One minute, Rwanda is the perfect place imaginable for a person to rebuild their life; the next, the threat of getting sent there is being deployed as a deterrent.

It is a truly farcical state of affairs, but it is also of central importance to what we are debating today, because the entire Bill is predicated on the Government being able to remove those who arrive here on small boats to a safe third country, and right now Rwanda is the only safe third country they have. As such, the fact that the Rwanda plan is unworkable, unaffordable and unethical renders this entire Bill unworkable, unaffordable and unethical.

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

This is an issue that the hon. Gentleman has raised before. As I said during the Bill’s earlier stages, when the Home Affairs Committee went to Calais in January and we met all the people involved in patrolling the beaches and the local officials, they told us that when the Rwanda scheme was announced, there was a surge in migrants approaching the French authorities about staying in France, because they did not want to end up on a plane to Rwanda. There was a deterrent effect; the trouble is that it has not actually started yet, but if it did, it would have an impact. That is the point.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not sure I follow the logic of it. He said that there was a deterrent effect, but it has not started yet, which suggests to me that there has not been a deterrent effect. If we look at the numbers, channel crossings continue to skyrocket, so I think what matters to this House is results and outcomes. As things stand, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Rwanda scheme has acted as a deterrent.

This bigger backlog Bill is rotten to its very core, because it prevents the Home Secretary from considering those who arrive here on small boats as asylum seekers, and instead obliges her to detain and remove them. However, there is nowhere to detain them, and there is nowhere to remove them to either. We already have 50,000 asylum seekers in around 400 hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £6 million every single day, and on average, each asylum seeker is waiting a staggering 450 days for a decision. The backlog now stands at 166,000, more than eight times larger than when Labour left office in 2010, when it stood at just under 19,000. Incidentally, I am still waiting for the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration to apologise to the House and correct the record on that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

My argument is about a negotiation. We clearly have to do a returns deal; it is an important part of the deterrent effect. We do not get a returns deal unless we have something on the table. There is a clear link between policies on safe and legal routes and getting a clear position in terms of negotiations with the European Union. The reality is that it is the only deterrent effect that will work. We are dealing with people who have risked their lives, fought their way across Europe and are prepared to spend their life savings to pay people smugglers to cross the channel. We will not deter them unless they know there is a returns deal in place, and one reason that the Dublin convention worked is that it acted as a deterrent. How else can we explain that the numbers have gone through the roof since we left the Dublin convention?

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this is just nonsense. In the last year that we were covered by the Dublin convention, before the pandemic struck, we applied to the EU for 8,500 returns under that returns agreement and only 105 were granted—that is 1.2%—so what he says is complete nonsense. It did not work when we were in the EU, and he is now expecting to magic up some agreement that the EU will not give us anyway. Stop misleading the House about those figures.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I find the hon. Gentleman’s response bizarre, because there are some simple facts, which are that we left the Dublin convention, and since then the number of small boat crossings has gone through the roof. It is not rocket science; it is a simple fact of mathematics. The point is that we cannot solve an international problem without international co-operation. We have to recognise the flow of asylum seekers coming across the European Union. The idea that we just say to the EU, “You can take them all; we are not going to take any” is for the birds. It is fantasy politics, and I am stunned that Government Members do not seem to understand that simple political fact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

With the greatest respect, I have listened at length to the hon. Member for Stone and have yet to find any common ground on these issues.

Frankly, it is about time that we stood up for the importance of the international rule of law and helping people when they are facing these situations. There are no queues in a war zone, there is no administration or bureaucracy: there is fear, terror and persecution, and those people who are in Sudan now will be asking those questions. If the Minister wants to answer them and give those people hope that, if they make it to the border or to one of the refugee camps—they may find one of those UNHCR people who does not think that the UNCHR has that relationship with the UK but thinks the Minister is prepared to do that—we will take a certain number of people, that might stop them fleeing. This legislation will not do so.

More people will keep coming, including from Afghanistan, where the Government have failed to bring in a safe and legal route, and where they still fail to listen to those of us who have constituents who have been affected by that fact. They will come from Eritrea. They will come from the war zones and places of persecution—those people whose religion means that they are at risk. They will come because they see what we did with the Ukrainians; they see this country, and they know that there is a better way of doing it. The Lords will take this legislation on—that is probably the point of it for the Government—but let nobody be under any illusions: the Bill is just about 4 May. It is not actually about resolving the problem.

[Tim Loughton]

It is difficult to know in five minutes how to address the five amendments with my name at the top, including the two that have been leapfrogged by the Home Secretary. I have spent many hours cossetted with the Minister for Immigration and others to try to get some of the adjustments being made, and I am grateful for the time he has spent to try to get us to a better place. I certainly do not have time to respond to the extensive assurances that he aimed to give me from the Dispatch Box earlier.

I support safe and legal routes. I am glad we will now have them on the face of the Bill. We need a balance. I support this Bill, but if we are to be tough on the abusers of our immigration system, we also have to ensure we are open and generous to genuine asylum seekers, to whom we owe a duty of care. The amendments on safe and legal routes are also timely because we needed to address the question that I posed to the Home Secretary some months ago about how the 16-year-old orphan from east Africa with relations in the UK would make it to the UK. This week, that apocryphal scenario became a reality. The measures that the Immigration Minister will be bringing forward need to address that question.

It is essential that the Immigration Minister consults local authorities about capacity, but he also needs to consult refugee organisations and others about the type of schemes with which we will come forward. How will they operate? Who will qualify for them? How will people access them? Let us make sure that those schemes are in place sooner rather than later in 2024, although I would have liked them to be contemporaneous. We have a deal on safe and legal routes, but we need to see some real workable details in the coming months and as the Bill goes through the Lords.

I have no time to talk about amendment 181 on the return of children or amendment 182 on best interest and welfare checks. My real concern has been on child detention, so I was grateful for the assurances that the Immigration Minister gave me, because the measures as they stand do not differentiate between children and adults in detention terms. They ride roughshod through the safeguards on child detention under the Immigration Bill 2014, through which this Government specified the 24-hour limit, and the Government have not even offered to put the maximum detention times for children in this Bill. That is a must when it comes to any amendments that the Minister can bring forward in the House of Lords.

[Edward Timpson]

I very much agree with the points that my hon. Friend makes in support of children. Does he also agree that we need absolute clarity on the responsibilities under the Children Act 1989 in all circumstances where a child is on these shores, and in particular where the Home Office itself has some responsibility?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

That is absolutely right. It is notable that three former Children’s Ministers are behind the measures we are trying to push today. It is essential that any child in this country, whether a refugee here temporarily or someone here for the long term, is covered by the welfare considerations of the Children Act. I am grateful that the Minister referred to the Children Act. As it stands, despite the measures that mean there will be a differentiation between children and adult detention—we do not know what yet—under the Bill a 12-year-old child claiming asylum could still be in a Home Office detention centre facility for 27 days. That is not a good look, and it must not happen.

[Vicky Ford]

I add my voice to the chorus of former Children’s Ministers on this issue. Does my hon. Friend agree that the period for which a child could be detained when they first arrive to find them suitable accommodation needs to be a matter of days, not weeks, and that that needs to be in the Bill?

[Tim Loughton]

That is what we put in the Immigration Act 2014 with the then Immigration Minister, now the Transport Secretary. What has changed between 2014 and 2023 that means apparently we have to detain children indefinitely? We need timescales in the Bill, as we had in 2014. I appreciate there are practical problems about age verification for those who are challenged. We may have to have a two-tier system, but certainly those children who are recognised generally as children should not be locked up in detention centres and Home Office facilities, and that has to be made absolutely clear when this Bill goes to the Lords.

We also need to know how and where the Government plan to accommodate those children once identified. The accommodation does not exist at the moment, and the Government have only a few months to magic it up if we want to get this legislation through in a matter of months. I share the Children’s Commissioner’s concerns. She said:

“The Bill is unclear on what the state of the accommodation will be for children while awaiting transfer to local authority care or removal from the country…What regulations will be in place for Home Office provided accommodation? If the accommodation is regulated which body will inspect them?”

There are a lot of questions to be asked. We are taking the assurances from the Minister on trust. We will not continue with a lack of detail when the Bill gets to the Lords, but for the moment we will not force it, because I trust the Minister to do the right thing before the Bill goes through its final stages.

[Apsana Begum]

I rise to speak to a range of amendments and new clauses seeking to protect people from the attacks on basic human dignity that are before the House today. I am supporting new clauses in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) about the ongoing human rights breaches that migrants endure, which have been happening for some time, but today I shall focus on how the legislation treats those who are pregnant, because not only will the Bill persecute and imprison people fleeing torture, war and oppression, but it will put the health of some of the most vulnerable of them—pregnant women—and the life of their unborn children at risk. That is why I have tabled new clause 2 seeking to exempt pregnant women and girls from provisions about removals. My new clause 3 seeks to require an independent review of the effect of the provision on pregnant migrants, and my new clause 7 is about a review of the effect of the measures on the health of migrants.

I am also supporting related amendments to prevent an immigration officer’s and the Secretary of State’s detention powers from being used to detain unaccompanied children, families with dependent children, or pregnant women, as tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).

In order to cut through the dehumanising othering that too often plagues debates on migration—I note the awful nature of the comments made earlier today in response to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) about the dental testing of young migrants, which I find dehumanising and an othering of different communities—I would like to draw the House’s attention to a real-life example to illustrate the human reality of what is being debated today.

Najma Ahmadi and her family fled from the Taliban and made 20 attempts to cross into Greece from Turkey—20 attempts. On two occasions, Najma nearly drowned, once while pregnant with her baby daughter. She finally arrived in the UK last July on a boat, her terrified one-year-old baby girl clutched against her. Najma and her family were entitled to asylum, which was granted last December, but we must not forget those pregnant women escaping persecution who have died seeking refuge. For example, Yohanna, an Eritrean woman thought to be about 20 years old, who gave birth as she drowned alongside many others, when the boat she was travelling on, trying to get to safety, capsized. And there are many other women who remain unnamed.

These women are not criminals, but this Government are proposing today to treat them worse than criminals, despite knowing that such women are in fact victims of foreign policy failures and the simple, indisputable fact that there were no safe routes for them. They are fleeing countries such as Afghanistan, which has barely had a mention today. As I said during the previous stage of the Bill, as of last month, 22 people had been granted asylum through the Afghanistan resettlement scheme. If that figure has changed, I would be more than happy for the Minister to address it in his closing remarks, but that is such a small number—unless of course the Government have changed tack and do not think there are women trying to escape the Taliban in Afghanistan and believe that they do not deserve safe routes through which to escape.

Not only will the Government refuse sanctuary to those who survive these horrors, but clause 11 will enable the Home Secretary to condemn them to indefinite detention. The Bill will therefore see migrant women who should have finally escaped persecution facing pregnancy and birth alone, without adequate medical support and with the fear of potential separation from their baby.

There is a wealth of information and evidence that the imprisonment of any pregnant women is wrong. We know that pregnant women in prison are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely and are five times more likely to experience a stillbirth. Yet pregnant refugees are to be placed in circumstances worse than the already inhumane situation of pregnant women in UK prisons such as Manston, where there are outbreaks of illness and disease, reports of assaults and drug use by guards, and which last year was estimated to be detaining thousands of people arriving in Britain via small boats, some for as long as 40 days or more. No one should be detained in such places, never mind those who are pregnant.

The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Midwives, and Maternity Action have all raised that healthcare in immigration detention is often very poor. In 2014, some 99 women were locked up in Serco-run Yarl’s Wood detention centre while pregnant, and research by Medical Justice found they often missed antenatal appointments—

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

If I may make some more progress, I will happily come to the hon. Gentleman later. I want to conclude the point that I was making to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) on the detention periods and standard of accommodation, because that is important. I assure her, and indeed my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has also taken an interest in the issue, that we will seek to detain unaccompanied children for the shortest possible period. Where there is no dispute that someone is under 18, they will be transferred to the local authority accommodation estate as quickly as possible. Where there is doubt about whether a person is indeed under 18 as they claim to be, they will be treated as a child while an age assessment is undertaken. Such a person will be detained in age-appropriate accommodation, as the law already provides. That is set out in the Detention Centre Rules 2001 made under section 153 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Rule 11 provides that:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

If no such accommodation is available, they will not be detained and instead will be transferred to a local authority as soon as possible. I hope that provides my right hon. Friend with the assurance she seeks.

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

The Minister quoted the Detention Centre Rules 2001, which are of course 22 years old. Rule 11 says:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

Although there is a checklist of about 65 things, virtually all of them are about fabric, freedom to practise religion and access to personal hygiene. Which of the rules contains support services that are relevant and age-appropriate to children?

[Robert Jenrick]

The rules are related to 2001, as my hon. Friend says, but as I understand it they have been updated since then. They have also been tested on a number of occasions in the courts, and the Home Office takes seriously its responsibility to live up to them. It would be unlawful if we were to accommodate an under-18 inappropriately. If I may, I will read out the other limbs of rule 11, entitled “Families and minors”. They are, first:

“Detained family members shall be entitled to enjoy family life at the detention centre save to the extent necessary in the interests of security and safety.

Secondly:

“Detained persons aged under 18 and families will be provided with accommodation suitable to their needs.”

Thirdly:

“Everything reasonably necessary for detained persons’ protection, safety and well-being and the maintenance and care of infants and children shall be provided.”

That, I think, is a comprehensive set of principles. It is one that has stood the test of time over the last 22 years. If it needed to be strengthened, of course we will do so, but I hope that my hon. Friend will take my strong assurance from the Dispatch Box that that is the standard of accommodation in which we intend to house anyone who is a minor. If that accommodation were not available, we would not house those individuals in detained accommodation at all.

[Tim Loughton]

Will the Minister give way again?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way one last time.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister is being generous. I will elaborate on this point if I am lucky enough to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. Where in those 65 rules are relevant child-appropriate support services such as social workers, child psychologists and others that would be necessary mentioned? Nothing that he has described guarantees that children will be in age-appropriate accommodation that has age-appropriate care. That is the point.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

Surely the hon. Lady sees the direct connection between us crashing out of the Dublin regulation because of the utterly botched Brexit of the Government she speaks for, and the number of small boat crossings starting to skyrocket. There is a direct correlation between crashing out of the Dublin regulation and skyrocketing small boat crossings. I hope that she will look at the data and realise the truth of the matter.

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

We have had this conversation before. The hon. Gentleman knows that when we were covered by Dublin—before we came out of it through Brexit—there were more than 8,000 requests for people to be deported back to an EU country, and only 108 of those requests, or about 1.5%, were actually granted. So there was not some golden era when it worked under Dublin; it was not working then, and it certainly will not work now.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Gentleman is right, we have had this conversation before, and he consistently refuses to listen to the fact that the Dublin regulation acted as a deterrent, so the numbers that he talks about were small. The number of small boat crossings was small when we were part of the Dublin regulation. We left the Dublin regulation, and now the number is large—it is not rocket science. There is a clear connection, a correlation, a causal link between the two.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We have only one hour left for the remainder of the debate, so I have to impose an immediate time limit. I was going to say six minutes, but I will have to say five minutes.

[Tim Loughton]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always an experience to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). It was once said that someone who had just met his father had just spent half an hour having a five-minute conversation with him. We have just had a half-hour speech, but I am afraid that we did not get five minutes of anything remotely new in that.

[Stephen Kinnock]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to raise my father and what he might or might not have said when he is not in the Chamber to defend himself?

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It would be better not to do so. There is no hard and fast rule, since the right hon. and noble Gentlemen is no longer a member of this Chamber.

[Tim Loughton]

I will happily withdraw that, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I can have my minute back. I declare an interest as the chairman of a safeguarding board of a children’s company.

I was rather surprised to read in papers over the weekend that, according to the briefings, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and I are some sort of ringleaders against the Bill. May I make it absolutely clear that I support the Bill and want it to go through as quickly as possible, and that I support the Rwanda scheme? Objecting to some of the Bill’s trafficking measures is about protecting victims and prosecuting traffickers, not undermining the Bill. Greater safeguards on how we look after children who have arrived here would not undermine the Bill; they would strengthen it. Safeguards to ensure that safe and legal routes are in place for genuine asylum seekers would not undermine the Bill; they would strengthen and justify the measures against those who are gaming the system, to whom we do not have a duty of care.

In my limited time, I want to concentrate on the amendment tabled by Baroness Mobarik. I also thank Baroness Stroud and Lord Randall for the amendments on trafficking and safe and legal routes. The fact is that the Government’s amendments to clause 12 will give a child on their own in the UK the chance to apply to be bailed from detention after eight days, but that will apply only if they were detained to be removed, to be united with family or to be returned to their home country. That will not apply to all unaccompanied children when they first arrive in the UK; it will impact on only a small group of children. Other separated children not subject to removal will be detained for at least 28 days, and there is still no statutory limit on detention for any separated child.

Under the Government’s proposals, separated children affected by the Bill can still be indefinitely detained. That is the truth of the matter. It is imperative to include a time limit on child detention in the Bill. If the Government intend to detain children for the shortest possible time, they can reinforce that message by enshrining a time limit in the primary legislation, as we have asked for all along. Although the Minister has given some concessions, we are still not there.