Rwanda Plan Cost and Asylum System
Debate between Tim Loughton and Katherine Fletcher
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
We are having an interesting and important debate, set in the global context of increasingly large numbers of people on the move. Climate change is driving them forward. The entrepreneurial among them are looking for economic opportunity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) mentioned, but I think it is worth dwelling on what our Rwanda scheme seeks to stop.
What is actually happening to some of the most vulnerable people in the world? They have criminal gangsters coming up to them, in countries in Asia, the far east and Africa, getting hold of them, maybe even coercing them slightly, and saying, “You know what? Sell granny’s farm, because the streets of the UK are absolutely paved with gold. You give us five, eight, 10 grand, sell granny’s farm to mortgage it, and you’ll be able to make a fortune and look after her.” Only when they are on a beach in Calais, with a gangster pointing a gun at them, telling them to get in an overcrowded and dangerous boat, do they understand what we are trying to stop. They are being sold a pup by criminals.
Today’s debate is not about point scoring and policy, although you would not believe it from listening to some of the stuff the Opposition say. We are taking action to tackle it. We are saying that if someone comes to this country illegally, they cannot stay here illegally, because otherwise we would be opening the window to a demand model for gangsters who were strapping kids under lorries under Tony Blair and are now strapping young men, teenagers, women and children to dangerous boats across the channel.
So we are working with France, and with Albania. The Home Office is taking a lot of steps to tackle what happens further upstream, including where the boats are bought from. We have got a treaty with another country, we are sorting out accommodation, and we are sorting out the backlogs. We are getting involved, putting more staff in.
What do the Opposition offer us? They offer us a highly moralising case. If this has not been clear from my remarks, there is a moral case to take every action we can possibly take to stop people getting done by criminals. So what do Labour Members do? They vote against it—is it 76 times, 73 times, 83 times? Goodness knows.
Katherine Fletcher
I defer to my hon. Friend’s knowledge.
Government Members are putting practical ideas in place, and what is the Labour party doing? Changing its mind. It has no plan and no ideas. Its soundbites are so brittle that its Members cannot take interventions from Conservative Members.
We have a worked-through plan that is trying something different to make sure we handle this in a global context. Everybody is facing this problem and, with channel crossings already down by a third, a nascent deterrent effect is occurring. We are working with the social media firms to make sure these—rude word—gangsters cannot sell absolute nonsense on TikTok and Facebook to kids who just dream of a better life. That is the action we are taking, and what are Labour Members doing? They are tabling process motions and asking for details but, crucially, they will not tell us their plan, because they do not have one.