Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Tom Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The reasoned amendment makes it very clear that we support those powers, but we do not support the totality of the Bill. In terms of tough action, the Home Secretary has yet to explain to the House why illegal crossings have gone up by 28% on her watch.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?

[Chris Philp]

I will make some progress.

Let me turn to the detail of the Bill. The only problem with the Border Security Commander is that he cannot actually command anything. There are no powers at all in the Bill, merely functions. They include, in clause 3, publishing a strategic priority document and, in clause 4, a duty to prepare an annual report. Preparing a strategic priority document and publishing an annual report are unlikely to smash the gangs. The Border Security Commander has no clear powers, merely an ability to publish documents and reports.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman has been extremely persistent, and that deserves its reward.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for the reward, and I hope to return one. The director general of the NCA has said:

“The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill should help UK law enforcement act earlier and faster to disrupt people smuggling networks and give us additional tools to target them and their business models.”

The Conservative party is about to vote against the Bill. Why does the shadow Home Secretary think that he knows better than the director general of the National Crime Agency?

[Chris Philp]

The point of a debate is to engage rather than read out a pre-prepared question. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the National Crime Agency has said that we need a deterrent. The Bill removes any legislative prospect of a deterrent, which is why we oppose it.

The Home Secretary talked about various new offences, including endangering life at sea and activities preparatory to supporting illegal migration. Of course, no one from any party in this House wants those things to happen, but the measures that she proposes duplicate the existing provisions in section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971, as amended by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Facilitating illegal immigration—quite a broad term—is already a criminal offence. Unlike her offence of endangering life at sea, which carries a five-year maximum sentence, section 25 of the Immigration Act states that facilitating illegal migration carries a maximum sentence of life, recently increased from 14 years. Guess who voted against that increase in the sentence? The Home Secretary.

Although we support the thrust of the clauses in the Bill, they are already covered by the tougher existing offence of facilitating illegal immigration. Clauses 19 to 26 contain plans to seize phones, which in principle we support, but that power exists already in section 15 and schedule 2 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. There is an element of duplication.

Let me move on to the more objectionable parts of the Bill. Clause 37 repeals the entirety of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That appears to command some rather unwise enthusiasm from the Government Benches. As I said, the first flight under the Rwanda scheme was due to leave on 24 July, following extensive legal challenge and legislation in this House. Very unwisely, the Government chose never to start that scheme, which would have had a deterrent effect, because it stands to reason that if people know that if they try to cross illegally into a country such as the UK they will be removed to Rwanda, they will not bother in the first place.

We have seen that kind of scheme work elsewhere, with Operation Sovereign Borders in Australia around 10 years ago. We have seen it work here as well, with the 2023 removals agreement with Albania. Crossings by Albanians, who were the most numerous cohort crossing the channel, went down by 93%. Again, it stands to reason that if people know that if they arrive here they will be removed, they will not bother crossing in the first place. But hon. Members should not take my word for it. The National Crime Agency says that we need a deterrent, and even the Government’s own Border Security Commander, Martin Hewitt—who cannot command very much—says that we need a deterrent.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (First sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

The next question will be the last. Witnesses, if there is anything that you have not yet said but would like to say, please do so.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Q Part of the aim of the Bill is to minimise opportunities for crossings, which involves targeting the criminal smuggler gangs that are enabling small boat crossings to take place. Do you agree that enforcement activities against those smuggler gangs will have a deterrent effect—that enforcement activity has value in its own right, but minimising the number of crossings by disrupting the business model will have a deterrent effect? On Enver’s point about the asylum hotel that was at risk of burning down, would you agree that those Government policies directly and gravely put the lives of vulnerable asylum seekers at risk?

Enver Solomon: The system meltdown that came about because of the fantastical Rwanda policy and the full provisions of the Illegal Migration Act left people in a state of permanent limbo, in inappropriate accommodation, in very vulnerable situations, in communities where there were high tensions. As a consequence of that, people’s wellbeing was potentially compromised. There is no question about that. We saw that through our work. We saw the rise in stress and in suicidal ideation. There was very clear evidence from our practice about the impact of what was, as we described, a system meltdown.

On your point about enforcement, enforcement has a role to play but it has to be one strategy combined with others—one side of a multi-pronged approach. Similarly to the evidence from dismantling drug trafficking, often when you dismantle one set of smugglers or gangmasters, others will reappear and take over that part of the trade. It is very difficult to enforce and prosecute your way out of this challenge. Multiple strategies have to be adopted—

[The Chair]

Order. Sorry to interrupt, but we are in our last minute. Mubeen and Daniel, would you like to come in quickly?

Mubeen Bhutta: Thank you—my hearing aid has magically started working.

On disrupting the business model, going back to what we said at the beginning about this being the other half of the safe routes story, clause 34 is about taking biometrics and introduces flexibility so that biometrics can be taken outside visa centres. We would like to see that extended to people required to submit their biometrics for family reunion visas, because we know that people are making dangerous journeys to visa centres. Often there are multiple journeys, often in conflicts, and people often have to use smugglers to get across the border if the visa centre in their country is closed. There is a real opportunity to strengthen that existing safe route by extending the flexibility in clause 34.

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[The Chair]

We have two quick questions to squeeze in.

[Tom Hayes]

Q We hear that, because the so-called Rwanda deterrent never actually happened, it is hard to assess whether or not it was a deterrent, but in a Q&A you published on 25 July, Dr Walsh, you said:

“The deterrent impact of the policy would likely have depended on the number of people sent to Rwanda.”

You estimated the probability of people crossing the channel in a small boat being sent to Rwanda to be about 1% to 2%.

You also said:

“There is no evidence that political discussions surrounding the Rwanda policy deterred small boat arrivals.”

In fact, from the day the policy was announced to the day it was scrapped, we saw 84,000 people cross the channel. Do you want to say anything about the efficacy of the so-called deterrent? Relatedly, do you agree that it is hard to make emphatic assessments of the fiscal burden of immigration owing to the quality of the available data?

Dr Peter Walsh: Yes, I would agree with that last point.

The Rwanda policy was never implemented, so it would be unfair to say that it did not have a deterrent effect. Policies of that kind typically have the bulk of their effect once they have been implemented. I cannot remember the source for the 1% to 2% figure. This is a somewhat old research paper, but at the time it was the best estimate we could point to. It was not an estimate that I or colleagues made. Can you see what the source is?

[Tom Hayes]

I can. It says:

“If only a few hundred asylum seekers were sent to Rwanda each year (as suggested by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Office’s modelling) and unauthorised arrivals had continued at rates similar to those seen in 2022 and 2023”—

the paper was published in 2024—

“then the probability of a person crossing the Channel in a small boat being sent to Rwanda would have been small—around 1-2%.”

Dr Peter Walsh: I now recall the Home Office’s modelling, and it was subject to a whole range of caveats. The Home Office was actually quite cautious about the estimates. That was the best available figure it had at the time. It was in part based on Rwanda’s capacity to process claims. The number could have gone up, but we never found out.

[The Chair]

Can I quickly get Kenneth’s question in?

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[Jo White]

Q I will be quick. Thank you for the work that you do. My biggest concern is those children who come into the UK who we do not even know are coming in, because it is hidden. They are clearly victims of modern slavery or child sexual exploitation. It is important, as you said just now, that we stop the gangs that are bringing them across. How confident are you that the new Border Security Commander with his anti-terrorism powers will be able to track those gangs down and smash them?

Dame Rachel de Souza: That is the first question I asked the National Crime Agency when I came into the role. I asked, “Could you find every child in this country?” I was told that, “With enough resource, we could pretty much do it, apart from some of the Vietnamese children who are trafficked into cannabis factories and things like that.” With resource, and with this new Border Security Command, we will get a lot nearer, and we need to do that.

[Tom Hayes]

Q Thank you for all of your work. In April 2023, you wrote to the then Home Secretary requesting information about children accommodated in hotels. Seven months later, when you received the information, you then said that it was seven months past your deadline and that the quality of the information itself was deeply troubling. Can you comment on how difficult or easy it was for you to discharge your statutory duties as Children’s Commissioner when working with the last Government to safeguard children?

Dame Rachel de Souza: The Home Office was the only Department that failed to answer my data request in time and that gave me imperfect data, but I did not stop and I kept going. I have to say: it is much better now. I was able to speak to and did have access to Ministers, and I was always able to make my case. I did not get that information in a timely manner, but I did get that information in the end. I am worried about what has happened to those children.

The data we were after was safeguarding data that showed all the concerns, and the reason I asked for it was because I knew that the safeguarding in the hotels was not as it should be. We got the data on children who had been victims of attempted organ harvesting, rape and various other things, as well as the number of children who were missing. We still do not know where many of those children are, and that is not good enough. The whole tone has changed, and I hope that the Government will still want to stop the small boats, while also being much more pro-children.

[The Chair]

We will squeeze in one last question.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 27th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Kenneth Stevenson]

Yes. I apologise—I think I have cut across the Minister, because she asked a very similar question, but, if you could give us an idea of how those three things that you spoke about before could be helped by the Bill, that would be really helpful.

Rob Jones: When we identify somebody from the UK who is involved in organising small boats crossings, for instance, we have to get very good, sophisticated surveillance control over that individual to get enough evidence to be able to produce a full file submission to the CPS for a section 25 facilitation offence. That could mean months of surveillance, or covert activity, in terms of eavesdropping and audio recordings.

In the meantime, we are seeing that individual with a public profile on social media, researching crossings, communicating with people overtly and meeting people. When you are looking at the commissioning of the offence, and you are living with somebody who is involved in serious organised crime, you are seeing that play out in front of you.

These clauses allow us to take elements of their business model—as they are meeting people, as they are researching, and as they are taking the preparatory steps to the section 25 offence—then go to the CPS and say, “We think we’ve got enough; we think we could go now.” That gives you more momentum, more speed and more agility.

It is the same mindset as trying to prevent attacks in the CT world. You would not choose to reactively investigate a terrorist attack; we would not choose to reactively investigate highly dangerous crossings in the English channel during which people get killed. We would choose to pre-emptively stop them, and that is what the new offences would introduce.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Q My question is regarding the asylum decisions backlog that the country faces, which we are now starting to move through. As a consequence, of course, some people will have their grants rejected and others will have them accepted. Where the grants are accepted, what would you say to anybody who claims that that could be a pull factor for people to try to access this country?

Then, just picking up on your point, Mr Jones, about criminal gangs starting to feel the pressure because of this new suite of tools, would you say that the tools provided for in this Bill, which will have a disruptive effect, could in consequence also have a deterrent effect on the criminal smuggler gangs?

Rob Jones: I will take the second question first. Obviously time will tell but, adding to what we are doing already, these tools will rack up the pressure, and that starts to change behaviour. It increases costs and increases friction in the business model. Those things contribute to deterring people from getting involved, and we see that with other areas of criminality. I will allow others to answer the asylum question.

Sarah Dineley: I am going to dip out, rather, and say that it is not really a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service, but I can tell you that the Home Office is undertaking a piece of work looking at what the pull factors are for migrants wanting to reach the UK, and at what point they reach the firm decision that the UK is their final destination.

[Tom Hayes]

Q If I reframe the question, then, have you seen any evidence to suggest that it may be a pull factor?

Sarah Dineley: There is nothing that I have read in any interview provided by a migrant to suggest that that is a pull factor.

Jim Pearce: I have a personal view, but I am speaking on behalf of the national police chiefs, and I am not sure that I am in a position to do that. That is probably a question for either Immigration Enforcement or the Home Office.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for the really interesting testimonies that you have brought today; we really appreciate it. I have two questions. We heard from the Migration Observatory earlier that one of the challenges in this world is that demand is essentially inelastic: they could double the price of the crossings and there would still be a market of people who would pay it, even for very flimsy boats. Picking up Tom’s question, it strikes me that the Rwanda scheme, which this legislation repeals, was ostensibly focused on deterrence and therefore trying to tackle demand—but, because demand is inelastic, it was not having the effect. It sounds like you are saying that this legislation is focusing on the supply and just making it impossible for people to cross the channel, no matter how much demand there is for it. Is that right? Have I understood that correctly?

My second question is for Sarah. I should probably declare an interest because I was previously the home affairs attaché at the embassy in Paris. You talked about international co-operation and mentioned things like JITs and Eurojust and the challenges we face there. We heard from a previous witness about how the UK no longer being in Dublin is being cited by migrants as one of the reasons that they are going in. Can you say more about the challenges that the UK is facing post Brexit? How do we build relations with key allies to overcome them?

Sarah Dineley: I will start with how we rebuild relations with key allies. I have talked about our network of liaison prosecutors. We regularly engage and hold engagement events with our overseas prosecutors: this year alone, we have had engagement events in Ireland, Spain and, two weeks ago, Italy. That is about building those relationships and finding out what their challenges are, as well as finding out about their legal systems and what barriers there are to the co-operation that we are seeking. I think we do have to recognise that different countries have a different legal framework, and we cannot simply impose our framework on another country; we have to be able to work around their framework to try to get what we need from them.

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[Mike Tapp]

Yes, we are. It is coming in this year.

Tony Smith: We do not have a biometric entry/exit system. The EU is bringing in EES, which means Brits will have to give their biometrics on entry and exit. We are bringing in the electronic travel authorisation—the ETA—but that is different from an entry/exit system.

[Tom Hayes]

Q My question is for Mr Williams. In a previous panel, I asked Dr Walsh whether he thought it was difficult to make emphatic assessments of the fiscal burden of migration, given the quality of the data available. You authored a February 2025 report that makes broadly the same points about some of the quality gaps. I would welcome you talking about the gaps in that data, which obviously affects the ability to make emphatic assessments.

I also want to ask you about that report. In a previous answer, you raised the importance of counterfactuals. In reaching the overall recommendations and assessments in your report, did you consider counterfactuals such as the fact that migrants might move up the wage and skills distribution and might not always remain on low pay? In the absence of migrant workers, for instance in health and care settings, there would need to be other people who could do their work. Did you consider the economic impact of having nobody in those roles to do that health and care work, and whether that would affect the worklessness in our country? Did you consider whether there could be a reallocation of British workers into higher-skilled and higher-wage jobs as a consequence of those migrant workers? Did you think about the economic impact of potentially more people doing unpaid care because of a lack of paid carers?

I ask those questions not because I feel we should rely on migrant workers—I do not—but because your report has been lauded by the shadow Home Secretary and other Conservative Members of Parliament. I want to make sure that if it is being used as a point of reference, the data and the assessments have integrity. If you were to consider those counterfactuals, I wonder whether that would affect your report.

Karl Williams: To clarify, we are talking about the report on indefinite leave to remain that came out recently, not the report from last year.

[Tom Hayes]

I forgot the name of it. The “Here To Stay?” report?

Karl Williams: Yes, that is the one. That is purely about the fiscal impact. There is some analysis, which I can go into in a minute, on the broader economic picture in the previous report, but this report was more tightly focused.

[Tom Hayes]

But inevitably the counterfactuals would have an impact on the fiscal burden carried by the state.

Karl Williams: Indeed, yes. The counterfactuals we did think about were different levels of stay rates and different rates among different wage profiles. Migrants earning more as they go through the system clearly does happen to some extent, whether through out-migration or through career progression. In conducting that analysis, we stuck to the fiscal profiles used by the OBR, because, as you say, the data quality is fairly poor. That was the best there was, without trying to construct our own estimates for ingoings and outgoings as migrants progress over their life course in the UK. The OBR models it by age, so it captures the different wage contributions that you make at different points in your life, which will be higher in some points and lower in others. It also captures the different burdens of, for example, healthcare in old age.

I am glad that you have raised the quality of the data. We have repeatedly pointed out, as have the Governor of the Bank of England and the Office for National Statistics, that the labour force survey is very broken. In that report and in previous reports, we have always pushed the point that we need better data. Everyone needs better data. This is one area where there is broad consensus, whether you are restrictionist or want more migration or whatever else. I understand that the reference here is to Denmark and the Netherlands.

[Tom Hayes]

Q Would you feel cautious about Members of Parliament emphatically assessing that there would be a fiscal burden of £234 billion over the lifetime, as your report concludes, based on your concerns about data, but also the fact that consideration of some of the counterfactuals I listed—and there could be many more—would impact that overall figure?

Karl Williams: The report is very clear about the assumptions we have made at various points and the unknowns. With any modelling exercise, whether you are conducting a fiscal model of an effect of a tax change or whatever else, you have to make reasonable assumptions.

[The Chair]

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions of this panel. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witnesses very much for their evidence.

Examination of Witness

David Coleman gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

I had Tom Hayes to ask a question, but we have literally 20 seconds.

[Tom Hayes]

Q Professor Coleman, would you on a level accept the description of being a eugenicist?

David Coleman: No.

[Tom Hayes]

Q In that case, I will use the rest of my time. Are you familiar with the—

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us, unfortunately, to the end of the time allocated for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank our witness for his evidence.

Examination of Witness

Professor Brian Bell gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

Q My questions are speculative. First of all, are you familiar with a report by the Centre for Policy Studies called “Here to Stay?”

Professor Brian Bell: Yes.

[Tom Hayes]

Q Could you comment on that? There is a headline figure that says that, in its analysis, the fiscal cost of those who might be granted indefinite leave to remain in the next four or five years would amount to £234 billion.

Professor Brian Bell: That is a speculative number. It is actually extremely difficult to work out the fiscal impact of migration. We are doing it at the MAC at the moment. We can only do it because we have access to data that the CPS could not possibly have. I do not know how you do that kind of analysis without making really very brave—and some may say foolhardy—estimates of what these people are going to do when they are in the UK. To give a very simple example, we currently do not know what dependants do when they come into the country. Let us say we issue a skilled worker visa and a dependent comes in. We will know nothing about what they do because the Home Office, quite fairly, does not pursue finding out about that dependent because they are here legally, but you need to know how much they earn and if they are in a job to work out what their contribution will be over the next 50 to 60 years of their life.

I think it is very dangerous to just make broad assumptions about, “Oh, they are going to be like this and they are going to earn this”, and then you can come up with a very big number. I could choose a big group of British people who will also have very big negative effects, because if you just choose people who are low earners and perhaps people who are disabled, you automatically get those numbers because they are entitled to more benefits in the long run, and they do not pay as much tax. I am not particularly sure what that tells us.

[Tom Hayes]

Q I am going to smuggle in a very quick question. Could you comment on the validity of the comparison between the Australian offshore processing immigration approach and the Rwanda scheme? Are they actually comparable, and do you have anything to say about the efficacy of the Australian approach?

Professor Brian Bell: As I understand it, the big difference is that in the Australian system, if your asylum application was granted, you were brought to Australia; the system was just offshore processing of the application. That is very different from the Rwanda scheme, where we were essentially washing our hands of any responsibility going forward for those asylum applicants. The Australian model is worth thinking about if you could find countries that would be willing to process the applications, because we are spending—let us be honest—an absolute fortune on housing asylum seekers here while we consider their claims. If you could find a cheaper and more effective way of doing that, while still recognising that we have the responsibility to take those asylum seekers who have claimed asylum in this country, that would be worth considering.

[Tom Hayes]

Q So it is not entirely appropriate to compare the Australian offshoring approach to the Rwanda scheme?

Professor Brian Bell: I would not have thought so.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Third sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend makes some very good points, particularly about over-correction between Governments but also about the fact that independence is an obvious thing to have for particular posts—in inspection, for example, but not necessarily operational ones—and the need to cohere a system, to ensure that all the good work being done across different Departments can be focused strategically on one aim. That is what the clauses seek to do.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. I want to take on a principled point that I have heard levelled by the hon. Member for Stockton West and other Conservative Members today and on Second Reading, which is that the Border Security Commander cannot command. It is really important to address that point.

From 2018 to 2023, we saw the number of small boat arrivals increase from 299 to 29,500. That is a hundredfold increase. As I understand it, some of the explanation given by the Conservatives is that the matter became very complicated, and we were seeing an increase in organised crime activity. To their credit, that was reinforced by the director general of the National Crime Agency, Rob Jones, who said

“The problem that I focus on is the organised crime element, which needs concurrent effort in a number of areas, designed to undermine the business model that supports organised immigration crime. That means tackling illicit finance; the materials that are used in smuggling attempts and the supply chain that supports them; the high-value targets based overseas who are involved in supplying materials and moving migrants”.––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 29, Q28.]

Those were just some of the things he highlighted.

If we acknowledge that the present Government face a more complicated situation, we should agree that it will involve a suite of tools. As Rob Jones said,

“There is not one thing that you can do to tackle these problems”. ––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 29, Q28.]

Sarah Dineley, the deputy chief Crown prosecutor, concurred with her colleagues and said:

“I do not believe that there is one single measure that would impact so significantly that it would reduce migrant crossings to zero.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 30, Q28.]

Jim Pearce, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for organised immigration crime, highlighted the same point.

If the situation is so complex and there is a need for the suite of tools that are being strengthened by this Bill, surely there is a need for greater co-ordination. Greater co-ordination will surely help to fix some of the strategic challenges that our immigration system and asylum system have faced in recent years. To co-ordinate is to command, and it is crucial we accept that point. If we do not, we will not be able to tackle the backlog we face, we will not be able to implement the measures in the Bill and we will not be able to secure our borders.

Amendments have been tabled in relation to aspects of the Border Security Commander role, but I am not entirely certain whether the Conservative party supports the role of Border Security Commander at all. On Second Reading, we heard colleagues asking what Martin Hewitt is doing with his time. I would welcome the hon. Member for Stockton West explaining whether the Conservative party does in fact support the role of Border Security Commander and Border Security Command. We heard clearly from those who gave oral testimony, who are operationally focused, experienced and expert in their field, about the necessity of such a command. Indeed, Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, summed it up well when he said that

“the Border Security Command is an understandable response.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 5, Q1.]

[Matt Vickers]

We will discuss when we come to the next group of amendments the aims and objectives of this role, and the fact that if we are going to have a Border Security Commander, they should have a very meaningful role that can make a real difference. I would like to press on clause 2 of the Bill, which talks about

“The terms and conditions of a designation as Commander are to be determined by the Secretary of State.”

I would be grateful if the Minister could explain to the Committee what those terms and conditions of designation might be? As I mentioned, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 sets out how the Met commissioner must be suitably qualified. What sort of qualifications could we expect to see in a commander and what will those terms and conditions be?

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[Matt Vickers]

When we talk about the Border Security Commander role, if we think it is going to “smash the gangs”, sort out all these problems and play a huge part in creating a secure border for this country, it is important that we allow it some element of independence and gravitas. We have talked about the commander being tied into the strategic priorities of the Home Office, but this amendment is about empowering them to make the difference that we want them to make. We want them to succeed.

As I was saying, removing that requirement would allow the Border Security Commander to act decisively. We must avoid unnecessary bureaucratic wrangling and ensure that, in this critical matter, they have the freedom they need to deliver results.

[Tom Hayes]

I have two quick points. First, the hon. Member talked about whether the Border Security Commander could somehow command or direct the activities of our international partners. I would highlight that this Government have strengthened and created the new international arrangements that have made it possible for us to start to secure and securitise our borders. It is important not to pretend that the history of what has happened did not happen; we should realise that we need to have close international ties.

Secondly, I am listening closely to the hon. Member’s suggestions for how the role could be improved. Is he proposing these amendments because the current office holder, Martin Hewitt, is not discharging the office in the way that he would like? Could he comment on whether he thinks that Martin Hewitt is doing a good job or a less-than-good job, and whether he thinks that the Border Security Commander role, as it is currently being discharged, is satisfactory?

[Matt Vickers]

At some point, Martin Hewitt will be superseded. We want to make sure that whoever is in this role is in the best possible position to do the best possible job. I do not think that these measures are necessarily about Martin Hewitt’s effectiveness or otherwise; they are about this post and its fundamental role—well, its apparent fundamental role—in delivering border security for this country.

[Tom Hayes]

It is not about Martin Hewitt’s professional competence or his ability as a person to do the role; it is about the role itself. Based on how the role has been configured, does the hon. Member believe that the present office holder is discharging the role well, with the responsibilities given, or is he proposing these measures because he believes that somehow the role is lacking?

[Matt Vickers]

I think there is an opportunity to strengthen this role so that it can provide that real fundamental change that we are apparently looking for in this Bill. I would not necessarily want to comment on the individual.

We have tabled new clause 21 to set out some clear and measurable objectives for the Border Security Commander, to attempt to give this co-ordinator some clear direction. New clause 21 would set out that, in exercising their functions, the commander

“must have regard to the objectives of…preventing the boarding of vessels, with the aim of entering the United Kingdom, by persons who require leave to enter the United Kingdom but are seeking to enter the United Kingdom…without leave to enter, or…with leave to enter that was obtained by means which included deception”.

In effect, we want it in black and white in the Bill that the commander will be given the objective of reducing illegal entry to the country, and that is what new clause 21 would achieve.

Since 2018, when the figures were first recorded, more than 150,000 people have arrived in small boats. As of 29 January, 1,098 people had crossed the channel since the start of 2025. In 2024 as a whole, 36,816 people were detected making the crossing. I would like to understand why the Government do not think it is worthwhile to give the Border Security Commander the direct objective of reducing or even ending those arrivals.

We also wish to ensure that those who arrive in this country illegally will not be able to stay. We know that effective returns agreements work as a deterrent. When in government, we cut the number of Albanian illegal migrants coming to the UK by small boat crossings by more than 90%, thanks to our returns agreement. In 2022, 12,658 Albanian illegal migrants arrived in the UK by small boat, but that fell to just 924 in 2023, following our landmark returns agreement with Albania.

We have therefore included in new clause 21 the objective for the Border Security Commander to ensure that a decision on a claim by a person who has arrived in the UK illegally is taken within six months of the person’s arrival, and for the commander to make arrangements with a safe third country for the removal of people who enter the UK illegally. It is up to the Government to put in place an effective deterrent to people crossing the channel in small boats.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

This is my third Bill Committee, and so far I am really enjoying it. In all three Bill Committees, I have sensed something interesting; my understanding of what the Conservative party has been does not quite coincide with what it is today. It feels peculiar to hear Conservative Members asking for this role to have so many teeth and being so prescriptive about writing that into primary legislation. As I understand it, Conservatives typically used to try to minimise the amount of detail in primary legislation, in order to give the arms of the state the freedom to do their duties and enact their responsibilities properly.

That is particularly important when we are living through a time of significant volatility. The complications surrounding our immigration and asylum system are manifold, so we need to give this role significant flexibility in order that the Border Security Commander can co-ordinate command. I am struck by what seems to be almost an existential challenge at the heart of modern Conservative thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Clause 4 would give the Border Security Commander a duty to prepare annual reports, which must state how the commander has carried out their functions in that financial year and set out the commander’s view on the performance of the border security system that year, with particular reference to the commander’s strategic priorities. That all seems very vague, and a case of the Border Security Commander being allowed to mark their own homework.

Can the Minister explain what success would look like for the Border Security Commander? What are the measurable key performance indicators that the Home Secretary will consider? That is important because the Secretary of State, as set out in clause 2, can dismiss the commander. What would constitute poor enough performance for that to happen, and what would be a success?

To try to inject some objectivity and accountability into the process of annual reports, we have tabled amendment 14. We would like the Border Security Commander to report on the number of persons who have, since the later of the passing of the Bill or the last annual report, been charged or convicted of offences under clause 13, “Supplying articles for use in immigration crime”; clause 14, “Handling articles for use in immigration crime”; clause 18, “Endangering another during sea crossing to United Kingdom”; or clause 43, “Articles for use in serious crime”. We want to know how effective the new offences will be in practice for achieving the Government’s aim of stopping illegal immigration.

The Government’s own impact assessment admits that very few people will go to prison as a result of the measures in the Bill. On the proposals to strengthen and improve the function of serious crime prevention orders, it says:

“It is estimated that between zero and three prison places, with a central estimate of one prison place will be required per year once the steady state is reached.”

On introducing an interim serious crime prevention order, it says:

“It is estimated that between 0 and 1.54 prison places, with a central estimate of 0.2 prison place will be required per year once the steady state is reached.”

On serious and organised crime articles, it says:

“It is estimated that between four and six prison places, with a central estimate of five prison places will be required per year once the steady state is reached.”

On new offences to criminalise the making, adapting, importing, supplying, offering to supply and possession of articles for use in serious crime, it says:

“It is estimated that between four and six prison places, with a central estimate of five prison places will be required per year once the steady state is reached.”

It is important to report on the new offences relating to immigration crime, which the Government think will not send a meaningful number of people to prison, and also on the new offence of endangering lives at sea, for which the impact assessment includes no estimate. Can the Minister confirm how many people the Government expect each year to be arrested, convicted and imprisoned under the new offence of endangering lives at sea?

[Tom Hayes]

I am wondering about the intent behind that question. Is the hon. Member concerned about the availability of prison spaces?

[Matt Vickers]

We want to see how effective the offences will be. The Government have set that out in part, but not for the new offence of endangering lives at sea, which has great consequence.

Amendment 14 would also require the Border Security Commander to report on the number of people identified as entering the United Kingdom via sea crossing without leave to remain; how many of them are detained pending deportation or a decision on deportation; and how many are deported to a country of which the person is a national or citizen, or to a country or territory to which there is reason to believe that the person will be admitted. We believe it is important to have transparency about the role of the Border Security Commander in facilitating removals. If they are charged with minimising threats to the border, removing those who enter this country illegally with no reason to remain is a big part of successfully achieving that objective.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fourth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with what Rob Jones, the director general of operations at the National Crime Agency, said in his oral testimony last Thursday? He said:

“We are not looking to pursue asylum seekers who are not involved in serious and organised crime. That is not what we do. This is about tackling serious and organised crime and being as effective as we can be in doing that.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 35, Q35.]

If we read the tea leaves, it is almost as if the hon. Gentleman is saying that there is an intent to pursue asylum seekers. Moreover, the NCA’s remit is already to be laser-focused and go after those gangs, as he recommends.

[Pete Wishart]

Rather lengthy interventions are a feature of this Committee, but I am happy to go with that if everyone else is. The hon. Gentleman is right to refer to the National Crime Agency. I listened carefully to what Mr Jones had to say to the Committee, and I have no doubt about his intention. I do not think he really wants to ensnare asylum seekers; I do not think that is his focus. But he has these two badly drafted and broadly defined clauses as the net that will scoop everything up. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, everybody will be in that net, and it will be a matter of trying to sieve them.

Why not start with the presumption that we will go for the gangs exclusively and leave aside those who come our shores to apply legitimately for asylum in the United Kingdom? Let us not waste time criminalising such people. The main problem, as I have said, is that the clauses are so broad in scope. They are not just a fishing net; they are a trawling net, trying to lift out everybody who comes across the channel.

The clauses cover not only direct acts of people smuggling, but incidental activities that may not involve any criminal intent. In combination with other clauses, they would make it a crime to supply or receive almost any item that one suspects could be used to facilitate illegal travel to the UK. The proposed legislation criminalises collecting or even viewing information that could be useful in making irregular journeys, if there is reasonable suspicion that it could assist others in migration. Although the Government couch a lot of this in humanitarian language, the provisions will not prevent deaths and harm at sea. Instead, they will criminalise people on the move who have no alternative route to the UK.

Let us look at the provisions in a little bit more detail. Supplying, offering to supply and handling articles for use in immigration crime will now get someone a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment. Although there are some limited humanitarian exemptions—for example, offering food and drink—the provisions considerably broaden the potential prosecution of migrant assistance and support. Importantly, with all the proposed new offences, there appears to be no explicit defence for those who are on the move.

Then there are the provisions about collecting information for use in immigration crime. Such information includes arranging departure points, dates and times; in other words, information that it would be necessary to gather if someone attempted to make such a journey themselves. The Bill makes it clear that evidence could include someone’s internet history and downloads. The Government contest this, but even looking up a weather map could put someone on the foul side of these clauses. I expect the Government will tell me, “No, of course that won’t happen,” but nothing in the clauses that we are debating states that that activity is exempt.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has noticed, but for the last three years we have had a refugee crisis from Ukraine—and there is such a distinction between how we have responded to Ukraine and how we have responded to everybody else. We put forward legal routes to allow Ukrainians to come to our country. My local authority, Perth and Kinross council, has the largest number of refugees from Ukraine in the whole of Scotland except the city of Edinburgh. I am immensely proud of the generosity of spirit of the people I represent who are taking part in that scheme.

Is it not so different when we allow schemes like that? That is what we are asking the Minister for. We will have a depopulation crisis towards the middle of the century, and immigrants might be at a premium by 2060 or 2070. Why have we not been inventive and creative? Why are we not looking to do things other than leave that mess—that disgrace—on the shores of France, as we have done to date?

I am sure the Minister will tell us that there is the defence of “reasonable excuse”. I accept that, and I know that it applies to each of these new offences—in other words, if a person has a reasonable excuse for engaging in the relevant conduct, they will not be guilty of the offence. I know that that is exactly what she will tell me, and she is already indicating that that is the case. But the burden lies on the defence to adduce sufficient evidence of a reasonable excuse, and if they have done so, it is for the prosecution to prove the contrary beyond reasonable doubt.

To be fair, the Bill sets out a non-exhaustive list of circumstances in which the defence of reasonable excuse would apply. Under clause 13, for example, a person will have a reasonable excuse if

“their action was for the purposes of carrying out a rescue of a person from danger or serious harm”.

They will also have a reasonable excuse if they were acting on behalf of an organisation that aims to assist asylum seekers and does not charge for its services. All that is purely a matter of judgment, and there does not seem to be a specific threshold for conviction. The maximum sentences for each of the new offences is pretty stiff and those for offences in clauses 13 and 14 in particular are disproportionately high. To put it in context, the offence of possession of articles used in terrorism has a maximum sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment, but someone could get 14 years for falling foul of the provisions in clauses 13 and 14.

The Bill is likely to have an impact on the prison population—I think I heard the hon. Member for Stockton West address some issues about the prison population with the Minister.

[Tom Hayes]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stuart, as I should have said earlier. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the proposed sentence for the facilitation of small boat smuggling and criminal activity is too high? Did I hear that correctly? Please do correct me if I am wrong.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong, and he did not hear me correctly. I am talking about the new offences in clauses 13 and 14, falling foul of which could result in a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment. He might contend that that might get some gang member, but I am suggesting otherwise. I suspect that practically nobody from gangs involved in this vile trade will be caught up in these offences, but ordinary asylum seekers will be.

Lastly on the prison population, there is a notable lack of robust evidence that lengthier custodial sentences achieve a deterrent effect or a reduction in reoffending. That is explicitly not acknowledged in the impact assessment for the Bill, which states:

“There is limited understanding of the behavioural impact of this intervention, so the deterrence effect on dangerous behaviour may not be realised as intended.”

I do not know whether the Minister believes that the new laws she is creating will make the slightest bit of difference to those who are in areas of conflict or fleeing oppression. I am not entirely sure that asylum seekers sitting down on the beach, or in the deserts of Sudan, in Afghanistan or in Iran, are the least bit cognisant of the developing, hardening and draconian laws of this country, put in place in Committees like this one. I suspect that they do not know about them—and, if they did know about them, they would not care less. Their sole and exclusive priority is saving their family’s and their children’s lives, and getting the hell out of that place.

That is the irritation; those asylum seekers could not care less about the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill that is being debated here today. They want out, and they will do anything possible to rescue their family. Imagine that, after all that journey, after sitting in these boats, after being in the hands of the people smugglers and those gang members, they arrive in the good old United Kingdom, only to be apprehended on the basis of clauses 13 and 14 of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I thank the hon. Lady for her observations. In practice, the clause allows for prosecution where an offence was committed overseas. It may well rely on evidence sharing from an international partner. She is right to talk about the network of CPS prosecutors across other jurisdictions.

In the time that I have been in the Home Office, we have been strengthening those ties and growing them further. We have done a lot of work via arrangements such as the agreement we came to with the Italians; the German agreement; the work we have done with the Calais group; the information we are sharing in and around the Balkan countries about the routes that go through those countries; the work that the Home Secretary and the Border Security Commander have done in not only Italy, but Iraq, the Kurdish region and Tunisia and some of the other countries that tend to be countries of transit. We are focusing more and more on how we can co-operate operationally.

Some of that work involves cross-country and cross-jurisdiction work to hit particular organised immigration crime across the piece on a set day. There have been some very good examples of cross-jurisdictional days of action. The muscles in this area are strengthening and being worked more. This clause is an added power that will make it easier for us to continue that work.

[Tom Hayes]

I draw attention to what Sarah Dineley, the head of international at the Crown Prosecution Service, said in her testimony:

“I will start with how we rebuild relations with key allies.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 38, Q41.]

That implies that relations with key allies have been strained and need rebuilding. She then said:

“I have talked about our network of liaison prosecutors.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 38, Q41.]

She then talked about how there is regular engagement and said that engagement events with overseas prosecutors have increased in recent months. Does the Minister agree that one of the reasons we have had an asylum backlog in recent years, and our asylum system has been described as a disaster, a meltdown and worse in oral testimony, is that we strained our relations with key allies?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes. When things are cross-jurisdictional and cross-country, one has to be able to co-operate with other jurisdictions with some respect for their particular prosecutorial approach in order to be able to share information and work together operationally and diplomatically to deal with the significant challenges that organised immigration crime presents. The Government certainly want to renew and strengthen their approach in that area, and have made a good start.

People should not underestimate how often people who break this law and would fall foul of this increase in jurisdiction come to visit the UK. It is possible that we could pick them up and charge them here and, in some instances, follow them and wait for them when they arrive. The extension of jurisdiction, which is the essence of clause 17, will provide us once more with what we hope will be an extremely effective new tool that will help us to disrupt and begin to dismantle some of the organised immigration criminal gangs.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 17 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.—(Martin McCluskey.)

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Vickers]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. Clause 18 creates a new offence of endangering others’ lives during a sea crossing from France, Belgium or the Netherlands to the United Kingdom, which results in the commission of an existing offence under section 24 subsection (A1), (B1), (D1) or (E1) of the Immigration Act 1971. Proposed new subsection (6) to section 24 of the 1971 Act states that this offence

“applies to acts carried out inside or outside the United Kingdom.”

The provision is necessary for this offence. Can the Minister explain whether partner countries have comparable offences to this one that can be used to apprehend people in France, Belgium and the Netherlands?

The former director general of Border Force, in his evidence to the Committee, was clear that clause 18 would be more effective if operated by French enforcement agencies, rather than in the UK, as most of the offences occur in French territory. Can the Minister reassure the Committee that, in order to successfully prosecute these offences in the UK, UK Border Force will be able to gather evidence collected outside the UK? Can the Minister guarantee that French support in providing that evidence will be forthcoming? What guarantees has the Home Office been given?

In order to be prosecuted under clause 18 for offences committed in French territorial waters, people would need to be transported to this country if they are not already here, which would have the rather perverse outcome of more people coming and being able to claim asylum. As I have not been able to find any reference to that in the impact assessment, I would like the Minister to share with the Committee what the justice impact tests showed for this new offence. How many new prison places are going to be required at steady state? In other words, how effective does the Minister think the new offence will be?

The Opposition tabled amendment 17 as we suspect that the new offence is not going to be greatly used. Amendment 17 would apply the new offence of endangering another during a sea crossing to the UK to any individual who tries to enter the UK illegally and makes their journey in an unseaworthy vessel, removing the requirement for the individual to have done an act to cause or create a risk of death or serious injury. If a person has crossed to the UK in a small boat, they have by definition endangered both their lives and the lives of others at sea. Those boats are unseaworthy, overcrowded and everyone who gets on board is responsible for that position. It is not just the lives of people on those dangerous vessels that are placed in danger, but potentially the lives of those who rescue them.

We have tabled amendments 15 and 16 to increase the sentence for the offence to 14 years. Before the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was passed, section 25 offences attracted a prison sentence of up to 14 years. The 2022 Act increased the penalty to life imprisonment in order to discourage unlawful facilitation of migrants to the UK, so why are the offences in this Bill for endangering lives at sea so much lower?

Since the Government have scrapped the Rwanda deterrent, we would like to help them to make this damp squib of a Bill a bit more of an effective deterrent to those considering making such a dangerous crossing from a safe third country. That is why we have tabled amendments 17, 15 and 16: to demonstrate that if an individual gets on an unsafe boat to cross the channel, thereby committing an immigration offence, they will be found guilty of endangering lives at sea. Then, as a foreign criminal, their deportation should be easier for the Home Office.

If the Minister is not going to accept our amendment, which would ensure that everyone arriving on a small boat should be found guilty of endangering lives at sea, I would like her to explain how people who cram themselves into overcrowded and unseaworthy vessels have not endangered themselves, others on that vessel and those who have to come to their rescue.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairpersonship today, Mr Stuart.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that on average we are seeing the number of people per boat increasing each year? He alluded to that earlier, and it means that more and more people are crowding into each small boat—he is nodding, so he seems to agree. Does he also agree that, because we are seeing more and more people crowded into these small boats, it is accounting for a rise in the number of people who are crossing the channel in small boats?

[Matt Vickers]

Yes—it is the case that more people are coming on fewer boats. Equally, however, there is also a rise in the number of boats that are coming across. I think that both those things are problematic. One thing that we know about these boats being filled with yet more people is that they become ever more dangerous, and we have seen some of the horrible consequences and fatalities as a result of that.

Amendment 5, tabled by the Scottish National party, specifies that the offence created by clause 18—endangering another during sea crossing to the United Kingdom—cannot apply to asylum seekers. Surely, that would render the new offence even more ineffective, as it will not be possible to charge people until their asylum claim has been determined. Someone is perfectly capable of endangering lives at sea, whether they are an asylum seeker or not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve on your Committee, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Members for Perth and Kinross-shire and for Stockton West for their contributions. There are a few points I want to make. Clause 18 already outlines provision within the lines that amendment 17 seeks to remove. Naming the act of supplying an unseaworthy vessel, while removing the broader terminology of an act from the Bill, sets a precedent where we would have to outline all possible acts within the Bill. That is wholly unnecessary and not in keeping with the structure of the Bill. Although providing an unseaworthy vessel is the initial act that causes risk to life, amendment 17 would serve to de-prioritise further acts of criminality that could endanger life in a sea crossing. The wording already in the Bill provides sufficient scope to address what the amendment seeks.

Following on from this, I think everybody in this room agrees with the sentiment of amendment 5—that genuine asylum seekers are vulnerable—but it is also important to recognise that someone with the right to asylum could be involved in criminality. The Bill already establishes, through clauses 16 to 18, the provision of a reasonable excuse as a defence, creating a clearer distinction between humanitarian activity and genuine asylum seekers, journalistic or academic works, and those involved in immigration crime as well. I believe that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire has already conceded that point, having withdrawn amendments of a similar nature.

[Tom Hayes]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham, who made a very persuasive case. She has stolen much of what I was going to say, which is actually quite helpful. I want to start by reflecting on the international situation, following up on the equally persuasive points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal about the relationship between the UK and France. It is worth reflecting on where we are. The current Home Secretary was the first to visit northern France in almost five years. Using a parallel Conservative political time continuum, that was six Home Secretaries ago.

In December, we had the meeting of the Calais Group in London, which was able to agree a plan to tackle people smuggling gangs. We have seen the Home Secretary and Interior Ministers from G7 countries, Germany included, meeting in Italy to agree a new joint action plan. We have seen the French Government appoint a new special representative on migration, Patrick Stefanini. He will work closely with our new role of Border Security Commander so that we have the closest, strongest, deepest engagement and interaction.

It is worth reflecting on that, because we are not going to solve the problem of small boat crossings on our own. We have to repair the damage done by the previous Conservative Government to our relationships with our major EU allies and partners. One of the consequences of the botched Conservative Brexit deal is that the UK no longer participates in the EU’s Dublin system, which determines which countries should take responsibility for processing an asylum claim where a person has links with more than one country, and provides a mechanism to return the person to the responsible country. That is underpinned by a shared database of asylum seekers’ fingerprints. It is chaotic that we had a deal that robbed us of the opportunity to take part in that system.

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tom Hayes]

Let me just finish my point. We heard in oral testimony last Thursday how the extraction of the UK from the Dublin system, under those chaotic circumstances, has created a pull factor for asylum seekers seeking to come to this country.

[The Chair]

Mr Hayes, I am sure that, from now on, you will want to focus closely on the subject of endangering people while at sea.

[Tom Hayes]

I will take only one intervention.

[Katie Lam]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would like to share with the Committee whether under the Dublin agreement we were net recipients of migrants or removed more than we received?

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I have another compelling statistic for her. Implicit in much of what the Conservatives say is the idea that the UK alone is carrying the burden of asylum seeker hosting, but the UK is actually fifth, behind Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in our receipt of the number of asylum seekers in the year ending September. The point I am making is that actually, contrary to much of the rhetoric that we hear in the Chamber and may be hearing in this debate that the United Kingdom is somehow on its own, shouldering all the responsibility for providing a safe place to asylum seekers, we are not. That is worth mentioning, because as a country we are trying to repair our relationships—

[The Chair]

Order. That has been mentioned, so clause 18 would now sensibly be the focus of your words.

[Tom Hayes]

Thank you for your patience, Mr Stuart. I will progress to my more substantive points.

I welcome the introduction of the new offence of endangering another life during perilous sea crossings to the UK, because we know that life is being endangered. At least 78 people died in the channel last year, and a total of 327 have died on the channel route since 2014. With your patience, Mr Stuart, I will talk about a particular case study.

We know that some of the lives that were cut short were incredibly young. A year and three days ago, a seven-year-old girl boarded a small boat in northern France with her three siblings, father and pregnant mother. The family joined six other children on that small boat, all of them seeking to cross the channel to reach the UK. Four other adults completed the complement on the boat. To describe that boat as small is a joke. It was later described as very small, no bigger than the kind a fisherman might use. It was too small for the number on board, which reinforces the point that I made to the hon. Member for Stockton West: that we are seeing the average number of people per boat rising, which accounts in part for the larger number of people trying to cross the channel to the UK.

The little girl I just talked about was pulled out of the water by rescuers. There were efforts to save her, but they failed. She could not be resuscitated. Aged seven, that child suffered a heart attack and she stopped breathing. Her family died. The six other children on the boat died. The four other adults on the boat died.

Later that day—3 March 2024—another boat crossing got into trouble. Thankfully, the 47 lives on that boat were saved. The night before, on 2 March 2024, another boat got into trouble when it deflated because it was not seaworthy. Again, thankfully, 20 lives were saved. But 327 lives have been lost on the channel route.

We know the facts of life in these flimsy boats. We know that every small boat is crowded with more and more people. We know that gangs are set on making as much money as possible, no matter the risk to life. We know that women and children are forced into the middle of ever smaller boats, so that when those boats fold and sink, as they do, it is they who are the first to be drowned or crushed. We know that the fuel is in containers that are so flimsy that they leak, and we know that when it mixes with seawater, saltwater, it inflicts the most horrific burns on the most vulnerable people.

We know another fact of life on these boats: the engines are among the weakest and the lifejackets are fake, do nothing and keep nobody afloat. And so I have to ask: why would we oppose the introduction of this new offence? It will ensure that anyone involved in physical aggression, intimidation or coercive behaviour will face prosecution and a sentence of up to five years.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has been clear that this offence sends

“a clear message that we will take action against those who are complicit in loss of life or risk to life at sea.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 63.]

To hear that from a Home Secretary is really important for those criminal gangs that are contemplating criminality. This is about going after those who further jeopardise the safety and lives of others during crossings and who are actively preventing offers of rescue. It is not about, as some have said, criminalising vulnerable people and dangerous crossings. Indeed, the Home Office has already said publicly that the Crown Prosecution Service always considers whether it is in the public interest to prosecute individuals. This is about protecting children like the seven-year-old whose life was ended a year and three days ago.

I want to dwell on the point about child protection, because it is so relevant to the question of sea crossings and whether we have this offence to try to limit the loss of life. We heard in oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner for England about the horrifying crossings that are taking place, but we also heard that the Conservatives had forced vulnerable children into horrifying situations when they arrived here in Britain. The commissioner stated:

“Children were languishing without proper safeguarding in inappropriate places.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 21, Q21.]

The Children’s Commissioner had to persistently pursue, from a Home Office that hindered her from doing her job, data on

“children who had been victims of attempted organ harvesting, rape and various other things”.––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 25, Q26.]

As she says on children who are missing:

“We still do not know where many of those children are…that is not good enough.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 25, Q26.]

I say that because we have a massive child protection issue on our sea. We have a massive child protection issue in the United Kingdom. We need the Bill to make sure that children are safe.

[Kenneth Stevenson (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. These steps have been taken following discussions with law enforcement to be as thorough as possible in our attempts to smash the criminal gangs and disrupt an organised activity at the very source, particularly in relation to endangering another during a sea crossing, but also when it comes to supplying and handling articles for immigration crime. We must allow enforcement every opportunity to identify the causes of such crime and use the findings of any investigation to deter further crossings. If he allows me a little bit of leeway, I will refer to the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, who spoke about piloting boats.

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Stevenson, interventions must be short.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point; I agree with him.

I want to continue to dwell on the question of children’s social care. It is this Government who have been backing children’s social care to look after unaccompanied children—something so important in the eyes of the Children’s Commissioner. It is we who are seeking to protect children when they make their desperate crossings and when they are here in the UK. It is no surprise that this Government is doing the same in other areas, such as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in this parliamentary Session, which establishes child registers to track children not at school, strengthens multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and assigns a unique identifier for each child. I say that because children’s protection is absolutely critical.

If the Conservative party, in tabling its amendment, were serious about protecting endangered life and tackling the criminal gangs that threaten children’s safety and undermine our border security, why did it do so little during its time in office and why did it not vote for the Bill? It proposed an amendment with the express intention of killing the Bill—as we saw in the Chamber, its Whips were begging Reform MPs to back the amendment that would have killed it off. I saw that with my own eyes.

This Government have increased deportations, returns and removals, which are at the highest rate for six years. We are cutting the cost of the asylum system. I beg the Conservative party and its allies in Reform to get serious about protecting our borders and protecting children and to stop blocking progress.

[Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)]

I have some comments on the amendments. I will start with amendment 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. I have watched the first episode of “The Chief”, which I enjoyed and gave me some insights into the outlook—perhaps even the ambitions—of the hon. Gentleman, which were very much to my liking. Although I have enjoyed lots of the contributions you have made with such huge passion, and indeed compassion for the people you refer to, my concern is about the unintended consequences of your amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

I thank Members for their considered contributions. Effective international partnerships can be useful, but I would not want to deny anyone the right to scrutinise a partner on Twitter, particularly one to whom we pay so much money. The previous Government were right to toughen up on sentences for the worst offences. They were right to restrict prisoner release during the pandemic. That put pressure on the prison system, and that that is why the previous Government were also right to undertake the biggest prison building programme since the Victorian era. I realise that the Labour party did not agree, but it was right that the previous Government used the Nationality and Borders Act to increase the penalty for people smugglers to a life sentence.

[Tom Hayes]

I was going to allow that statement to go by, because lunch is near and I am quite hungry, but I am hungrier still for the truth. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept the validity of independent assessments of our prison system—the system that this Labour Government inherited—as near to collapse? For him to claim otherwise is farcical, and I hope he will withdraw that.

[Matt Vickers]

I repeat exactly what I said: the previous Government were right to toughen up those sentences and make those who are guilty of some of the worst offences stay longer in prison. They were right not to release people during the pandemic, and therefore they were right to have the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorian era; that is a fact. It was also right that the previous Government used the Nationality and Borders Act to create life sentences for people smugglers. The vile criminals who profit from the peril of others deserve nothing less. That is why it is right to increase the sentence for this offence, as set out in amendments 15 and 16, to deter people from engaging in this awful, vile and inhumane trade. I will press amendments 17, 15 and 16 to a vote—

[Tom Hayes]

Just before the hon. Gentleman does so, there was a question about why the proposed sentence length of 14 years was hit on. I wonder whether he might wish to illuminate us.

[Matt Vickers]

As I said in my opening remarks, that has to be a deterrent. This is a damp squib Bill. If people come to this country illegally—if they break in—there should be real consequences. If they put other people’s lives at risk, there should be real consequences. I think we have proposed the right sentence, and Committee Members can now have their say on it.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Sixth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 6th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Clauses 30 and 31 concern the sharing of trailer registration information. Clause 30 creates a clear discretionary power for the Transport Secretary and, in practice, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to share some or all of the trailer registration information they hold with the Home Office, for specified purposes related to border security and law enforcement; the National Crime Agency and HMRC, for use in connection with their statutory functions; policing bodies, for purposes of policing law enforcement and safeguarding national security; and specified persons in the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar for purposes equivalent to their UK counterparts.

The measure is designed in recognition of the limited timeframes that law enforcement bodies have to review information and take decisions when risk-assessing thousands of lorry movements into the UK each day to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute crime, and to conduct checks at the roadside. Border Force intends to use this information, alongside customs information and other information it holds, to develop a richer picture of vehicle movements and enable timely interventions. For the police, the National Crime Agency, HMRC and recipients in the Crown dependencies and Gibraltar, the value of the information will be realised via the law enforcement data service, which will provide it on demand at the point of need.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I am sure that if we cast our minds back to 2019, we will all remember the awful case where 39 Vietnamese migrants died in the back of a trailer in Essex. Reading reports of what people found when they opened the lorry, and hearing about people dying in excruciatingly painful ways, makes us all realise that everything we are doing is about trying to stop harm to vulnerable people and save lives. Does my hon. Friend agree that this group of clauses will make it easier for data held by DVLA on UK-registered trailers to be shared with our law enforcement and police, and that as a consequence we might be able to avoid more misery and loss of life in such excruciating circumstances?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. That is at the higher end of the harms that one would hope could be prevented by more timely access to this kind of information. These clauses will ensure that those charged with securing the border and beyond can use the information in line with the range of threat types enabled by cross-border lorry movements such as the one my hon. Friend just mentioned, to ensure that the law enforcement community engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, and wider serious and organised crime, are able to tackle it at pace.

Clause 31 complements clause 30 by setting out how information received by the Home Office and the police may be disclosed onwards, with whom and for what purposes. Robust inter-agency and international co-operation is crucial to smashing the criminal gangs. Border Force routinely works with the National Crime Agency and the police for the purposes of criminal investigations connected with the smuggling of people and illicit goods, and with HMRC for customs purposes.

The police, in turn, need to be able to alert law enforcement partners to identify specific trailers of interest. Border Force and the police also need to be able to alert European law enforcement partners to intercept trailers where there might be a threat to life and in support of cross-border co-operation against illicit goods. This clause, subject to safeguards contained in clause 32, enables just such an outcome to be achieved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Working out the potential for electronic borders and a more sophisticated approach to the hundreds of millions of journeys that cross our borders every year is an important part of the day job of my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston. This is a more limited clause, but we are certainly investigating the potential, costs and benefits of a much more digitalised border. We are not about to introduce that through this Bill, but there will be more to be said when that work has been done in due course.

We understand the potential for making border crossings much more convenient for everybody while having more robust information about who has crossed borders, and when and where they were crossed. Some of this is about goods, trailers and a range of other things crossing borders, and ensuring that we have information on when people smugglers and clandestines cross borders, too.

[Tom Hayes]

I note that clause 34(3) sets out the requirement for an authorised person only to take biometric information from a child under the age of 16

“in the presence of a person aged 18 or over who is—

(a) the child’s parent or guardian, or

(b) a person who for the time being takes responsibility for the child.”

Does the Minister agree that we ought not to disapply the requirement for consent on such tests for children who are under the age of 16?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is important that we uphold standards and have those requirements, which is why the clauses we are debating do that. These clauses deal with the need, in an emergency situation, to evacuate people who are British citizens and/or people who live in families that include British citizens. It is about being able to get them to safety but, at the same time, to collect biometric information so that we can check who they are. It is much more effective for us to do that at the earliest opportunity rather than getting them to the UK or on UK territory and having to do it then. That is why the clauses will put us in a much better situation from the point of view of identity and security checks, if there is an emergency evacuation of British nationals from a particular place in the future, which we hope will not happen.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 34 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 35 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 36

Provision of biometric information at ports in Scotland

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Seventh sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

Clause 37 repeals the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. In doing so, the Government are removing the only deterrent, and indeed the only place where we can send people who have arrived from a safe third country. It is well established that it is extremely difficult to return people to some countries. In addition, the lack of documentation can frustrate the process of removal to someone’s home country. That is why a third country deterrent is needed: if people cannot be removed to their home country, they can and will be removed to a third country.

The logical consequence of repealing the Safety of Rwanda Act is that a greater number of migrants will arrive from countries that are harder to return them to. Without some form of agreement to send the migrants to a safe country, they will continue to come and to stay. Section 80AA of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 contains a list of safe countries, but the list is limited to countries that contribute very few illegal migrants, save for Albania. The last Conservative Government cut the number of Albanian illegal migrants coming to the UK by small boat crossings by over 90%, showing that our returns agreement with Albania worked. As the former director general of Border Force said:

“If we cannot send them back, we could send them to another safe country—ergo, Rwanda—where they could be resettled safely without adding to the continuing flow of arrivals by small boat from France.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 41, Q43.]

Channel boat crossings are up 28% since the election, with more than 1,300 people crossing in the week commencing 1 March 2025. This Labour Government have smashed farmers, small business owners and pensioners, but it seems that the people-smuggling gangs are the only ones who are safe. The only thing that will stop the gangs is a strong deterrent that means that people do not board small boats because they know that they will be deported if they reach the UK, and they will not be allowed to stay.

The additional offences and powers in this Bill are welcome as far as they go, but, with the scrapping of the Conservatives’ deterrent—that if someone has no right to be in this country, they will not be able to stay—this Bill is just window dressing. It will not, and cannot, stop people crossing the channel in small boats. The Government know that, because their own impact assessment shows that only a handful of people each year would be imprisoned because of the new offences created by this Bill.

Since the announcement that our deterrent would be scrapped, there are almost 8,500 more people in asylum hotels. That is the Government’s failure.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I was trying to count the number of times the hon. Member used the word “deterrent”, and I ran out of fingers. Could he please define what a deterrent is?

[Matt Vickers]

Does the hon. Gentleman want me to use my fingers to help him to count? The deterrent is preventing people from getting in those boats. If people know that they will be detained and removed when they arrive in this country, they will stop coming.

[Matt Vickers]

Does the hon. Gentleman know what has happened with global migration? If we compare the movements that have been made in the last week, those into Europe and those into this country seem to be slightly misaligned. The number of people arriving in this country is up 28%. The number of people put into hotels in communities across this country is up 29%; that is 8,500 more people. The number of people who have arrived in this country illegally and been removed is down significantly since this Government came to office.

It is clear that a new approach is needed. The National Crime Agency said that stopping channel migrants is not possible without a Rwanda-style scheme. It was a terrible mistake for Labour to cancel our deterrent before it had even started. The Labour Government like to point out the cost of the Rwanda plan, but a deterrent that stops illegal migrants from making the crossing and settling in the country will save the state billions in lifetime costs.

As Karl Williams from the Centre for Policy Studies pointed out,

“the Office for Budget Responsibility’s analysis last summer…estimates that a low-skilled migrant, or low-wage migrant as the OBR puts it, will represent a lifetime net fiscal cost to the taxpayer of around £600,000.”

Williams then pointed to

“analysis from Denmark, the Netherlands and other European countries that asylum seekers’ lifetime fiscal costs tend to be steeper than that” ––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 43, Q49.]

The evidence therefore suggests that if 35,000 people cross the channel a year—that is roughly where we were last year—at that sort of cost range, the lifetime costs will probably be £50 billion or £60 billion.

[Tom Hayes]

I ask the hon. Member to desist from referring to that report. In oral evidence, I asked two experts whether they thought it was possible to make such assessments on the basis of the available evidence, and they declined. In fact, the author of that report said that the available evidence was fairly lacking in robustness and integrity. When I asked him whether he had considered certain key counterfactuals, he admitted that he had not. Later, in response to my question about whether it was appropriate for MPs to brandish such research, Professor Brian Bell said that it would be “foolhardy” to do so because the report itself made “very brave” assumptions.

Will the hon. Member now desist from using that report, given that we are in a democracy, we are striving for accountability and truth, and we should not be using fake information?

[The Chair]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[Tom Hayes]

I apologise, Mr Stuart.

[Matt Vickers]

I will not desist from using those figures, but I would be happy to hear the hon. Member’s alternative figures when the time comes. I am sure this is not cost-neutral; I am sure it is very expensive.

As I was saying, that is why an effective removals and deterrent agreement is needed. I ask the Minister whether the Government are looking at a removals and deterrent agreement. If not, why are they repealing the UK’s only deterrent? How does she think we can control our borders without one, when it is clear that this Bill will not be effective in doing so? Does she agree with the National Crime Agency that a removals agreement is the only way to stop channel migrants, as happened with Operation Sovereign Borders in Australia?

The Government say that they are clearing the backlog and returning people who arrived on small boats. That is just not the case. The most recent immigration figures show that the asylum backlog is higher than when Labour came into office, and returns of small boat arrivals were down again in the most recent quarter, with only 4% of arrivals being removed. In fact, of the total returns between October and December 2024, only 16% were enforced; in the three months before, only 13% were. Does the Minister think that allowing 96% of illegal immigrants who arrive by small boat to stay in the UK is a deterrent?

[Tom Hayes]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, and I promise that I will be briefer. Does the hon. Member agree that the overwhelming trend under the last Conservative Government in the balance between enforced and voluntary returns was in favour of voluntary returns? In fact, in 2023, only 24% of returns were enforced, in 2022, 25% were and in 2021, 27% were. Does he not agree that the trend over the last years has been one of voluntary returns?

[Matt Vickers]

I would say that the big issue around deterrence is how many of those who arrive in small boats are removed. Despite the fact that the number of those arriving illegally is up 28%, the number who are being returned is down significantly. That is the big question at play here.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the hon. Member for his patience. Does he agree that he is moving the goalposts slightly to manufacture a political argument that, as he knows, would not be supported by the evidence available? Furthermore, will he look back into history at the record of the last Labour Government? I invite him to comment on their success—I know that he will want to jump at that. In 2004, 85% of people reaching our country were removed through enforced returns; in 2005, 73% were. Where there was a trend of enforced returns, it was actually under the last Labour Government.

[Matt Vickers]

In terms of the political arguments, what people out there want to see is the number of people arriving illegally in this country going down. They are not seeing that; it is up 28%. They want to see the number of hotels in communities across the country going down. It is not, although it was. The number of people arriving was also going down, but it is now up 28%, and there are 8,500 more people in hotels. That is the reality of the situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Mullane (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

Good morning, Mr Stuart. It was interesting to hear from the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire that he considered the Rwanda scheme a crackpot scheme. Another opinion is that it was “un-Conservative and un-British”—the opinion of John Major, the former Conservative Prime Minister. We have to acknowledge that the basic principle of this Bill is to address the failures of past legislation. Indeed, the Minister explained during an earlier debate that it is not possible to make the suite of legislation involved in the Safety of Rwanda Act and the Illegal Migration Act work together coherently. Not to repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act would undermine confidence in the credibility of the Bill. We are moving away from reliance on expensive gimmicks, hotel use, the flaw that is the Rwanda Act, with its price tag of £700 million of taxpayers’ money, and failure to effectively process the people arriving on our shores. Do we really believe that clinging to a piece of dead legislation is the way to protect our borders and put the safety of our country in focus and at the front?

[Tom Hayes]

May I start by saying that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stuart? I am particularly enjoying the opportunity to have these debates in a free-flowing way—while sticking to parliamentary etiquette, obviously.

I commend the hon. Member for Stockton West, with whom I have some sympathy. He has been sent here to defend the impossible. I half wondered, when he came in wearing that fetching yellow tie, which I slightly covet, whether he had come to hold his hands in the air, make an apology and perhaps stand on the side of classical liberalism, but no: he stood true to the 2024 manifesto on which he was elected. I hope that in addressing how he would define a deterrent, I will add something new. When I asked him for a definition, he said that a deterrent would prevent people from coming and that it would do so by detaining and removing them. I shall make a case that challenges his assumptions on that basis.

A deterrent is a strategy aimed at preventing external actors, targets and adversaries in the military sense from taking unwanted actions. For the Rwanda asylum policy to be a deterrent, the Conservative Government would have needed to achieve certain things: to maintain the capabilities required to deter and be highly resolved to deploy them—as the hon. Member said, to be able to detain and remove—and to effectively communicate their resolve to act. In any communication, one needs to be understood to be highly resolved and capable of following through.

For the Rwanda asylum policy to be a deterrent, the Government would have needed to persuade potential migrants of their capabilities and resolve to send them to Rwanda to process their claims after they had illegally entered the country, and to have stopped migrants from paying significant sums of money to smuggler gangs facilitating illegal migration. In short, from what the hon. Member said, it feels as though the principal target of deterrents was migrants. The Rwanda asylum policy was always doomed to fail on those key conditions, because it was not able to achieve detention or removal.

On detention, Professor Brian Bell, the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, told us that the numbers given by the Government

“are certainly not consistent with a story of a very significant deterrent effect from the Rwanda Act.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 56, Q84.]

Dr Peter Walsh of the Migration Observatory cited concerns about

“where people would be detained”,––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 14, Q13.]

as the UK immigration detention system had capacity for only 2,200 people, with roughly 400 spaces free. Moreover, he said that Rwanda would struggle to process more than “a few hundred” asylum claims a year.

That takes me to the question of removal.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend realise that the detention estate was used by the Conservative party to empty some prison places and try to relieve pressure there? I think it highly unlikely that there would be even 400 spaces.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important reminder that when the Labour Government took office after our historic win, we inherited an awful mess in our prison system, which was described by independent experts and organisations as near to collapse—so near that there were just a few hundred spaces left at a time when the country was rioting.

[Chris Murray]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that under the previous Government, the Home Office tried to secure additional detention estate for asylum seekers but catastrophically failed to do so? For example, at Northeye, they spent hundreds of millions of pounds to secure the site—far more than the previous owners had paid—yet found that it had contaminated ground and could not be used, and the Bibby Stockholm in Dover closed very swiftly after opening.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank my hon. Friend for those important points. In fact, the Bibby Stockholm was moored just off a place near my constituency in Dorset. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for campaigning so quickly and efficiently to have the Bibby Stockholm closed, and I thank the Government for responding so constructively to that request. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh about how we have seen significant challenges to the state’s ability to detain. As a consequence, in one of the two conditions set out by the hon. Member for Stockton West for an effective deterrent, it is clear that the Conservative Government failed.

For the next component of an effective deterrent—removal—we need only look at the ultimate proof: who went to Rwanda? What deportations actually happened? I can anticipate some of the ways that the Conservatives may challenge that, so I would like to take them on. First, they may blame this Labour Government for cancelling the policy, without also saying that the Conservative party controlled the timing of a general election that they seemed certain to lose. That they believed they were certain to lose is perhaps why they called the election before they could begin deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. In fact, the first flight was set to take off on 24 July. If the Conservatives had delayed the Dissolution of Parliament by just 20 days, to 19 June rather than 30 May, the first planes could have taken off.

The last Prime Minister could have waited out those 20 days, if he did not have anything else to do. With a zombie Government that were not showing any ambition, if he had wanted to show ambition, he could have spent a nice 20 days watching all 90 hours of the TV show “Lost”. If he wanted to go at a more leisurely pace—and the Conservatives were excelling at going at a leisurely pace—rather than binge watching something, he could have watched all 30 hours of the TV show “Stranger Things”. Instead—and this is where the “ba-dum” comes in—the Government manifested signs of being lost, and the last Conservative Cabinet just comprised stranger things.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Elegant.

[Tom Hayes]

I thought I would to and find a moment of humour in the dispiriting debate on this topic.

The Conservatives may progress to blaming successful legal and judicial challenges to the policy. The Rwanda policy was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal said, unlawful and deemed to be so by the courts. If they do, His Majesty’s Opposition should confirm whether they respect the independence of our judiciary in adjudicating such challenges on the one hand, and respect the international human rights laws, under which challenges were made and were successful, on the other. That is important, because one of the hallmarks of the new Government is to be lawful and to respect our judiciary. We need to embrace that change. The Opposition could also reflect on the probability of further legal challenges being undertaken because of the human rights concerns about Rwanda, which my hon. Friend highlighted so effectively.

Last, the Conservatives may want to blame political challenges for undermining the credibility of their Rwanda asylum policy. In a democracy, it is of course right that Members of Parliament raise concerns on behalf of their constituents—indeed, that is what we have been doing—but the Conservatives overcame those political constraints by passing the Safety of Rwanda Act to address judicial concerns, and they signed a legally binding agreement with Rwanda. So the idea that the deterrent was not able to function because of legal or political challenges is actually farcical, because the previous Government held the cards in their hands.

I have heard it said that the Conservatives could have followed the Australian asylum policy, which has been described as a successful model—perhaps it even inspired the Rwanda asylum policy—but there is good reason to believe that UK could not have achieved the deterrent effects of the Australian offshore asylum processing model. Indeed, Professor Brian Bill, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, said in oral evidence that it was inappropriate to draw comparisons between the Rwanda scheme and the Australian policies.

Were we to be generous and accept the view of the hon. Member for Weald of Kent that the Australian policy stood out in the world as being successful, there would be challenges to assessing the efficacy of that policy. As the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, an expert and independent institution, has said, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the Australian offshoring policy was the reason for a drop in numbers of people going to Australia. Put bluntly, if migrants were paying attention to the last Government’s policy, they had no reason to believe that they would be barred from staying in the UK.

That takes me to my third and final definition of what would make an effective deterrent. Yes, the state must be understood to be highly resolved to deter, detain and remove, and capable of doing so, but it takes two to tango. Britain can only be understood if asylum seekers are able to understand, which in turn depends on several key factors. It means migrants being able to do at least three things: to pay close attention to the last Government’s actions—I struggled to do that, so I cannot see how asylum seekers would—to stay fully informed about the many twists and turns in the Safety of Rwanda Act asylum policy, which again I struggled to stay abreast of, and to behave as rational actors who weigh up the costs and benefits of action.

We have heard in testimony and oral evidence that migrants are typically unaware of Government policy and actions, because they are too busy being asylum seekers and migrants. Moreover, it can be said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the chaotic and difficult circumstances that they are forced to inhabit prevent them from being the rational actors that they would otherwise be, calmly and objectively assessing the trade-offs between the perceived costs of illegal entry, the probability of those being incurred, and whether those are outweighed by the potential benefits of migration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)]

Clause 38 repeals sections 1 to 6 and schedule 1, sections 7 to 11, sections 13 to 15 and schedule 2, sections 16 to 28, sections 30 to 5, sections 53 to 58, section 61 and section 66 of the Illegal Migration Act.

Section 2 of the Illegal Migration Act placed a duty on the Home Secretary to make arrangements to remove persons to their home country or a safe third country who have entered or arrived in the UK illegally. Let me point out to those people who are concerned about genuine asylum seekers that section 2(4) of the IMA makes it clear that the provision does not apply if someone comes directly from a place of danger, which is consistent with article 33 of the 1951 refugee convention. However, people who come here directly from France, a safe country where no one is being persecuted and which has a perfectly well-functioning asylum system, should not illegally enter the United Kingdom.

I ask the Minister why the Government are repealing this duty. Is it because they do not think they are able to remove those who have arrived illegally? Is it because the Government think people who arrive in this country illegally should be allowed to remain?

Section 5 of the Illegal Migration Act provides that asylum claims are automatically deemed inadmissible for those who have arrived illegally. One of Labour’s first actions in government was to allow illegal migrants to claim asylum. Can the Minister explain how allowing illegal migrants to claim asylum is providing any deterrent? Surely it will help the smuggling gangs, by providing a stronger incentive for people to make those dangerous crossings of the Channel in small boats.

[Tom Hayes]

The Illegal Migration Act, which we are discussing under this clause, was put on the statute book by the previous Government, but they did not commence much of it at all. Can the hon. Member explain why that was?

[Matt Vickers]

There is a lot to do in the way of commencement; the Bill is there and could be commenced at any time, if the Government felt it was of help. In fact, in a few years’ time, when they come back to the drawing board to try to find a deterrent, they might well want to do that.

Sections 31 and 32 of the Illegal Migration Act prevented people who have entered the country illegally from obtaining British citizenship. The Labour Government are repealing this provision. Their position is hardly surprising when the Prime Minister does not think that British citizenship is a pull factor, but that does not mean it is the right thing to do. Why are the Government repealing this clause, allowing illegal migrants to get British citizenship?

Do the Government not believe that British citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, especially for those who have entered the country illegally? If so, why have the Government not included measures to stop illegal migrants obtaining British citizenship, and instead only issued guidance stating that

“applications made after 10 February 2025 that include illegal entry will ‘normally’ be refused citizenship, regardless of when the illegal entry occurred.”?

Section 58 of the Illegal Migration Act states:

“The Secretary of State may make regulations about the effect of a decision by a relevant person (“P”) not to consent to the use of a specified scientific method for the purposes of an age assessment…where there are no reasonable grounds for P’s decision.”

This means that, if a migrant refused to undergo an age assessment, they would be considered an adult. Labour have removed age assessments for illegal migrants who claim to be under 18, resulting in the risk that grown men may end up in schools with teenage girls. In fact, the most recent data on age disputes shows that more than 50% of migrants claiming to be under 18 were actually adults. How do the Government therefore intend to ensure that migrants claiming to be under 18 actually undergo age assessments, and why is that not included in the Bill?

The SNP’s new clause 2 would repeal the Illegal Migration Act entirely, so the SNP must be agreeing with the Labour Government that illegal migrants should be able to get British citizenship and should not have to undergo age assessments. Therefore, I ask the same questions: does the SNP not believe that British citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, especially for those who have entered the country illegally? How would the SNP ensure that migrants claiming to be under 18 actually undergo age assessments, and why is that not included in new clause 2?

By repealing the Illegal Migration Act in its entirety, the SNP want to stop the seizure of mobile phones from illegal migrants, something that helps to establish identities and obtain evidence of immigration offences. As Tony Smith said:

“Passport data, identity data, age data and travel history data are often held on those phones—all data that would be useful when considering an asylum application.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 40, Q43.]

The Liberal Democrats’ amendment 9 would have repealed section 29 of the Illegal Migration Act, which requires the Secretary of State to remove people who have sought to use modern slavery protections in bad faith. Do the Liberal Democrats think that people using modern slavery protections fraudulently should be allowed to stay in the UK? If so, do they believe that people who make fraudulent immigration claims should be allowed to stay in the UK? We believe that the effect of repealing the majority of the IMA and the entirety of the Safety of Rwanda Act will be an increase in the number of people arriving in this country illegally and remaining.

I have therefore asked the Government whether they would be prepared to be transparent about the numbers. If they are convinced that the approach set out in the Bill will be successful, let us measure it. Will the Minister commit to publishing all the numbers, and the nationalities, of all those who might have been excluded from the UK asylum system on grounds of connection with a safe third country or a late claim, but have not been—with reasons why not—and to setting out the obstacles to returning them to their country of origin and what steps are being taken through international agreements to overcome that, as recommended by Tony Smith in evidence to this Committee? We will oppose the inclusion of this clause in the Bill by way of a Division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Murray]

Like the Safety of Rwanda Act clause, this clause is an inevitability, because it was clear from the outset that these sections of the Illegal Migration Act were never going to work. I know that the Conservatives tend to think that everybody who works in the migration sector set out to thwart their plans at every turn, but that is not the case. I was working for the strategic migration partnership in Scotland when the Illegal Migration Bill was introduced two years ago. I remember sitting down with local authorities, the police and other key stakeholders to look at the legislation, and all of us collectively said, “How is this going to work? This is never going to be feasible in reality.”

I draw people’s attention to one component of the Act that is being repealed, which brings its failure to the fore. The IMA placed on the Home Secretary a duty to remove that applied to all asylum seekers regardless of their case. For anyone under 18, the duty to remove kicked in at the age of 18, but when we were working with local authorities, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children came across and sought asylum in this country. These children are among the most vulnerable people in the world. They have lost their loved ones, they are on their own and they are in a strange country. In the UK, we have a national transfer scheme to disperse them around different local authorities. I worked with the officers who were trying to help those children to get themselves together after a really traumatic experience.

The Illegal Migration Act meant that, at the age of 18, in theory those people would be eligible for immediate removal. What does the Committee think that did to those children in terms of their attempts to secure any services, learn English or get any education? It made it impossible for them and it had a direct impact: they did not leave the country, but they disappeared. Some of them are probably out there being exploited right now, as a direct consequence of clauses in the Illegal Migration Act. The Act did not just put those children at risk; it put incredible pressure on overstretched local services around the country. For the previous Government to set out to use immigration legislation to put further pressure on overstretched local services was only going to have negative consequences in communities, and it should never have happened.

More broadly, the duty to remove, which this clause repeals, essentially shut down the asylum system and created what IPPR has called a “perma-backlog”. We have talked about deterrents and incentives, but I do not see any greater incentive for someone seeking to exploit the asylum system in this country than shutting it down overall, which is what that duty to remove did. It created a vicious circle, which frankly was bad for asylum seekers themselves, because genuine refugees had to spend years in hotel accommodation, which is not a particularly nice thing to do, and for the taxpayer in the UK, because costs soared from £18,000 per asylum seeker per year in 2019 to £47,000 in 2024. It was also bad for communities, because people could not be moved through that process, which clearly put pressure on an already febrile immigration situation. It is good that we are repealing this duty; as I said, it was inevitable, because it was never going to work.

Finally, I understand the points that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire made about human trafficking. It is really important that we offer the victims of modern slavery proper protections, especially when they are forced to commit crimes in the course of being trafficked. This legislation does not completely take that power away, but again, I have to draw on my experience of the last couple of years. There was an increase in the number of exploiters—those who were perpetrators of trafficking—using the trafficking system to evade prosecution. I worked closely with Police Scotland and the Crown Office, including in the Perth and Kinross council area. We saw, particularly in the Vietnamese community, the growth of that development.

We must not see the world in black and white. I am by no means saying that every victim of trafficking is somehow an imposter and we must stop them getting any protection, but it is happening, so it is proper that we keep the clauses in place so that we can tackle that. If we do not have that component, the system will break down. Just as we saw with the asylum system, if we do not have clauses to make the system functional, it will break down and everybody loses.

[Tom Hayes]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, who, in an outstanding speech, set out the major challenges with the Illegal Migration Act, part of which will be repealed.

I want to knock on the head four things that were said by the hon. Member for Stockton West. The first was in reference to section 23 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. That provision, which the Opposition have talked about, was never implemented by the last Government, so in effect he is opposing a repeal of something that his last Government never started. That feels to me like the worst kind of politics. Between the Royal Assent given to that legislation and the Dissolution of Parliament, 315 days passed, yet no effort was made to implement that provision.

Secondly, sections 9 and 10 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 were, as we have heard, unworkable. They allow people to arrive, claim asylum in the UK, get support, and be put up in a hotel, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh described, will often be in the some of the most dire conditions that somebody can go through after fleeing some of the worst experiences that people can have, be it trauma, famine, disease or poverty—the list goes on. Applications were not processed, so people were not able to leave their hotel. The consequence of that is not just an expensive asylum backlog, but people living with serious psychological scarring for a significant amount of time.

That brings me to my third point. I will talk more about this when we reach new clause 26, which relates to scientific age assessments, but I really do not know how the Conservative party can talk about the welfare and protection of children when we heard oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner about children who were subject to, and vulnerable to, organ harvesting, rape, sexual assault and disappearance from hotels and into wider society, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, they are likely to continue to be abused, exploited and victimised. I will make those points when we reach that debate.

Lastly, on the point about France, I wish the Conservative party would stop throwing stones at one of nearest neighbours and most important strategic allies, particularly when we are in such a volatile international climate. It is really important that we properly scrutinise legislation, but do not indulge in the petty politics that defined the last Conservative Government, disrupted so many of our international relations, and actually made us less secure.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

This has been a small but perfectly formed debate on clause 38, which repeals all but six sections of the Illegal Migration Act. As Government Members have pointed out, despite the amount of time that has lapsed since the Act got on the statute book, the vast majority of its provisions have never been commenced. In fact, we had to commence one tiny bit of it so that we could restart asylum processing; that is probably the most it ever had any effect.

Let us be clear: the Illegal Migration Act meant that thousands of asylum claims were put on hold, because of the duty to remove, increasing the backlog, putting incredible pressure on the asylum accommodation system and creating what has been called the “perma-backlog”. We all know what that was, and how big it was when we came into Government. The Act has largely not been commenced, nor will it be under this Government. We need to sort out the chaos created by the unworkable and contradictory provisions in the Act. Despite the bravado of the hon. Member for Stockton West in his earlier contribution, I suspect that most Conservative Ministers knew that the Act was unworkable, because it was not commenced when they had the ministerial capacity and power to do so for all the time between when it was put on the statute book and when we formed a new Government a year later.

The system had been left in chaos but, were the Government to accept new clause 2 and simply repeal the entire Act, it would lead to a missed opportunity to improve our immigration system. I will go through some of that with the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. Clause 38 will repeal section 2 of the 2023 Act, which provides for the duty to remove. The Government are committed to ending the migration and economic partnership with Rwanda, so section 2 will be repealed to deliver that by repealing the duty to remove and associated provisions.

On sections 22 to 28 of the Illegal Migration Act, we are not retaining the vast majority of modern slavery provisions in the Act because they are connected to the duty to remove irregular migrants. These sections were never commenced and provided that where a duty to remove was applied for an individual, that individual should be disqualified from the national referral mechanism unless certain limited exemptions applied. We are removing sections 30 to 37 relating to permanent bans on entry, settlement and citizenship, which, while held up as a success by others, were unenforced and unworkable. Sections 57 and 58 of the Act are also repealed. They relate to age assessments, but both sections are unworkable and irrelevant without the duty to remove.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eighth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dame Siobhain. I want to dwell briefly on clause 43 because it embodies a significant theme in the Bill: preparing our country for the challenges we face today and those we will face to a greater extent in the future. In that context, it is so important to talk about the risk posed to our country’s security by 3D-printed firearms.

I commend the campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who has done an enormous amount of work on this issue. 3D-printed firearms are a serious threat to our security, and present a new challenge to law enforcement because they can easily be made at home and are untraceable and undetectable. Indeed, files containing IKEA-like step-by-step guides to 3D print firearms at home can be downloaded from the web in as little as three clicks. That is terrifying. If we can tackle that through the Bill, that feels like a significant contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katie Lam]

Clause 48 details who can apply to make orders and interim orders, and it replaces and extends the previous list in section 8 of the Serious Crime Act 2007. Can the Minister please explain how long an application for an interim serious crime prevention order might take when made to either the High Court or the Crown court?

[Tom Hayes]

I want to reflect on where we have got up to. We have moved through the clauses at quite a pace, and that is very pleasing to see. The Bill responds to the requests of operationally and frontline-focused people in law enforcement and border security, and it is an attempt to give them the tools and powers that they need. I particularly wanted to mention that in the context of interim serious crime prevention orders, which we have spoken about in clauses 47 and 48.

That cuts such a sharp contrast with what has happened over recent years. In 2022, one Home Secretary introduced the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. At the time, the Government said that that would deter people from crossing in small boats, but it did not. In 2023, another Home Secretary brought in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. At the time, the Government said that that would turn people away from crossing the channel in small boats, but it did not. In 2024, another Home Secretary brought in the Safety of Rwanda Act, which happily we have just repealed today. At the time, the Government talked about the prospect of sending people to Rwanda, and they said that alone would be sufficient to deter people from crossing the channel in small boats. It is no wonder that that failed, too.

I wanted to set out how in 2022, 2023 and 2024 we had three separate Acts, which all aimed to do something and failed to do so. They have not delivered what operationally focused people have requested. We really need to look at how, just eight months into this new Government, we are turning the page on our asylum system and giving enforcement powers to the people who need them. We are also tidying up the statute book and ensuring greater co-ordination across the key agencies that can secure our border. I commend clause 48 to the Committee, as I do the series of clauses before it and the Bill overall.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The idea behind the creation of interim serious crime prevention orders is to ensure that they can be brought into use ahead of a longer lasting serious crime prevention order. The widening of the range of organisations that can apply for them is designed to empower organisations such as the National Crime Agency, HMRC and the MOD police to apply, because they are much closer to the evidence that could enable the disruption of a particular serious organised crime group.

The hon. Member for Weald of Kent asked how long it would take to get such an order, and that would vary from case to case. It depends on the evidence. As I pointed out in relation to the previous clause, this is about the High Court reviewing the papers. It is not about a trial or a pre-trial; it is just about issuing an order that will prevent something that might cause damage from happening. We think that the changes made by the clauses that we have just debated, up to and including clause 48, make it more likely that serious and organised crime orders will be used and will be effective.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 48 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 49

Notification requirements

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Ninth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Seema Malhotra]

I will just make this point first. In a sense, the new clause will have a very limited impact on access to benefits for those with pre-settled status, or limited leave, under the EUSS. To access income-related benefits such as universal credit, they would be required to evidence relevant qualifying activity, such as current or recent employment or self-employment. Those with settled status, or indefinite leave, under the EUSS already have full access to benefits where eligible.

On the question asked by the hon. Member for Weald of Kent, I know there is broader research, and there is some data but not other data, and there are different estimates, but I am sure that she will know and appreciate that the vast majority will be working. Her question is also relevant to a more general question about those who are here and have settled status: how many are working? We know that there is different research, but the vast majority are self-sufficient.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I refer the Committee back to the oral evidence that we heard at the very start of our work. Experts were asked whether they felt that the available immigration data, which could have been improved over 14 years, was robust enough for making strong assertions. Time and again, we heard from experts that it is very hard to make assessments about the net benefit or net cost of immigration flows into our country. Do the Government intend to work alongside the Migration Advisory Committee to improve the quality of immigration data so that we can make such assessments on a more robust footing?

[Seema Malhotra]

Indeed, it is important to have data that can inform policymaking and public debate. This is a separate matter to the one of those who come to work, settle and contribute to our economy and society, which I know we all want to see—that is indeed what we see in our constituencies—but it is also important that those who come through humanitarian routes are supported to access employability skills and employment, so that they can support themselves and their families. It is important that we look at how joined-up we are and to what extent that support is in place.

Amendment 22 agreed to.

Amendments made: 23, in clause 55, page 56, line 29, after “to” insert

“any of the Channel Islands or”.

This amendment enables certain provisions of the Bill to be extended by Order in Council to any of the Channel Islands.

Amendment 24, in clause 55, page 56, line 31, after second “to” insert

“any of the Channel Islands or”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)

This amendment enables certain amendments and repeals by the Bill to be extended by Order in Council to any of the Channel Islands.

Clause 55, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 56

Commencement

Amendment made: 25, in clause 56, page 57, line 15, after “35” insert

“, (EU Settlement Scheme: rights of entry and residence etc)”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)

This amendment to the commencement clause has the effect of bringing NC31 into force 2 months after Royal Assent.

Clause 56, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 57 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause 30

Conditions on limited leave to enter or remain and immigration bail

“(1) The Immigration Act 1971 is amended in accordance with subsections (2) and (3).

(2) In section 3(1)(c) (conditions which may be applied to limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom)—

(a) omit the ‘and’ at the end of sub-paragraph (iv), and

(b) at the end of sub-paragraph (v) insert—

‘(vi) an electronic monitoring condition (see Schedule 1A);

(vii) a condition requiring the person to be at a particular place between particular times, either on particular days or on any day;

(viii) a condition requiring the person to remain within a particular area;

(ix) a condition prohibiting the person from being in a particular area;

(x) such other conditions as the Secretary of State thinks fit.’

(3) Before Schedule 2 insert—

‘Schedule 1A

Electronic monitoring conditions

1 For the purposes of section 3(1)(c)(vi), an “electronic monitoring condition” means a condition requiring the person on whom it is imposed (“P”) to co-operate with such arrangements as the Secretary of State may specify for detecting and recording by electronic means one or more of the following—

(a) P’s location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place;

(b) P’s presence in a location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place;

(c) P’s absence from a location at specified times, during specified periods of time or while the arrangements are in place.

2 The arrangements may in particular—

(a) require P to wear a device;

(b) require P to make specified use of a device;

(c) require P to communicate in a specified manner and at specified times or during specified periods;

(d) involve the exercise of functions by persons other than the Secretary of State.

3 If the arrangements require P to wear, or make specified use of, a device they must—

(a) prohibit P from causing or permitting damage to, or interference with, the device, and

(b) prohibit P from taking or permitting action that would or might prevent the effective operation of the device.

4 An electronic monitoring condition may not be imposed on a person unless the person is at least 18 years old.

5 In this Schedule “specified” means specified in the arrangements.’

(4) In Schedule 10 to the Immigration Act 2016 (immigration bail), in paragraph 2(1) (conditions of bail), after paragraph (e) insert—

‘(ea) a condition requiring the person to be at a particular place between particular times, either on particular days or on any day;

(eb) a condition requiring the person to remain within a particular area;

(ec) a condition prohibiting the person from being in a particular area;’”.—(Dame Angela Eagle.)

This new clause makes provision about the conditions which can be imposed on a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom or a grant of immigration bail.

Brought up, and read the First time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham and I welcome the new clause. British citizens must be safe, and they need a Government who act to protect them. I believe that the new clause will give them reassurance that we have the ability to impose tight controls and monitoring of an individual if it is deemed necessary by the authorities. We must have legislation that puts the security of our country at the top of the agenda, and the new clause gives the police the powers to impose electronic monitoring, curfews and movement bans on people who are perceived to be a threat when ECHR obligations are protecting them.

[Tom Hayes]

I want to comment briefly on the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. I understand the importance of being sensitive to possible infringements and abuses of international law; indeed, in recent years, we have seen states around the world traducing it. However, I gently say to him—I hope it has not missed his attention—that the Prime Minister is a lawyer and, as a consequence of that background, he is deeply wedded to the law. In most of his speeches and statements, he refers consistently to the importance of the UK being a leader on the world stage by respecting international law.

I say that because the Committee has just repealed the Safety of Rwanda Act, which was deemed unlawful by the courts. We have a Prime Minister who deeply respects international law; around the world, we have states and actors who traduce it. Having a Prime Minister and a country that are so committed to it at this point in history is really important. I gently say to the hon. Member that it is important that we are sensitive to possible infringements of international law, but we ought not to overplay the possibility of it happening here in our country, when all the evidence from the last eight months should give us confidence and hope.

[Matt Vickers]

I would be interested in the Minister’s assessment of the operational utility of the new clause. What impact do the Government expect it to have on lowering the rate of abscondence from immigration bail?

--- Later in debate ---

Increasingly in this Committee, we are trying to anticipate what the Ministers are going to say, and usually I have been pretty good at that. [Interruption.] The Minister for Border Security and Asylum is pointing to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department—I know what she is going to say, because she replied directly to a question I asked about this. They always point to the fact that we have a safe route from Afghanistan but Afghanis still made up the largest group of people who came across the channel the last year. That is a fair point, but one group we never hear about when it comes to this is Ukrainians. We know of only five Ukrainians who have crossed the channel irregularly. That suggests to me that the Ukraine safe route scheme works.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on the statistics that show that around 90% of people crossing the channel are men, and on the fact that men in Ukraine are typically committed to fighting the Russian invasion?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Forster]

I am happy to support new clause 1—in fact, I enthusiastically support it. The challenge of speaking after the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire is that most of the things worth saying have already been said. In the evidence session I highlighted that safe and legal routes are a key part of us tackling the problem. The Ukrainian scheme is a clear example of success, as is the Hong Kong scheme, yet this Government, like the last one, seem reluctant to go down that route.

[Tom Hayes]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh was just saying, that we listen to the refugee voice and think more broadly about what asylum seekers and refugees actually want?

In a previous life, I worked for an international development charity where I led UK campaigning on safe and legal routes. In so doing I took away a major learning, which is that the UK cannot be overwhelmingly the country that receives refugees and asylum seekers via safe and legal routes. That is in part because the UK alone cannot be asked to shoulder such a large responsibility, but also because many asylum seekers and refugees wish to return home and therefore want to be located in a safe country that is nearer to their home country. Is it not right that we think about this in a broader and international sense, rather than assuming that the UK has to always be the country that shoulders the responsibility, when there are other ways that we can support?

[Mr Forster]

I have some sympathy for what the hon. Member says. We talked about listening to the refugee charities. One of the notes that I made of our evidence session is that they criticised the Bill as only being half the story—saying that it tackles the supply but not the demand. They said that we needed an integrated approach, and to them this Bill was not that; it was a blunt instrument. They were sympathetic to some of the Bill, but they said that it will not fully solve the things that we want to solve.

I have sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s point that it might not be a full solution if the UK is the only country to agree safe and legal routes; but we made an agreement with Europe agreed about the Ukrainians. The hon. Member could have tried to amend the new clauses to say that the Government should be working with international partners to introduce safe and legal routes, but it seems that the Government want to dismiss any discussion of safe and legal routes whatsoever, even if working with partners.

[Tom Hayes]

Is it not the case that the Government do not think that primary legislation is the way to secure international negotiation about safe and legal routes? Actually, those conversations will be happening with the Government and partners. In fact, one of the highlights of having a new Government is a reset of our relationship with the European Union, which—in time, once it matures and restores—can help in negotiations for better routes for humanitarian assistance and support. Primary legislation is not needed for everything.

[Mr Forster]

I would really like to hear the Minister confirm that the Government are going to work with international partners to encourage a co-ordinated programme on safe and legal routes. One option, I would hope, is to agree to the new clause, but if the Government will not agree with this version, will they agree to consult on how to introduce safe and legal routes with partners? I am trying to be as moderate and practical as possible. A lot of requests from MPs do not require immediate action, but they do require the Government to consult. Is that something that the Minister would consider?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

That is a very difficult thing to say. We have some rough ideas when it comes to the Ukraine and Afghan schemes. These schemes are really worth while. We have seen them work, because there are no Ukrainians crossing the channel—we have had five individuals. It is absurd and ridiculous to suggest that every single refugee in the world is going to come, but the Government—we passed this in a clause earlier—are putting a cap and a quota on people using these safe routes. They are not interested in opening up and developing these safe routes; they want to stop and put a quota on people using them.

[Tom Hayes]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there is not a binary choice between, on the one hand, safe and legal routes to the UK, and on the other, getting into a death machine boat to reach the UK? Actually, we could have refugees and asylum seekers who travelled through safe and legal routes to other countries.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. I think we are starting to get into territory where there is general agreement. With these amendments, we are asking the Government to look at what more they could do to achieve their clear objective of smashing the gangs. The gangs are successful and will adapt to whatever is put in their way by the Bill. These people know how to work this business. People have said it has only been going five years, but this business is developing at pace. They will amend their business model and practice to adapt to whatever the Government throw at them in the new criminalisation clauses. Their trade will probably get more lucrative as a response, so let us beat them. Let us take them on. Let us really spike their business model by offering an alternative way and means to secure entry to the UK so asylum can be claimed. All we are looking for is an opportunity to develop this and have a conversation.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Tenth sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, and I mean that in two senses. First, they query whether this Government are committed to international human rights, when they have shown time and again that they are, although I understand that concern, given what has gone before. With this situation—where they are trying to prescribe, in primary legislation, the foreign affairs of this Government and the regularity with which they meet international organisations—I wonder too whether they are experiencing some post-traumatic stress disorder, because they know that the previous Conservative Government resorted to sticking two fingers up at our international partners and international agencies. I hope they will withdraw the new clause because they should feel reassured that this Government have a respect for human rights, international law and working with our international partners and agencies.

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I hope you, too, enjoyed a long and languid lunch, Dame Siobhain, after the way in which we overshot this morning’s sitting. This group of new clauses introduces requirements, in primary legislation, for the Secretary of State to put in place arrangements for closer co-operation with Europol, which includes seeking the establishment of a joint task force, providing adequate resources for participation in Europol’s anti-trafficking operations and the publication of an annual report.

Very few of us would quibble with what I suspect is the intended output of such clauses, but I would quibble with the means by which the hon. Member for Woking has decided to try to bring it about. He is putting things into a piece of primary legislation, which cannot be easily changed, moved or shifted about, and that creates more issues and less flexibility than what I am sure he is seeking to achieve.

I suspect that, with these clauses, the hon. Gentleman is using the Bill as a hook on which to hang requirements on the Secretary of State, so as to have a debate about how the Government will co-operate with international law enforcement agencies. I do not think he is really saying that we should be doing that in the quite rigid way that his new clauses suggest. I reassure him that we are doing what I think he wants us to do according to the new clauses, but in a much more flexible way that can be changed very quickly because it is not stuck in a piece of primary legislation. I think we also discussed it on day one in Committee.

The UK has a strong relationship with Europol, including significant permanent presence in the agency’s headquarters in The Hague. UK law enforcement agencies already collaborate with international partners through Europol-supported operations. The allocation of resources to that participation is an operational decision for law enforcement agencies, and certainly not one that should be included in primary legislation. There is regular interaction on both operational and strategic matters between Europol, this Government and the Home Office, including at the most senior levels.

As well as working with Europol, the Home Office will continue to work with a range of international bodies—including Frontex and operational work with many of the law enforcement agencies in European countries and beyond, for example—to deliver the Government’s border security objectives. That is because we recognise that border security is not just about one’s own border: quite often weaknesses in others’ borders along the traveller and migratory routes cause weaknesses for us. Indeed, sometimes visa regimes in other countries can cause problems in the UK. For example, the sudden appearance on small boats last year of large numbers of Vietnamese, who clearly had not walked from Vietnam, was caused by changes that had happened to visa requirements in other countries. Those things are interrelated. Fighting organised immigration crime is an interrelated operational, diplomatic and political matter, on which this Government are doing a great deal of work to try to strengthen it and make it more effective.

The UK regularly participates in operational taskforces with EU partners, and it is inappropriate to place on the face of a piece of legislation a statutory requirement to seek to establish a joint taskforce. That would force us to have a joint taskforce, whether or not we wanted one and whether or not it would do any good, thereby, in that case, diverting precious resources where they are not operationally needed.

I hope the hon. Member for Woking understands the points that I am making. The Border Security Commander will provide an annual report to Parliament, setting out their views on the performance of the border security system as it develops. Europol is an individual agency, among many with which UK law enforcement collaborates to achieve the Border Security Commander’s objective. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept my comments on his three new clauses in the spirit in which they are intended: we know what he means, but we think that we have a better way of bringing it about in a far more flexible way than through his new clauses. If he accepts that argument, I certainly hope he will withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

I was listening carefully and had a lightbulb moment. Perhaps the Conservatives figured out what a deterrent was—it was crashing the economy and putting our country into such difficulty that it obliterated the pull factor. That might be a cruel thing to say. Does the hon. Member agree that we heard in evidence that there are pull factors in the UK in terms of our language, our diaspora and quality of life, and other countries may not have those same factors? If we agree to the new clause and make it easier for people who cross the channel illegally to work here, people may be even more incentivised to come here compared with other countries.

[Mr Forster]

I am happy to have given the hon. Member the chance to mention Liz Truss and attack the Conservative economic record. I take the point. If Government Members like the spirit of the new clause but do not like the detail, why have they not suggested that it should apply only to existing asylum seekers caught up in the backlog rather than new asylum seekers? I have not made that distinction. You are implying that there should be that distinction; you are not implying that, Dame Siobhain, obviously—the Government are implying that. I have not used “yous” for a while; I am afraid I did that time.

We will talk about this in a debate on a new clause that is still to come. The Government have identified that they need to improve the system. I completely agree. They have inherited a completely broken system. A further new clause tabled by the Liberal Democrats would put a legislative framework around the system, to try to improve it. If the Government are so concerned about allowing asylum seekers to work, I hope they will support that new clause.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 14

Report on impact of carers’ minimum wage on net migration

“The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, lay before Parliament a report on the impact of introducing a minimum wage for carers on levels of net migration.”—(Mr Forster.)

This new clause would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of implementing a carers’ minimum wage on levels of net migration.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Vickers]

Public trust in these decisions is completely and utterly broken. The answer to that is not to allow a good chunk of them to go unseen by the public. The public deserve to see and the people making the decisions deserve to be held to account. We need to ensure that the law is fit for purpose. We need to see the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the ECHR. That needs to be there for all to see. Public accountability and transparency are a good thing. The taxpayers out there, who fund all this, have a right to know what is going on, at any level, in the tribunals.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dr Murrison. I agree that there is a lack of trust in our immigration and asylum system, but does the hon. Member agree that the cause of that is not the conduct of courts in public or private, but the backlogs that have been created and the inability of the Conservatives to tackle the problems in our immigration and asylum system? Will he also reflect on the fact that the Conservatives in government had the opportunity to introduce this change but chose not to? Is he perhaps playing a bit of politics?

[Matt Vickers]

We have seen what has happened since the election. We will not go into the fact that numbers are up significantly, and whether the number of people arriving by small boat is down significantly, but actually, regardless of when it is changed, here is an opportunity, with a piece of legislation, to change this. The trust that the public have in the system is completely battered by these decisions, so it is right to have that transparency. The answer to the need to build public trust is not to hide a good chunk of what is going on, but to let more people see it. The light of day would be very good at getting rid of some of this toxicity, holding people to account and ensuring that the legislation that we have tomorrow is fit for purpose. As parliamentarians, we should be held to account for the legislation that we are putting forward. We should be held to account for its consequences, including in the tribunals that are making so many decisions on these cases.

Public trust is pivotal when advocating for Opposition new clause 24. It transforms the subject of the debate from a dry procedural tweak into a fundamental issue of democratic accountability. The British public’s faith in the immigration system has been battered by the bizarre tribunal rulings highlighted earlier—decisions hidden behind closed doors that defy common sense and insult victims. By mandating public hearings at the first-tier tribunal, we can signal that justice is not just for claimants but for taxpayers, who fund it.

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[Matt Vickers]

Well, we will see how much longer we get to sit. Time will tell, but I will move on.

[Tom Hayes]

The hon. Member is making a very powerful point about the importance of restoring trust and, to be fair to him, he has been making that point for many years. On 20 July 2021, he said in debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill:

“Our asylum and immigration system is not fit for purpose. It lines the pockets of criminal gangs and people smugglers, and it is not fair on genuinely vulnerable people who need protection. It is also not fair on the British public, who pick up the tab.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 902.]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman about what happened in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and, in fact, the years before that. Does he agree with the 2021 hon. Member for Stockton South, as he then was, that in fact the cause of the mistrust in our asylum system is the management of it, not what he is trying to address here?

[Matt Vickers]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman is a fan; I made an effort today with the tie. I think I was speaking as much common sense then as I am today. I agree that the system does not work. That is why we are here. It is why I hope these proposals will make a difference. It is why we are trying to improve the system. And that is why I think we should have transparency in these tribunal outcomes.

As I said, we are talking about decisions hidden behind closed doors that defy common sense and insult victims. By mandating public hearings at the first-tier tribunal, we can signal that justice is not just for claimants, but for taxpayers who fund it and citizens who live with its consequences. Transparency exposes these absurdities, has the potential to curtail judicial overreach, and could reassure a sceptical public that the system prioritises their safety and fairness over secretive leniency, because trust, once lost, is hard to rebuild.

It is only right that the general public, who foot the bill for these cases time and again, are allowed to fully understand what their money is being used for. It is only right that the public can see these sessions so that there is a place for scrutiny and accountability. It is only right that such a shameful abuse of the UK’s legal system be exposed to the taxpayers of this country.

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[Matt Vickers]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Conservative party is clear that the ability of immigrants to remain indefinitely in the United Kingdom and to acquire British citizenship should be not an automatic right, but an earned privilege, reserved for those who have made a real commitment to the UK. New clause 25 would increase from five to 10 years the period before a person can claim indefinite leave to remain, and add conditions to ensure that those applying for indefinite leave to remain have not claimed benefits or relied on social housing while here on work visas. Those claiming indefinite leave to remain must also be able to demonstrate that their household would be a net contributor and that they do not have a criminal record.

It is only right that individuals prove they have made a positive contribution to the United Kingdom and that their place in society is justified. For too long, the United Kingdom has been seen to have an open door policy, and this has been abused. Enough is enough. The 10-year rule would prove commitment—five years lets you settle; 10 years lets you prove you belong. It is enough time for people to learn our language, adopt our values and pay their dues.

[Tom Hayes]

This proposal has emerged before the Leader of the Opposition sets in train her new policy commissions, including one on immigration, so it is good to get a teaser today. Under this proposal, will a person who would seek to apply for indefinite leave to remain after 10 years be required to apply for limited leave to remain every 30 months?

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[Matt Vickers]

We have said 10 years. That is a principle actually—

[Tom Hayes]

I might be able to help the hon. Gentleman. The IPPR, which listens to the voices of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees navigating that 10-year process—people who look to settle here legally—and which looks at the data, published a report, “A Punishing Process”, which talks about some of the administrative costs and difficulties of the process. As part of the Leader of the Opposition’s new commission on immigration, will the hon. Gentleman be able to provide an assessment of the true cost to the Home Office of an individual applying for LLR every 30 months? Will he would maintain the requirement that people have to pay £2,608 as an adult and £2,223 for a child in visa fees? One of the concerns of the IPPR report is that poorer people often get pushed into greater poverty by having to apply every 30 months.

[Matt Vickers]

We have processes in place that determine this, and they do come with a cost. However, the cost to the British taxpayer of allowing this to go on unabated is that much greater. There are processes in place and there are costs attached to them, but there are huge costs attached to allowing people indefinite leave to remain on shorter terms than we are suggesting.

[Tom Hayes]

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me which evidence base supports that assertion?

[Matt Vickers]

There is huge cost. I will come to what the cost will be in the next few years of the number of people who are about to gain indefinite leave to remain.

[Tom Hayes]

Can he give me the name of the report?

[Matt Vickers]

No, I will not give him the name of the report.

Applying the 10-year rule, rather than the five-year rule as now, would prove commitment. As the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) said:

“A British passport is a privilege, one that has been debased by benefit tourism for too long. Our plan gets it right, making sure that those who pay their way get to stay.”

The Prime Minister, bizarrely, does appears to think that British citizenship is not a pull factor, so much so that the Government are seeking to repeal swathes of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 passed under the previous Conservative Government. In doing so, this Government will scrap rules that meant that almost all those who entered the United Kingdom illegally would not be entitled to British citizenship, and that asylum seekers who failed to take age tests would be treated as adults. Those were common-sense policies. We are calling on all parties, and especially the Government, to support this new clause. We need to ensure that everyone who comes to this country is willing to contribute and to integrate into our society.

[Matt Vickers]

The principle here is that we are saying, “You will get indefinite leave to remain, not after five years but after 10 years.” We have already had the debate about British citizenship and what that means—all the benefits that come with it and all the costs to the taxpayer that are attached to it. I therefore I think that this principle is right: if someone is going to stay here, they have to have been here longer, earned their keep, contributed and integrated properly. I think that 10 years allows that. I think that this is the way forward, and I stand by it.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the hon. Member for his patience in allowing me to intervene again. Is it not fair of the Government to accept only those amendments whose details are actually known and worked up; and is it not, therefore, unfair of the hon. Member to press a new clause when he has not worked out the details of what its implementation would look like?

[Matt Vickers]

The details and the need for people to engage with the authorities are already in place. This new clause is literally about saying “10 years” instead of “five years”. No part of it amends existing provisions regarding migrants’ responsibility to account for themselves during that period. There is no suggestion of any change to that; it is beyond what we are amending through the new clause. If we wanted to change that, there would certainly be a debate to be had, and there would probably be opportunities to bring forward amendments, but that is not what we are proposing here. We are proposing to increase the period from five to 10 years.

Our country is our home; it is not a hotel. We can guess what the Government’s response to this will be—more deflection and criticism—but they must remember that they are in government now and have a duty to protect the British taxpayer from unnecessary costs. If they do not act, every UK household is forecast to pay £8,200 as a result of between 742,000 and 1,224,000 migrants getting indefinite leave to remain in the next couple of years. The Government must act to ensure that everyone who stays in the country is a net contributor.

It may interest the Government to know that changes to indefinite leave to remain have happened before—and can and should happen again now. In 2006, under the then Labour Government, the Home Secretary extended the time required to obtain indefinite leave to remain from four years to five years, an extension that applied retroactively to those already actively pursuing indefinite leave to remain. It is hoped that this Government will make a similarly bold move and support new clause 25.

Before the accusations start to be thrown around, let me make it crystal clear that new clause 25 is not some cold-hearted exercise in exclusion; it is a robust, principled stand for expectations—a line in the sand that says that if someone wants to live here, stay here, and call Britain their home, that comes with a reasonable cost. That cost is not measured just in pounds and pence, but in commitment, in responsibility, and in proving that they are here to lift us up, not weigh us down.

A recent study undertaken by the Adam Smith Institute found that, according to figures produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the average low-wage migrant worker will cost the British taxpayer £465,000 by the time they reach 81 years of age. It is clear that opening the ILR door to millions of new migrants will impose a considerable and unwanted financial burden on the British taxpayer for decades to come.

The OBR report explores the opportunity to reform indefinite leave to remain rules, which new clause 25 seeks to do, to help mitigate the long-term fiscal burden of low-skilled migrants, who are unlikely to be net contributors to the public purse. A refusal to back new clause 25 is not just inaction, but a choice to prioritise the untested over taxpayers—to keep the welcome mat out while the costs pile up. The Opposition say no, this is our home, and we expect those arriving to treat it as such.

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[Katie Lam]

How can I begin my remarks without repaying the Minister’s kind words about my clothing? This is one of my favourite jackets and I am delighted to see that it might also be one of hers.

It is no secret, as the hon. Member for Bassetlaw has just set out, that previous Governments of different parties have failed the British public on immigration. The level of immigration to this country has been too high for decades and remains so. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) has said, the last Government, like the Governments before them, promised to do exactly that, but again like the Governments before them, they did not deliver. Because of that failure to deliver, the British public may face a bill of more than £200 billion in the years ahead, unless we change the rules on settlement.

Under current rules, after just five years in the UK, migrants on work or family visas will become eligible for indefinite leave to remain. If they are successful, and 95% of ILR applicants are, they are entitled to welfare, social housing, surcharge-free access to the NHS and more. According to the Centre for Policy Studies, some 800,000 migrants could claim ILR over the course of this Parliament. Given the profile of those who are likely to qualify, that could come at a lifetime cost of £234 billion.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Katie Lam]

I will gladly.

[Tom Hayes]

Sorry, I coughed and laughed at the same time, partly because I think the hon. Member anticipated the point I was about to make. I will put this on the record again, as I have consistently. She may have more information to come back to me with and I will come back to her. The Centre for Policy Studies report is flawed. It has skewed information; it uses assumptions that are unreasonable and the financial modelling that ensues is therefore unreasonable. As a consequence, it feels like the Centre for Policy Studies and the hon. Member are reaching for a very large number to create the impression that there will be a very significant financial burden.

I make two additional points. First, even if that report relied on reasonable assumptions and therefore the modelling was correct, the Boris wave was caused by her party’s Government. She is nodding her head; she affirms that. I welcome that, in her speech, she has so far acknowledged the failings of that Government. Secondly, the report makes some very big assumptions about the future behaviour of the people currently in the migration system in our country. That is not a wise move, particularly when she is extrapolating £235 billion to £240 billion across a very long timeline. In fact, if we were to break it down on an annualised basis, even using the report’s flawed assumptions and flawed modelling, the figure would be far smaller. We need to have some integrity in the data that we use. Does she agree?

[Katie Lam]

As Professor Brian Bell said in evidence to this Committee—in a session to which the hon. Member for Bournemouth East has referred a couple of times—

“It is actually extremely difficult to work out the fiscal impact of migration.”––[Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 59, Q92.]

That is clearly true: forecasting the lives of millions of people over decades will obviously have a substantial margin for error.

The only way to avoid that error would be not to try to forecast in the first place. I have repeatedly asked the Home Office, over several months, whether anyone in that Department or any other—indeed, anyone in Government—is attempting to forecast the cost to the public purse of the ILR grants that will come in this Parliament. I am yet to receive an answer. To me, that clearly says that nobody in Government is thinking about the impact the issue will have and how much it will cost. When they do, I will happily use those numbers. Until and unless that happens, the modelling from the CPS is the best we have—in fact, it is all that we have.

[Tom Hayes]

This is my last intervention on this matter. I take the hon. Lady’s point entirely, but will she not acknowledge that the modelling has deep, fundamental flaws? Although it may be the only modelling and therefore the best, on the strength of what is in that report it is still not worth considering or using in parliamentary debate.

[Katie Lam]

I have already acknowledged that the margin for error is massive—that is clearly true. If everything that the hon. Member is saying is correct, I would like to see Government figures to replace the CPS figures. I think that is a reasonable request.

The £234 billion cost is equivalent to £8,200 per household, or around six times our annual defence budget, and this about not just money but capacity. Our public services are clearly already overstretched and this could push them to breaking point. If we accept, as we should, that previous Governments have failed on migration, then we should do everything in our power to limit the long-term impacts of that failure. That is why the Conservatives propose to extend the qualifying period for ILR and reform settlement rules to ensure that only those genuinely likely to contribute will be eligible for long-term settlement. That would give us an opportunity to review visas issued over the last few years. Those who have come to this country legally on time-limited visas and have subsequently not contributed enough, or have damaged our society by committing crime, should be expected to leave.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly said that the levels of immigration under the last Government were wrong and that it was a mistake to allow so many people to come to the UK. This amendment would allow the Government to limit the long-term consequences of that mistake, so why would they oppose it? It is not too late to change our rules around settlement. By refusing to extend the eligibility period for indefinite leave to remain, the Government are actively choosing to saddle the British taxpayer with a likely bill of hundreds of billions of pounds. We must make difficult decisions on this reform and the many others required in our migration system. Those decisions may be painful, especially in the short term, for individual people, families or businesses but they are the only way for any Government’s actions to match their words. The public have had enough and rightly so.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth East talked about LLR, which must be applied for every two and a half years on the existing 10-year route. That is the case only because, as it stands, the 10-year route, by design, is for those not on eligible visas. The five-year route that we here propose to change is exclusively for those on eligible visas. I therefore cannot see why, within the existing rules, there would be any requirement for LLR applications. I hope that reassures the hon. Member.

[Margaret Mullane]

The new clause is not in keeping with the provisions outlined in the Bill, which primarily focus on border security through new and strengthened law enforcement powers, providing intelligence to address organised immigration crime.

I fundamentally disagree with the context of the new clause. Subsection (2) relates to existing legislation whereby the qualification of indefinite leave to remain applies to people on skilled work visas, scale-up worker visas, entrepreneurial or investor visas, innovation founder visas, or UK ancestry visas, and people with a partner who holds citizenship. Those people are, for the most part, contributing to our society through work. If somebody has been living and working here in a skilled role, or innovating in our country—and possibly even supporting job creation—for five years, that is long enough for them to identify Britain as their home. They will have friends and community networks. In most instances, they are boosting our economic productivity. The increased qualification period set out in the proposed new clause would move the goalposts for skilled workers after years of contribution.

I will bring the conversation back to the purpose of the Bill: the Committee’s focus should be on those entering the UK illegally and those engaged in organised immigration crime, not the construction workers, nurses, doctors, investors and business owners in Britain on work visas.

[Tom Hayes]

I will speak briefly. I welcome the hon. Member for Weald of Kent’s clarification of the Conservative party’s position on the amendment, but that clarification also raises further questions; I wonder whether the hon. Lady could respond on the spot. If there is no requirement every 30 months in the 10-year period for an individual to pay fees of £2,608—or, for a child, £2,223—to the Home Office, how will the Home Office fund much of its work? The fees paid by adults and children contribute significantly to the Home Office’s budget. The point is particularly important because the Home Office has had to borrow from the official development assistance budget in order to fund asylum hotels. I worry that there is going to be a significant financial gap here, and I wonder if the hon. Lady could clarify what her costings are?

[Katie Lam]

I think the hon. Gentleman is eliding two different routes. At the moment there is a five-year route, which is for people on eligible visas, and a 10-year route. The 10-year route has LLR requirements that have to be applied for every two and a half years, and is the route that generates the fees that he is talking about. Under the amendment, that would not change; we are proposing changes only to the five-year route. The five-year route at the moment does not have LLR requirements because it is for people on eligible visas. The income for the Home Office from the same people should be no different under the amendment that we are proposing. I hope that that is clear.

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[Tom Hayes]

I am happy to accept that clarification. If that is correct, I look forward to seeing more information about the particular policy, what financial costs would be involved and what the financial benefits would be.

Finally, I echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh about the importance of settling. We talk here about the financial costs: it is going to be more costly to our country and public services if somebody is having to go through many years of unsettled status. It is going to be harder for them to have all the infrastructure and anchors that they need within society. As a consequence, I would love to know whether the Conservatives have done any modelling of the impact of increasing the period of limbo, including—as mentioned in the IPPR report that I referenced earlier—the cost to public services when people find themselves homeless, with difficult mental health conditions or unable to take their child to the school that they want and have to travel significant mileage.

The hon. Lady and I share a desire for the integrity of data and its greater availability. In proposing the amendment, does she have access to any of that information?

[Katie Lam]

I will come back briefly. If I have properly understood the hon. Member’s question, he is asking what we think the impact will be on the number of people who would still apply for ILR after 10 years.

[Tom Hayes]

indicated assent.

[Katie Lam]

He is nodding.

Part of what we are trying to say by extending the time is that we feel that a person’s commitment to the UK before they apply for settlement should be longer than five years. If application numbers go down because people feel that they do not want to commit for 10 years before getting settlement, that is something that we are happy to accept as part of the amendment.

It seems from the numbers that we have at the moment that the number of people who would apply over an extended period would go down because fewer people would qualify under the rules that we are stipulating. The reason why they would not qualify is that they would not be making a sufficiently significant contribution to the public purse over that period. Our calculations are that all of those lost applications would be net fiscally positive.

[Tom Hayes]

In which case, I will close by saying that the Home Office data shows there is not that drop-off of people—people do not leave the country because they have to wait longer for their status. In fact, those people try to get that status by serving within our country and economy. The Home Office data, which is publicly available on gov.uk, records what the stay and departure rates are each year. I am not sure that the amendment and the policy within it are going to achieve the goal that the hon. Lady is seeking.

[Katie Lam]

I totally take the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I think he is answering a slightly different point. What we are saying is that the combination of the extension of time and the change in criteria would lead to lower applications. It is not so much about a choice on the part of the individual migrant, but a structural change within the system.

[Tom Hayes]

The very last point I will make is that I understand what the hon. Lady is saying, but that is not what my point was about. This would not be a deterrent or an incentive for people to leave the country. People would still remain in the country. The health impacts and the limbo that people would experience through their inability to settle would still create a fiscal drag.

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[Matt Vickers]

I am sure the Minister will agree that a large part of those are voluntary returns. I am sure a large part of them may also benefit from some of the agreements made by the previous Government. Actually, when we talk about the people arriving here illegally on small boats, the number is up significantly in the last two quarters, since this Government came into office. That is a fact.

[Tom Hayes]

I am reading from the Home Office website, which says:

“Comparisons of arrivals between the same months in different years may also be affected by differences in conditions. As a result, we do not make comparisons between shorter periods where arrival numbers…may fluctuate considerably.”

The Home Office also comments:

“Financial, social, physical and geographical factors may influence the method of entry individuals use and the types of individuals detected arriving… These factors may also change over time.”

Therefore, is it not the case that looking at just two quarters, and trying to make a comparison, is not really the most robust way of doing this? Is it not better to reflect on the Bill and the changes it is seeking to introduce, and to realise that it will make a significant difference in the medium to long term?

[Matt Vickers]

Two quarters is a significant amount of time. This is a record. The hon. Gentleman might not be comfortable with it, but the number of people who have arrived here illegally being returned is going down significantly. It is a fact, and this new clause matters. More than 742,000 people will qualify for indefinite leave to remain in the next couple of years. As we have said, that could cost our constituents £8,200 per household. That is a significant cost to people in my part of the world. Because of that cost to my constituents, I would like to press the new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Matt Vickers]

The Bill repeals sections 57 and 58 of the Illegal Migration Act, which concern scientific age assessment methods. The Conservative party completely disagree with that decision. Every European country apart from ours uses scientific age assessment techniques such as an x-ray of the wrist, although there are other methods. More than 50% of those claiming to be children were found to be adults after an age assessment in the quarter before the election. Without a scientific age assessment method, it is very hard to determine their age. There have been cases of men in their mid-20s ending up in schools with teenage girls, and that carries obvious safeguarding risks. We have tabled the new clause to ensure that scientific methods for assessing a person’s age are used, and to disapply the requirement for consent for these methods to be used.

[Tom Hayes]

With regard to migrants’ diet before they come to the UK, can the hon. Member tell us whether he expects them to have or to lack normal calcium?

[Matt Vickers]

We have said that there are several methods. If we are unhappy with one, we can use alternatives. This is something that British taxpayers want to see. They want to ensure that our classrooms and social care settings are safe.

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[Matt Vickers]

We can debate the methods at length, I am sure, but I think we have a responsibility to have a method. The fact that the rest of Europe is doing it means it is something we should be doing.

[Tom Hayes]

The rest of Europe is doing free trade, but the shadow Minister does not want to do that. We should reflect on Europe and what we want to import into our country.

On the bone age assessment, can the hon. Gentleman tell us with confidence grounded in science that it would be able to determine the range of relevant ages? Can he tell me what the margin of error would be for someone aged 18 or 19, and what an assessment of bone density and bone age would tell us if they posed as 15 or 16?

[Matt Vickers]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that these age assessments could go some way to ensuring that a 20 or 30-year-old does not end up in a classroom beside a teenage girl. There is an opportunity to provide a power that can be used, along with all the knowledge that the agencies have, to make an assessment. The science can be determined, and the agencies can look at it in the round. We know that people have turned up without any form of identification. This is an opportunity to draw a line in the sand. Where agencies think this is the right thing to do, they can use the power. Of course, they will use it in moderation and in the context of the question marks around any method that they would use to assess age.

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[Matt Vickers]

I will stick to the new clause and the age assessments. This is a tool. It would not be used unabated. It is another tool that our agencies could use alongside whatever other assessments they might make. We would be giving them the opportunity to require people to undergo an assessment, and that is a good thing. That is why the rest of Europe is doing it. The agencies and experts—the professionals on the frontline dealing with these very troubling, difficult cases—should have all the tools they could possibly require to handle them. I see no reason why we would prevent them from doing so.

[Tom Hayes]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s desire for our frontline staff to have all the tools they need. The Bill will expand the number of tools, but those are the tools that frontline staff are requesting. We could have scientific age assessments, and the Government are certainly not ruling them out entirely; there is work going on in the Home Office to consider their efficacy. Does he agree that we need tools that will help our frontline staff achieve the goals that we set them? The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says that age determination is an inexact science, and that the margin of error can sometimes be as much as five years either side. I myself am not a scientist or a member of the royal college—I assume that the same is true of the hon. Member—so is it not better that we listen to such expert bodies, and develop policy in line with them, rather than just saying, “Because Europe is doing it, we ought to do it”?

[Matt Vickers]

That is a safe assessment of my scientific qualifications.

We are not saying that this is the only thing that agencies and experts on the frontline, who deal with these cases day in and day out, will be able to use; it is something that they can use. If we have ended up with adults in classrooms alongside children, that is wrong. We need to give the agencies every tool in the armoury to make the situation work. This is one thing that they can use—with their knowledge and with every other assessment they would make—and it is the right thing to do.

We have talked about kicking this down the road. I think we have a commitment that the Government will do something on this issue some day, or some time. But here is an opportunity to keep the power in the legislation for agencies to use here and now, rather than in six months or a year. I am sure that the Minister will give me a timeframe on whether the Government will come back with such a power.

The SNP’s new clause 43 is almost the polar opposite of our new clause. It states:

“A person who claims to be a child must not be treated as an adult by the Home Office for the purpose of immigration control.”

We know that there are adults coming to this country who claim to be children. Believing them without question would make it harder to control our borders and create significant safeguarding concerns. Why does the SNP think it should be made harder for the Government to determine the true age of those entering this country illegally? How does this best serve the interests of the British people? Given the SNP’s blind adoration for the European Union, we must question why they are happy for the United Kingdom, of which Scotland is a key part, to be the only European nation that does not use medical tests to determine the age of those coming to the country.

Why does this matter? The issue has not decreased in significance. The number of asylum age disputes remains high, particularly in the latest available figures. Of those about whom a dispute was raised and resolved, more than half were found to be over the age of 18. The fact that a record number of asylum seekers pretend to be children should be the wake-up call that we need to ensure that we have the checks in place to verify age and stop those who seek to deceive from entering the UK. As the available figures show, this tactic is becoming commonplace, and action must be taken to stop this abhorrent abuse.

If the figures were not evidence of the need to support new clause 26, perhaps the facts of the cases will be. A 22-year-old Afghan who had murdered two people in Serbia claimed asylum in the UK by pretending to be a 14-year-old orphan, when in fact he was 18. There is the utterly horrific case of the Parsons Green terrorist, Ahmed Hassan, who posed as a 16-year-old before setting off a bomb on a tube train in west London, injuring 23 people. Although the Iraqi’s real age remains unknown, the judge who jailed him for 34 years in 2018 said he was satisfied that the bomber was between 18 and 21. The clock is ticking. The crisis is not slowing; it is surging.

In quarter 2 of 2024 alone, 2,088 age disputes landed on the desk of the Home Office. That is 2,088 claims where someone said, “Trust me, I’m a child.” By the end, 757 were unmasked as adults, and the deception rate was a staggering 52%. That is not a blip, but a blazing red flag. That is more than 750 grown men, and potentially dozens more uncaught, slipping through a system that Labour has crippled by repealing the scientific age checks in the Illegal Migration Act, leaving us guessing in the dark while the numbers climb.

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[Katie Lam]

I will come on to precision and the ways of determining age slightly later in my remarks.

Ahmed Hassan, an Iraqi asylum seeker, claimed to be a 16-year-old when he arrived in the UK. In 2017, he set off a bomb at Parsons Green tube station, injuring 23 people. His real age is still not a matter of public record. In 2018, a Home Office probe found that Siavash Shah, an Iranian asylum seeker, spent six weeks as a year 11 pupil in Ipswich despite being 25—the list goes on. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, the Home Office identified almost 4,000 cases of adult migrants claiming to be children—45% of those who originally claimed to be children when they arrived here—and every other person of that cohort was in fact an adult. Some were at least 30 years old. That puts British children at risk, puts genuine child asylum seekers at risk and takes valuable school and care places away from the young people who genuinely need them.

I feel this particularly keenly as a Member of Parliament for Kent, the county into which all small boats arrive. Our laws mandate that the people who come to this country illegally and claim to be under 18 must be prioritised for care equally with Kentish children. That puts enormous pressure on the system and makes it harder for our children to be cared for. That is madness when we know that half of those arrivals are in fact adults, and we must put a stop to it.

It is completely rational, albeit morally wrong, for adult migrants to claim to be children. Under-18s who come here have a greater entitlement to care and support, do not have to live in accommodation with adults, and are not subject to the same rules as adults—or the rules are applied less strictly. Of course, there are people who cross the channel without their parents who are under 18; most, though not all, are male 17 and 16-year-olds, and some are younger children. No one disputes that, and children should be treated as children, but we must be realistic about the scandalous degree to which our system is exploited by the cynical and the sinister.

We have to protect actual children, and we should use every tool in the box to do so, including scientific testing. Where people refuse such tests, the Government should be able to override that refusal. We are acting in the interests of public safety and to protect the security of our children. Labour Members have asked for exact details of the scientific methods. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West set out, there are many methods and several different ways of doing it. The ones that can be implemented in short order are the dental and skeletal tests.

Other methods are currently at an earlier stage of development, such as facial age estimation and DNA methylation, which is a process by which people much cleverer than me can assess how a person’s genes are read by their body, which changes with age. In 2022, the interim Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee stated that the

“teeth, clavicle, and hand/wrist or knee… have been shown to have a significant research and publication credibility and provide a consistent age range over which changes occur.”

Later, the same report states:

“The committee has relied on areas and methods that have been repeatedly tried and tested and shown to have consistency.”

As the report makes clear, and as Government Members have said, scientific age assessment is not perfectly precise and is not magic, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West also correctly says, our proposal is that scientific age assessments should be used not to replace other methods and judgments, but to supplement them.

The situations that my hon. Friend and I have set out are horrifying. We can see no reason why the Government would not want to have the widest possible set of tools available to them to stop such things happening, including the option in future to bring in scientific methods that are currently at a nascent stage.

[Tom Hayes]

I thank the hon. Member for Weald of Kent for raising the absolutely horrific and awful circumstances involving Thomas Roberts, who would have been my constituent and whose mother, Dolores, is my constituent. She is racked by grief and unable to sleep at night. Her health has worsened because, as she said to the Minister and me last night in the Minister’s office, with her son being murdered, she feels that half of her whole life has completely disappeared.

I do not want to name the murderer in this debate; I name Thomas Roberts, the victim. I want to talk briefly, with your permission, Dr Murrison, about Thomas Roberts, because it is important for the Committee to know who he was. It is important for Dolores, so racked with grief, to know that her MP and the Committee are focused on what happened.

Thomas was 21 years of age when he died on 12 March 2022 in Bournemouth town centre, the victim of a stabbing by an asylum seeker. His mum has told me several times, and she told me again with the Minister last night, that Thomas was known by everyone and, when his mother wanted to go into town, to Littledown or to other parts of the constituency, he would say no, because he was so well known and he did not want to be seen by his friends out with his mum.

Thomas was an aspiring Royal Marine and, in order to become one, he was in the Sea Scouts. He was physically fit—so fit, in fact, that he would actually bench press his mum and his brother. Dolores told me that the passing of his driving test on the first go was one of her proudest moments. It is one of the things that she remembers so fondly and so closely now, as she comes to terms with her grief.

Thomas was also an aspiring drum and bass DJ, and by all accounts a very good one, who was up and coming on the south coast. If he had not made it as a Royal Marine—there was every certainty that he would—he could easily have taken up a drum and bass DJ career. He was a member of the Christchurch boxing club. He was active in his community, and deeply loving and caring about his family.

Thomas lost his life—or rather, his life was taken from him—because an asylum seeker was in our country. That begs the question: why was that person in our country? Why were they able to wield the knife that cut short Thomas Roberts’s life, and that took away all the hopes and ambitions that his mother had for him? It is because we did not have access to the necessary database to track criminality and find out more about who the asylum seeker actually was. I am deeply sad that Thomas is not with his mum, in his community, or with his friends who loved him so much, because the last Government broke our asylum and immigration system, and created the conditions for that tragic killing and other tragic killings that have happened in our country.

Scientific age assessment, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent said, is not a magic wand; it is imprecise, as we heard from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. We know what works, and that having a functioning asylum and immigration system will make all the difference. I just wish we had had that on 12 March 2022 when Thomas was denied his life opportunities because of the breakages in that system.

I thank the Minister for meeting Dolores yesterday—I know that that provided her with much-needed comfort and clarity. I am absolutely confident that the Bill and its measures will make the difference that is so needed to protect our society. I also note the contribution of Councillor Joe Salmon of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, who has been such a support to Dolores and her wider community, because she will be grieving for a very long time. It is incumbent on all of us in public service to speak the truth, look at the facts and bring forward the measures that will make the biggest difference.

If I may, I will return to the question of scientific age assessments. I referred to the concerns of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and of experts, but I now refer to the House of Lords debate on 27 November 2023, which is worth a read if Opposition Members have not had a chance. It goes into significant detail and depth about the concerns that I had about that as a possible policy at that stage of its development.

The Minister has been clear that scientific age assessments are not off the table; there just needs to be certainty that they are an effective tool. To avoid any further deaths and injustices, we need to have the right tools to protect the people of this country, secure and protect our borders, and make sure that we are truly able to restore confidence and trust in this system and in our ability to manage who comes into our country and who stays here.

[Becky Gittins]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East and the hon. Member for Weald of Kent for playing a respectful part in quite a heated discussion, which has done honour to Dolores and her family at an incredibly difficult time. It is really poignant that such case studies are discussed in these debates; they show what can happen on the limited and rare occasions that things go incredibly wrong with such systems. It is worthwhile that we have these discussions.

I must say that I was disappointed by Opposition Members’ contributions in support of the new clause, however, because although they successfully focused on occasions where things have gone wrong, they were limited on detail. I was also disappointed by their inability to answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh. We need that detail, and we need to understand how that would be different from the tools in the Home Office’s arsenal during the 14 years of their Government.