Nationality and Borders Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christian Wakeford]

It is almost like they are creating another argument for the Online Safety Bill. They want to insult us via virtual participation, and then turn their screen off and hide away because they cannot deal with the arguments. What we are hearing is generally insulting and, quite frankly, wrong. We are truly representing the views of the people—the views of our constituents.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when Labour Members point at us and imply that we are racist, they are also pointing the finger at millions of former Labour voters who actually agree with us on this matter?

[Christian Wakeford]

I could not agree with my hon. Friend any more; he puts it far more succinctly than I possibly could.

We also see the Opposition turning their back on the British people and the red wall all over again. We have had this debate many, many times, but unfortunately the Opposition are not listening—well, they are not here. What we are seeing is a paradigm shift whereby the Labour party no longer represents those working-class communities. It is no longer listening to those working-class voters. Thankfully, on this side of the Chamber we do listen.

There is also a particularly harmful argument that we have heard far too many times in the debate. It is about listening.

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[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison). In Ipswich, we have extended the hand of friendship to huge numbers of refugees over the years. We have a very significant Kurdish community in Ipswich, which has made a massive contribution to the town, supported by the Suffolk refugee centre.

Only recently I was in the Bloom Lounge, which is quite a trendy, upmarket cocktail bar in Ipswich, where I had pornstar martinis and all that sort of stuff. It is run by Erion and Francesko. They run the hugely successful new cocktail bar, and they came here from Albania. They were refugees. They fled Albania, and the people of Ipswich and this country extended the hand of friendship to them. What is more, Erion is a Conservative councillor. The local Conservative party in Ipswich is a party of refugees—far more so than the local Labour party.



We have a major problem here. We must realise that there are those who make the decision to come to this country illegally. They shun the legal process and come here illegally—break the law. Every person from that category who stays limits our capacity to show compassion towards the most genuine of refugees. There is also a limit to how many refugees we can take, so we need to be realistic about that. Each one of those people who decides to come here illegally—some are economic migrants—means that one fewer family can be supported. That is the reality of the situation.

The Labour party makes this charge of racism, but the vast majority of the British public support the position that we are adopting today. Frankly, they probably want to go a bit further. That is the reality of the situation and that comes across in the correspondence that I receive. The vast majority of people in this country abhor racism. They welcome immigration, and they want to extend the hand of friendship, but what they do not want is lawlessness. What they do not want is what we are seeing at the moment. Sadly, the message that is going out is that once you are in, you are in, so it is worth the risk. The consequence of that is the loss of human lives, an unsustainable pressure on public services, and a limit on our ability to show compassion towards the most needy.

I have met the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) on many occasions to discuss this issue. He knows my views on it, and I am rather robust on the issue. I have to say that I never thought that the French would deliver on this for us. Ultimately, the people of this country voted to take back control of our borders and they do not want a situation in which we are dependent on the French playing ball for us to be able to do so. This Bill enables us, on this vital issue, to take back control and make sure that we deliver, but we must deliver. We can sit on these Benches confident that the vast majority of our constituents and the British public—decent British people—stand four-square behind us, but their patience is wearing thin. We cannot be here in six, seven or eight months’ time with the numbers that we are seeing today, because it is a problem and it is getting worse. Denying that there is a problem is for the birds.

The Labour party will vote against this Bill tonight. Ultimately, Labour’s position would mean that we have thousands more people attempting this dangerous route. The Labour party would probably put all those individuals up in hotels. The Labour party would send out a clarion call, “Come over. Once you’re in, you’re in.” That would put intolerable pressure on public services. That is the Labour party’s position, is it not? It is the Conservative party’s position to have a humane system that welcomes genuine refugees through a rules-based system, but that acknowledges that many people attempting this route are not refugees. Some are and they should follow the correct procedures, but many are not.

I welcome this Bill. I am incredibly proud to support it, but we need to deliver it. My view is that all options should be on the table when it comes to this vital issue, because this simply cannot continue.

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[Bambos Charalambous]

I invite the right hon. Member to read the refugee convention and he will find there what the actual law is. On the basis of his logic, we would only be taking asylum claimants from France, Ireland and Belgium.

Looking at the detail of the Bill, many hon. Members have quite rightly highlighted the odious clause 12, which creates a two-tier system for refugees based on how someone arrives in the country and their mode of transport, not on the strength of their claim. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) put it, it is

“judging them on how they arrived, not what they have left.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 757.]

Once again, sentence first, verdict later.

[Tom Hunt]

It is wrong to say that there is no difference between somebody who has broken the law by coming here from another safe European country illegally and somebody who has come here through a legal process. Surely they should be treated differently.

[Bambos Charalambous]

Criminalising people who have come to this country irrespective of what they have left behind makes them criminals. What law have they broken when they are seeking refuge here?

What we have seen playing out in the channel crossings over the past few days occurred because the Government have closed down all safe routes for refugees to travel to the UK for protection. People are being driven to make dangerous journeys because they are out of options. To this callous Government, it is all a game—pure theatre. The Tories use all migrants, an ever-easy target, as a distraction from their own institutional failings and the gross inequality that falls upon their citizens.

The Bill does nothing to propose refugee resettlement or family reunion routes and will only put more pressure on Britain’s broken asylum system. About 10% of arrivals are expected to be unaccompanied children. The Government should be properly addressing the issue of safe routes for claiming asylum and helping unaccompanied children. Penalising refugees is a clear breach of article 31 of the refugee convention, but even more disconcerting is that clauses 27 to 36 seek to interpret the refugee convention to suit the Government’s whim. Unilaterally deciding how international law should be interpreted never ends well for the Government. The reason they feel the need to do so here is that they know they will be humiliated when those clauses are challenged. Once again, it is not so much a case of marking their own homework; more a case of being judge, jury and executioner.

One thing the Bill will almost certainly do is ensure that people seeking asylum here are kept longer. Whether through imprisoning asylum seekers for four years in our prisons or detaining them in barracks, that is an awful lot of money to spend on something that is not going to work. I dread to think what impact that will have on our creaking criminal justice system. Again, we have not seen the sums. Why not? Surely the Home Secretary will have cleared this with the Chancellor and costed it?

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[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman mentions Syrians fleeing war crimes. Our resettlement programme has principally focused on Syrians fleeing war crimes, who, via the UNHCR working in the region, have been able, safely and legally, to come to this country in greater numbers than are seen in any other European resettlement programme. That is quicker, safer and easier than illegally crossing the channel in a dinghy. We are not just running Europe’s resettlement programme; as we speak, we are bringing locally engaged staff from Afghanistan to the UK, and we have opened up a route for British nationals overseas from Hong Kong to come here, escaping the oppressive regime of the Chinese Communist party. In addition, 29,000 people have come in the past six years as part of refugees family reunions. So when the Opposition claim that we are not offering safe and legal routes, that is simply not true.

The Scottish nationalists have been saying that Scotland would like to do more. I am very disappointed, as I said in my intervention, when I was able to get in, that out of the 32 local authorities in Scotland only one, Glasgow, takes dispersed asylum seekers. If Scotland wants to do more, they have the opportunity to do so. Moreover, when it comes to taking unaccompanied asylum seeking children under the national transfer scheme, Scotland took only a very small handful of the 600 or so who were transferred last year. Scottish National party Members cannot talk about money, because those children have more than £50,000 a year of funding going with them. There are children right now in Dover who need to be looked after, so I call on the Scottish Government to put action behind their words and take some of those children on—tonight. They do not need independence to do that; they can do it now.

Let me be clear: we will always play our part for those in genuine need, but we should choose who deserves our help. Illegal immigration undermines that choice. Instead of the UK being able to choose the children and families most in need, illegal immigration instead allows those who pay people smugglers or who are strong to push their way to the front of the queue.

[Tom Hunt]

rose—

Nationality and Borders Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

Any Government in such circumstances could amend the primary legislation to remove that requirement. I also make the crucial point that we have an independent judiciary in this country, and it is open to people to bring points of challenge where they believe that there are grounds for doing so. It is fair to say that that is a regular occurrence in our society and a cornerstone of how our government, politics and society have evolved over centuries. No doubt that will continue to be the case, but let me again be very clear that the Government have acted and will continue to act in accordance with our international obligations. I must be very clear on that point.

Lords amendment 6 removes the clause from the Bill that establishes our differentiated approach to those who are recognised as refugees. That is an essential and fundamental part of our plan to deter people from making dangerous and unnecessary journeys to the UK. We therefore cannot agree to the amendment, which will simply encourage people to continue to risk their lives at sea.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that amendment 6 is a huge slap in the face for all those people who play by the rules and engage in proper legal processes to get to this country, whether they are a refugee or not?

[Tom Pursglove]

My hon. Friend and I have had many conversations about this topic over recent months and he makes a genuine point that individuals coming to this country illegally makes it more difficult for us to help genuine refugees in the way that we all want to. We see that reflected in the generosity of spirit shown across the country as people offered help in response to the Afghan crisis and to what we are seeing unfold so tragically in Ukraine. There is an outpouring of emotion and wanting to help, but there is also genuine concern about people putting their lives in the hands of evil criminal gangs, and paying significant sums of money to those gangs, which have no regard for human life and are willing in effect to play roulette with the safety of the people they are transporting.

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[Tom Hunt]

The shadow Minister has said that only 300 people have been linked to the offshoring. That is partly because the message has gone out to all the many hundreds of thousands who might have been tempted that it is not worth trying.

[Stephen Kinnock]

I do not think we are in control of which messages get out and which do not. This is about results and consequences, not about the process. If the process is not working, it needs to be fixed.

Rather than being fair, compassionate and orderly, this process would be cruel, demeaning and costly. This is why the Labour Party supports Lords amendment 9, which removes offshoring from the Bill. While we are on the topic of fairness and compassion, I should note our long-standing support for Lords amendment 10, which would allow unaccompanied children in Europe to join family members who are living lawfully in the UK. At this point I should also note my personal dismay at the Bill’s approach to victims of modern slavery, which, again, utterly contravenes the principles of fairness and compassion. I look forward to hearing the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on that subject later today.

What is abundantly clear is that little to no resilience is built into Britain’s asylum system. It is simply failing to adapt and keep pace. It is also utterly inflexible at each point in the process. Ukrainian refugees are having to fill in 50 pages of paperwork in order not to be turned away; that is far beyond the necessary security checks. We have 100,000 person-long asylum waiting lists, and 12,000 Afghan refugees are stuck in hotels. Lords amendment 11 is a useful first step and one that we support, but with Putin’s barbaric actions moving the goalposts almost every day, we suggest that the Government should move further and faster in delivering a resilient system with the capacity that is required to adapt. A Government who fail to plan are a Government who plan to fail, and Lords amendment 11 would at least go some way to forcing this Government to plan and to build capacity.

Finally, while we feel that the concessions given on clause 9 are a welcome step forward, we remain unconvinced that the fears of innocent citizens who feel at risk from this policy have been allayed. It is still too vague, and we will be pushing Lords amendment 4 to a vote.

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[Stuart C. McDonald]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), with whom I agree entirely. Let me start by echoing the comments of both the Minister and shadow Minister on PC Keith Palmer, whose incredibly bravery we should never forget.

It is appropriate to recognise that one or two slivers of progress have been made, for example, on BNO visas and Chagossians, but the fundamental problem is that the core idea at the heart of this Bill, which was appalling from its outset last July, remains at its heart: the idea that we should punish and dehumanise certain refugees so as to disincentivise others from coming here, all on the basis that they should stay in the first country they come to. I thought that that was a horrible idea at the time, but the subsequent events in Afghanistan and the further invasion of Ukraine highlight as never before how utterly misconceived and nonsensical the Government’s thinking was, because although most refugees do seek protection in the first country they enter, some will not, for a host of perfectly understandable reasons. The Government have recognised that, rightly, in their family scheme for Ukrainians. Of course it makes sense for Ukrainians to come to join a brother, aunt or grandparent here in the UK and not to stop in Poland or France, but this Bill will criminalise and undermine recognised refugees from Afghanistan or anywhere else who seek protection here motivated by precisely the same reasons. The Bill represents nothing less than this Government resiling from the refugee convention. The Tories are ripping up a 70-year-old convention exactly when we see that it is as crucial as ever; the Bill’s incompatibility, to lawyers out there and most people in here, is as clear as day. The Government know it as well, which is why they cannot even accept Lords amendment 5, a simple amendment that would require powers in part 2 to be exercised in accordance with the refugee convention. If the Minister is right and everything is absolutely consistent with the convention, no harm is done and there is absolutely no reason for the Government to oppose that amendment.

The House of Lords has done its best to make this Bill barely tolerable, but the Government are seeking to reverse almost every one of its eminently sensible proposals. The Government are not listening, whether to parliamentarians, international authorities or the public. Through their motions to disagree, the Government want to take us back to a Bill and a system that will see refugees criminalised with an offence punishable with up to four years in prison, conceivably with people who rescued them next to them in the dock. It is a system that would see people subject to offshoring while their claim is heard and processed. There is the ludicrous inadmissibility procedure that means nothing can happen while the Government pretend they are going to remove a person to a country they have passed through, despite having no returns agreement in place with it. Even once recognised as a refugee, an Afghan, Syrian or persecuted Christian convert, or whoever else, is going to be treated as a sub-class of refugee, with limits on recourse to public funds, no prospect of settlement and limited family reunion rights. In short, they will be unable to rebuild their life here at all, which is exactly the purpose of the Bill: deliberately making the asylum process awful. Those are just some of the most appalling aspects of the Bill that the Lords have sought to fix.

Let us consider this proposition: up to four years in prison for an Afghan or anyone else who takes an unauthorised route to get here. It is outrageous, so Lords amendment 13 and all the consequential ones should remain in place. What about this: penalising those who charitably seek to assist refugees? That is absolutely absurd, so we support Lords amendments 20 and 54 , which ensure that push-back powers are not exercised in a manner that endangers life. It is incredible that these things are even up for debate. We should not be ripping up the convention by making the unauthorised Afghan or Ukrainian arrivals second-tier citizens, deliberately destroying their prospects of rebuilding their lives. So Lords amendment 6, which deletes clause 11, must be left in place. It is hard to overstate how significant this is. As former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, the provisions of clause 11 would

“threaten the integrity of the global asylum system”.

This is about denying recognised refugees their rights under the refugee convention and it is totally unacceptable.

Where is the Government’s draft guidance about how they will use these sweeping powers? Apparently it exists, but, like so much else in relation to this Bill, they have kept it to themselves. How will decision makers decide when to use powers to strip recognised refugees of many of their rights? Who will face the burden of proof as to whether the provisions should apply? What will the standard of proof be? Will decisions take into account the individual circumstances of the refugee, in the context of the particular countries they passed through? How much discretion will decision makers have not to treat recognised refugees in this frankly disgusting manner? Any exercise of these powers will be abhorrent, but we have little idea about how these sweeping powers will be used. That is another reason we should not be providing them to the Home Secretary.

The utterly obscene idea of offshoring asylum claims must be kicked into touch. All sorts of myths have been perpetuated about how this was successful—it was not; it has been abandoned by the Australians. It did not stop—it did not exceed 300 people— because message got out that it was not worth trying to get to Australia; it stopped because the whole process was at capacity within weeks of its being launched. So we support Lords amendments 9, 52 and 53. Frankly, if Members are still thinking of resisting these amendments, they are either not interested or are utterly indifferent to the grotesque suffering it has caused those caught up in the Australian scheme. We are talking about children self-harming; suicides and suicide attempts; a mental health catastrophe; and sexual assaults. If that is not enough, perhaps Members should consider the billions of pounds such a system will cost, while achieving nothing. Yet the Home Secretary, who is now paying salaries to people responsible for the Australian disgrace, will not even publish her assessment of the costs. We have been promised the economic impact assessment repeatedly. The Home Affairs Committee was told it was to be published shortly, and that was last autumn. Here we are at ping-pong and it has been kept hidden. There must be a reason for that.

[Tom Hunt]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that when this was introduced in Australia the number of individuals who lost their lives at sea dramatically decreased, to almost zero? Surely that ought to be taken into account when assessing its effectiveness.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I take into account all the evidence we heard on this matter in the Bill Committee—all the written submissions and the oral evidence we heard. Any assessment by anyone independent of the Government behind that scheme says that none of that was attributable to the offshoring and it was actually attributable to something else I do not like, which was push-backs, but push-backs in a completely different context to those—

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[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Unlike the Opposition, I take the view that this Bill is a serious attempt to deal with an almost intractable problem. Nobody should challenge that point. Nevertheless, we are a great nation, and our greatness rests on the fact that we take a moral stance on most things. That is not a formula for softness but it is an argument for rigour in what we do. Lord Kirkhope’s amendment 9 strips out the Government’s plans to create an offshore asylum-processing system, and I believe he is right. Asylum offshoring would be a moral, economic and practical failure. Previous international experience shows that to introduce it here would be an unmitigated disaster.

The first problem with offshoring is an ethical one. To get a sense of the issue, we have only to look at what happened in Australia when it adopted the same approach in 2013. It meant that children, modern slavery victims and torture survivors could be detained offshore. The Refugee Council of Australia has documented gut-wrenching stories of sexual, physical and mental abuse in the processing facilities. A 14-year-old girl who was held offshore for five years doused herself in petrol and tried to set herself alight. A 10-year-old boy attempted suicide three times. Another child starved themselves near to death and had to be removed back to Australia.

Those were not isolated cases. In fact, there have been numerous reports of assaults and sexual abuse relating to Australia’s processing facility on Nauru. Between January and October 2015 alone—just a few months—there were 48 reports of assault and 57 reports of assault against a minor. That is what we appear to be trying to copy. We cannot risk creating a similar situation here. I ask the House to remember what happened to the views of migration around Europe when we saw the body of a drowned child on a Turkish beach. That is what would happen if such stories started to come out of a British offshoring facility.

The second problem with offshoring is its staggering cost. Australia ended up spending over £1 million per person detained offshore—around £4.3 billion for 3,127 asylum seekers. That is 25 times higher per head than what we spend now. We would expect to have many more applicants than Australia had. Last year alone we had 50,000 applicants. Despite what was said earlier, the Australians have learned the lesson. They have wound down their policy, shut down their processing centre in Papua New Guinea and have not sent any new asylum seekers there since 2014.

[Tom Hunt]

It is right that I point out that Australia may not be using Papua New Guinea but it still uses another island, and its approach continues to be very robust.

[Mr Davis]

The one that I was citing was Nauru, not Papua New Guinea, which turned it down itself and refused to take any more. That is the actual fact of it. By the way, I talked to Tony Abbott about this issue last week and will recount a bit of that discussion in a moment. Since that centre was closed, there were 92,000 asylum applications, so it is not as though the story went away.

There is also a major practical problem: where is this facility going to be? Will it be in Ghana, which referred to the policy as “Operation Dead Meat”? Rwanda? We have heard more on Rwanda today, and I will leave it to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) to talk about Rwanda, as he knows more about it than I do. Albania? Moldova? Gibraltar? All these places have all been talked about—none has said yes. Even if we do find somewhere, we will have to pay it a spectacular bribe to get it to take in our dirty washing; that is what it is, in effect. The Government are simply proposing shifting responsibility for our problems to another country. That does not fit with the behaviour of the great country that I believe we are.

Given the time limit, I will finish on this point. I spoke last week to Tony Abbott, who was Prime Minister of Australia for some of the time we are discussing. We did not talk primarily about this policy, but I asked him what was most effective. I am afraid that he rather agreed with what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said—that the really effective policy was pushback.

Frankly, what we have to deal with, in the Home Office and with our French allies, is a series of practical problems, alongside the legalities of how we handle the channel, which is not yet resolved either. What we cannot do is put aside ethical standards in order to drive people away from our shores.

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In short, the SNP continues to support the efforts of those in the other place to force the Government to listen to the advice that they have been given and to think again about many of the Bill’s provisions.

[Tom Hunt]

I intended to speak on the first group of amendments, but I have a lot to say about the second group as well, so I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate.

I welcome Lords amendments 28 and 29. It is good that we have a Government who take security in this country incredibly seriously. It is right that we are compassionate and generous when it comes to Ukrainian refugees, but I am sympathetic to the Government’s position of not completely waiving checks and of listening to the advice of the security services. I see Lords amendments 28 and 29 as an extension of the principle that the Government must protect the security of our country from individuals coming from countries deemed to be high-risk.

Lords amendments 30 to 35 amend clause 69—an incredibly important clause, in my view. I always hesitate to use the term “pull factor” because of some of the comments that have been made about pull factors, but I do think that one pull factor has been the ability of many people who have entered this country illegally, and who may or may not be legitimate refugees, to stay here. It is a case of, “Once you’re in, you’re in.” If we determine that an individual is not a refugee—if that person does not pass the tests—we must get them back to the country they came from as soon as possible. I therefore welcome clause 69 and think it should be protected from any potential amendments.

Let me be honest with the House: my view is that those who come here illegally should immediately be deported to the country from which they came. If someone wants to claim asylum, they ought to go through the correct procedure. I should be interested to hear from the Minister whether that is the case.

In general, I think that the Bill is extremely important. In relation to the amendments and what we heard earlier today, I suspect that many other Members on both sides of the House have constituents who, while they are incredibly big-hearted, and in particular have a big-hearted attitude to the Ukrainian refugees—and indeed other refugees—see a distinction between them and people who enter the country illegally and who we should not assume are refugees. Some may not be, and I think it important for us to bear that in mind. I also think that those in the other place—I will be careful about what I say, and I will be very respectful of the other place—should tread carefully, because I think there is immense support for this Bill out there in the country.

[Stephen Farry]

I will restrict my comments to Lords amendment 40, which I originally tabled in this House with my colleagues the hon. Members for Foyle (Colum Eastwood) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna). I was very pleased when the House of Lords took it up. I especially thank Baroness Ritchie and Baroness Suttie, and all those who spoke in favour of the amendment at that time.

I believe that the system of electronic travel authorisations is essentially unworkable in the context of the island of Ireland. I know that the UK Government have received representations from the Irish Government, and they will also be aware of the cross-party opposition to this proposal in the Irish Houses of Parliament, the Oireachtas. It is important that we listen carefully to those voices and take account of the considerable concern felt in Northern Ireland about this measure.

Of course the common travel area applies to Irish citizens, but we are now talking about citizens of the European economic area who previously had freedom of movement and about all the other non-Irish residents of the island of Ireland having to apply for an ETA in due course. The Government may say that this is a simple process and there is no intention of introducing routine border checks; I recognise that they have been clear about that. None the less, it will be a new bureaucratic process. People may either forget to apply for their ETAs or forget to renew them, and some may even be placed in a degree of legal jeopardy. Someone who is in Northern Ireland without an ETA and has to interact with the UK state, perhaps for healthcare reasons or in the event of a traffic accident, will potentially be in a position of some uncertainty, and there may well be repercussions from that.

There are three instances in which this could become a problem. There are tens of thousands of movements each day on the island of Ireland involving Northern Ireland citizens—for the purposes of work or education, for example, and because people living in one part of the island may have business in the other jurisdiction. People who do not intend to do any business in Northern Ireland often have to travel through it to get from A to B. The quickest route from Dublin to Donegal is through Northern Ireland on the A5, and even someone making a very localised journey from Clones or Cavan town, for example, will cross the border four times in the course of that short journey. This could become fairly absurd.

There is also the question of tourism. The island of Ireland is very much a single market for tourists. Many people come to the south, and then want to come to Northern Ireland to see all our wonderful attractions and take advantage of our great scenery. We can foresee a situation where tourists are not aware of the requirements, or where tour operators have to go through bureaucracy in order to ensure that their passengers on bus tours, for example, are fully compliant with this new law. That may well put some people out of the market or persuade them not offer that type of service. That would be a huge loss to our tourism sector, which is a key aspect of the Northern Ireland economy. The movements that happen at present on the island of Ireland are not a threat to UK security. I encourage the Government to reflect on this further and talk more to the Irish Government about finding a resolution.