Illegal Migration Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way to the hon. Member if he will now support our proposals for a cross-border police unit to go after the criminal gangs.

[Tom Hunt]

I actually have another question. Would the right hon. Member explain why the Leader of the Opposition, when he was a human rights lawyer, once said that there was an undertone of racism in all immigration law? Does he continue to believe that?

[Yvette Cooper]

Immigration law is important, but the problem is that, at the moment, a huge amount of immigration law is not even enforced. There has been an 80% drop in the number of people who have been unsuccessful in the asylum system and been returned—an 80% drop since the Conservatives came to office. At the same time, our asylum system, under the Tories, is in total chaos. Only 1% of last year’s cases have had even an initial decision. Home Office decision making has been cut by 40%, the backlog has trebled in the space of just a few years, and thousands of people are in costly and inappropriate hotels.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

It may have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that when the botched Brexit negotiations took place we left the Dublin convention, which is crucial for returns. We have to find a deal that replaces it. That is about protecting our borders, because it is about returning people when their asylum claims are not successful.

A strategy for securing Britain’s borders must begin with a clear and honest recognition that we cannot solve these problems unilaterally. This is a collective international issue that requires a collective international solution, so closer co-operation with our nearest friends and neighbours must be our starting point and our No. 1 priority. That means urgent action, which will be taken forward from day 1 of a Labour Government, to negotiate a returns agreement with the EU to replace our previous participation in the Dublin system.

That is just the start, however. We also need to restore access for our law enforcement agencies to the treasure trove of information—from biometrics to travel history—that Eurodac and other databases provide in support of efforts to ensure that the removal of asylum seekers from the UK to safe EU countries is possible.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Out of interest, the Labour party talks about safe and legal routes, so does it support a cap on the numbers coming through those routes? If so, how would it prioritise refugees, bearing in mind that there are hundreds of millions of people across the world who would like to move here and could conceivably get refugee status?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Yes, we do support a capped scheme for safe and legal routes, and it has to be based on prioritisation according to, for example, high grant rate countries and family reunions.

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is all very well, but the reality is that those on the Government Benches have completely burned every relationship with our partners and allies across continental Europe and, as a result, we have left the Dublin convention. There is a direct connection between the massive surge in numbers coming on small boats and the Government’s botched Brexit negotiations.

Solving these problems also means establishing formal working arrangements to put the UK at the heart of international efforts to crack down on our real enemies here, the people smugglers, by relentlessly hunting them down and ensuring that they are brought to justice. The Labour party has set out a more targeted approach than the Government are currently undertaking; we would recruit a cross-border specialist unit in the National Crime Agency to go after the criminal gangs upstream, working with French experts and Europol. Finally, it means working closely with our European friends and allies to develop new safe and authorised routes from EU countries to the UK for those who are most in need of our help.

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[Tim Farron]

Yes. There are arguments for stricter or less strict measures for dealing with migration and asylum, and it is important to discuss those, but it does not help when we have bogus nonsense figures being spouted, sometimes in this place. That just creates more heat and no light.

Let us deal with the charge that France is a safe place, that people should not be allowed to come here from there and they should just stay there. France could say that to Italy and Spain—

[Tom Hunt]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Farron]

I will not give way again, sorry. I have taken loads of interventions and I am testing everyone’s patience; my speech is now 11 minutes in.

France could say the same to Italy or Spain, and then Italy or Spain could say, “Stay in the sea.” What we are seeing now is an attempt to undermine Britain’s part in the globe. We were told by some Conservative Members that we were leaving the European Union but not Europe, and that we would now be “global Britain.” Ignoring for a moment the moral obligations we have to people seeking sanctuary, let us remember what message it will send to our neighbours, friends and allies around Europe and elsewhere if we unilaterally decide that we are not going to play the game. This undermines our soft power and our sovereignty. This is why we support new clause 3, which deals with setting a target and gives a clear sense of Britain stepping up to the plate and being part of a global operation.

The Government talk about deterrence, but the Bill fails to understand the horrors that people have been through. People who have left Sudan or Eritrea often go through Libya, and I would ask Conservative Members to spend a moment to research what it is like for a refugee passing from the horn of Africa, for example, through to Libya and then crossing the Mediterranean. What are their experiences? We tell those people that it will be scary and that we are not going to treat them very nicely when they cross the channel, but that is nothing compared with their experience of crossing Libya. I ask Members to inform themselves about that in particular.

The Bill is clearly not aimed at tackling the criminal gangs. The simple fact is that the criminal gangs’ business model will remain alive and well. Why? Because people will arrive on these shores and then not claim asylum. They will go under the radar, which fuels modern slavery and criminality. More people will be exploited, especially women and girls. There is no question whatsoever that this Bill will do anything to tackle the business model of those gangs—it is clearly not intended to, which is another outrage. It is indeed a traffickers’ charter. It will therefore lead to more deaths in the channel. It is a recipe for uncontrollable borders, because there will be nobody applying for asylum. They will just slip under the radar. If the Government had done an impact assessment, they would know that. Maybe they did, but they have not shared it with us.

The simple fact is that we need safe and legal routes. People from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong stand a chance, one way or another, of having a safe route to the United Kingdom. But if you are a young Christian man seeking to avoid being conscripted in Eritrea, a woman seeking sanctuary from Iran or a person from a religious minority in Sudan, you have no chance whatsoever of getting here. That is morally outrageous. We are turning our back on our long-held principles and obligations. That is why new clause 6 is so important and why, with your permission, Dame Eleanor, we will push it to a vote tonight.

New clause 6 would ringfence asylum seekers from those countries that already have an 80%-plus grant rate—places such as Sudan, Eritrea and Iran. It proposes a pilot scheme for 12 months—this is measured, small and not all that ambitious—just to give the Government an opportunity not to be duplicitous about this and to show that we are at least providing an experimental and evidence-based safe route. I urge the Government to accept the new clause; otherwise, we will seek to divide the House. New clause 4 talks about a humanitarian travel permit, and new clause 7 deals with refugee family reunion.

If the Government seriously want to make the case that the Bill is going to undermine the business case of the people traffickers, evil as they are, they will fail to do so unless they provide meaningful, tangible, credible safe and legal routes. Those routes do not currently exist, and these new clauses allow the Government the opportunity to create them. If they will not accept them, this will prove that they do not have a plan to stop the boats and that they are just getting into the gutter to grub for votes.

To be fair, I think the Government have misjudged those who seek sanctuary here. I have met many of them. I have been to Calais and other places, and I have had to interrogate why people would choose to come to the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Devizes set out many of those reasons, but I have never discovered among those people any who have heard of the national health service or our benefit system. The lie that they are somehow coming over here to sponge off or threaten us is just that: it is simply untrue.

But those people have heard of something: they have heard of a Britain that is safe, where they can raise their children, where they can be who they are and have whatever faith they may be and whatever political views they may hold—a place where they can raise and feed their family in safety. I cannot imagine anything making me more proud than that being the reputation of this country. No amount of small-minded attempts to change the law by this “here today, gone tomorrow” Tory Government will dent that reputation. I think the Government have misjudged not only the asylum seekers, but Britain too.

Let me tell the House a story about my constituency, and then I will shut up. Let us be honest, the Lake District is not the most diverse part of the United Kingdom, yet in August 1945 half the children who survived the death camps, including Auschwitz, came to Windermere to be rehabilitated and to start their lives afresh, because that is who we really are. That is who Britain really is and we should be proud of that. Let us absolutely stop the boats, but let us do so in a way that makes sense and that is neither dozy nor dangerous.

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[Stella Creasy]

The Minister needs to be clear about how those people have been identified. There are people tonight in Tehran at direct risk of harm and needing our help. The challenge with this legislation is that it refuses to set out a safe and legal route, saying that it will be done in secondary guidance. None of us can therefore be confident enough to say to those people, “Hold up—wait for the queue and the bureaucracy. There is somewhere for you to go. Don’t worry, because help is coming.”

The Government must connect with international organisations and uphold the international rule of law. The honest truth is that the only way the world will be able to stand up to dictators and persecutors and against war is by collaborating. We have seen that in such a powerful way in Ukraine, yet we do not seem to be capable of learning the lessons by setting out schemes and being able to say to people, “Actually, there is a way forward, and we will all share the burden of standing up for these values.” That is what a sensible asylum policy would do, because it would be effective. We would cut off the boats at source by having proper, safe and legal routes for people so that they would not need to get on a boat to claim in the first place. Irregular routes are inevitable because of why people are running in the first place.

I also want to speak briefly to amendments 131 and 132—I pay testament to the Member who spoke to me previously about them—which are about our role in the European Court of Human Rights. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) is not here, because I was hoping he might want a chance to clarify his earlier remark, in which he genuinely tried to suggest that Winston Churchill opposed us being part of the European Court of Human Rights. As somebody who served on the Council of Europe and repeatedly saw pictures of Winston Churchill—

[Tom Hunt]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Stella Creasy]

I will, if the hon. Gentleman will let me finish my sentence; I am sure he wishes to hear what I have to say. I thought it was worth hearing from the man himself, because his argument for a European Court of Human Rights was that:

“In the centre of our movement”—

don’t tell anybody that he wanted a united Europe—

“stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law.”

What Winston Churchill saw then, we still see now, which is overbearing Governments who do not respect the courts of law and do not want the scrutiny of law. These amendments speak to precisely that fear: that legislation in this country might be poorly drafted, burdensome or, indeed, oppressive. What we all want, and what we would find common cause with Winston Churchill on—that does not happen often—is the importance of keeping politicians honest by putting them up to the scrutiny of the courts. Now I will happily give way, to see how the hon. Gentleman feels he can be honest and whether he wants to support these amendments and take that point away.

[Tom Hunt]

I will attempt to answer on behalf of my colleague, the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), who I spoke to earlier about this. One of his key points was that what the late Sir Winston Churchill signed up in 1950 did not involve rule 39 audits. The way in which the situation has evolved means that what we are dealing with today is totally different from the situation that faced this country in 1950, so to make that comparison is crude, and it is wrong. I am sure that when my hon. Friend comes back and makes a further intervention at some point, either today or tomorrow, he will powerfully deal with the critique that the hon. Member has just put in front of him.

[Stella Creasy]

I hope that the hon. Member for Devizes is at dinner, because after having made that speech, I am sure he needs something to eat. I simply say that that was not what Winston Churchill stood up for—as those of us who have served on the Council of Europe and read his speeches in detail know—let alone subsequent Conservative Governments. Those Governments were part of the development of the Council of Europe, where we did not just scrutinise the judges but helped appoint them and vote for them: we had a direct role in choosing them. That does not accord with what the hon. Gentleman was arguing, which was that this is out of kilter. Every single step of the way, the United Kingdom has been part and parcel of developing the European Court of Human Rights—and rightly so, frankly, because the libertarian in me speaks up for the Court. If given the temptation to be overbearing, without scrutiny and without the courts to keep them honest, Governments of all colours will do things that none of us think right.

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[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak against the Government clauses before the Committee today and in favour of several amendments that seek to limit their horror and inhumanity.

The changes made by clauses 37 to 48 to the legal and human rights of asylum seekers breach the UK’s human rights obligations. The proposed timescales and tests, combined with the lack of judicial oversight, build in unfairness and undermine access to justice. It is difficult to see how a vulnerable and traumatised person will be able to engage with the process, especially as the provisions do not set out any right to legal advice and representation.

That is one of the many reasons that I support new clause 26 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), which would require an equality impact assessment about how people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 will be impacted by the Bill. Indeed, protections for vulnerable people, pregnant women and children are being tossed aside in favour of new powers to indefinitely detain people at greater risk of harm, including survivors of torture, trafficking and modern slavery.

The new and sweeping powers of arbitrary detention are nothing short of spine chilling. The Bill will increase the number of people detained, while removing the bulk of the essential safeguards that were put in place to protect people, adding to the inherent harm caused by indefinite detention. That is despite the UK’s immigration detention system being plagued by mismanagement, profiteering by private companies and incidents of systemic and direct abuse and neglect, including the scandals reported at Brook House immigration removal centre, the Manston short-term holding facility, Harmondsworth IRC and many others.

What is the purpose of this sweeping and illegitimate restriction of people’s liberties? What is the crime that such individuals have committed to be treated worse than serious criminals and to have fewer rights? Today, this Government propose to punish people for seeking asylum. Not satisfied with that, they seek to ensure that those people cannot challenge this injustice—all essentially to deter anyone else from coming to the UK to seek sanctuary. They are literally planning to persecute the already persecuted.

Denying access to asylum on such a basis undermines the very purpose for which the refugee convention was established. The convention explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly. The United Nations Refugee Agency has said:

“Most people fleeing war and persecution are simply unable to access the required passports and visas. There are no safe and ‘legal’ routes available to them.”

The reality is that the UK offers safety to far fewer refugees per capita than the average European country, such as France or Germany, and to far fewer than the countries neighbouring those from which 70% of the refugees from the global south flee. That is why I support new clause 10 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), which sets out a requirement to introduce a safe passage visa scheme. She has spoken eloquently about the stories behind the numbers and statistics—the people with real lives, hopes and dreams.

If the Government seriously wanted to protect the lives at risk from small boat crossings, they would back more generous family reunification rights and support safe, functioning routes. Instead, the Bill is the latest in a long line of measures that form their hostile environment and the toxic, racist and xenophobic narrative that is taking hold in many parts of the world, based on fear and the manipulation of that fear. It is immoral, deeply cruel and divisive. It breaks international law, it crushes human rights and it is shameful.

[Tom Hunt]

I have waited for a very long time to speak on the Bill. On Second Reading, I think I waited for four hours but did not get called. I have waited for a good amount of time today, too, but it has only made me more determined to get my points across.

I did not sign any of the amendments before the Committee, but I have sympathy with many of them, particularly amendment 131 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), amendment 132 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), and amendments 133 and 134 in the name of my hon. Friend and very senior colleague the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). Although it might surprise some people, I have a little bit of sympathy with amendments 72 to 75 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), but I do not think that now—before we have sorted out the scourge of illegal immigration and its impact in this country—is the right time to pursue such amendments.

In a general sense, it will not surprise people to know that I welcome the Bill. We have 45,000 people a year entering the country illegally. They are mostly young men, as has been statistically proven; many are from safe-origin countries; and every single one of them has gone through France and multiple other safe European countries but has refused to claim asylum. They have decided to shop between different safe European countries, and they have come here. Being an economic migrant and moving to the UK because there are job opportunities here is a very noble dream, of course, but my advice to them is to engage with our legal migration points-based system, and we will make a determination as to whether their dream and our needs meet.

We are the party that believes in controlling our borders. We are the party that believes in strong border controls. Labour Members get incredibly sensitive whenever anybody suggests that they believe in open borders, but I simply say to them, “Show me the evidence. Show me the evidence that you believe in controlled immigration. Show me the evidence that you don’t believe in open borders. When I look at your record, every single thing you vote on is against precisely those things, so I don’t think it is unreasonable for me and colleagues to come to the conclusion that you are opposed to all border controls. As I say, show me the evidence.”

I turn to amendment 131. When the Rwanda policy was first introduced, a lot of us supported it because we saw what had happened in Australia. Australia had had a massive problem with illegal immigration, but it went down the route of offshore processing, and today it no longer has that massive problem. It is quite simple. A few Opposition Members are saying, “Australia did not work”, but we looked into this in detail and met Australian officials, and it did work. We think that going ahead with the Rwanda policy, if it were given a chance to work, would provide a significant deterrent. It would save lives at sea, and would enable us to operate the compassionate, controlled asylum system that virtually all of us in this place want.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who spoke so powerfully about the issues at the heart of the Bill. I pay tribute to her outstanding work in the area of modern slavery and trafficking.

Here we are again, back for a second day of debate. Across the Committee, I think we all agree that we need to stop the dangerous small boat crossings and destroy the criminal industry at the heart of them, yet each of us knows, though perhaps not all of us admit it, that the Bill is a con and a sham that will only make a bad situation worse. The Government have no returns agreements with the EU to replace the one we were part of before Brexit, nor do they have a working deal with Rwanda. The Home Secretary failed last weekend in her mission to persuade Rwandan officials to state specifically that Rwanda can take thousands rather than hundreds of asylum seekers sent from the UK every year, although at least she got a photo op outside some houses being built for Rwandan citizens.

For a deterrent to be effective, it has to be credible. There is next to nothing in the Bill that is remotely credible, because it is about chasing headlines and government by gimmick when what we need is common sense, hard graft and quiet diplomacy so that we can really go after the people smugglers upstream and do a deal on returns and on family reunion. What we need is Labour’s five-point plan, which will stop the small boat crossings, clear the Tory asylum backlog and re-establish a firm, fair and well-managed asylum system.

I said yesterday that the Bill was being rushed through Committee at such a speed as to make detailed consideration and debate almost impossible. That applies perhaps even more to today’s sitting.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I note what the shadow Minister says about quiet diplomacy. Actually, it seems to me that the Prime Minister has a very good, cordial relationship with the President of France, but it is quite clear that that alone will not be enough to sort this problem out.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Well, the Conservative party has spent the past five or six years completely destroying our relationships with our European neighbours and partners, so any improvement on that is very welcome, but I feel that the Prime Minister has an uphill struggle on his hands, given the very low base from which he is starting.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for that powerful intervention. She is absolutely right. We are talking about basic standards of decency and humanity. Houses of multiple occupancy need to be properly regulated. They need a basic floor of certification and registration and of health and safety, particularly when we are talking about families. The Government should consider being more transparent and straightforward on that point.

Fortunately, we on the Opposition Benches care about secure borders, and we will clear up the mess by delivering a firm, fair and well-managed system that will stop the dangerous channel crossings, because we know that good government is not about chasing headlines; it is about common sense, hard graft and quiet diplomacy. Those are the qualities that underpin our new clauses and amendments to the Bill.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I intervened on the shadow Minister in Committee, and I found out that apparently the Labour party supports a cap for safe and legal routes, which was news to me at the time. Has he had any time to think about what that cap level would be? Bearing in mind how many people would like to try to get to our country, what would the approach be to those who failed in their application, but had still travelled here illegally and got here? Would any potential future Labour Government be open to deporting those individuals?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The cap has to be determined in consultation with local authorities and Parliament—that is absolutely right. In terms of removals, what we need is a processing system that actually works, so that we can get to a decision. People from safe countries who should be removed need to be swiftly removed from our country, and those who are genuine asylum seekers should be granted leave to remain, so that they can get on with their lives and we can start to clear up the abject mess that this Government have made of our asylum system.

The first part of our five-point plan is to repurpose and redirect the funds currently being wasted on the money-for-nothing Rwanda plan into a new, elite, cross-border, 100-strong police force that will relentlessly pursue the ruthless criminal smuggling gangs upstream. The latest £500 million payment that the British Government have made to the French Government will be having some effect on reducing the crossings, but the reality is that we will not succeed if we focus all our efforts on the hundreds of kilometres of French coastline, where resources are bound to be spread thin. We also need sophisticated operations with the British authorities working with EU member states, Europol, Interpol and Frontex to tackle the gangs upstream. New clause 16 instructs the Government to lay before Parliament a framework for a 12-month pilot co-operation agreement with those Governments and agencies to do just that and secure the prosecution and conviction of persons involved in facilitating illegal entry to the United Kingdom from neighbouring countries.

New clause 16 also incorporates the second part of our plan: securing a returns agreement with the European Union, which is essential. Since the Conservatives botched the Brexit negotiations and Britain left the Dublin convention, which had provided agreements on returns, the number of channel crossings has gone up by an astonishing 2,400%. For every one person crossing the channel in a small boat in 2019, 24 are crossing now.

There are three vital points to make on getting a returns deals. First, international challenges require international solutions. Secondly, we need an agreement with our nearest neighbours that must include returns. Thirdly, we will only strike a returns deal with the European Union if we bring something to the negotiation, and that should include a proper plan for capped safe and legal routes for bona fide asylum seekers located in mainland Europe. We suggest that Britain prioritises unaccompanied children with family in the UK, and new clause 14 reflects that.

--- Later in debate ---

I was rather disappointed by the fact that the Foreign Secretary and the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), among others, failed to join us in the Division Lobby in Committee when we voted for the equivalent clause. I am aware that they have pushed back against ham-fisted Ministers trying to steamroll them on this matter, and I also note that they have sided with their local Conservative councils against their own Government, but they are certainly not the only Members on the Government Benches who have urged the Home Office to do better on this point. And, of course, all accommodation must be value for money, as our new clause 11 indicates: we cannot keep having private companies making these huge mark-ups at the expense of the taxpayer.

[Tom Hunt]

If this quiet diplomacy was not as successful as the shadow Minister hopes and a lot of these return agreements did not materialise, and all these people who arrived here illegally were green-lighted if a Labour Government were ever in charge, would there ever at any point be any policy whatsoever to deport to a safe third country?

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have just pointed out, we are proposing, for example, a fast track for people from safe countries. We absolutely are of the view that people whose asylum claims are not successful or legitimate should be rapidly and safely sent back to their country of origin. I hope I have understood the hon. Gentleman’s point; I am not quite sure what it was.

Members on both sides of the House have raised concerns about the way in which this Bill will undermine our ability to crack down on modern slavery, and we do have to ask why it is that the Prime Minister has taken the attitude he has towards trafficked women and young girls being sold as sex slaves and is so accommodating to terrorists and other criminals on the other hand. We just need to look at his tweet of 7 March, threatening victims of modern slavery with deportation; it was disgraceful, and now his Government’s amendments 114 to 116 have made it even harder for victims to come forward. It will be held up, I am afraid, by the pimps and traffickers to threaten their victims. Two former Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioners, Sara Thornton and Kevin Hyland, recently warned that this Bill will devastate modern slavery protections and is a gift to criminals. All of us in this House know that this Bill is a traffickers’ charter.

Then we should look at the Prime Minister’s shocking record on deporting foreign criminals. Astonishingly, 19 terror suspects are currently living in taxpayer-funded British hotels because the Government have failed to remove them. Labour’s new clause 15 places a duty on the Secretary of State to remove suspected terrorists who have entered the country illegally or to consider the imposition of terrorism prevention and investigation measures upon them.

Deportations of criminals have fallen off a cliff since the Conservatives came to power in 2010. They plummeted by 66% to 5,000 a year before the pandemic and to just 2,100 in 2021. This is an insult to victims, and it again proves what we all know: Labour is tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, but under the Conservatives criminals have never had it so good.

The Minister for Immigration was appointed to his position as the moderate voice who would curb the more fanatical tendencies of his boss, but that simply has not happened. Instead, it appears that he has either been kidnapped by the hard right of his party, or he has willingly hitched his wagon to it because he thinks that is the way the wind is blowing. However, the Minister is not alone, because his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister also appears to have caved in to the Home Secretary and the Trumpian faction she leads. He has caved in by adding Government new clauses 22 and 26 to the Bill, thereby completely torpedoing his own negotiations with the European Court of Human Rights. It really is quite extraordinary that Conservative Prime Ministers never seem to learn from the fate of their predecessors: the more they appease the extremists, the more they demand. The Prime Minister is weak, and he is being played. This weakness did for his predecessors, and ultimately it will also do for him.

Arguably the most shocking part of this whole sorry tale is this Conservative Government’s contempt for taxpayer cash. Aside from losing billions to fraudsters during the pandemic, dishing out overpriced contracts to their mates for unusable personal protective equipment and crashing the economy to the tune of £30 billion, the Government’s asylum policy stands out as a prime example of Ministers scattering taxpayer money to the four winds and receiving absolutely nothing in return—chasing headlines while buying failure.

There are so many vital questions to be answered. Why, for instance, have the Government failed to publish an impact assessment? For example, do Ministers have any idea of the increase in detention capacity that will be required because of this Bill? The Home Secretary was completely unable to answer this simple question during her car crash of an interview on the radio this morning. How much will these additional detention places cost? How much will the Government pay Rwanda per asylum seeker, and how much will each flight cost? We still do not know the answer to that question one year after the £140 million was given. Our constituents deserve to know, as these decisions impact directly on their communities and on the state of our public finances. It is outrageous that the Government are not providing an iota of information about the impact of a Bill with such huge financial and community impact implications.

So we are bound to ask: what are Ministers afraid of? If they truly believe that this Bill will succeed in achieving its objectives, surely they would happily have published the impact assessment well before Second Reading, and they would have been delighted to stand at the Dispatch Box to defend it. However, there is of course another possibility, which is that Ministers have not even attempted to assess the impact of this bigger backlog Bill because they are utterly terrified of what they would reveal if they did. They are terrified of seeing the cost of their own incompetence. They are horrified by the thought of being transparent because transparency reveals the truth, and the truth is that this Bill will just make everything worse. It will boost the profits of the people smugglers. It will add tens of thousands to the backlog. It will add hundreds of millions to the hotel bills. It will tarnish Britain’s reputation as a country that upholds the international rules-based order. It will further inflame community frustration and tension, and it will add to the desperate misery of those who are seeking sanctuary from persecution and violence.

Many Conservative Members agree with every word of what I have just said, and I urge them to support our new clauses and to join us in the No Lobby when we vote against this deeply damaging and counterproductive Bill this evening.

Illegal Migration Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The existing arrangement that we have secured with Albania—incidentally, Albania is a signatory to the European convention against trafficking— enables us to safely return somebody home to Albania, with specific assurances to prevent them being retrafficked to the United Kingdom and to enable them to be supported appropriately upon arrival.

On the broader issue of modern slavery, the Bill makes a number of important protections when we establish the scheme. If they are party to a law enforcement investigation, their removal from the country will be stayed. We have said that we will bring forward statutory guidance, giving them a 30-day period, allied to the period set out in ECAT, to come forward and work with law enforcement, which is extendable if that enforcement activity goes on for some time. We would then only remove that person either back home to a safe country, such as Albania, or to a country, such as Rwanda, where we have put in place appropriate procedures to ensure that that Government, in turn, looks after them.

I point the hon. Lady to the judgment in the Court of Appeal that made some criticisms of the Government’s approach, but did not say that the arrangements in Rwanda with respect to modern slaves were inappropriate; it supported the Government in that regard. We will clearly put in place appropriate procedures to ensure that victims, such as the one she refers to, are properly supported.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Many opponents of the Bill seem to support uncapped safe and legal routes. The reality of that would be that potentially over 1 million people could get the ability to come here. Does the Minister agree that those proposing that should be open and honest about it, and explain what the dramatic consequences would be for public services and community cohesion in this country?

[Robert Jenrick]

I completely agree. Anyone who feels that this country has sufficient resource to welcome significant further numbers of individuals at the present time, should look at the inbox of the Minister for Immigration. It is full of emails and letters from members of the public, local authorities and Members of Parliament, on both sides of the House, complaining that they do not want to see further dispersal accommodation and worrying about GP surgery appointments, pressure on local public services and further hotels. I understand all those concerns, which is why we need an honest debate about the issue.

That is why, at the heart of the Bill, there is not only a tough deterrent position for new illegal entrants, but a consultation on safe and legal routes, where we specifically ask local authorities, “What is your true capacity?” If we bring forward further safe and legal routes, they will be rooted in capacity in local authorities, so that those individuals are not destined to be in hotels for months or years, but go straight to housing and support in local authorities. That must be the right way for us to live up to our international obligations, rather than the present situation that, all too often, is performative here, and then there are major problems down the road.

Let me reply to issues other than modern slavery in the amendments before us. On the issue of detention, we believe that a necessary part of the scheme, provided for in the Bill, is that there are strong powers. Where those subject to removal are not detained, the prospects of being able to effect removal are significantly reduced, given the likelihood of a person absconding, especially towards the end of the process.

We have made changes to the provision for pregnant women, which I am pleased have been accepted by the Lords, and unaccompanied children, but it is necessary for the powers to cover family groups, as to do otherwise would introduce a gaping hole in the scheme, as adult migrants and the most disgusting people smugglers would seek to profit from migrants and look to co-opt unaccompanied children to bogus family groups to avoid detention. That not only prevents the removal of the adults, but presents a very real safeguarding risk to children.

On unaccompanied children, we stand by the amendments agreed by the House last week. They provided a clear differentiation between the arrangements for the detention of adults and those for the detention of unaccompanied children. The amendments agreed by this House provide for judicial oversight after eight days’ detention where that detention is for the purpose of removal.