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 What we are seeing is a paradigm shift whereby the Labour party no longer represents those working-class communities.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—