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.