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.