Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between Tom Hunt and Bambos Charalambous

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[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?