Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Tom Hunt and Bob Seely

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tom Hunt]

I will not be giving way.

I will be supporting amendment 11 in relation to the Human Rights Act. I will also support the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark on the ECHR. I remember vividly the situation in June 2022. I also remember the referendum we had in 2016, where the majority of people in this country voted to leave the European Union. They did so because they wanted the Parliament of this country to be fully sovereign; they did not want it to be frustrated by foreign organisations, whether the EU or the ECHR. The way in which that happened in June 2022, to a policy that has majority support from most of the people in this country, was devastating.

More generally, it is important that we respect the discussions on Second Reading, when the Prime Minister said that he wanted sound international legal arguments for amendments. That bar has been met, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark has explained how that is the case. Fundamentally, I have regretfully come to the conclusion as a Member of Parliament that we should leave the ECHR. My prediction is that, in time, we will. Many of the debates associated with the ECHR are similar to the debates around Brexit. Those who originally wanted to leave the EU were branded extremists and a minority. The same arguments were made, such as, “Let’s reform it from the inside.” We will try that again with the ECHR, and I think we will be unsuccessful.

It is the supranational nature of the ECHR that I am deeply uncomfortable with. We have already seen how that operates. Some Members have made the point that it is not a foreign court because we have ownership of it. People made the same argument about the European Union, and the MEPs going to Brussels. Ultimately, when it came to that decisive referendum, most people who voted on that question disagreed with that view and we rightly left the EU. It is not right and the issue of the ECHR opens up a serious democratic deficit, given that we left the EU. The principles for why we did are live in this debate today, and we must listen.

On the issue of illegal migration, like on the issue of net legal migration, we are playing with fire. The level of frustration felt by millions of people in the country is extreme, and the warnings are there from across of the world about what happens if mainstream parties do not deal with people’s legitimate concerns about mass migration. If the Conservative party does not responsibly and robustly deal with it and finally stop the boats, the warning signs are there for what might happen.

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[Tom Hunt]

We have heard lots of arguments about the ECHR and about Winston Churchill forming it. That has been defeated time and again but continues to be wheeled out by Opposition Members. I do not agree. I do not think for a moment that if Winston Churchill was alive today, he would be comfortable with the way in which today’s ECHR operates and its supranational nature.

Ultimately, I applaud the Prime Minister’s desire to stop the boats, but it is not enough just to try, and it is not enough to be just 80% or 90% of the way there. We need to be 100% of the way there. We have seen previously that any chinks in the armour of any Bill designed to tackle this issue will be ruthlessly exploited. We share the Prime Minister’s desire and we want to work with him to get a Bill that we can all unite behind to stop the boats.

Immigration is not just an important issue. I honestly believe that it has become an existential issue. Ultimately, it is important that we unite behind the Bill, but it needs to work. The question is: do we think that the Bill will work or not? Do we think it can be strengthened? For all those reasons, I will vote for the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark with a certain degree of pride. I believe in the sovereignty of this country, I believe in listening to the people of this country, and I believe in narrowing the unhealthy disconnect there is between the views of the majority of people on immigration and where we are at the moment.

[Bob Seely]

I am sorry to have got to the debate a bit late. I will talk in general about some of the amendments; I am sympathetic to a lot of them. I always listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who is always eloquent on this subject and probably right in what he says, but I will explain why, despite my concerns about the ECHR, I will not support his amendments and the other amendments. That is because we are dealing with the art of the possible as well as the art of what is right and wrong.

I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) talk in apocalyptic terms, but he was right to say that there is a great deal of angst and concern. According to the recent poll, in my patch, like in his, more than 50% want people sent back without a right of appeal. I am therefore sympathetic towards that argument. I am also sympathetic to the concern of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark that the system will not work. But we are dealing with the art of the possible, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich says that we need 100% certainty and not 80% or 90%, I get a bit concerned.

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[Bob Seely]

I am so sorry, I thank the hon. Lady.

Option 2 is that some of the legal appeals work and some do not, but we begin to get the planes moving, sort of, this summer. That is a reasonable success, and we are heading in the right direction with other measures. Option 3 is that it does not work. We get some brownie points for trying, but it is a bad outcome. Option 4 is that we vote down the Bill today, there are no flights at all, the left is in clover and the liberal elites are smiling all the way to the next election. A hundred colleagues on the Government Benches will return, and there will be no one to challenge woke or large-scale illegal immigration whatsoever.

[Tom Hunt]

What will make the liberal elite the happiest will be to see the Bill strangled in the courts because of its weaknesses. What does my hon. Friend think about the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who perhaps knows this issue better than anyone else?

[Bob Seely]

My hon. Friend makes a point about the happiness of the liberal elites, but he is giving a subjective opinion about what he thinks they would love. Actually, what they would love most of all is for the Bill to die tonight. We must get the Bill through to give us any form of chance. As I said, there are four options. Option 1: it works perfectly—it may not. Option 2: it is likely to work in part—we can live with that. Option 3: it fails—that is bad, but we are trying. Option 4: we kill the Bill tonight—we can all go and look for new jobs. That is what we are facing.

I want to see my hon. Friend and many others return, but we need to give people the best chance of delivering on the Bill. The best chance of that is to try to push the Government in a conservative direction—I give my hon. Friend that—but only as far as they can go. I am on the same side of the argument as my hon. Friend on this, but my difference is that I will give the Government the benefit of the doubt to get the Bill through Third Reading. We have to get the Bill through. Even if my hon. Friend does not vote against it but is willing to abstain, that will be an improvement.