Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Tom Hunt and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I shall be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, because we do not have much time, although there is a great deal I could say on this Bill. There could not be a greater contrast than the one between the cold, calculating speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Southend West (Anna Firth) and the humanitarian approach taken by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) in trying to defend international law and humanitarian principles in what we do.

This Bill is appalling in so many ways, but it is walking us rapidly away from the European convention on human rights and, with it, the European Court of Human Rights; from the 1951 Geneva convention protecting the rights of asylum; from the 1954 convention protecting people who are suffering from statelessness; from the 1989 convention on the rights of the child; and from the 2005 trafficking of children convention. That is why I strongly support Lords amendment 1, which was introduced by Baroness Chakrabarti to try to reverse this whole process. If we walk away from international conventions that this country knowingly and willingly signed up for—indeed, we drafted many of them—who are we then to criticise Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia or any other country where we believe there is a breach of those convention rights? What protection would we be offering to people we know are already being badly treated and whose only protection is the rights that come through those conventions? The Government are cynically and deliberately doing this.

I attend the Council of Europe as one of our representatives, and I have to say that Members of the Council of Europe from many countries—these are not necessarily people of the left, by any manner of means—are astonished at how Britain is walking away from all these conventions that it promoted in the past. The response from those at the Council of Europe is consternation about why we are doing that. It is consternation at the endless attacks on the European Court of Human Rights and on the European convention on human rights, which protects the rights of people in this country as well as other countries around the world.

This did not all come from nowhere; it came from the hostile environment, deliberately created by the Conservative party and the coalition Government, which had such a devastating effect on the Windrush generation. It comes from constant media references to the “asylum wave” and the horrible stories that are written about people seeking asylum. As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and others have pointed out, the number of asylum seekers in Britain is low compared with that in the rest of Europe, and the number in Europe is low compared with that in the rest of the world.

Why are there 70 million people around the world not in a place they can call their own home? The answer is: wars; human rights abuse; and environmental degradation. What are we going to do? Are we going to put up barbed wire everywhere, send gunboats everywhere, in order to try to deter desperate people? Or are we going to do something about it by trying to improve the living conditions of people in places that they are trying to flee from and improve their human rights situation? I have met people in Calais, and I have met people in this country who have come from Calais. Believe me, they are desperate. There are people who have managed to walk, almost, from Eritrea or Afghanistan. They have crossed the Mediterranean and other seas and gone through immense danger. They are looking for a place of safety—and what do we offer them? Nothing more than a hostile environment and being sent to Rwanda. Should we not look at this thing a bit differently? Should we not look at it from a humanitarian point of view?

Should we not also give refugees here the right to work? We have 100,000 vacancies in the NHS alone and a skills shortage in almost every industry, and we have highly skilled, highly intelligent people who could no longer stay in the country they came from and are looking for a place of safety. Perhaps we could be slightly more humanitarian and decent about this and accept that we have a responsibility.

We should accept that our country is enriched by those who have come here with their skills, knowledge and determination to create a better society, rather than passing this tawdry little Bill, which may well be rejected again by the Lords—I hope it is—and by the courts, knowing full well that even if the Home Secretary’s dream of sending so many people to Rwanda were carried out, they could not be housed or processed there. Can we not just turn the dial round for once and, instead of maintaining the pretence that this country was always friendly to people who are desperate, let us prove it and show that we are supportive and welcoming of desperate people who want to contribute to our community?

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I will speak to Lords amendments 2, 12, 20 and 22, on arrangements for removal, to Lords amendments 31, 33 and 35 to 38, on arrangements for those under the age of 18 and for pregnant women, and to Lords amendment 102, on safe and legal routes.

Where the Government have given some ground on the Lords amendments and entered into discussion, I feel confident that the main ethos of the Bill is still there. I was really keen to ensure that. I did not want to see the Bill watered down. I liked what I saw when it left this place, and I did not want to see it weakened and made unable to deliver.

On under-18s, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) made the good point that we do not want a situation where there is a perverse incentive for young people to be sent by themselves. That is concerning to both of us. Age verification needs to be robust. We know that there is evidence of adults—particularly adult men—pretending to be under 18 when they are not. No one in this House wants to see children detained, and that was never the Government’s intention, but at the same time we cannot allow an opening for people who are not under 18 to get special treatment.

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), said that there has not been enough time to scrutinise the Bill. This is an urgent situation. The Bill was introduced early this year. It appears to have been stuck in the other place for a huge amount of time; I understand that they have been up until 6 in the morning looking at it. I do not know how much longer the right hon. Lady would like this place and the other place to scrutinise this piece of legislation that needs to be implemented urgently.

I find it deeply frustrating when I see individuals who have never had to live with the consequences of uncontrolled mass migration and illegal migration, and people who have never had to talk to constituents who are desperately concerned about the situation—they may have hotels in their constituency that have been adversely impacted by it—opining and moralising about what they think is right and demonising anyone who supports a Bill such as this.

As I have said many times before, the House of Lords should tread carefully, because it is unelected. It is oh so tempting to moralise on this deeply complex issue without engaging in any plan, and there is no plan from the other House. Lords amendment 102 would introduce uncapped safe and legal routes. What would happen if we had alternative safe and legal routes that people could apply to? If they were uncapped, they would fill up incredibly quickly, and if they were capped, the cap would be met incredibly quickly and we would be back at square one. We would still have people entering our country illegally. What would we do then? That is not a plan.

Let me turn to Labour’s five-point plan of vagaries and platitudes—because that is what it is. All we hear about are safe and legal routes. Then there is the cross-border police force—as if that has not already been looked into. Labour Members say, “We have to do more to talk to France”. Again, it is as if we are not already doing that. It is as if the Prime Minister does not already have a good relationship with the President of France; he has, but we still are where we are.