The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Tom Pursglove)

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I am happy to come in later.

Tom Pursglove

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Q Thank you, Sir Roger. Thank you for coming to give evidence, Mr Featonby. I welcome the support you have expressed for the principle of the Afghan scheme. Of course, this Government are absolutely committed to the principle of establishing safe and legal routes. You have been asked several times about the issue of channel crossings, and I feel that you have glossed over that slightly in your answers. Do you think that it is a priority? How would you go about tackling that challenge?

Jon Featonby: It should be, and it is right that it is a priority. There are too many people trying to cross the channel. It is well known that it is the busiest shipping lane in the UK. It is not said enough, but tribute should be paid to Border Force and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution because we have not seen huge numbers of lives lost, especially compared with what we have seen in the Mediterranean.

We would certainly say that although people continue to make those journeys, the primary focus should be on ensuring that people’s lives continue to be saved and that the loss of life stays relatively low. However, it comes back to the fact that we do not think the Bill will deter people from putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers or, as we are increasingly seeing, taking to small boats—relying not on people smugglers but on very small and even less seaworthy crafts.

There is no easy way to tackle the problem. There is no one simple solution. However, some of it will come down to the increased provision of safe routes. The more safe routes there are, the less likely people will need to take dangerous journeys. Something that needs to be a part of the UK’s international co-operation, and something that it can play an increasingly important role in, is making sure that people have access to protection systems outside the UK.

It comes back to the point about understanding why people make those journeys in the first place. People do not get on those boats on the French shores lightly—it is clear what the risks are going to be when they are there. Understanding what leads someone to that point is vitally important, and I am not sure that the Bill reflects what people with that lived experience would tell us. Some of that will require continued work with our European partners, in particular, to make sure that people have access to information, as well as to their protection systems, in order to look at the reasons why somebody may not have claimed asylum in France, for example.

A vital point that came up in the equality impact assessment published earlier this week is that when states such as the UK look to put in extra measures to protect their borders and asylum systems, they must ensure that does not lead to inverse reactions, which will just lead to people making more dangerous journeys. That is certainly what we have seen over the last 10 to 15 years. The harder it has been for people to make journeys when one route is cut off, the more people are generally pushed to make more dangerous journeys. We should be dealing with the root causes of why people make those decisions in the first instance.

Tom Pursglove

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Q What assessment have you made of those evil criminal gangs and the associated criminality? You have referred to the life sentences for people smugglers. What more would you propose doing to break their business model?

Jon Featonby: It is largely about the points I have just raised. The explanatory notes to the Bill talk about breaking the business model, and absolutely there are the enforcement procedures regarding the people smugglers themselves. We agree that that should continue to be a priority. However, we need to look at why people turn to people smugglers, and that is because of a lack of other alternatives, whether that is accessing protection systems or those other safe routes.

Tom Pursglove

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Q On modern slavery, I recognise that one of the challenges to modern slavery prosecutions is maintaining victim engagement throughout the criminal justice process. In your view, what are the key barriers for victims?

Jon Featonby: That is a very good point. We believe that the modern slavery response needs not only to provide protection for people coming out of situations of exploitation, but to enable those people to take part in prosecutions to tackle people who are exploiting others, whether in the UK or abroad.

The challenges that we see people quite often face are, first, at times a lack of trust in the police or whoever else it might be, but also—probably more importantly and more pertinent to the Bill—a lack of security about their immigration status. The people we work with, who predominantly do not have a secure immigration status in the UK, are thinking about where they are going to sleep that night, and how they are going to feed themselves and their family, rather than how they are going to help the police through this, or potentially how they will have to recount quite traumatic experiences to support those prosecutions.

That is why we support the measures in the Bill to try to give more people secure immigration status. We think that will make a big difference, but we absolutely encourage the Government to go slightly further to ensure that more people can avail themselves of that protection, which would have a beneficial impact on prosecutions as well.

Tom Pursglove

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Q I will ask one more quick question, so that hopefully my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West can come in. In your view, will the new legal aid provision in relation to the one-stop process encourage earlier referrals into the national referral mechanism?

Jon Featonby: Potentially. Some of it depends on how it is implemented. We would probably like to see some changes to that provision. I touched earlier on the work that the Red Cross does at reception centres to support people when they first leave those situations of exploitation. At that point, people come out, they are in these centres, the Red Cross may well be there, but it is probably the police, local authorities and increasingly immigration enforcement. There are very few opportunities for people to get legal advice at that point around what the NRM entails for them.

The provisions in the Bill on legal aid are welcome, but they are only for those people who have ongoing protection claims. Most people who come out of those situations of exploitation will not necessarily have an ongoing asylum claim. We would welcome the broadening of the provisions in the Bill to make sure that it covers everybody who may be thinking about entering the NRM, so that they are able to get legal advice, whether or not they have an ongoing human rights or asylum claim alongside it.