William Cash
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UK Borders Control Bill
William Cash Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Let me share a chilling thought with the House. The United States had both the suspects of Wednesday’s Paris atrocity on its travel ban list, but the two French citizens who are the suspects were freely able to come to and go from the United Kingdom should they have so wished. That is one of the consequences of our lack of control over our borders, in stark contrast with the control that the United States has over its borders.
The principal attribute of a sovereign country is its ability and rights to control which aliens, that is non-citizens, can visit or stay and which cannot. That is the issue that the Prime Minister has correctly highlighted in his various speeches on immigration during the course of this Parliament. On 14 April 2011, he said that
“for too long, immigration has been too high. Between 1997 and 2009, 2.2 million more people came to live in this country than left to live abroad. That’s the largest influx of people Britain as ever had…and it has placed real pressures on communities up and down the country. Not just pressures on schools, housing and healthcare—though those have been serious…but social pressures too.”
He went on to talk about those social pressures and issues relating to integration. The Prime Minister referred to 2.2 million extra people coming to this country between 1997 and 2009, and it is against that background that the Conservative party manifesto for the last general election said that
“immigration today is too high and needs to be reduced. We do not need to attract people to do jobs that could be carried out by British citizens, given the right training and support. So we will take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands.”
That led to the pledge.
What are the latest figures? They show that between June 2010 and June 2015—that is, over the course of this Parliament—we will have a net increase of migration into our country of a further 1.1 million. Roughly speaking, that is some 200,000 people a year for the first three years, 250,000 people last year and a similar number this year. That means that over the course of the five years of this Parliament, the rate of increase will be even greater than the rate of increase that was so rightly criticised by the Prime Minister in his speech in 2011 and that led to his concerns being reflected in the Conservative party manifesto. I welcome the Prime Minister’s recent reaffirmation in his speech on 29 November that he is determined to try to get net immigration down below 100,000 a year—in other words, to the tens of thousands.
It is worth considering a brief history of what has happened. The treaty of Rome in 1957 set out free movement for economically active people—in other words, for people who were working or self-employed. Everybody thought it was perfectly reasonable that someone who had a job could go and undertake it in another country within what was then the European Community comprising a much small number of nations. In the early 1990s, that right was extended to the non-economically active. Worst of all, article 8 of the treaty on the European Union conferred rights as European citizens on all those holding individual nationality of an individual member state. Against that background, this Government and this Parliament are severely constrained in what they are able to do about this matter unless we change the law along the lines set out in this Bill.
Clause 3 states:
“Section 7 of the Immigration Act 1988 is hereby repealed.”
That section, which is entitled “Persons exercising community rights and nationals of member States”, says:
“A person shall not under the principal Act require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom in any case in which he is entitled to do so by virtue of an enforceable Community right or of any provision made under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972.”
It then goes on to explain how that will be implemented. Interestingly, although most of section 7 was passed into law on 20 July 1988, section 7(1) was not passed into law until 20 July 1994—six years later. I suspect that that is because the Government of the time realised in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when we had Prime Minister Thatcher in charge, that the implications of implementing it in full would potentially be very significant. Let us remember that at that stage net immigration into the United Kingdom, including immigration from the European Union, was running at about 37,000 a year. Now, over 120,000 people a year are coming in just from other countries within the European Union. In my submission, we need to ensure that the people who are currently given a privileged position under section 7 have that removed from them so that each case can be treated on its merits, as I think the public would wish.
The problem is that because of European law and the judgments that are passed by the European Court of Justice, even groups that we thought were exempt from the provisions of section 7 are now being included. In the case of Chen, for example, the United Kingdom initially made provision to allow the primary carers of European economic area residents—self-sufficient children —to seek leave to enter or remain under paragraph 257C to 257E of the immigration rules. In that case, it was ruled that those people were entitled to come in anyway. Whatever has been passed by the European Community has been extended in its impact, making it more difficult for us to be able to take control of our own borders.
Clause 1 reasserts the sovereignty of the United Kingdom in determining which non-UK citizens may enter our country and the circumstances in which non-UK citizens may be required to leave the United Kingdom.
Clause 2, which is entitled “Regulation of entry by non-UK citizens”, says:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Acts, or of any other Act or Order, Regulation or Directive, the United Kingdom retains the exclusive right to regulate entry by non-UK citizens to the United Kingdom and to determine the circumstances in which non-UK citizens may be required to leave the United Kingdom.”
I have referred already to clause 3. Clause 4 deals with registration certificates. Obviously, we must have some system of ensuring that people who are in this country who are not United Kingdom citizens are able easily to demonstrate their right to be in this country. That is why clause 4 states:
“From the date of the coming into force of this Act and notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, any non-UK citizen resident in the United Kingdom without the authority to remain in the United Kingdom provided by a current visa, visa waiver, residence permit or other official document must apply for a registration certificate to confirm their right of residence in the United Kingdom.”
The clause goes on to set out how that would work. Certificates would be issued and administered by the Secretary of State, and the content of the forms and the grounds on which applications could be granted or refused would be prescribed by the Secretary of State.
The model that I used for those provisions is what is currently contained in the UK visas and immigration legislation, under which one can apply for a registration certificate. There is no requirement for a European economic area or Swiss national exercising treaty rights to fill in an application for such a registration certificate, but they are encouraged so to do because they can then demonstrate that they are entitled to be in the United Kingdom. Clause 4 would operate on that basis, except that under my Bill it would be mandatory for somebody to apply for a registration certificate and hold such a certificate.
As an aside, one can see what a farcical situation we have reached. The Government have said that they are concerned that a large number of people with criminal convictions from other European Union countries are coming into the United Kingdom, so I was encouraged when I saw that the application form for a registration certificate says under section 10:
“Please provide details as requested below of any criminal convictions you may have both in the UK and overseas.”
There is provision to set out all that detail. It is in the national interest that we should know whether people applying to come into this country have criminal convictions. There has been a series of well-publicised cases where people with previous criminal convictions have committed further crimes in the United Kingdom, which has caused outrage.That was fine, until I noticed that the form went on to say:
“However, please note that should you fail to provide this information this will not result in the rejection of your application.”
That is written in because the European Union will not allow us to require such information. This is just another example of the farcical situation that we are in at present, where we do not have control over the people entering and leaving our country.
Under clause 4, the registration certificate system would require people to fill in the form accurately and give information about their previous criminal convictions, in exactly the same way as anybody who wishes to go to the United States of America has to obtain a visa. If it is all right for the United States, why is it not all right for the United Kingdom, which is an attractive place to visit? People are not deterred from visiting the United States by such a requirement, and they would be no more inhibited from coming to our country if we had such requirements. The Bill would ensure that as far as possible people would be able to stay in the United Kingdom if they wanted to, provided they had registration certificates.
There is no point in issuing a command without having a sanction, so clause 5 states that anyone who is present in the United Kingdom after 31 December 2015 without legal authority or without having applied on or before that date for a registration certificate shall be guilty of an offence, as would anybody who entered or attempted to enter the United Kingdom without legal authority after that date. Clause 6 sets out the penalties. Under the current regime, there are no effective penalties against those who come into our country and we do not know how many such people there are.
In March 2014 I asked the Home Office for its
“most recent estimate…of the number of illegal immigrants employed in the UK; and what change there has been in this number since May 2010.”
The Minister for Security and Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) answered:
“HM Government have not made any estimate of the number of illegal migrants currently employed in the UK. Given the clandestine nature of illegal migrants, any estimation is, by definition, extremely difficult and prone to considerable uncertainty.”—[Official Report, 3 April 2014; Vol. 578, c. 740W.]
He then went on to explain all the wonderful things the Government are doing.
On 7 April I asked the Minister
“how many illegal workers whose employment has been the subject of penalties pursuant to section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (a) have been deported and (b) are still in the UK.”
He replied:
“We are better placed than ever to identify and charge those working illegally…It would not be possible to provide the information requested without linking immigration case outcomes to our data on civil penalties issued on employers. This would incur disproportionate costs.”—[Official Report, 7 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 116W.]
That was another completely useless response from a Government who are apparently trying to regain control over our borders, which has my full support, to ensure that the only people living here are those we really want to live here. As part of that process, of course, we need to know who those people are.
Where does one go for information about how many people are here illegally? One source of information is the Government’s December 2013 publication, “Sustaining services, ensuring fairness: Government response to the consultation on migrant access and financial contribution to NHS provision in England”. It estimates that, at any one time in England, there are about 2.5 million overseas visitors and migrants, of whom about 450,000 are from the European economic area, 1.4 million are from outside the EEA, 65,000 are ex-pats and 580,000 are irregulars,
“including failed asylum seekers liable to removal, people who have overstayed their visas and illegal immigrants”.
The Government document estimates that there are 580,000 people here who should not be here, and it goes on to explain the significant burden they are placing on the national health service in various ways and how they are not contributing as they should be.
That is the scale of the problem. There may be well over 500,000 people in this country who have no right to be here whatsoever. The Bill would, in a sense, flush them out, because if they did not have British citizenship, a residence permit or the right to stay here, they would be guilty of an offence.
I have raised before in this House the issue of what the Government are doing to enforce the provisions that make it illegal to be here without authority. I have been told that there is no need to introduce new legislative requirements, such as those in clauses 5 and 6, because section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 is clear that people who are in breach of the provisions can be prosecuted. Section 24(1) on “Illegal entry and similar offences” states:
“A person who is not a British citizen shall be guilty of an offence punishable…with a fine of not more than level 5 on the standard scale or with imprisonment for not more than six months, or with both, in any of the following cases:—(a) if…he knowingly enters the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or without leave; (b) if, having only a limited leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, he knowingly either—(i) remains beyond the time limited by the leave; or (ii) fails to observe a condition of the leave; (c) if, having lawfully entered the United Kingdom without leave…remains without leave beyond the time allowed”,
and so on.
In the context of the very large numbers of people thought to be in the country illegally, one might think that we would exercise effective sanctions against them. I was therefore extremely disappointed, although I must tell the Minister that I was not that surprised, to find that in 2013 the number of defendants convicted for offences under section 24(1) in all cases of people overstaying their time limit for leave—there may be hundreds of thousands of them—was two in the magistrates court and four in the Crown court. There was only one conviction in the magistrates court and one in the Crown court under section 24(1)(b)(ii) for failing to observe leave conditions.
At the moment, even the existing law is not applied. People in this country illegally and in breach of their obligations are not prosecuted or proceeded against, which is nothing short of scandalous. That is another reason why the Bill would provide a fresh starting point. Everybody not here legally would have the opportunity to leave, to seek to regularise their position by applying for a certificate or to face the consequences of failing so to do.
If we won back control over our own system, we could require people coming into the country to provide fingerprints or DNA samples. At the moment, that matter is governed by the Eurodac regulations. I have done a lot of work on migrants crossing the Mediterranean, landing in Italy and finding their way into other parts of Europe. In Italy, they are often not processed at all: their fingerprints are not taken, so nobody knows that they have ever been in Italy, which means that they can ultimately present themselves in another country in the European Union and seek asylum. Some asylum seekers or migrants try to fight the system and refuse to give their fingerprints—the Italian authorities say they do not take their fingerprints because they refuse to give them—so I suggested that if such people do not want to give their fingerprints, we should take a sample of their DNA, but I was told that that would be illegal under the Eurodac regulations. This is crazy: what harm can there be in people seeking asylum supplying their DNA, particularly if they do not want to give their fingerprints?
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
My hon. Friend will perhaps recall that a short time ago, I presented the United Kingdom Parliament (Sovereignty and Jurisdiction over Borders) Bill, which contains a provision that would deal with any difficulties that we have in respect of immigration policy by bypassing the European Court of Justice and using the hallowed formula, “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”. All the regulations and provisions that would otherwise prevent us from getting proper control over our borders would be wiped away by taking that very simple step. What astonishes me is that that formula would return governance to this country. I hope that he will bear that in mind.
Mr Chope
I am delighted that the Bill will have the even more enthusiastic support of my hon. Friend. I agree with him that there is no point in pretending that we can sort this problem out without distancing ourselves from all the European Union regulations. That is why I have drafted the Bill in a way that reasserts the sovereignty of this Parliament over the borders of our United Kingdom.
I am conscious of the time, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could carry on for a bit longer, not least to point out some of the practical shortcomings of the worthy proposals that the Prime Minister made in his speech on 29 November, but I will not do that and will instead sit down, having proposed the Second Reading of the Bill.