Illegal Migration Bill

Statement

My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made yesterday in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary:

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill. Two months ago, the Prime Minister made a promise to the British people that anyone entering this country illegally will be detained and swiftly removed—no ifs, no buts. The Illegal Migration Bill will fulfil that promise. It will allow us to stop the boats that are bringing tens of thousands to our shores, in flagrant breach of both our laws and the will of the British people.

The United Kingdom must always support the world’s most vulnerable. Since 2015, we have given sanctuary to nearly half a million people through family resettlement and global safe and legal routes. These include 150,000 people from Hong Kong escaping autocracy, 160,000 Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s war and 25,000 Afghans escaping the Taliban. Crucially, these are decisions supported by the British people precisely because they were decisions made by British people through their elected representatives, not by the people smugglers and other criminals looking to break into Britain daily. For a Government not to respond to waves of illegal arrivals breaching our borders would be to betray the will of the British people whom we are elected to serve.

The small boats problem is part of a larger global migration crisis. In the coming years, developed countries will face unprecedented pressures from ever greater numbers of people leaving the developing world for places such as the United Kingdom. Unless we act today, the problem will be worse tomorrow, and the problem is already unsustainable.

The volume of illegal arrivals has overwhelmed our asylum system. The backlog has ballooned to over 160,000. The asylum system now costs the British taxpayer £3 billion a year. Since 2018, some 85,000 people have illegally entered the United Kingdom by small boat—45,000 of them in 2022 alone. All travelled through multiple safe countries in which they could and should have claimed asylum. Many came from safe countries, such as Albania. The vast majority—74% in 2021—were adult males under the age of 40, rich enough to pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds for passage.

Upon arrival, most are accommodated in hotels across the country, costing the British taxpayer around £6 million a day. The risk remains that these individuals just disappear. And when we try to remove them, they turn our generous asylum laws against us to prevent removal. The need for reform is obvious and urgent.

This Government have not sat on their hands. Since the Prime Minister took office, recognising the necessity of joint solutions with France, we have signed a new deal providing more technology and embedding British officers with French patrols. I hope Friday’s Anglo-French summit will further deepen co-operation.

We have created a new small boats operational command, with over 700 new staff; doubled NCA funding to tackle smuggling gangs; increased enforcement raids by 50%; signed a deal with Albania, which has already enabled the return of hundreds of illegal arrivals; and we are procuring accommodation, including on military land, to end the farce of accommodating migrants in hotels.

But let us be honest: it is not enough. In the face of today’s global migration crisis, yesterday’s laws are simply not fit for purpose. So to anyone proposing de facto open borders through unlimited safe and legal routes as the alternative, let us be honest: by some counts there are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear: they are coming here. We have seen a 500% increase in small boat crossings in two years. This is the crucial point of this Bill. They will not stop coming here until the world knows that if you enter Britain illegally, you will be detained and swiftly removed—back to your home country if it is safe, or to a safe third country, such as Rwanda.

That is precisely what this Bill will do. That is how we will stop the boats. This Bill enables detention of illegal arrivals, without bail or judicial review within the first 28 days of detention, until they can be removed. It puts a duty on the Home Secretary to remove illegal entrants and will radically narrow the number of challenges and appeals that can suspend removal. Only those under 18, medically unfit to fly or at real risk of serious and irreversible harm—an exceedingly high bar—in the country we are removing them to will be able to delay their removal. Any other claims will be heard remotely, after removal.

When our Modern Slavery Act passed, the impact assessment envisaged 3,500 referrals a year. Last year, 17,000 referrals took on average 543 days to consider. Modern slavery laws are being abused to block removals. That is why we granted more than 50% of asylum requests from citizens of a safe European country and NATO ally, Albania. That is why this Bill disqualifies illegal entrants from using modern slavery rules to prevent removal.

I will not address the Bill’s full legal complexities today. Some of the nation’s finest legal minds have been and continue to be involved in its development. But I must say this: the rule 39 process that enabled the Strasbourg court to block, at the last minute, flights to Rwanda, after our courts had refused injunctions, was deeply flawed. Our ability to control our borders cannot be held back by an opaque process conducted late at night, with no chance to make our case or even appeal decisions. That is why we have initiated discussions in Strasbourg to ensure that its blocking orders meet a basic natural justice standard, one that prevents abuse of rule 39 to thwart removal. That is why the Bill will set out the conditions for the UK’s future compliance with such orders. Other countries share our dilemma and will understand the justice of our position.

Our approach is robust and novel, which is why we cannot make a definitive statement of compatibility under Section 19(1)(a) of the Human Rights Act 1998. Of course, the UK will always seek to uphold international law, and I am confident that this Bill is compatible with international law. When we have stopped the boats, the Bill will introduce an annual cap, to be determined by Parliament, on the number of refugees the UK will resettle via safe and legal routes. This will ensure an orderly system, considering local authority capacity for housing, public services and support.

The British people are famously a fair and patient people. But their sense of fair play has been tested beyond its limits as they have seen the country taken for a ride. Their patience has run out. The law-abiding patriotic majority have said, ‘Enough is enough.’ This cannot and will not continue. Their Government—this Government—must act decisively, must act with determination, must act with compassion, and must act with proportion. Make no mistake: this Conservative Government will act now to stop the boats. I commend this Statement to the House.”

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, here we go again, as the Government launch yet another Bill to deal with their catastrophic failure on asylum. We have record backlogs, claimants waiting sometimes years for claims to be sorted, children lost, and claimants bundled into hotels with no or little local consultation. Last year, a record 45,000 people crossed the channel on small boats, up from four years ago, as convictions for people smugglers have halved. It is a public policy failure.

Just last year, the Nationality and Borders Act was passed. The Home Secretary said:

“Anyone who arrives illegally will be deemed inadmissible and either returned to the country they arrived from or a safe country.”

Can the Minister update us on how that is going? How can it work with no return agreements and the shocking Rwanda plan, as it should be, stuck in the courts? Last year’s Act led to 18,000 people deemed inadmissible because they travelled through safe countries. Without the return agreements, which the Minister never mentioned, can he confirm that just 21 were returned—or if he prefers, 0.1%. The other 99.9% were placed in shocking hotels, or similar, at the cost of £500 million and more boats arriving. It is chaos—chaos with shocking human consequences and potential rises in community tensions.

What is different this time? Where are the return agreements? Where are all those to be detained for 28 days going to be housed? What happens after the 28 days? Let us remember, among those people, there will be torture victims, those fleeing war and persecution, Afghan interpreters and families with children. It is chaos, unworkable, but it gets the Government the cheap headlines they crave—even if it means potentially excluding victims of modern slavery or trafficking. Where are the safe and legal routes that many in this Chamber have been asking for? To take one example, what route exists under the existing rules or under this Bill for Afghan interpreters who fled Afghanistan, and were told by the Government to flee Afghanistan, to avoid capture by the Taliban?

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I came across an article that said:

“The longer the queue, the worse the administrative confusion, the greater the incentive is for racketeers to target their efforts on Britain. There is a direct link between Government incompetence in managing asylum cases and the surge in applications to stay here.”

This was written in 2000 by William Hague, then the leader of the Conservative Party and now of course the noble Lord, Lord Hague of Richmond. He was criticising the then Labour Government, but, in the ministerial letter we received, referring to plans to

“clear the legacy initial decision asylum backlog by the end of 2023”,

there was a complete failure to acknowledge that this legacy was created by a Tory-run Home Office, which has never got a grip over the last 13 years. Nearly 100,000 people have been waiting for a decision on their asylum claim for over six months—that is four times the number in 2019. We need a minimum service level in the Home Office.

We all want to see an end to dangerous channel crossings, but the Bill and the hullabaloo surrounding it are just more of the same gimmicky gesture politics, not the practical and sustainable solution that is actually needed. The Bill is not only unworkable but illegal and immoral. It treats people as criminals simply for seeking refuge. In the article I quoted from, the noble Lord, Lord Hague, said:

“We believe Britain has a moral as well as a legal duty to welcome here people who are fleeing for their lives.”

That “we” was the Conservative Party 23 years ago. No wonder that even some Tory MPs are now upset at the xenophobic and dehumanising rhetoric and intentions to breach the refugee convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.

My Lords, it is clear that the need for reform is obvious and urgent. The problem in the channel has grown over the last two years. Since 2018, 85,000 illegally entered the UK by small boat—45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Many of them came from safe countries, such as Albania, and all travelled through multiple safe countries, in which they could and should have claimed asylum. The vast majority, 74% in 2021, were adult males under 40, rich enough to pay criminal gangs thousands of pounds for passage.

Noble Lords will not have noticed or been able to discern from the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, any policy from either the Labour Party or the Liberal party to address the crossing of the channel. The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, suggested that the delays in the asylum process were causing the mass migration—this is simply not the case. As the UNHCR says, there are 100 million refugees in the world at the moment. This requires an urgent and sustainable solution.

The noble Lord, Lord Coaker, asked me whether the Nationality and Borders Act was not a complete answer. I can reassure him that it was never said that that Act would be a silver bullet. This Bill builds on that Act, which laid the foundations of our approach but, because the situation has got worse, we now need to go further. The Nationality and Borders Act was about changing how we processed asylum claims in the current system to streamline it and reduce late and spurious claims. It made progress, and it is right that we did that, but this is different. We are now going to move these cases out of the system entirely, so they are heard elsewhere in a safe country. Illegal entry will no longer be a route to making a claim to settle in the UK—it is only by making it clear that if you come here illegally you will not have the ability to stay here that we will stop the boats. That is a measure of compassion, because it will stop people embarking on dangerous journeys across the channel.

Last year, 50% of those who crossed the channel came from only five countries—Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Sudan and Iran. If I were a young woman in Iran being hunted by the authorities for demonstrating and had relatives in this country, how could I come here? What safe and legal route is open to me? I believe that there is none. If we want to put the smugglers out of business, as of course we all do, the way to do it, contrary to what the Minister has just said, is to open safe and legal routes. It is absurd to suggest that a flow of 100 million would come in; that is just wild and ridiculous talk.

Has the Minister considered the likely cost of this policy? It seems to have three defects: first, it wrecks our reputation; secondly, it will not work because it will not put the smugglers out of business; and, thirdly, it could have considerable economic costs. Has the Minister considered Article 692 of the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU? If the EU believes that we have broken the European Convention on Human Rights—and the Home Secretary says in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, pointed out, that she cannot confirm that we have not—and if it turns out that we have, as I believe we have, the Commission has the right to denounce the trade and co-operation agreement. I do not know how much of that it would denounce, but it has been in the press this afternoon that a commissioner contacted the Home Office today. Could the Minister tell us what assessment he has made of the form of action that the Commission would ask the European Union to take against us, and what economic cost that would have?

I thank the noble Lord for his questions. First, I can reconfirm that safe and legal routes exist. As I have repeatedly told the House—

From Iran?

Perhaps the noble Lord could listen for a moment. As I told the House, the UK resettlement scheme is one that permits the Government to accept refugees who have been approved by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and are taken directly from conflict zones. This scheme grew out of the Syria and Jordan schemes, and it is a principled and fair way in which to resettle those in need of protection. It has the advantage, as noble Lords will immediately notice, of providing protection to those who need it, not based on their ability to cross Europe and pay a people smuggler to get them across the channel on the basis that they are in sufficiently good health to survive the journey. The present safe and legal routes that exist are much fairer and more appropriate.

In the second part of the noble Lord’s question, he gave a list of countries from which people crossed the channel, but he omitted, of course, Albania, a safe third country which is a NATO member and EU accession country. Given the vast numbers who come by that route from safe third countries, I simply do not accept the premise of his question.

As to his suggestion that in some way the trade and co-operation agreement would be renounced as a result of this Bill being passed, I do not accept that contention for one moment. The Government are of the view that the measures in this Bill are compatible with our international obligations—and time will tell.

My noble friend the Minister is an experienced lawyer, and we have heard a lot about how this may or may not be in contravention of international law. I am not an experienced lawyer, but perhaps he could help me out. A lot of the critics are saying that we should let all these people in and then determine things and possibly reward them with British citizenship. Does he think that, if we let people into this country who break the law to come here and then rewarded them with British citizenship, it would undermine everybody’s respect for the rule of law in this country?

I entirely agree with my noble friend. The reality appears to be, from the policy vacuum on the Labour Benches, that the Labour Party is in favour of open borders, which appears to be entirely out of step with the views of the British people.

My Lords, the notion that the Labour Party is in favour of open borders is a complete calumny. It is a disgrace that we should argue such an important issue in this way. Article 692 has been referred to, and it is clear from the evidence that the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of this House received earlier this week that it is likely that Part 3 of the TCA would be disestablished. The consequences of that would be absolutely catastrophic.

Let me put this to the Minister: when his boss, the Home Secretary, talked about the 100 million people displaced, and in the next sentence said, “These people are coming here”—that is what she said—did she not believe that she was throwing a match into an oil tanker? Did she not understand the Donald Trump playbook of creating a crisis then believing that other people can be blamed, such as the Civil Service, the opposition parties and this House?

I suggest that it is worth at least thinking about the idea that, while we might take this Bill through Committee, we do not vote it down, because that is exactly what this Conservative Government want. Let us have a sensible debate about sensible policies agreed with the French, starting next Friday, to do what we did 20 years ago and stop the flow.

As the noble Lord will recall from his time in this department, the policy of stopping asylum is not straightforward, and that of stopping people from entering illegally and claiming asylum is not straightforward. The Labour Party failed in its time in office to answer this question, and the problem has only got worse, particularly over the past two years. It is with this legislation that we are addressing the issue that has arisen. In the absence of a policy from the Labour Party, we can do no other than to conclude that it is in favour of open borders.

As to the noble Lord’s second point in relation to international co-operation, it has been vital, alongside the creation of this new legislation, to liaise internationally both with the French and the Albanians. As the noble Lord is aware, the Prime Minister is meeting President Macron on Friday to discuss these issues.

Does my noble friend accept that this is too serious a matter to try to turn it into party politics? Does he further accept that international law is crucially important for Britain and for the establishment of a whole range of other things? The Conservative Party is intended to be the party of law and order. I must say to him that many of us accept the seriousness of the numbers of people concerned. If you are concerned with climate change—as I am—it will increase and be worse, but we cannot do this by breaking international law.

I will go along all the way with my noble friend on the tough measures that have to be taken, but he has to accept that to propose something that is against international law will undermine all the other things that we have to do throughout the world. It does not help to say things that are, frankly, somewhat distant from the truth. I happen to think that the Labour Party has got it wrong, but it does not mean that, because it has got it wrong, it does not have a policy. On this occasion, unusually, it does.

I can reassure my noble friend that, as I have already said, the Government do not believe that they are acting contrary to international law.

My Lords, if it was so that the Government are not acting contrary to international law, as the Minister has just said, then the compatibility statement would be put on the face of the Bill.

My Lords—I am sorry, is the noble Lord finished?