Illegal Migration Bill

Clause 1

Introduction

1.37 pm

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendments 2, 6 to 9, 12, 20 and 22, Government motions to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (o) in lieu of Lords amendments 2, 12, 20 and 22.

Lords amendments 23 and 30, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendments 31 to 36, Government motions to disagree and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendments 31, 35 and 36.

Lords amendments 37 and 38, Government motions to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (e) in lieu of Lords amendments 37 and 38.

Lords amendments 39 to 67, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendments 73 and 74, Government motions to disagree and Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments 73 and 74.

Lords amendment 90, Government motion to disagree and Government amendments (a) to (c) to the words so restored to the Bill.

Lords amendment 93, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 95, Government motion to disagree and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Lords amendments 102 to 104 and 107, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendments 3 to 5, 10, 11, 13 to 19, 21, 24 to 29, 68 to 72, 75 to 89, 91, 92, 94, 96 to 101, 105, 106 and 108 to 114.

This Bill is vital to stopping the boats and preventing the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary journeys across the channel. The Bill as passed by this House made it unambiguously clear to illegal migrants and people smugglers alike that, if they come to this country by unlawful means, they will not be able to stay. Instead, they will be detained and swiftly removed either to their home country or to a safe third country.

The Government brought forward a number of amendments in the Lords to enhance the Bill. These are largely of a technical nature, so I will not detain the House by setting these out now. Instead, I will confine my remarks to the non-Government amendments passed by the other place. I am grateful to the House of Lords for undertaking its proper role as a revising Chamber. Some of the changes made by the other place are, however, little short of wrecking amendments, and are not ones that the Government can support. There are a few honourable exceptions and I will deal with those first.

As the Minister says, most of the amendments we are going to be debating and voting on later are wrecking amendments. Does he agree that none of these amendments addresses the fundamental need to address the actual incentives for people to cross the channel? That is what the Bill does and these amendments take that away.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would direct Members to the speech made in the other place by Lord Clarke. He said, very powerfully, that, as a former Home Secretary and long-standing Member of this House, and as someone who is interested in and knowledgeable about this issue, he sat through many hours of debate and did not hear, from any of the critics of the Bill, a single credible alternative to the Government’s approach. If hon. Members follow that logic, they need to get behind the Government and support them in delivering this approach.

Another point that Lord Clarke made, which I agree with, was that, if we fail to tackle this issue—if we dismiss the concerns of members of the public—we will see very serious consequences in the years ahead, with a fragmentation of community cohesion and a weakening of the successful multi-ethnic democracy that all of us, on both sides of the House, are proud of and want to see sustained for future generations.

The Minister says that the other place put forward wrecking amendments, but is it not true that the other place proposed amendments that ensure that we honour treaties, respect our judiciary and ensure that the Home Office is acting within the law?

I do not agree with that. There are a few important exceptions, which I will come on to. I hope that, in my remarks and in answering any questions, I will reassure the hon. Lady that, on the points of substance made by those who want to see the Bill proceed and the issue tackled, the Government are making the right changes to the Bill.

The Minister says that no one has proposed a credible alternative, but four Lords amendments do. Lords amendment 102 proposes a

“Duty to establish safe and legal routes”.

Lords amendment 103 would amend the Crime and Courts Act 2013 to confer on the National Crime Agency specific functions to tackle cross-channel organised crime. And under Lords amendments 104 and 107, the Government would set up a 10-year strategy on refugees and human trafficking, working with foreign Governments. Do those four amendments not constitute a credible alternative?

As it happens, I will come to each of those points later in my speech, if the hon. and learned Lady does not mind, but in each case, we are already doing what she asks us to do. The Bill has a specific provision in respect of safe and legal routes and, when we had this debate in this House previously, we agreed further to set out the details of that. As for the National Crime Agency, its officers who work on organised immigration crime—I met them in recent weeks in Belgium, France, Italy, Tunisia and Libya—would be very surprised to hear that the agency does not have the authority to act on organised immigration crime because those in some cases very brave men and women are doing that work every single day on our behalf already.

Let me make a small amount of progress and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams).

I turn to the first issue of substance, which is Lords amendment 2. That would provide that the duty to make arrangements for removal applied to persons who entered illegally from the date of commencement of clause 2, rather than on or after 7 March 2023, as originally provided for in the Bill.

We acknowledge the position advanced by some in the other place and in this House about the retrospective effect of the Bill, but these Lords amendments go too far in resetting the clock. The closer we get to commencement of the Bill, the greater the risk that organised criminals and people smugglers will seek to exploit that, and we will see an increase in crossings as the deadline looms, which would only put more people at risk.

To guard against that, we have brought forward amendments in lieu to move the application of the duty from 7 March to the date of Royal Assent. The date of 7 March, however, would continue to apply for the purpose of the Secretary of State’s power to provide accommodation for unaccompanied children and for the purposes of the bans on re-entry, settlement and citizenship. That Government amendment in lieu has a particular advantage with respect to the concerns about modern slavery expressed by my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), but I will come to that in a moment.

Can the Minister tell me how many Afghan women have been able to avail themselves of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme phase 3 programme? That is the Government’s position on a safe and legal route. As we have understood from various Westminster Hall debates, we are looking at a handful in phase 3. Everything else refers to what has happened in 2021. I also draw his attention to the recent horrific drownings off Greece. This included a number of Afghan nationals and people from Pakistan-administered Kashmir. What really is the point of these ineffective, supposed safe routes?

The hon. Lady and I share the same objective: to ensure that the schemes that the Government have established are operationalised as quickly as possible, so that people who are eligible—perhaps including the women she is in contact with—can come to the United Kingdom, settle here and find sanctuary. It is incredibly important that the UK is a beacon in the world for resettlement schemes. We have already supported more than 20,000 people under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the ACRS to come to the United Kingdom. I appreciate her point that the numbers in recent months have been lower than she or we would like. One reason is that there is so little capacity in the UK today to properly house individuals, and one explanation for that is that the sheer number of individuals entering the country illegally on small boats has placed an intolerable pressure on our social housing and the contingency accommodation that we have available. If we are to bring further individuals to the UK—as we want to do and are continuing to do—they risk being housed in hotels, which is an unacceptable way to house vulnerable people and, in particular, families.