Illegal Migration Update

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 5 September.

“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a Statement about illegal migration.

Tackling illegal migration is one of the Government’s central priorities because it is the British public’s priority. People can see that illegal migration is one of the great injustices of our time. It harms communities in the UK, it denies the most vulnerable refugees a chance of resettlement, and it leaves behind a trail of human misery. Indeed, the perilous nature of the small boat crossings was underscored once again last month when six fatalities occurred in a tragic incident off the French coast. My thoughts are with all those affected, and I pay tribute to the first responders in both the UK and France who worked in difficult circumstances to save as many lives as possible.

That reminds us all why we need to do whatever it takes to stop the boats, which is exactly what the Government have been doing throughout the summer. We started by redoubling our efforts to smash the criminal gangs upstream, well before those gangs are in striking distance of the United Kingdom. We have agreed a new partnership with Turkey to target the supply chain of small boats, which establishes the UK as Turkey’s partner of choice in tackling the shared challenge of illegal migration. Two weeks ago I visited my counterparts in Egypt, as the Security Minister visited Iraq, to deepen our law enforcement co-operation with two more strategically important countries in that regard.

In the UK, we have been ratcheting up our activity to break the business model of the gangs. Unscrupulous employers and landlords who offer illegal migrants the ability to live and work in the UK are an integral part of the business model of the evil people-smuggling gangs. We are clamping down on them; we announced over the summer the biggest overhaul of our civil penalty regime in a decade, trebling illegal working fines and initiating a tenfold increase in right to rent fines for repeat offenders.

As we do so, more rogue employers and landlords are getting knocks on the door. Illegal working visits in the first half of this year increased by more than 50% compared with the same period last year. So far in 2023 we have more than trebled the number of right to rent civil penalties issued compared with last year, resulting in a sixfold increase in the number of penalties levied. Following the resumption of the immigration banking measures in April, banks and building societies are now closing the accounts of more than 6,000 illegal migrants.

As we surge our enforcement activity, we are driving up the returns of those with no right to remain in the United Kingdom. Last month we announced the professional enablers task force, which will increase enforcement action against lawyers and legal representatives who help migrants to abuse the immigration system. Lawyers found to be coaching migrants on how to remain in the country by fraudulent means will face a sentence of up to life imprisonment.

Since our deal with Albania in December last year, we have returned more than 3,500 immigration offenders, on weekly flights. As we have done so, we have seen a more than 90% reduction in the number of Albanians arriving illegally. So far there have been more than 12,600 returns this year, with returns in the first half of this year 75% higher than in the same period last year. Of course, those changes follow the landmark Illegal Migration Act 2023, which, coupled with our partnership with Rwanda, will deliver the truly decisive changes necessary to take away all the incentives for people to make illegal crossings from the safety of France.

As we adopt a zero-tolerance approach to illegal migration, the Government have extended a generous offer to those most in need of settlement. The latest statistics published over the summer show that, between 2015 and June 2023, 533,000 people were offered a safe and legal route into the United Kingdom. Last month the Home Office resettled the thousandth refugee through the community sponsorship scheme.

While this Government’s focus is on tackling the source of the problem, we have none the less worked to manage the symptoms of illegal migration as best as is practicable. We have made significant improvements at Manston since last year, and it continues to operate as an effective site for security, health and initial asylum checks, despite the pressure of the summer months.

We have worked to ensure that when migrants depart Manston they are now heading to cheaper and more appropriate accommodation, by rolling out room sharing and delivering our large accommodation sites. Those sites are undoubtedly in the national interest, but the Government continue to listen to the concerns of local communities and Members of this House, and throughout the summer further engagement has taken place to ensure that those sites are delivered in the most orderly way possible. We have successfully ended the use of Afghan bridging hotels, with Afghan families now able to move on with the next stage of their lives in settled accommodation, and the hotels are now returning to use by the public.

Reducing the backlog in asylum cases and establishing a more efficient and robust decision-making system is not in and of itself a strategy to stop illegal migration, but it is important for taxpayer value and we have prioritised it. We have transformed the productivity of asylum decision-making by streamlining processes, creating focused interviews and instilling true accountability for performance. As of 1 September, we have met our commitment to have 2,500 decision-makers, an increase of 174% from the same point last year. As a result, I am pleased to report to the House that we are on track to clear the legacy backlog by the end of the year, and that recently published provisional figures for July show that the overall backlog fell.

Tackling illegal migration is not easy; more people are on the move, and more are mobile, than ever before. Countries around the world are struggling to control it. But our 10-point plan is one of the most comprehensive strategies to tackle this problem in Europe, and that is showing. As of today, arrivals are down by 20% compared with last year, and for the month of August the reduction was more than a third. That is against the reasonable worst-case scenario of 85,000 arrivals that we were presented with when taking office last year.

In contrast, irregular migration into the EU has significantly increased, with Italy alone seeing a doubling in small boat arrivals. In Italy, a 100% increase; in the UK, a 20% decrease. Our plan is working. There is of course much more to do, but it is clear that we are making progress. I commend this Statement to the House.”

My Lords, even as we discuss yesterday’s illegal migrants Bill update, new information emerges which requires the update to be updated, as we read in today’s papers of various claims and counter- claims. First, can the Minister explain to us where the Home Office will find the additional £2 billion a year, because it will no longer be allowed to use the foreign aid budget to pay for migrants in hotels? This is a result of the illegal migrants Act. Is this report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact accurate? Why has it never been mentioned? Did the Minister know about it, because when he was asked about it earlier by another noble Lord, he did not know anything about it. So can he update us on whether this should have been mentioned, or whether the reports of that additional £2 billion are wrong?

This Saturday we saw the year’s record numbers for a day, with 870 people crossing the channel. So far this year, 21,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats. Can the Minister tell us how many of those were children and what the estimate is of the numbers waiting in France for the opportunity? If the weather improves, does the Minister expect that that number will continue to grow?

As we watch the Government move from crisis to crisis on migration, can the Government update us on plans to house migrants? Is it the case that the Army base in the Prime Minister’s constituency is still to be used, and not dropped, as a possible option, as Sir Edward Leigh MP said yesterday in the other place? When will the “Bibby Stockholm” barge be fully utilised? Has all the legionella in the water supply now been dealt with? What happened with “Bibby Stockholm”, and when did Ministers become aware of the problems? What plans does the Home Office have for more barges or, as I read in the papers over the Summer Recess, for marquees?

The Prime Minister keeps declaring victory in respect of small boats, yet the “small boats week” designed to highlight success was a catastrophic failure that merely highlighted that fact. Is it not the case that the asylum backlog is still at record levels? Migrants continue to cross the channel in huge numbers, the provision of detention facilities outside hotels is a mess, and costs continue to rise. Can the Minister also update us on how many failed asylum seekers under existing laws are awaiting deportation?

My Lords, I will not repeat the questions which have already been asked, except to emphasise the issue about the ODA money and the question of where on earth they will find funding for this to be changed.

This Statement is, basically, very thin gruel, because it opens the door to more problems than the problems we had already raised. I will question two of those big problems which are additional to the ones which have already been asked. The first is about the number of claim withdrawals. There has been a big increase in withdrawals of asylum claims, particularly from countries which have a very high grant rate for asylum claims. The previous rules on treating asylum claims as withdrawn provide three reasons that an asylum claim will be treated as implicitly withdrawn. The new version of the rules, since we completed the debate before the Recess, now adds two more grounds: failure to maintain contact with the Home Office or to provide up to date contact details, and failure to attend reporting events unless due to circumstances outside the applicant’s control. The Government say that the rule changes are to improve clarity regarding the withdrawal of asylum applications. It is difficult to see how adding yet further grounds will do anything other than increase the number of people who have genuine asylum claims thrown out.

The claims that I want to talk more about are those where, according to the rules, the circumstances in which an asylum claim will be treated as explicitly withdrawn have now widened. Before, the only circumstances in which a claim would be treated as explicitly withdrawn were where an applicant signed a specified form. Now, an applicant may also

“otherwise explicitly declare a desire to withdraw their claim”.

Can the Minister clarify what the “otherwise” circumstances are? These are new circumstances, but nowhere are they explained. How can he be sure that these people do not require protection, and what happens to them once their application has been withdrawn?

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their questions. It is apparent that I would refute the allegation from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, that, in any sense, the illegal migration update did not reveal a sensible and competent approach.

I will remind the House of the six points contained in the Statement. The first was the agreement we have recently struck with Turkey to take action with the Turkish authorities to disrupt gang activity and to prosecute those who would seek to smuggle people across the channel. The second point was the reiteration of the department’s approach to lawyers who would seek to undermine the efficacy of the asylum system by coaching or by, in effect, enabling fraudulent use of asylum and other routes; we have created the Professional Enablers Taskforce to prevent such an abuse of the system. The third was the massive increases in civil penalties for illegal working and for renting to those who are not entitled to do so.

Fourthly, on the very satisfactory statistics in relation to returns, I need not remind the House that 3,500 Albanians have been returned in recent times—a 90% reduction in the numbers arriving on small boats. Fifthly, my right honourable friend the Immigration Minister reminded the House of Commons that the target of 2,500 asylum decision-makers has now been met. Finally, there has been a 20% reduction in small boat crossings, compared to this time last year. This must be viewed in the context of circumstances where small boat arrivals in Italy have gone up by 100%.

In the context of all those points, it is notable that none of the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, or the noble Lord, Lord German, focused on these points. That is because neither the Liberal Party nor the Labour Party has any answer to the problem posed by small boats.