(1 day, 23 hours ago)
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18:58 - The House divided: - Ayes: 83 / Noes: 267 - Question accordingly negatived.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendment (b) in the name of the Prime Minister.
I call the shadow Home Secretary.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House regrets that there have been a record-breaking number of small boat crossings, amounting to over 12,000 this year alone and a lack of action from the Government to tackle this; further regrets that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill scraps the Government’s ability to remove illegal immigrants to a safe third country, designed as an effective deterrent; and calls on the Government to support the Immigration and Visas Bill introduced by the Shadow Home Secretary, which will prevent foreign nationals, including rape gang perpetrators, from exploiting the courts with spurious human rights claims to avoid deportation, double the residency requirement for Indefinite Leave to Remain and ensure that those who have become a burden can be removed, introduce tighter visa rules for civil partners, allow deportation of all foreign national offenders, and introduce a binding cap on migration, to be set by a vote in Parliament.
For decades, the British people have demanded and politicians have promised dramatically lower immigration. For decades, successive Governments, including the last one, have failed to deliver that. That failure over decades has undermined faith and trust in democracy itself, and it is now time to end that failure and deliver what the public want. That is why we have tabled the Immigration and Visas Bill, which presents a serious, credible plan to fix immigration issues.
According to Ipsos last week, 67% of the British public think that immigration is too high. The British public are right. There are around 11 million foreign-born people in the UK, and for too long immigration numbers have been far too high. Immigration at that level has serious consequences. Some 48% of social housing in London has a head of household who was not born in the UK. In the last 10 years, migration has absorbed around 50% of new housing supply, and some nationalities are exceptionally dependent on social housing—for example, 72% of Somalis live in social housing compared with only 16% of the population more generally.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I think the right hon. Gentleman may have revealed something early on in his speech. He has told us that now is the time for “a serious, credible plan”. Is he therefore admitting that in the 14 years when his party was in government, there was not one serious or credible plan?
Chris Philp
I will talk a bit in a moment about the record of the last Government, but I have already said that for decades, under successive Governments—including the last one, but previous ones, too—immigration has been far too high. That is a failure by Governments over a period of decades, and it is now time to listen to the British people and put that right.
High levels of immigration, especially when there is not proper integration, undermine social cohesion. A nation state and a society cannot function properly when there are fractures in social cohesion.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?
Chris Philp
I will give way in a minute. In advancing the case that we have a problem with social cohesion and a lack of integration, I will present some evidence—it is not an assertion—in support of that. The most recent census revealed that a million of our fellow citizens do not speak English at all or properly. In one part of east London, 73% of children do not speak English as their first language. Some nationalities have extremely low rates of economic activity or very high rates of economic inactivity. For example, among people born in the middle east and north Africa, economic inactivity rates are 40%. That is double the rate for people born in the UK. Among people born in south and east Asia, the economic inactivity rate is 50% higher than it is for people born in the UK. By contrast, the economic inactivity rate for those born in Australia or New Zealand is only half the level of the UK-born population.
I am afraid to say that when it comes to crime and offending, there are some immigrant groups where levels of criminality are very high. For example, Afghans are 20 times more likely to commit sex offences than average. People of Congolese origin are 12 times more likely to commit violence, and Algerians are 18 times more likely to commit theft.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?
Chris Philp
I will give way in just a moment. These figures illustrate that we have a problem with integration, and that is why we need to get these numbers dramatically down, until such time as we can address these issues.
Let me turn to the economy, because it has long been thought that net migration is an unalloyed economic good. Indeed, that is one reason why successive Governments of both colours over some decades allowed immigration to get so high and to stay too high. [Interruption.] Both Governments, over many decades. Recent analysis, however, has shown that that belief is simply not true. Office for Budget Responsibility analysis last year showed for the first time that low-wage migration costs the Exchequer money. It is not a net contributor, but a net draw on the Exchequer. It costs other taxpayers money at low-wage levels, particularly where there are large numbers of dependants. It has reduced per capita GDP, which affects the level of affluence enjoyed by the population, and it is one reason that productivity in our economy has flatlined for so long. Businesses have reached for mass low-skill migration instead of investing in technology or automation, or simply becoming more productive.
That has all happened while 9 million of our fellow citizens of working age remain economically inactive. Many of those have caring responsibilities, some genuinely cannot work and others are studying, but many of those 9 million—likely more than half—could and in my view should be in the workforce, instead of large numbers of low-wage, low-skilled migrants being imported.
It is time for a different approach. We need to end the era of mass low-skilled migration and instead focus on small numbers of very high-skilled workers who should be welcomed. We need to invest more in technology and we need to get more UK residents of working age into work, including by investing in training and by reforming the welfare system. I think somebody wanted to intervene, so I will give way.
Jeremy Corbyn
When the right hon. Member has finished denigrating every community that has made its home in this country, will he reflect for a moment on the massive contribution made in education, in health, in transport and in many other industries by people who have come to this country? When he goes into a hospital, does he criticise those people who have come from another country and are working in our hospitals, looking after us and the health service, or is he interested only in denigrating people because they were born speaking a different language and they look different from him?
Chris Philp
I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman was listening very carefully. I expressly said that highly skilled migrants do make a contribution and should be welcomed, and when I referred to issues involving social housing, economic inactivity and criminality, I was reading out facts. I was reading out census data published by the Office for National Statistics. Those are facts. The right hon. Gentleman may not like the facts, but they are facts none the less. [Interruption.]
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
The hon. Member for Burnley (Oliver Ryan) has just said, from a sedentary position, that my right hon. Friend was “race-baiting”. My right hon. Friend was simply reading out official statistics in contributing to an important debate about the future of our country. Does my right hon. Friend think that the hon. Gentleman should stand up and put his views on the record, and tell his constituents what he thinks about their legitimate concerns?
Chris Philp
I think he should do that, because the British public have expressed very clear views on this issue, and if we cannot, in this House of all places, lay out the facts—published data—as a way of having an honest debate about it, I do not know where we have got to. That kind of shouting down, saying that it is somehow beyond the pale to discuss these facts, is precisely why we ended up in this mess in the first place.
Let me come on to some of the steps taken late in the time of the last Government—[Hon. Members: “Too late!”] Yes, they were too late: that is right. Those steps took effect in April 2023 and April 2024, and they included preventing social care workers and students from bringing dependants, and raising various salary thresholds. The official forecasts published by bodies such as the Office for National Statistics and the Office for Budget Responsibility show that, thanks to those measures, net migration is likely to fall by 500,000 compared to the peak—and those measures are already having an effect. If Members compare the number of visas issued in the second half of last year with the number in the second half of 2022, they will see a 76% reduction in the number of social care visas, a 21% reduction in the number of student visas, an 89% reduction in the number of student dependant visas, and a 45% reduction in the number of skilled worker visas; many of those people were not, in fact, skilled.
The truth is, however, that we need to go further, and the White Paper published last Monday does not go far enough. On the Laura Kuenssberg programme, on the Sunday before last, the Home Secretary said that the Government’s measures would have an impact of only 50,000 on net migration, whereas the number accompanying the White Paper was 100,000. Whichever number we take, however, it represents only between one tenth and one fifth of the impact of the measures taken by the last Government. That simply does not go far enough.
Chris Philp
I am going to make some progress.
I have a question for the Immigration Minister. She is welcome to intervene if she wishes to do so, or else respond in her speech. The last Government set out a plan to increase the salary threshold for family visas to £38,000, which was due to take effect on 1 April this year, just seven or eight weeks ago. The new Government suspended that measure, which will obviously have the effect of increasing immigration. Will the Government implement the increase in the threshold, as set out by the last Government? As I have said, the measures in the White Paper go nowhere near far enough, whereas we have delivered a detailed plan.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only are the measures inadequate, but they potentially open a big new route for inward migration? At the weekend, the Paymaster General suggested that the youth mobility experience scheme that we have with the EU was comparable to the scheme that we had with Uruguay. That involved 500 visas a year. We read in the papers today that the EU is asking for hundreds of thousands of youth visas. Is my right hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the possibility of this being a back door to very substantial migration?
Chris Philp
Yes, I am. It could create an enormous new loophole. There are potentially around 60 million people eligible for that visa route, and we have no idea at all of the cap. A couple of days ago, the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister what a numerical cap might be. Characteristically, he did not answer the question. There is no answer to the question of whether people coming over on the scheme could claim benefits, and no answer to whether they could bring dependants. Some European countries grant citizenship to illegal immigrants just three years after they get asylum, and they would be eligible to come as well. It seems to me that this route could create an enormous loophole in our asylum system.
Mr Brash
It is really important that the right hon. Gentleman clarifies something to aid this debate. I have read his motion carefully, and the vast majority of it is about illegal migration. It repeatedly feels like illegal migration and legal migration are being conflated as the same issue, which does not help the debate. Could he clarify whether that is his intention?
Chris Philp
I intend to talk about both. I have been talking about legal migration, and I will come to illegal migration in a moment. The hon. Gentleman raises our Immigration and Visas Bill, and one of its measures speaks directly to the question of legal migration. The numbers have been far too high for decades, and the only way that this democratically elected House can get a handle on this issue is by having an annual binding vote in Parliament to set a cap on the level of legal migration. When the cap has been reached and the agreed number of visas has been issued, the Government would simply stop issuing any new visas. Never again would we see a situation where migration numbers end up being far higher than expected, because this democratically elected House would decide. The system would be transparent and open, and the level could be set at a number that is far, far lower than anything we have seen in recent history. But when we put that in an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill last Monday, the Labour party voted against the measure, which would at last give Parliament powers to limit inward migration. I call on the Government to think again and to support our Immigration and Visas Bill, which would provide Parliament with those powers.
Let me turn to the question of illegal migration, because the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) has invited me to do so, and it would be churlish not to respond to an invitation of that kind. The main mode of illegal immigration into this country—it is not the only one—is in small boats crossing the channel. First, there is no reason at all for anyone, no matter their circumstances, to cross into the UK by small boat from France, because France is a safe country. France has a well-functioning asylum system, and there is no war going on there. No one is being persecuted in France, and people do not need to get into a rubber dinghy to flee from Calais. Not a single one of the people coming across need to do so for reasons of fleeing persecution, and they should claim asylum in France.
The Government’s record in this area is lamentable. When they came into office last July, they cancelled the Rwanda scheme before it even started. Amendment (b), in the name of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, is grossly misleading. It describes the Rwanda scheme as being “in force”, but the scheme was never in force. It was not due to start until 24 July, so the amendment is deeply misleading. Last July, the new Government set out their alternative plan, which was to “smash the gangs”. How is that going? Well, since the election, about 37,000 people have illegally crossed the channel—a 30% increase on the figure for the same period 12 months prior.
Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
Will the shadow Minister give way?
Chris Philp
Let me just make this point.
This year has been the worst in history for illegal channel crossings. Today, an observer has counted 820 illegal immigrants arriving in Dover, which will make this the worst day of the year so far. The plan to smash the gangs is in tatters and is not working. Far from closing down asylum hotels, as the Government promised to do, they are opening them up. As of 31 December, there were 8,000 more asylum hotels than there were a year before.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
Would the right hon. Member take a moment just to reflect on and remember the woman and small child who lost their lives today in an incident in French territorial waters?
Chris Philp
Yes, of course I would. A number of people have tragically lost their lives crossing the channel, and that is precisely why we need to stop these crossings entirely, as Australia did about 10 years ago. If we can stop the crossings entirely, lives will not be put needlessly at risk and we can avoid tragedy.
Carla Denyer
I have to say that I am disgusted by the narrative coming from Conservative Members, who are continuing, even in opposition and in using this Opposition day debate, to scapegoat migrants for their own 14 years of failure to deliver proper public services, tackle inequality and tackle poverty in this country, which led to many of the problems the right hon. Member has listed. Now that he has moved on to tackling small boats, will he not acknowledge that, without providing safe and regulated routes for people to claim asylum, they are pushed into the hands of people smugglers, and that the most rational as well as the most compassionate thing to do would be to provide those safe and managed routes?
Chris Philp
No, I do not accept that. First, every single person getting on one of those boats is able to claim asylum in France, and they do not need to get into one of those boats to claim asylum in the UK. Secondly, unless every single person that wants to come to the UK is given a safe and legal route, those people who are not given a place on what would presumably be a capped scheme would none the less try to cross by small boat. So the idea that that is a solution to small boat crossings is manifestly absurd.
There are of course safe and legal routes. Some were set up for specific purposes, such as the Ukrainian scheme, the British national overseas scheme, the UK resettlement scheme that saw 25,000 people from Syria resettled here, the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme and the Afghan relocations and assistance policy for Afghanistan, and the refugee family reunion route. There are plenty of safe and legal routes, and as I say, unless every single person who wants to come here is given a safe and legal route, there will still be illegal crossings, which are anyway unnecessary because France is safe and people are able to claim asylum there.
Chris Philp
I will make some progress.
The Government’s amendment makes reference to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, and the obvious truth is that their Bill will not make a great deal of difference. It creates a Border Security Commander. I know Martin Hewitt and I have every respect for him, but the Border Security Commander has no powers. All the Bill provides are functions, and those functions include preparing an annual report and publishing a strategic priority document. With all due respect to the immigration Minister, I do not think the people smugglers will be very concerned by an annual report or a strategic priority document. The so-called counter-terror-style powers in the Bill amount to confiscating mobile phones and using slightly enhanced surveillance tactics on the criminal gangs. This is a tiny step in the right direction, but the truth is that it will make no difference. As the National Crime Agency has said, law enforcement alone will not fix this problem, because if we dismantle one gang, another will simply pop up in its place. That is what the National Crime Agency assessed a year or two ago.
We do know what worked in Australia, which had an even bigger problem than us about 10 years ago, with about 50,000 people crossing to Australia. It set up Operation Sovereign Borders, which entailed a removals deterrent, and they used Nauru rather than Rwanda. In a few months, after only a few thousand people had been removed there, the illegal maritime crossings to Australia stopped entirely. The number went down to zero because the deterrent effect meant that people in Indonesia did not even attempt the crossing in the first place, and because those crossings were stopped, hundreds and hundreds of lives were saved. So it is clear to me that we need a removals deterrent, like Rwanda, to prevent these crossings.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I visited Rwanda, and I was impressed by the facilities being built for the migrants due to go there. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, had the Rwanda scheme not been cancelled by the current Government, the people due to go there would be being cared for and would be setting up new and successful lives, and we would not have people dying in the channel?
Chris Philp
Yes, I completely agree, and I commend my hon. Friend for going to look at the facilities there. Had that scheme been started as intended, on 24 July, the deterrent effect would by now have stopped these crossings. In fact, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sends people to Rwanda, so it is clearly good enough for them. Other countries, including Germany, are now looking at removals deterrents. It is clear that the Government should restart a proper removals deterrent, and I urge them to do so urgently.
We have presented a Bill to this House which contains serious and credible measures to limit legal migration, to take action against illegal migration and to ensure people with no right to be here are removed, including foreign national offenders. One of the most important measures is to repeal the Human Rights Act in relation to immigration matters, because over the years UK judges in the immigration tribunal have adopted evermore expansive definitions of ECHR articles to allow dangerous foreign criminals to remain in this country. There are thousands of examples of the definitions of the articles—not just article 8, but article 3 as well—being stretched and stretched over the years beyond any definition of common sense, and certainly beyond anything contemplated by the framers of the ECHR 70 or so years ago.
That is why the Human Rights Act must be repealed so that Parliament decides the rules, not judges applying expansive interpretations. I will give just one example. There was a Zimbabwean paedophile who failed to be deported back to Zimbabwe. A judge—I think using article 3, not article 8—said no, the paedophile could not be sent back to Zimbabwe in case he faced some hostility back in Zimbabwe. What about the rights of children in the United Kingdom to be protected from paedophiles? What about the rights of British citizens to be protected from foreign national offenders? That is why we need to repeal the Human Rights Act in relation to immigration matters. That is why it is in our Bill, and I call on the Government to support it.
It is time to deliver what the British public want. The Opposition have developed a credible and detailed Bill to do that. I call on the Government, if they are serious, to support it.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to en and insert
“notes that 127,896 people crossed the Channel while the previous Government was in office, as a criminal smuggling industry took hold on the French coast; further notes that 84,151 of those people arrived while the previous Government’s £700 million Rwanda scheme was in force, with only four volunteers travelling to Kigali during that time; welcomes the fact that the current Government deployed the 1,000 staff working on that scheme to process asylum decisions and deportations instead, resulting in 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK being removed in just nine months; further welcome the progress made since July 2024 in establishing the Border Security Command, cracking down on illegal working, and increasing the resources allocated to identifying, disrupting and dismantling smuggling gangs; and looks forward to the crucial agreements reached with France, Germany, Italy, and Iraq to increase enforcement cooperation taking full effect, and the counter-terror powers introduced in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill becoming law.”
I note that the motion begins by regretting the fact that we are 20 weeks into this year and more than 12,000 people have crossed the channel by small boat. Let me start on a note of consensus: I agree with the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) that numbers are too high and I agree that they must come down. I will come on to the action we are taking to achieve that aim.
But first, I must address what we on Merseyside would call the shadow Home Secretary’s brass neck. What he did not say in his speech was that in the last 20 weeks when he was immigration Minister, it was not 12,000 people who crossed the channel, but 13,000. It was not 230 small boats that made the crossing, as we have had so far this year; during his last 20 weeks in charge, it was almost 500. Where was his motion of regret then? Where were his expressions of outrage then? In fact, let me tell the House just how bad it was in his last 20 weeks in charge, from the end of April to the middle of September 2021. More people crossed the channel by small boats in those 20 weeks than in the previous 40 months put together, all the way back to the start of the crossings in 2018: 173 weeks-worth of crossings and he managed to get them to exceed that total in his last 20 weeks in charge.
That was not the right hon. Gentleman’s only claim to fame during his period in office, because he was the Minister in charge when net migration started to run completely out of control. In the 19 months he was in charge, net migration rose from 170,000 to 470,000, a 300,000 increase in less than two years.
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady should correct the record. I never had ministerial responsibility for legal migration, so I would be grateful if she withdrew that.
Dame Angela Eagle
Collective responsibility apparently never used to matter to the Conservative party, but if we remember some of the history we will know that that was actually true.
I want Members to cast their minds back to the summer of 2022, and the 20-week period from Chris Pincher having his night at the Carlton Club all the way through to when the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) had to write an emergency Budget. The Conservative Government descended into utter chaos, with three different Prime Ministers and four different Home Secretaries taking turns in office. What was happening with small boats in the channel during those particular 20 weeks? We had not 12,000 or 13,000 arrivals, but 30,000 arrivals.
Dame Angela Eagle
No.
There were 30,000 arrivals in the space of 20 weeks— not 220 or even 500 boats, but 670 boats. How did that happen? The Conservatives were all too busy fighting among themselves and crashing the economy to bother about protecting our borders.
Let us not forget the role that the shadow Home Secretary played in that little bit of Conservative party history. In the space of 20 weeks, he went from tech Minister to no ministerial role, to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to Paymaster General, to police Minister, but none of that was his most important role. We should remember—
Dame Angela Eagle
I am talking about 20-week periods, which feature in the Opposition’s motion. I am talking about what happened in a 20-week period, when—just to go back over it—the shadow Home Secretary went from tech Minister to not having a job, to being Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Paymaster General, and then police Minister. The Conservatives brought the same chaos to government as they did to their immigration policy, over which they had control for 14 years.
Dame Angela Eagle
No; I am going to make some of these points. We should all remember that the shadow Home Secretary was once credited as being the economic guru behind Liz Truss’s premiership. This is the man who helped Liz Truss to write her catastrophic mini-Budget, drive the country off a cliff and scupper her own premiership.
Dr Caroline Johnson
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The history lesson of who was which Minister in which Government when is obviously all available on the internet, if people want to look. How does it relate to the matter we are discussing today, which is what the current Government are doing to tackle migration?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order, and I look forward to hearing her views in the debate later.
Dame Angela Eagle
I think it is perfectly reasonable to point out the chaos that there was in 14 years of Conservative government and the shadow Home Secretary’s record in these areas—
Dame Angela Eagle
Let me finish the sentence. No, I will not give way.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to point out what the Conservatives’ record is, when they have come to the Chamber to try to lecture the Government about what to do with our immigration and migration policies, even though we are clearing up their mess.
This Government inherited a system in total chaos from the Conservatives, which was partially because of the chaos I have just mentioned—those 20 weeks between the Pincher visit to the Carlton Club and the Budget that was needed to clear up Liz Truss’s mess, when we had three Prime Ministers and four Home Secretaries. Can the Conservatives seriously pretend to the British people that while they were busy doing all that, they had a coherent migration policy that they can lecture us about? I do not think so.
Dame Angela Eagle
I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman now, because he stood up when I got to the end of a sentence.
Dr Evans
I am very grateful to the Minister; now that I know that formally, I look forward to being able to intervene in future.
I would be grateful for clarity on the Prime Minister’s policy. In 2020, he wrote a letter in which he defended migrants’ rights and made a positive case for immigration, yet in his recent speech he talked about crafting an “island of strangers”. Will the Minister provide clarity on which of the two the Prime Minister believes when it comes to immigration policy?
Dame Angela Eagle
When we discuss migration policy, net migration and legal or illegal immigration, it is really important to remember that we are talking about human beings, that we should treat them as human beings and that all human beings have human rights. We should not perpetuate narratives that dehumanise people. Too often—
Dame Angela Eagle
Let me finish the sentence. Too often, the Opposition parties—some of the Opposition parties; not all of them—perpetuate a narrative that is increasingly dangerous. Let us not dehumanise fellow human beings.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I recognise how important it is to use temperate language, but all my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) did was to factually set out two statements the Prime Minister made, with an interval between them. The Minister must acknowledge that the public mood has changed significantly in very recent times. The purpose of this debate is to scrutinise the Government’s record in their 10 months in office and to see how effective those interventions have been. It is perfectly legitimate to ask about the characterisation that her Prime Minister has made very recently about this matter.
Dame Angela Eagle
I do not think that the two quotes are incompatible with each other. Our White Paper sets out the route forward. Net migration is coming down. The legacy that we inherited from the Conservative party was the quadrupling of it in four short years. It is also important to remember that when we are talking about legal migration and net migration, we must have integration and the capacity to absorb the people we allow into our country. Crucially, when it comes to small boats, we have to have the capacity to decide who comes into our country. I do not see that those two statements from the Prime Minister, which were years apart, are incompatible.
Stephen Gethins (Arbroath and Broughty Ferry) (SNP)
May I commend the Minister for saying that we are talking about people? In a recent debate in this place, I mentioned that Lord Alf Dubs had used the “outrageous” to describe what the Prime Minister had said. He did not. He said that the Prime Minister’s words were “regrettable”. I was wrong about that. Does the Minister realise that words matter when we are talking about people? We can have different views on migration policy, but we are talking about people. I commend those words that she used just now, and I encourage other members of the Government to do likewise.
Dame Angela Eagle
I thank the hon. Gentleman. It is very important to remember that we thrive—as we always have in our history—with a tolerant, multicultural society in which we strive to understand each other and get on with each other, rather than to divide and seek to cause resentments, which some people with their own political narratives do, and that is regrettable.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
Clearly, this is a very emotive debate for Members from all parts of the House. It is probably a good time to acknowledge that in the NHS, we are more likely to be treated by an immigrant working for the NHS than we are to be waiting behind an immigrant for treatment. Despite the rhetoric that has been promoted by many politicians over the past few years, especially those who championed Brexit, we should acknowledge that the NHS was not being crippled by immigration, but being sustained by it.
Dame Angela Eagle
It is important that all of us acknowledge the humanity of people who come to our country to work, and the contribution that they make. But we also have to have rules: we have to decide who comes to our country and why, and we have to explain those rules to the electorate. That is what I shall go on to try and do.
We inherited a system in total chaos. The Conservatives allowed criminal gangs to take hold across the channel, which saw the numbers arriving rocket from 300 in 2018 to more 30,000 in a few years. They crashed the asylum system, with a 70% drop in monthly decision making and an 80% drop in asylum interviews in the run-up to the election. There was a 34% drop in returns compared with the last Labour Government, and they spent £700 million sending four volunteers to Rwanda. Their handling of legal immigration was no better. Net migration quadrupled in the space of just four years to nearly a million—that is their record.
Those numbers tell a wretched story of a system spiralling out of control; an entire criminal industry building up along our borders with terrible consequences; ruthless smugglers sending desperate people on dangerous, sometimes deadly, journeys and making a fortune in the process; basic rules not being enforced; and a collapse of trust and confidence in the state’s ability to perform one of its most fundamental functions: keeping our borders safe and secure.
So bad was the Conservatives’ record that the public simply stopped believing anything they said—and who can blame them? For all the talk about stopping the boats and stopping this crisis, the crisis carried on. Unsurprisingly, strong words and grotesquely expensive gimmicks make little impact against sophisticated smuggling networks. The task of ending this chaos falls to this Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
The Minister knows that I have long believed that this Government are harbouring their own ambitions for a Rwanda scheme. It started with the idea of a returns hub in Albania, but that seems to have been rejected by the Albanian Government. Does the Minister have any further plans to introduce some sort of son of Rwanda on behalf of her Government?
Dame Angela Eagle
When we came into office, we ended the Rwanda scheme. The scheme was about deporting people, processing their asylum in another country and never letting them back here. [Interruption.] But it did not work—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I want to hear what the Minister has to say, as do my constituents and, I am sure, all Members’ constituents.
Dame Angela Eagle
The Conservatives—who conveniently called an early election so that the Rwanda scheme would never start, after spending years saying that even perpetrating the idea of a Rwanda scheme would stop the boats—know as well as I do that over 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats in the years from the Rwanda scheme being put into law to its being abolished. They can sit there and say that—
Dame Angela Eagle
No. They can sit there after all this effort and all these gimmicks and pretend to the British people and Members of this House that the Rwanda scheme was ready to go and would have worked perfectly if only their Government had staggered on until 24 June, but nobody believes them, because it was a flawed scheme from the start. It was not a deterrent, it did not work, and it was massively expensive.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dame Angela Eagle
No, I have given way enough. I will carry on and make my points, because we do not have much time.
Since the general election, we have established the Border Security Command to draw together the work of all relevant agencies, supported by at least an extra £150 million this financial year. We have backed UK law enforcement to play a leading role in major international operations to take out the gangs and their supply chains further up the smuggling route. We have deepened co-operation with key allies, including France. We have struck new agreements with Germany, Iraq, Italy, the Calais Group and the G7. We have hosted a major international summit on border security—the first of its kind, with over 40 countries in attendance.
We have also transferred the staff and resources from the failed Rwanda scheme and used them to return more than 24,000 individuals with no right to be in the UK. We increased asylum decision making by 52% in the last three months of 2024, and we have ramped up illegal working enforcement visits and arrests by 40%.
Dame Angela Eagle
No. As this Government have made clear consistently, this is just the start. We need to go further, and we will.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
On the topic of going further, will the Minister give way?
Dame Angela Eagle
No.
There are two main factors that make today’s challenges different from the past. The first is technology. The physical distances between nations and continents may not have changed, but the near universality of smartphones and internet access has made the world feel a lot smaller. The gangs can organise journeys more quickly and easily than ever before. For the people they prey on, the promise of a different future is right there on the screen of a mobile device.
The second factor is the emergence of a ruthless criminal industry worth billions of pounds, stretching across borders and continents. On illegal migration and border security, we are acting to get a grip on issues that have gone unchecked for far too long. For years, the ringleaders and facilitators of this trade have been able to evade justice by ensuring that they are not present when money changes hands or the boats set off. To shift the dial, we need action to be taken earlier and faster. We need a response that fits the scale and urgency of the threat, and to mount such a response we need to legislate.
Having intensified activity across policy, operational and international arenas since the general election, we have moved to strengthen the law by bringing forward the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. The House is well acquainted with the Bill, but its core aims and measures bear repeating. The Bill puts an end to the failed gimmicks of the past. It furnishes law enforcement with counter-terrorism-style tactics to strike against smuggling gangs earlier and faster—long before they get within striking distance of our shores. The National Crime Agency and its associates who help us with this work asked us to change the law to provide them with those tactics.
The Bill introduces new powers to seize electronic devices, and new offences covering the sale and handling of small boat parts for use in illegal activities. It upgrades serious crime prevention orders to target individuals involved in organised immigration crime. It creates a new offence of endangering life at sea to act as a deterrent against small boat overcrowding. It also sends an unambiguous message that we are ready to take action against those who are complicit in fatalities in the channel. [Interruption.] I talk about fatalities in the channel; Opposition Members laugh and joke among themselves.
Mark Ferguson
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way—that roar from Opposition Members is no doubt enthusiasm for what I am about to ask.
This week, the Government signed a deal with the European Union that includes, among other things, the ability to find out if someone has been arrested in another European country for people smuggling and the ability to use facial recognition technology. Does she agree that those are exactly the tactics one would need if one wanted to smash the gangs, and yet the Conservative party opposed the deal?
Dame Angela Eagle
I agree. Of course, the Conservative party also oppose all of the Bill, despite—[Interruption.] Well, Conservative Members say it is not true, but they voted against it. I do not know why the Opposition should have voted against a Bill that provides more powers to deal with organised immigration crime internationally.
Dr Murrison
I am, as always, listening carefully to what the Minister has to say. Has she been listening to the National Crime Agency? It has said clearly that although many of the things she has outlined are important, her list is nevertheless missing one thing: deterrence. Will she explain where deterrence features in her measures?
Dame Angela Eagle
The National Crime Agency has not said that about the Bill. In fact, if the right hon. Gentleman had listened to the evidence sessions at the beginning of our consideration of the Bill, he would have heard good evidence from the NCA supporting the parts of the Bill that provide counter-terrorism and prevention powers, and being enthusiastic about the increased opportunities that the Bill will give for successful enforcement.
Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)
On that point, will the Minister give way?
Dame Angela Eagle
No.
Turning to legal migration, through the plans in our immigration White Paper, we will deliver a system that supports our efforts to reduce net migration and backs British talent. As the Home Secretary set out in the House last week, our approach is founded on five core principles: first, that net migration must come down; secondly, that the migration system should be linked to skills and training domestically, so that no industry or sector can rely solely on overseas recruitment—a major failure of the last Government’s 14 years in office; thirdly, that the system must be fair and effective, with clearer rules in areas such as respect for family life and stronger safeguards against perverse outcomes that undermine public confidence; fourthly, that this country’s laws must be respected and enforced, from cracking down on illegal working to deporting foreign criminals; and fifthly, that the system must support integration and community cohesion.
This is not a task that can be completed overnight. Clearing up the Opposition’s legacy will not be easy because of the chaos that we inherited from the Conservative party. We saw record net migration, record small boat arrivals and record numbers of asylum hotels, criminal smugglers left to run amok for years, and public confidence shaken by past failures, expensive gimmicks and broken promises. It has been left to this Government to clear up the mess and turn the page on the chaos and failures of the past. That work has begun.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Before I call the Lib Dem spokesperson, I wish to make it clear that there will be a five-minute time limit for Back-Bench speeches.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
The Conservatives want to talk about immigration today. I am delighted to start by talking about their record in government, though I should warn the House that calling it a record may be overly generous. A record, after all, implies coherence, consistency and competence. What we have witnessed instead is a decade of headline-chasing gimmicks, theatrical tough talk, performative cruelty and policy U-turns so dizzying they could give a weathervane whiplash.
Let us start with the basics. As the shadow Home Secretary has already confessed, the Conservatives promised again and again to bring immigration down. That was in 2015, in 2017 and in 2019. Then they promised the same thing in 2024, when the British public in their infinite wisdom told the Conservatives to go back to their constituencies and prepare for a period of quiet reflection. Spoiler alert: they did not just miss those targets—they incinerated them.
At the time of the last election, when the Conservatives wanted to stand on their record, net migration was the highest in British history. It was not just high, not just elevated, but record-breaking. What was their grand response? Rwanda. Yes, Rwanda: a deportation scheme that cost half a billion pounds and moved precisely zero people; a stunt so hollow that it made the policy vacuum look crowded; a triumph of symbolism over substance, if ever there was one. Throughout it all, we heard the same tired refrain from the Home Office lectern from which the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who opened today’s debate, used to speak: that immigration somehow threatens our identity. That came from a Government who relied utterly and shamelessly on migrant workers to prop up every sector that they spent a decade undermining—from the NHS to social care, higher education to farming. If hypocrisy were an export, the Tories would have been running a trade surplus.
Dr Pinkerton
No, thank you. The hon. Gentleman’s party had nine years; I have less than nine minutes.
Meanwhile, the legal migration rules became so convoluted that even seasoned immigration lawyers needed to phone a friend. Skilled workers were welcomed one week and penalised the next. International students were encouraged to come and then punished for having families. The only thing consistent in Conservative policy was chaos.
All that was wrapped in a layer of chest-beating, slogan-touting nationalism. “Take back control,” they cried, as if chanting it loudly enough might somehow make it true. Yet control is not about standing on the shoreline like King Canute, barking orders at the tide. It is about building a system that actually works—one that treats people with dignity, balances compassion with pragmatism and delivers results instead of rhetoric. Instead, what did we get? An asylum system on its knees, trafficking gangs operating with near total impunity and, most tragically, lives lost in the channel. Just this Monday, 62 people were rescued after a small boat sank in the early hours. One person died; others were injured. That, of course, is not an anomaly. According to the BBC, over 12,500 have crossed the channel in small boats this year, and it is only May.
The Labour response so far has, I would argue, been muted ambition, vague promises and nervous tiptoeing around the institutional wreckage, as if managerial competence alone might magic away a decade of Conservative failures. The Liberal Democrats are clear that these crossings must stop, but unlike the Conservatives we do not confuse cruelty with competence.
Dr Pinkerton
No, I will not.
We believe in expanding safe and legal routes for refugees, including humanitarian travel permits offering vulnerable people a viable alternative to risking their life at sea.
Dr Pinkerton
No.
We also believe that the real way to tackle the channel crisis is through stronger co-operation. That means working through Europol to dismantle trafficking networks, share intelligence, deliver joint enforcement and report progress back to Parliament every six months, as well as a statutory duty for the UK Border Security Commander to meet their Europol counterparts at least once every three months.
Dr Pinkerton
I give way to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans).
Dr Pinkerton
We need safe and legal routes in order to allow people an alternative to putting their life at risk to cross the channel. That work needs to be done on a continental basis with our European partners.
Dr Pinkerton
No, thank you—I will make progress.
We believe that European co-operation is, as I have just indicated, the answer to the small boats crisis. Even the shadow Home Secretary agrees. We all heard him say that the UK’s withdrawal from the Dublin agreement, as part of Boris Johnson’s botched Brexit deal, meant that the UK
“can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”.
Straight from the horse’s mouth!
Let us talk about the backlog. At the end of 2024, about 91,000 asylum seekers were stuck in limbo; most had been waiting over six months just for an initial decision. And while they wait, they are banned from working, banned from rebuilding their lives and forced to depend entirely on the state. That becomes a source of resentment for local communities, whose discontent can be weaponised by the darker fringes of our political spectrum.
Dr Pinkerton
No.
That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) tabled an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill to allow asylum seekers waiting more than three months to work. That is humane, it is pragmatic, and it would help to grow the economy. The Conservatives failed to address that injustice for a decade, and Labour has also failed to grasp the nettle since. It is disappointing that both parties voted against that sensible policy, which would have ensured that those seeking asylum paid their own way.
Dr Johnson
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is making an interesting speech, for giving way. He talks about the importance of safe and legal routes, of which there are several, but does he accept that if those safe and legal routes are capped to some extent, there will still be people for whom there is not a safe and legal route, who may then risk their life in the channel?
Dr Pinkerton
We must also recognise that safe and legal routes are one mechanism that needs to be pursued —so too is international aid, which allows people to stay broadly in the regions from which they may otherwise be displaced. We often forget that Jordan has the highest number of refugees of any country in the world.
We welcome this Government’s attempt to address the wreckage left by the previous Government, but let us be clear: any new immigration policy must come with a credible action plan for filling vital jobs without harming the economy. Let us start with a higher carer’s minimum wage. Right now, our social care sector is in crisis: there are simply not enough workers and millions of people are missing out on essential care. Instead of properly investing in the British workforce, the Conservatives chose the short-term fix: underpaid overseas workers propping up an underfunded system. With those workers being squeezed from all sides, many care homes are at breaking point, and families are being left to pick up the pieces.
It is disappointing that Labour’s national insurance increases are only adding to the pressures in that sector. The Government’s recent immigration announcements look set to disproportionately hit the care sector. Let me be absolutely clear: the people who come to Britain to care for our elderly and disabled are not the problem. They are vital to this country and to the wellbeing of some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and they deserve our thanks and respect, not to be demonised by those who failed to pay British workers properly in the first place.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an interesting point about those who help us. Following a complicated pregnancy, my wonderful daughter was birthed at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford by a team comprising English, Spanish, Indian, Italian and South African experts. Will he join me in thanking those immigrants who bring so much to our country and help us when we need it?
Dr Pinkerton
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I was recently also in my local hospital where I had an extraordinary care experience from a multinational care team. I celebrate all those NHS workers who have come from overseas to serve us all.
Finally, let me turn to one of our greatest national assets: our universities. As a recovering academic who spent more than 20 years in higher education, I have seen at first hand how international students enrich our campuses, strengthen our soft power and boost our economy.
Dr Chambers
My hon. Friend and I have both spent part of our careers teaching at universities. Would he acknowledge, given the university funding troubles at the moment, that our universities are very much propped up by foreign students paying tuition fees, which helps subsidise the cost for British students?
Dr Pinkerton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comment, and I will come on to make a point about the state of the finances of UK universities.
Universities are magnets for global talent and they are the envy of the world, so why are this Government so determined to undermine that? The new immigration White Paper limits international graduates to spending just 18 months in the UK after their studies. This is a short-sighted, self-defeating policy that has already caused alarm in the sector. I have heard from university vice-chancellors who are warning of financial catastrophe and a collapse in international recruitment. The Russell Group has also been clear that international students drive local economies, fund research and help make Britain a science superpower. Higher education is the No. 1 export for 26 parliamentary constituencies and among the top three in 102 of them. We jeopardise that at our peril.
As if that were not enough, there is now talk of a levy on international student fees, because apparently what our universities really need in the middle of a funding crisis and a challenging international recruitment environment is a brand new tax. This feels reckless, and we strongly encourage the Government to think again and to work with the university sector to flesh out those proposals in a way that works for both the country and the university sector.
The Liberal Democrats will always stand for an immigration system that is fair, firm and forward looking, one that supports the economy, reflects our values and honours Britain’s proud tradition of offering sanctuary to those in need. The Conservatives today want to shine a light on immigration, but when we look at their record, we see a decade of chaos, cruelty and catastrophic incompetence. I congratulate them on their courageous decision.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I want to start by being very clear about what I believe and what I know my constituents in Hartlepool believe. Immigration, whether legal or illegal, is far too high. There is nothing right wing or indeed racist about being worried about immigration and its effect on our communities. We as a party and as a Government will absolutely be judged on our ability to solve this problem over the coming years. I know that the Minister agrees with this wholeheartedly, and we will stand by it. We will be judged on our ability to solve this problem.
The Conservative motion before us feels rather like the arsonist turning up and complaining that we have not yet put out the fire. It is a motion that I am sure the Reform party will support, if any of its Members can be bothered to turn up, given its entirely vacuous nature and total absence of any policy solutions.
I want to talk briefly about legal migration, because that hugely exercises me and many of my constituents.
Mr Brash
I will give way in a moment. The last Conservative Government put construction workers on their points-based immigration system. They wanted to import construction workers—the people we need to rebuild this country—while my further education college that trains local Hartlepudlians in construction skills had its funding cut by 10%. That is nothing short of economic vandalism—vandalism that for far too long threw my constituents on the scrap heap. That is the Conservatives’ legacy.
Mr Snowden
The hon. Member just referred to the Government as equivalent to the fire brigade turning up to put out a fire. Given the Government’s track record since coming into office, does he agree that it would be fair to say that they brought petroleum to put out the fire, not water?
Mr Brash
Again, after 14 years, the Conservatives turn up demanding to know why nobody has done anything about the issue in 10 months. Frankly, it is hypocrisy of the highest level.
I turn to the comments made about the Conservatives’ much-touted Rwanda scheme and illegal migration. Time and again we hear the same tired lines—“It was just about to work”, “If only we’d had a little longer, it would have solved all the problems of the small boats.” Well, they had the time. They chose to call the early general election; they could have waited. If they had truly believed in the scheme—this totemic flagship of theirs—they would have backed themselves, but they did not, because they knew it was a busted flush. They knew it was going to fail, and they rushed to the country before that failure could be fully exposed.
How did we get to this point in the small boats crisis, which is central to a lot of what we are talking about? There were no small boat arrivals recorded before 2018. Why? It was because at that time the UK had a returns agreement with the EU—anyone making that dangerous crossing could be returned—but the Conservative Brexit deal did not have a returns agreement in it. The same Brexit deal championed by Reform is the reason for the numbers we are seeing. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who is not in his place, championed that deal and now uses the numbers it caused as a weaponised political choice.
Mr Brash
The reality is that before 2018 we had that agreement. We have had it before. This Prime Minister has shown time and again his ability to negotiate on the world stage, and I have total confidence that he will do that.
Indeed, the only surrender that has taken place this week is the hon. Member for Clacton surrendering to his sun lounger. As a direct result of the failure of the Conservative party to get a returns agreement in its Brexit deal, we have seen the numbers explode. However, progress is being made. The asylum backlog is now down 32% from its record high under the last Government. In Hartlepool—a town unfairly targeted with disproportionate dispersal accommodation—we now have a freeze on any new asylum accommodation and a clear target set to reduce numbers. But let us be clear: the numbers are still too high. That is why the passage of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is absolutely essential. It gives us the ability to use counter-terrorism powers to pursue and dismantle the criminal gangs that facilitate those crossings—powers that the Opposition parties voted against.
We have to go further. We must tighten the use of article 8 of the European convention on human rights to ensure that it cannot be misused, so that it is this House, not the courts, that decides who stays and who is deported. I place on the record that any foreign criminal in this country should be deported. We must strike agreements with international partners, so that those people coming on boats can be swiftly returned, because that is the true deterrent. That will be achieved not with Tory gimmicks or by Reform slogans, but with detailed policy, focused diplomacy and the hard graft that this Labour Government have already begun.
It is about time that Conservative Members stopped playing politics with this issue. That is what the people of Hartlepool expect and it is what the Government must do. As long as I am in this place, I will hold them to account to do that.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
There has been too much immigration to this country for far too long. I have great regard for the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), as she knows, but regard allows for sharp disagreements, and if she did not know that we disagree, she will after this speech. That level of immigration has damaged our economy, our shared sense of belonging on which social cohesion depends and our public services, by increasing population to an unsustainable level.
Let me first turn to the economy. The effect of mass migration on the economy has been to displace investment in domestic skills and in recruitment and retention of labour. It has displaced investment in the modernisation of our economy and it has therefore damaged productivity by inhibiting it. It has essentially created an economy that is low-skilled and dependent on the provision of relatively cheap labour, and is therefore unfit to compete in a high-tech, high-skilled world. That is what mass migration has done to our economy.
For evidence, one has only to look at the House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs report, which says:
“we have found no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration—immigration minus emigration—generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.”
The reason for that is that 70% of migrants are in low and medium-skilled roles. They are not the brightest and the best; they are not the people who we need to fill the vacancies that cannot be filled otherwise. Essentially, vacancies are being filled rather than providing opportunities for the vast majority of those Britons who cannot get a place in the labour market.
Mass migration has certainly damaged social cohesion by undermining our shared sense of belonging. We simply cannot import that number of people—many of whom do not speak English as their first language—without significant investment in integration; yet even if we were integrating at pace, the sheer volume would make it impossible to hold many communities together. We have seen social fracture, with a risk of complete fragmentation, in many communities.
Hon. Members from across the House will have visited schools where the headteacher has said proudly, “Of course, the children here speak 15 different languages,” as though that were a cause for celebration. Without a common language, there can be no currency for learning about one another and there can be no means by which we can share what makes us British. We have to promote the English language and we should abolish any attempt by any authority to translate things into foreign languages: let us make that a rallying cry from today.
Finally, the population of this country is growing at an unsustainable rate. We have heard already that successive Governments, beginning with the Blair Government, then the coalition Government, Tory Governments and now this Government, I am sorry to say, have failed to recognise that if we increase net population by 700,000 to 900,000 people a year, a number that equates to the combined populations of the five cities of Cambridge, Norwich, Hull, Lincoln—
Sir John Hayes
I did say that it was under successive Governments. The reason for that is that the liberal elite of this country—I do not count the hon. Gentleman among its number—that controls far too much of the Establishment and wields too much power is at odds with the understanding which prevails in his constituency and mine of ordinary, everyday working people, who recognised what I have just said long ago but were told by people who should have known better that net migration at that level was not only tolerable but desirable. It is a complete nonsense to pretend so, and every piece of analysis justifies that.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. Does he agree that this concern about the high levels of immigration is also an issue of democracy and the sense of people not being heard? I noted the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) expressing support for deportations of foreign-born criminals, but unless the Government use levers—restrictions on visas for those countries not taking people back—we will again see too many foreign-born criminals in our prisons instead of being deported back to their native country.
Sir John Hayes
I of course agree with my right hon. Friend, who as usual has brought a particular insight based on his long experience to our considerations, and let us just take one example of that. Some 647,000 migrants received health and care visas from 2021 to June 2024; 270,000 of them were workers and an extraordinary, outrageous 377,000 were dependants. Even—[Interruption.] Even, I say to those on the Liberal Democrats Benches, those remaining members of the liberal elite who still perpetuate the conspiracy of silence about these matters must understand that everyone who comes to the country brings an economic value and an economic cost, and many of those dependants will not have brought economic value. That is not to disparage them in any way—they are perfectly nice people, I am sure—but they are not adding to the economy and certainly not adding to the per capita productivity or growth in the economy. In fact, they are detracting from it.
Cameron Thomas
The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the liberal elite but he is being generous there to me, a guy who was state-educated; I am very much just a bloke, but I thank him. One thing the Liberals were elite at was pointing out the fact that Brexit was not going to work. The promise of Brexit was of course to take back control of our borders; what does the right hon. Gentleman make of the fact that immigration is now four times higher than in 2019, following his own party being in government?
Sir John Hayes
Of course Brexit and particularly free movement led to a massive influx of people. When David Blunkett, now Lord Blunkett in the other place, was Home Secretary, he estimated that as a result of free movement 13,000 people would arrive in this country. In fact, the figure was in the hundreds of thousands and when settled status was granted it turned out to be millions. So the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong about the effects of Brexit.
Sir John Hayes
I will not because I know others want to get in and I am already testing the Deputy Speaker’s patience.
The truth of the matter is that we need to address migration not only for the reasons I have given about population growth and the damage to social cohesion and the economy, but because unless we do so the British people will assume, and rightly so, that people here just do not get it. Well, I do, and I hope those on my Front Bench now do, and the Government need to wake up and smell the coffee pretty soon.
Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Immigration is a part of Britain’s history and we have a proud record of supporting those seeking refuge from across the world. British life has been enriched by people who have come from across the globe and made their lives here contributing to the NHS, the business sector, local communities and our economy. However, the immigration and asylum system we have inherited is, after years of neglect, not fit for purpose.
Today, due to time constraints I will particularly focus on border security and asylum, because it goes without saying that border security is national security and our asylum system can only work if it is well managed and well regulated. Indeed, over the last six years criminal smuggling gangs have been allowed to take hold along all our borders, making millions of pounds out of small boat crossings and exploiting some of the most vulnerable people while going virtually unchallenged. We have had expensive rhetoric from the Tories, and I am sorry to say that they practically collapsed the asylum decision-making system and relied on the Rwanda scheme, which was simply a gimmick. They haemorrhaged an eye-watering £700 million of taxpayers’ money on a system that we all knew would not work and, indeed, did not.
It is important to shine a light on what this Government are doing with the legislation they have introduced—the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill—which will put national security back at the heart of our border system. It will give law enforcement agencies counter-terror-style powers and actually deal with the criminal smuggling gangs, and Opposition parties voted against it.
Sally Jameson
I am not taking interventions—you had 14 years to intervene.
We will have tougher border security measures for foreign national sex offenders, who will be excluded from refugee protections. We will have new powers on seizing electronic devices, new offences against gangs selling and handling small boat parts and new and modernised biometric checks overseas to build a clear picture of individuals coming to the UK and to prevent those with a criminal history from entering. We have new agreements with France, Germany, Italy and Iraq on tackling those gangs, and our agreement with France will mean that policing units will have the authority to intercept boats in shallow waters. We have announced a £150 million funding package for the Border Security Command, unlocking new surveillance technology and new additional funding for the National Crime Agency.
Whether it is through the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill or the workings of the immigration White Paper we announced recently, we are finally getting to grips with the system after many years, making it fair and humane but also putting in the graft to ensure that laws and safeguards are in place, so that we do not find ourselves in this mess ever again and that our national security is not put at risk. There is no more rhetoric or gimmicks, but meaningful action and a Government who are actually governing, facing up to the problem and getting it sorted. That is what my constituents and people across the country expect.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Nobody ever voted for mass immigration. The country has repeatedly said that it wants border security, very little immigration and deportations for those who break the law, yet successive Governments have imposed mass immigration on our country. Human rights laws that render border security and immigration control almost impossible are treated like untouchable and unchangeable holy scripture.
The justifications for mass immigration have changed over the years. First, people were told that the numbers were small and that nothing much would change. Next, people were told that immigrants would integrate and that there was nothing for them to worry about. People were then told that multiculturalism was a gift and that things such as foreign foods made it all worthwhile. More recently, as the numbers became unimaginable and communal intimidation, violence and sectarian politics, and even terrorism, became, in the words of Labour’s London Mayor,
“part and parcel of living in a big city”,
people have been told to keep their views to themselves and parrot the official line instead.
However, diversity is not our strength: it is a very serious and difficult challenge that we have to manage, thanks to policies imposed on the public by politicians who chose—arrogantly and callously—to ignore what the people of their country wanted. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) wants to intervene, he can do so. Britain’s true strengths are our long stability, our legal inheritance, our institutions, our language, our shared identity forged through the triumphs and tragedies of history, the places we have in common, our literature, our culture and even our food. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is entitled to intervene, but he has continued to abuse from a sedentary position—as, indeed, have various Members on the Government Benches. This is supposed to be a debate.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman served as the chief of staff to Baroness May, who was the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister at different points. Is he honestly saying that he does not bear a single piece of responsibility for the situation that we find ourselves in today, given that he was at the heart of policymaking when this all went terribly?
Nick Timothy
When I worked in the Home Office, for the first couple of years net migration fell—after that, it rose. The Conservatives, like the Labour party, have failed the public on immigration. I am happy to accept that, but Members on the Government Benches show no sign of any contrition or of learning anything from experience.
While politicians have talked vague nonsense for years about British values, sometimes values that could equally be said to be French or Dutch or whatever, and sometimes values not even shared by many British people, the constituent pieces that add up to our shared identity and culture are precious. Without our shared identity, there is less social trust, little solidarity and less willingness to compromise and make sacrifices for one another. It is undeniable that mass immigration and the radical diversity it has brought have undermined that shared national identity.
What of the justifications for this massive social change? We have been told for years that it is vital for our economy, but mass immigration has displaced British workers from their jobs and undercut wages. The zealots who still support mass immigration will no doubt scoff that I am guilty of the lump of labour fallacy. If I am, so is the Migration Advisory Committee and various immigration experts. The only fallacy is believing that importing millions of fiscally negative immigrants will make us richer.
Nick Timothy
I will in a moment. That fallacy is now enshrined in Whitehall policy through the Office for Budget Responsibility, which insists that immigration creates fiscal headroom without calculating, as the Danish Ministry of Finance does, the true long-term fiscal cost of immigration by national background of migrants. I will now give way, unlike the Immigration Minister when she was going on.
Dr Caroline Johnson
My hon. Friend is making an important speech. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) talked earlier about the five cities-worth of people being brought into the country. What that essentially means is that we have to build five more cities to accommodate them. Has that not increased house prices and, in fact, made many young people poorer and meant they find it more difficult to get on the housing ladder?
Nick Timothy
Indeed. I remember when Dominic Raab was the Housing Minister and he made that point. The response from the Labour party was one of sheer hysteria, with accusations of bigotry. My hon. Friend is completely right.
Mass immigration has also killed labour market pressures for employers to invest in skills and training, labour-saving technology and the pay and conditions of their workers. Then there is the capital stock of the country. When our population increases at the kind of speed we have experienced, what do we expect to happen? There are fewer hospitals and surgeries, less space on trains and the road, and fewer flats and houses and police officers and prison spaces per person than before.
Let us dwell for a moment on the social problems that we have created for ourselves. According to the census, there were six London boroughs where a majority of people were born abroad. In towns and cities across the country, the census shows that we can draw a line where on one side the white British population lives and on the other lives an Asian Muslim population. The reasons that should alarm us ought not to need spelling out.
We are importing many of the world’s hatreds. Just look at the Saturday marches against Israel and the intimidation of Jewish communities, or the riots we saw in Leicester three years ago. When the Prime Minister referred to an island of strangers, he was not wrong, even if the Immigration Minister did not back him up in using that language in her speech.
The pity is that the policy response is risible. From Tony Blair to Boris Johnson, we have seen successive Governments talk things up, only to deliver ultra-liberal immigration policies. [Interruption.] Yes, this is the point, and Labour still will not learn. This Government are pursuing the same cynical path. Their policies are pathetic. They cannot even tell us if indefinite leave to remain changes will apply to immigrants already in the country. We know that Labour lacks what it takes to drastically cut the number of people coming into the country or to remove all the people who are here who break the law, claim benefits or take out more than they put in. I hope, and I believe that my party has rediscovered the necessary steel. The future of our country will depend on it.
Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
There was a court case yesterday where a people smuggler, known as “Captain Ahmed”, was jailed for his part in co-ordinating and managing the small boat crossings of more than 3,000 people. He is a ruthless man who treated human life as rubbish, ordering the murder of migrants and happily bribing officials to pursue his financial objectives. This man was smuggling across the Mediterranean, but his methods mirror that of the criminal gangs bringing people across the English channel. My question to the Opposition is: why was he here living in asylum accommodation when he was arrested in 2023? He had previously served a prison sentence in Italy for drug smuggling, and yet he was never deported. That is why I welcome the borders Bill.
Dame Angela Eagle
Does my hon. Friend agree that when we came into government, there were more than 18,000 foreign national offenders living in our communities who should have been deported and had not been? When we left office in 2010, that number was 4,000.
Jo White
I thank the Minister for making that key point. The British people were let down by the Opposition when they were in government. I welcome the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which gives us the powers to pursue those people not only here in our country, but across borders to their origins. In government, we will never allow people with criminal records to be considered for asylum.
The last Government allowed the backlog of asylum seekers to rise to over 80,000, housing them in hotels across the country and, when that became too embarrassing, trying to hide them away by putting them on a disease-ridden barge, buying disused Army bases at huge expense, and setting up a dispersal process with houses being purchased across the country.
It is only this Government who have tackled the problem head-on. More than 24,000 people have now been returned, and 23 hotels have been closed down—but I want more, my constituents demand more, and I will keep coming to the House to ensure that we get more. We must get the borders Bill into law, and smashing the gangs is critical. Reform and the Tories keep voting against the Bill, while repeatedly offering no viable alternatives. There is only one party that can be trusted to secure our border, and I will back the Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
I have to say that I was amazed to see a Conservative motion on immigration on today’s Order Paper. I think all that most of us in the House require from the Conservatives is a full and sincere apology for the mess and chaos that they left behind, and then for them to go away for a long period of self-ordained silence. They thought that they were reducing immigration, but what they did was quadruple it. They did not even understand their own immigration policy. They were letting hundreds of thousands of people come into this country. So please, do not get to your feet and have the temerity to lecture this House about immigration after the mess that you made.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Gentleman did rather incite me to get to my feet, and I am somewhat stunned at his allegation that I have played any part in this.
Pete Wishart
That was not like me, Madam Deputy Speaker. It was very lax, and I apologise.
The Conservatives are currently languishing in fourth place in the opinion polls, and it is a well-deserved position.
Cameron Thomas
I am making this intervention from the Reform Bench, in the absence, apparently, of their own interest in immigration.
Another thing that I think the Conservative party might answer for is the fact that Vladimir Putin weaponised immigration in 2015 through his terrorist tactics in Syria. I wonder whether the Conservatives have given much thought to how the Conservative Friends of Russia group continued to operate for nearly a decade thereafter.
Pete Wishart
I do not think the Conservatives give much thought to anything in this particular field, so I would not even venture to give an opinion on that.
As I was saying, the Conservatives are in fourth place in the polls, and their entire vote has practically gone wholesale to Reform. This scrappy, desperate motion represents a vain attempt to stop that leakage and get some of their vote back. Let me also say to the hon. Gentleman that it does not matter how hard they try—and they are trying—because they will never outperform Reform, who are the masters of nasty rhetoric. The Conservatives are mere amateurs compared with the hon. Gentlemen of Reform who just so happen not to be in their places again.
The whole debate about immigration is descending into an ugly place which seems to fire the obnoxious and the unpleasant. I am talking not only about those two parties but about the Government too, and I am now going to direct my blame at some of the things they are doing. A new consensus is emerging in the House. For all the faux arguments and fabricated disagreements, the three parties are now more or less united in a new anti-immigrant landscape in the House. The only thing that seems to separate them is the question of who can be the hardest and the toughest in this grotesque race to the bottom on asylum, refugees and immigration.
The fear of Reform percolates through every sinew in this House. It dominates every single debate, and everything that is going on. Reform is killing the Conservatives, but Labour seems to want a bit of the self-destruction action too. Everything the Government do on immigration is now looked at through the prism of Reform, and they have even started to get the Prime Minister to use Reform’s language. The hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) could not have been more generous in his tribute to the Prime Minister for his contribution to nasty rhetoric. The thing is, the “island of strangers” speech could have been made by any one of these three parties.
Sir John Hayes
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I have not changed my mind about this; I have believed it forever. I only change my mind about anything about once a decade. The truth of the matter is that he must know that, according to the ONS, the scale of population growth will be equivalent to the population of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Peterborough, Belfast, Cardiff, Manchester, Ipswich, Norwich, Luton and Bradford added together. That cannot be reconciled with the quality of life and standard of living that his constituents and mine expect.
Pete Wishart
I know the right hon. Gentleman does not change his mind, and it is something that we all love him for in this place. Maybe we should look forward to what is on its way in a couple of decades. I think he knows that a spectacular population decline will start to kick in around the mid-part of this century. Spain and Italy are already doing something about it. All we are doing in this place is stifling population growth through the two-child benefit cap—something that works contrary to what we require.
All Labour is doing is climbing on the anti-immigrant bandwagon, and that is alienating its supporters. I am sure that everybody saw the Sky News report this morning on the intention of former Labour voters. Sky News found that only 6% of lost Labour voters have gone to Reform. Labour has mainly lost votes to the Liberal Democrats and the parties of the left. In fact, Labour has lost three times as many voters to the Liberal Democrats and the left as it has to Reform, and 70% of Labour voters are considering abandoning the Labour party to support the parties of the left.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way any more.
In chasing Reform voters by using its language and appeasing Reform, Labour is only further alienating its supporters. One can only wonder at the political genius that is Morgan McSweeney, who has managed to chase voters away in a search for voters who do not exist.
Pete Wishart
I cannot give way—I have no time.
Ordinary Labour voters have good, liberal values, but just now they have a party that is not representing their views. That is why they are moving on.
In Scotland, we take on Reform. We are one of the few parties across the United Kingdom that has steadied its own position, and we have even improved it slightly. There is a big gap between us and Reform. That is because we take on Reform’s arguments and we do not appease the party or go on to its agenda. I encourage Labour colleagues to think about that.
We now have an immigration policy that is the exact opposite of what we need in Scotland, and it is contrary to our national interest. Scotland is in the early stages of the population and demography crisis, and it will only get worse because of what this Government are going to impose on us. We will soon have too few working-age people available to look after an ever-increasing older population.
For all three parties—Labour, the Conservatives and Reform—immigration is a burden and is out of control. For us in Scotland, it is essential to the health of our workforce and our economy. That is why we will never stop calling for a separate Scottish visa. We need the tools in our country to face up to our crisis. I will leave the Government to get on with their grotesque race to the bottom and to pander to Reform in a vain attempt to get some votes, but Scotland does not need their new “island of strangers” policy. It is contrary to what we want, so please leave us right out of it.
Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
The Conservatives have the brass neck to come to this place and get Member after Member to stand up and talk as if they are commentators. They are completely ignoring their role over the previous 14 years, when their record on immigration was appalling. It started with David Cameron, who promised to get migration down to the tens of thousands. That was followed by a conveyor belt of Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries who ratcheted up the rhetoric almost as high as the number of people coming into the country. Finally, we had the Boris wave, which saw net migration hit almost 1 million. I have to say that, when I was listening to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) talk about the liberal elite, I wondered if he was referring to Boris Johnson, because it happened on his watch. Boris’s betrayal was perhaps the worst, given that he led a Brexit campaign that famously centred on control of our borders. The Conservatives’ 14 years in power prompts the question: if they want a binding cap on migration, who on earth would trust them to keep to it?
There is a strong case for control over legal migration, and I wholeheartedly welcome the steps outlined in last week’s immigration White Paper, which I believe will contribute to that aim. My constituents do not object to people from around the world coming to this country to contribute to our economy and enrich our culture. We have a proud history of that. However, it must be carefully balanced with preventing exploitative labour market practices that create a race to the bottom on pay and conditions in crucial sectors such as health and social care, as well as the need to build strong, united and integrated communities.
Sir John Hayes
I take the hon. Member’s point. As I did say, successive Governments are to blame for this, beginning with the Blair Government or perhaps even earlier. Would he, however, acknowledge that we cannot increase the population on the scale we have been doing without putting unbearable pressure on demand for housing, access to GPs and health services, and other public services?
Connor Naismith
This Government are committed to bringing the numbers down. Regretfully, the right hon. Gentleman forgets the role of austerity in putting pressure on public services, housing and the other things he mentioned.
Turning to the issue of small boats, I first want to acknowledge that this country has a proud history of providing refuge to people fleeing persecution, and I think most people believe in those traditions, but this should not be determined by one’s ability to cross a continent or pay huge sums of money to people smugglers. What we need, quite simply, is fairness and control. That is why I welcome the steps the Government have taken to speed up processing, disrupt the smuggling gangs and work alongside our international allies, whom the previous Government unfortunately spent a lot of their time alienating.
Connor Naismith
No, I will not give way. I want to make some progress.
The Rwanda plan was, quite simply, a joke, and I think the Tories take my constituents for fools. It cost them £700 million, and they sent only four volunteers. Shockingly, they still think it just needed more time. The right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), the former Prime Minister, staked his entire reputation and electoral fortunes on stopping the boats. If the Rwanda plan was going to work, why did he call a premature election in the rain outside 10 Downing Street rather than in an airport hangar? It was because he knew the plan was not going to work. Why else would he do it?
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member, who is my neighbour in Cheshire, for giving way. I note his views on the last Government’s record, but can he explain how Labour’s decision, just 20 days after the election, to suspend the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which would rightly have prevented illegal migrants from claiming asylum or gaining British citizenship, sends anything other than completely the wrong message and undermines public confidence in the immigration system?
Connor Naismith
Quite simply, my experience from talking to voters—we are talking about public confidence —is that the public had no confidence in the Rwanda plan. Everybody could see that it was not going to work, so the Government were absolutely right to cancel it. The answer is that, just like my Labour colleagues and millions of voters, the previous Government knew that it was going to fail. These issues are of crucial importance to my constituents and I will continue to push the Government to do more to control our borders, but that will not happen by slogans or press releases. It will happen through the hard yards of good policymaking, and I am pleased to see that that work is well under way.
Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)
It does not matter how many times the Prime Minister repeats and repeats his vacuous election slogan of “smash the gangs”, there is no plan to do it, it is not happening and nobody out there believes him. The Government had an opportunity when they came to office. The Rwanda scheme was on the brink of becoming operational, which would have given them one of the most robust deterrents in Europe. As we saw in Australia, when a scheme similar to Rwanda was set up in the Pacific, it only had to deport the first few thousand and it had the impact of largely stopping the boats arriving—but in a callous, irresponsible and purely political move, Labour cancelled the Rwanda scheme. It is a political calculation that the Government have got entirely wrong, as without a deterrent everything else they announce or say is just words.
The Government have had nearly a year to show us they had more up their sleeve on immigration than buzzwords and crocodile-tear outrage about the scheme—so, how is that going? Since the election, almost 36,000 illegal immigrants crossed the channel, a 30% increase on the same period 12 months prior. To date, 2025 has been the worst ever year for small boat crossings, with around 12,000 arrivals. That surge in numbers has led to Labour already breaking its manifesto promise to end the use of asylum hotels. Figures show that on 31 December 2024, there were 8,000 more people in asylum hotels than when the Conservatives left office.
The Government have been clutching at straws for good news. They started off by holding a press conference to celebrate the arrest of one member of just one gang—out of the thousands of criminals involved in the illegal immigration trade—to show they were smashing the gangs. If that was not enough of a laughable spectacle in its own right, the investigation had mainly been undertaken before they came to office and such arrests are a matter of course anyway. More recently, they have switched to triumphantly claiming 24,000 deportations. Time and again, even at Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister has refused to outline how many of those are just routine and voluntary removals, rather than enforced deportations of people who have illegally crossed the channel.
Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Ind)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Oliver Ryan
I thank the hon. Member. Speaking of voluntary removals and laughable schemes, does he accept that the four people his Government sent to Rwanda were in fact volunteers, and that the whole scheme was laughable and hideously expensive?
Mr Snowden
It did not start. The scheme was not even operational. That is like buying a car, waiting until it gets to the showroom and then claiming that only the showroom manager is driving it, so it is not worth the money. It is a ridiculous thing to say.
We hear vacuous slogans, empty words—quite apt—cooked up stats and a Prime Minister unable to answer the most basic of questions; he is now not only reduced to begging other countries to give him options to provide a safe country to deport to, but he is publicly getting slapped down by the leaders he is asking. The return hubs he is now so desperately trying to set up are only a watered-down version of the Rwanda scheme. Even more worryingly, not only have they shot themselves in the foot by cancelling Rwanda; in launching their new border security Bill, they have not realised that without a deterrent it is all just words.
Mr Brash
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman can address the point I made in my speech. Repeatedly, Conservative Members, including him, have said, “If we had only waited a little bit longer, Rwanda would have worked.” Why do you think the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) called the general election—
Mr Snowden
The hon. Member would have to ask my right hon. Friend.
The only tangible elements of the Bill are: a Border Security Commander with no powers other than writing a report and setting some objectives; and new powers to confiscate phones from people who arrive illegally, missing the fact that most of the them discard their phones to hide their identity anyway. Notably, the Bill repeals lots of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, lifting the requirement for the Government to remove people who arrive here illegally and allowing illegal migrants a path to citizenship.
Let us be clear: there should be no route to citizenship for anyone who arrives in this country illegally. France is a safe country, and to get to France—let alone the UK—people will have had to pass through many other safe countries. Everyone who arrives in small boats across the channel or in lorries from the continent is arriving from a safe country and should therefore qualify for immediate deportation. These are not asylum claims; it is illegal immigration.
As much as I would like to take up all the time in this debate—and more—talking about the ludicrously weak and counterproductive policies of this Government, by the time I finished, many more small boats would have crossed the channel. I would rather spare the Minister the time, and hope the Government spend it instead correcting some of their mistakes.
We have outlined some provisions in our Bill that would help, including: disapplying the Human Rights Act from immigration matters; a requirement to deport all foreign criminals regardless of human rights claims; the introduction of a scientific age assessment technique when an illegal immigrant is trying to pretend they are over 18; a requirement to impose visa sanctions on countries that do not take back their own citizens; and increasing the period to qualify for indefinite leave to remain from five years to 10.
I live in hope, though—for the sake of our national security, the confidence of the British public in our immigration system, and to reduce the strain on our public services—that the Prime Minister picks up the phone to his opposite number in Rwanda, apologises for the disrespectful way he treated their country and begs to get the deal back on the table. However, I think it will take a few more years of repeating empty slogans, dodging difficult questions, and holding press conferences every time there is an arrest of a single person out of the thousands involved in the illegal immigration trade, before the Prime Minister realises that instead of smashing the gangs, he is making everything worse, and that it is time to pick up the phone to Rwanda again.
Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Ind)
The Opposition motion, which I will not be supporting, uses the word “regret” an awful lot, but it omits any regret on their part for their complete failure to properly secure our borders during 14 years in government. The Conservatives ran an experiment in this country, and they will never be forgiven for it—especially for facing both ways on the immigration question for such a long time.
In 2010, the Tories pledged to get immigration down to the tens of thousands, and over the next five years they failed. In 2015, the Tories said they would get net migration down to the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands, and they failed. In 2017, they said they would get migration to the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands, and they failed. In 2019, they said the “numbers will come down”—at that point, they had panicked slightly about the whole affair.
At the time the Tories were leaving office, net migration was nearly 1 million. Time after time, over 14 years, they told the British people they would tackle net migration and bring the numbers down, but they did not—and now, after 10 months, they have the bottle to stand in front of this Government and ask, “Why are the numbers not down yet?”. We are taking action to bring the numbers closer to the approximately 200,000 that they were when Labour left office in 2010. There is this rhetoric that immigration has been an issue for 30 or 40 years, but the numbers have been sky high over the past 10—since Brexit, really. And the Tories wonder why people think they are irrelevant.
There is mention in the motion of a cap, but—as always with this Opposition—there is a history lesson here. I am old enough to remember 2013 to 2015, and the cap that was announced by the coalition Government. [Hon. Members: “Surely not!”] I was a very junior councillor. A cap was mentioned by the coalition then—a complete chocolate fireguard. They got the headlines when they announced it, but it failed to do the job, so they ditched it. In the end, it was not worth the press release it was written on. It was game playing of the highest order.
We are seeing the same thing again now; history is repeating itself. In the past four years, net migration quadrupled and our asylum system was completely destroyed. The processing of asylum claims took so long and numbers increased by so much that the previous Government were spending £9 million a day on hotel stays across more than 400 hotels. Hotel stays for my constituents are a treat, and not something to be doled out to people coming off boats in the channel—but unfortunately that is what the Conservatives did for the best part of five years. My constituents do not begrudge genuine asylum seekers, but that system was broken and they have told me that that is just not on.
Boats over the channel were basically invented by the previous Government. Indeed, 13,500 people crossed the channel in small boats in the shadow Home Secretary’s last five months as Minister for Immigration, and 260 boats crossed in his last two. The same number of boats have crossed the channel in the last six months of this Government. I would say that that is progress.
If a person is here in this country illegally—and illegal is illegal—they will be removed. That is not in contention; I do not see how it can be. In contrast to those years of open borders, this Government have secured agreements with France, Germany, Italy, Iraq and more. The arrangements with France and Germany in particular are game-changing, and I want to see French boats in the water stopping those asylum seekers in the months to come. I will finish there, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I am very short on time, but thank you very much for calling me to speak.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, rightly said earlier, migration has been too high for decades and remains so. In every year since 1997, with the unsurprising exception of 2020, net migration was over 100,000 people. Every election-winning manifesto since 1974 has promised to reduce migration. Successive Governments of both parties have promised to end the era of mass migration and control the borders, and successive Governments have failed. In the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), the previous Government, like the Governments before them, also promised to do exactly this, but, again, like the Governments before them, they did not deliver. I am afraid that this Government are just the latest addition to this rogues’ gallery of broken promises.
Worse than disregarding the public’s wishes, public servants have told the British people to ignore what they can see and feel around them. The public was told that migration would deliver growth. It has not. Instead, people can feel their wages stagnating because they are being undercut. They can see the pressure of mass migration in their soaring rents, in how hard it is for their children to get on the housing ladder, in the lack of cohesion in their communities, and in the pressure on their GPs, dentists and schools. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), immigration is the biggest broken promise in British politics, and probably the biggest single reason that British politics is so broken.
Katie Lam
I wish to make a little progress.
Fixing this broken system is the single biggest thing that we can do to restore trust in our politics. That means control of the borders and an end to mass migration; we need a system that works in the interests of this country and its people. Those who have come here legally and not contributed enough should be made to leave. Those who are here illegally, either by crossing the channel or from overstaying their visas, must be removed. The era of taxpayers funding accommodation, education, healthcare and legal challenges against their own Government for those who have no right to be here must end forever.
Sir John Hayes
We should deport the approximately 1 million people who are here illegally. We also need, as I hope my hon. Friend will acknowledge, to look at the indefinite right to remain. All kinds of people—with extremely dubious pasts, presents and possibly futures—have been granted that status. Will she commit the Opposition to relook at that, because indefinite does not mean permanent?
Katie Lam
We already have committed to that and will continue to do so. It is a clear amendment both to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill and to the deportation Bill in the name of my right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary.
Unless and until politicians of all stripes can deliver the migration system that the British people have voted for time and again, there will be no reason for them to trust in our political system, and they will be right not to. We have seen no indication from this Government since they came to power last year that they are willing to do what needs to be done to give the British people the immigration system that they want and deserve. The debate today, I am afraid, has been no different.
The Minister clearly wished only to speak about the record of the previous Government. But they are in charge now—and what do we see? My right hon. Friend, the shadow Home Secretary, points out the facts. He says that Afghans are 20 times more likely to be sex offenders, and Government Members say, “Outrageous!”. Well, it is outrageous; saying so is not. He points out that over 70% of Somalis live in social housing, and they call it race-baiting. That is exactly the attitude that has allowed our political class to ignore the reality of the world that we live in. No party and no Government who continue to treat the British public’s very legitimate concerns with such scorn will ever rise to meet the challenge of securing our border.
The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) called for more safe and legal routes, but demand to come to Britain will always dramatically outstrip our supply. There is no number of safe and legal routes that will ever stop people making the dangerous channel crossing. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) called for this House—not foreign courts—to decide who can stay in this country. I admire his stance, and I look forward to the launch of his campaign to leave the ECHR.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) made a characteristically insightful speech about the substantial challenges of integration, and rightly connected that to the volume of immigration. No country of our size could ever hope to integrate that many people each year, and he is right to say so.
Mr Brash
It is possibly in order for me to correct the shadow Minister. I was very clear that I believe that the application of article 8 should be tightened so that courts in this country are not sovereign over this place regarding deportations. It should be this place that ensures deportations—not our courts.
Katie Lam
I thank the hon. Member for his clarification. I hate to break it to him, but article 8 will not do what he thinks it will, and tightening it will not solve the problem. The article that presents the biggest problems, actually, is article 3, which does not have caveats and cannot be tightened in the way that he suggests.
The hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) spoke of border security as national security. She was correct to do so, but just last week when told in this Chamber that terrorists come across the channel in small boats, her colleagues on the Government Benches laughed and jeered.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk made, as ever, a compelling economic and cultural case for control. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Jo White), who is not in her place, set out some of the worst problems with the current immigration system, but she was perhaps not entirely forthcoming in the way she shared the statistics. Far from Labour closing asylum hotels, there are 8,000 more people in asylum hotels than when Labour came to power.
The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) and I have aired our differing views on this topic over many weeks in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill Committee. I am not sure either of us has done much to persuade the other, but I always enjoy his company.
Dr Evans
In 2020 the Prime Minister—then Leader of the Opposition—pledged as point 6 of his “Another future is possible” plan that the Yarl’s Wood detention centre would close. To my knowledge, as of today it is still open. Given my hon. Friend’s experience, is she aware that Yarl’s Wood will be closing? Has she heard the Government commit to closing it, and if so, when will that be?
Katie Lam
I can only recommend that my hon. Friend does not hold his breath.
I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden) for mentioning what needs to be done on age assessments. The amendments we have tabled to the border security Bill would make much progress on that.
Last week the Prime Minister said that mass migration risked turning us into an “island of strangers”. He was absolutely right. He recognised, as we do, that fixing migration is the single most important thing that his Government could do to restore public trust in our politics, yet the plan that he presented—the Government’s migration White Paper—is not a plan to end mass migration or control our borders. It is a plan for more of the same.
Instead of a detailed programme, the Government’s White Paper offers more delays, more reviews, more consultations and more half-measures. Their plan to deport foreign criminals is subject to a consultation later this year. Their plan to reform the rules on settlement is subject to another consultation. When given the chance, they have voted against a hard cap on visas, against our plan to disapply the Human Rights Act 1998 from immigration cases, and against our plan to restrict long-term settlement to those who contribute enough to cover their costs. They are just not serious.
The Home Secretary estimates that their plan will cut migration by 50,000 people. In the context of hundreds of thousands a year, that is just not enough. The Government have no plan to remove the 1.2 million people here illegally and no real plan to restrict study or family visas, which made up 40% of all migration last year.
If we thought that the Government’s plans would genuinely end mass migration and control our borders, we would support them in a heartbeat. The need to do what is right for our country is bigger than any single party, politician or Prime Minister. Unfortunately, this Government have no plan, and they will go down as the latest Government who failed to fix mass migration. This is the most shameful betrayal of public trust in British politics, and it must end, but the Labour Government show no sign that they will do what needs to be done.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)
It is a pleasure to respond to this important debate, which I welcome, because it is time to restore control over the UK’s immigration system. Coincidently, that is the title of our 76-page White Paper, which is a serious plan, and one that the Conservatives should have thought more about bringing forward when they were in government.
Let me reassert the fundamental point made by my hon. Friend the Minister for Border Security and Asylum in her opening speech: the Government are picking up the pieces after years of chaos and dysfunction. The Conservatives can talk all they want, but they cannot rewrite history. When it comes to small boats, the worst day, the worst week, the worst month and the worst year all took place on their watch in 2022—after the Rwanda deal had been signed. They gave us record net migration, they gave us record small boat arrivals and they gave us record numbers of asylum hotels, so we will take no lectures from them.
It bears repeating that what we inherited was, by every possible measure, a failing system. Net migration had risen to record levels, driven in large part by overseas recruitment, despite the public being assured that it would come down. Order and control utterly vanished from the legal immigration system as net migration has quadrupled in recent years to record highs. That was at the same time as investment in training went down: total investment in training per employee fell by 19% in the decade to 2022. It is this Government, in the spring statement, who announced £625 million to go towards skills training. Those important points were made by hon. Members across the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash).
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for talking about this issue. There is a debate to be had about cause and consequence, but we cannot deny that apprenticeships in engineering halved while visas doubled on the Conservatives’ watch. That is a serious issue, which the White Paper is tackling. I urge the Conservative party to engage with the substance of that White Paper and the serious reforms we need to make.
The dramatic increase in net migration has had serious and far-reaching implications across a range of areas, from public services and community cohesion to housing stock, the economy and our domestic labour market. Perhaps most damagingly of all, it has badly dented the confidence of our constituents, who want an immigration system that is fair, controlled and managed. They want to see opportunity for themselves and for their families.
Migration is an important part of our national story—none of us should deny that—because for generations people from all over the world have come to Britain to live, to study and to work, from members of the Windrush generation who helped rebuild our country following the second world war, to the doctors and nurses working in our NHS. Indeed, they enrich our society and culture, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Connor Naismith) outlined, but recognising the value and contribution of legal migration is not the same as having no controls. For far too long, a persistent and abject failure to exert control has undermined the system, with grave consequences. That is the situation we inherited on legal migration, and we must now have the important debate about why that has been the case and what we must do to bring it down.
The picture on illegal migration and border security was no better. Under the Conservatives, small boat crossings grew in number from a few hundred in 2018 to tens of thousands. Hotel use peaked with 56,000 asylum seekers in 400 hotels in the autumn of 2023 when the shadow Home Secretary was at the Home Office.
Luke Akehurst
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. This has not been touched upon in the debate, but there is an issue of asylum seekers not just in hotels but in houses in multiple occupancy. That is causing a lot of community cohesion problems, with unscrupulous landlords buying up HMOs in cheap terraced housing in the towns and villages of County Durham. Does the Minister accept that that is also a problem that rose and rose under the previous Government?
Seema Malhotra
That is indeed an issue that the Minister for Border Security and Asylum is working on with local authorities, so that there are caps and we have a well-managed process.
Seema Malhotra
I will make some progress first.
There is also the issue that the UK has come to be seen as an easy target by criminal smuggling gangs, who relentlessly undermine our border security and put lives at risk in the channel and elsewhere, the consequences of which, tragically, we have seen again today. That cannot go on, and under this Government it will not.
We have restarted asylum decision making on the horrendous backlog that was left by the previous Government. Returns are up by 21% to more than 24,000. The hon. Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden) raised the question of those who have been subject to enforced returns. The number is up significantly on the previous year. He may want to engage with those figures and his Government’s record on that.
We have taken action through the new Border Security Command, the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill and the immigration White Paper.
Seema Malhotra
I want to make some more progress. We are acting to restore order and control to the immigration system and to give law enforcement the powers they need—powers the parties on the Opposition Benches voted against.
We have laid out a set of robust measures in the immigration White Paper, including reversing the long-term trend of increasing international recruitment at the expense of skills and training. We want to see net migration come down by investing in training. Also, for the first time, a labour market evidence group will be established, drawing on the best data available to make informed decisions about the state of the labour market and the role that different policies should play, rather than always relying on migration. Immigration must also work for the whole of the UK. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) and I have been in a number of debates on the needs of Scotland. Departments across Government, along with the devolved Governments and sector bodies, will engage in the new labour market evidence group as part of the new approach.
We will tackle the overly complex family and private life immigration arrangements, where too many cases are treated as exceptional in the absence of a clear framework. That is why legislation will be brought forward to make clear that Government and Parliament decide who should have the right to remain in the UK. That will address cases where legal arguments based on article 8 and the right to family life are being used to frustrate deportation when removal is clearly in the national interest.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.