(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)
The scale of illegal immigration and its impact on our country is simply not understood in this Parliament, and nor do most Members even care. British people are genuinely scared—women are frightened to go into their towns alone, and parents are terrified to let their children walk to school. It is getting worse and worse. The British people are not stupid; they can see their communities radically changing, and they can feel their streets becoming more unfamiliar, more dangerous and more menacing, all while the Home Office deliberately conceals the true extent of the change from our citizens.
I am contacted by dozens and dozens of women who genuinely fear for their lives and who feel ignored by this place—ignored by those who are supposed to represent and protect them; ignored and abandoned; thrown to the wolves in pursuit of some sick multicultural experiment that is being forced on our people, one that has very real-world consequences.
What happened just yesterday? Two Afghan illegal migrants were jailed for raping a schoolgirl. The footage exists—she filmed herself during the rape. Even the men’s barrister warned that it would lead to “disorder” if it was released, as it was so horrific. “You’re going to rape me”, the girl cried as she was dragged away. She screamed for help and begged not to be taken. One of the migrants gagged her with his hand. The Afghan men forced her to perform sex acts in a secluded area. She is heard screaming for help; she calls for her friends; she wants to go home. She is pleading for help from passers-by—none came. Can you imagine her horror, her fear and her desperation? Think if it was your daughter. How would that make you feel? Honestly, think about that.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
The hon. Member is giving a very powerful introduction to his speech. He and I share profound concerns about the scale of illegal migration to the UK, and the ability of those migrants to arrive here and then disappear. For me, the most disturbing aspect of the case that he has mentioned, which was reported yesterday, is the fact that we are being gaslit by the media. Those two Afghani boat arrivals were described as being from Leamington—they are not from Leamington. Does the hon. Member agree that women and girls are less safe in this United Kingdom now, today, than they were five years ago, for this reason?
Rupert Lowe
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and I completely agree with what she has said.
The girl was then pushed to her knees before being brutally raped. Another—one of too many.
Last year, a 35-year-old old Iranian small-boat migrant raped a 15-year-old girl in an alleyway. He was known to police in Germany, where he had been convicted of assault offences. He told the girl she could be his “sex doll”, and that he wanted to—I quote— “fuck her”, before dragging her down an alleyway, forcing her to her knees outside a secluded doorway, and then raping her. The poor girl’s anguished mother later asked, “Why was he in this country?” It is a question that millions and millions of British people are asking. Why are they here?
These are unimaginable horrors, but they are happening, right across our country, every day, brutally and relentlessly. This House may not like to hear this, but it must listen; it must understand; it must digest. This is a political choice, and it is one that this Parliament has made. These are men who should never have been in our country to begin with. They should have been detained, and they should have been deported, indiscriminately and without question. They were not: they were housed, fed and cared for at taxpayer expense. They were released on to our streets and allowed to roam freely—thousands and thousands of them, unvetted foreign men from barbaric cultures that have no place in our communities. Words cannot adequately describe my disgust at what has been forced on to the British people.
Since being elected, I have used what little influence I hold to try and uncover the impact of these migrants and just how severely the British people are suffering because of it. I have asked more than 600 questions of the Home Office, but I receive very few answers, particularly when the question is regarding illegal migrants. “No data”, “not centrally collected” and “disproportionate costs” are often cited. I thought that perhaps it was incompetence, but evidence has come to my attention that proves the Home Office has been misleading MPs. On 20 January, I asked the Home Office
“what information the Department holds on the number of irregular migrants defined as absconders.”
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way—I did give him notice that I was going to intervene. It is inconceivable, is it not, that Home Office Ministers would not know the answer to that question? When I was a Home Office Minister, I would ask my officials for exactly that kind of information. It is not just that the hon. Gentleman did not know; it seems that Ministers did not either. I cannot believe that. It is inconceivable.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. He has illustrated with the story that he has related, and by citing the evidential base, how bad things are. Data from the Home Office—I checked this before the debate—shows that, as of October 2025, 53,298 migrants had breached their immigration bail or absconded from detention, which means that their whereabouts were unknown. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this only adds to the stress in our communities, including that caused to the health and housing systems, and that more must be done to find those who have illegally breached immigration bail and deport them to their countries of origin?
Rupert Lowe
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and I will come to that point in a minute, but I completely concur.
To recap, I asked the Home Office
“what information the Department holds on the number of irregular migrants defined as absconders.”
A Minister replied:
“The requested data is not readily accessible from published statistics, and could only be collated and verified for the purpose of answering this question at a disproportionate cost.”
That was not true.
On 3 September, I asked the Home Secretary
“what estimate she has made of the number of foreign nationals who have absconded after being served with a deportation order.”
The answer, from a different Minister, was:
“The Home Office does not hold any central record of the requested information.”
That was not true.
On 24 November, I questioned the Home Office permanent secretary in the Public Accounts Committee on the number of illegal migrants who have absconded from Home Office accommodation in the past five years. I got no concise answer.
During all this, a Home Office whistleblower presented themselves with these figures, in black and white, regularly disseminated within the Home Office. The actual data is as follows: there are 736 foreign criminals in the total absconder pool for foreign national offenders. That is 736 foreign criminals who have been released from prison and then absconded before deportation. Please think about that: 736 criminals—rapists, murderers, paedophiles. They were meant for deportation but have escaped into the community—736 of them. It is a terrifying thought.
Overall, the total absconder pool stands at 53,298, largely referring to the number of illegal migrants who were once in the system and whose current whereabouts is unknown.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
Given that 53,000 illegal immigrants have absconded with no address, and 736 who have committed crimes have absconded, does the hon. Member agree that this Government have lost control of their borders and their immigration policies, and they have lost all credibility when it comes to immigration issues?
Rupert Lowe
I do agree with the hon. Member’s helpful intervention. Unvetted and unknown men—sex pests, misogynists, and even far worse—are in our communities, on our streets and near our schools, in the thousands and thousands. This is a national security emergency and must be treated as such.
The evidence is undeniable. I have seen it in Home Office documents. It exists. It is real. The figures were not even disputed by the Home Office; they simply told The Daily Telegraph:
“The Home Office has refused to confirm whether the figures are accurate, saying it does not comment on speculation.”
This is not speculation. This is cold, hard data. The numbers demonstrate quite spectacularly how the Home Office has failed to keep the British people safe. It is an outrageous scandal that this information has been deliberately hidden from the British people. We deserve to know the facts. We deserve to know what is being forced on to our communities. The answer is staggering: 736 foreign criminals gone, disappeared; and 53,298 illegal migrants gone, disappeared. My questions—
Rupert Lowe
My questions are these. Where are they now? What is the Minister doing to detain them? Where did they come from? What are their convictions? How has this been allowed to happen?
Rupert Lowe
I can count, thank you. Why did the Minister mislead the British people? Who is being sacked?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. We do not need commentary from a sedentary position. I remind Mr Lowe that we do not accuse other Members of misleading the House, so please refrain from using such terms and please check your language.
Rupert Lowe
Will the Minister now commit to publishing these figures on a regular and transparent basis, or will I have to continue exposing this? Further whistleblowers have already come forward with additional information, and I thank them for that. My warning to the Home Office and to other Departments is this: be very careful about any further misleading statements. There are many decent people in the civil service who will not tolerate it, and I want them all to know that they have a safe and secure channel to release this information publicly through me. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this festering, rotting mess desperately needs to be disinfected.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend write to the Procedure Committee with his file on this case? The Procedure Committee is at the moment inquiring into the quality of answers to written questions, and is very concerned about the lack of quality. I am also concerned about receiving answers, in my case from the Treasury recently, that suggest there was an attempt to deliberately mislead, which has been exposed only as a result of supplementary answers.
Rupert Lowe
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I will indeed write to the Committee.
I have one final question for the Minister: what else is the Home Office lying about?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Lowe, we spoke about this earlier. We do not accuse each other of misleading and we do not accuse each other of lying. There are different ways of framing such questions—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. If I needed the hon. Member’s help, I would have asked for it.
Mr Lowe, this is a very serious subject. We have to make sure that our language is appropriate and serious. I will now call the Minister, and no doubt you will want to intervene on him, but please keep your language in check.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mike Tapp)
I thank the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) for securing this debate, and I am grateful to him and all other hon. Members who have participated. As we have heard, this an important issue for the Government, the public and the Home Office, which does not lie. A lot of ground has been covered, and several claims and criticisms have been aired about how this Government are tackling illegal migration, many of which I would contest or flatly reject, as I do the apocalyptic picture that he paints of our great country. He can continue to talk it down, but it will not gain him any more votes.
I will respond to this issue in more detail shortly, but before that, I must do two things. The first is to state without hesitation or equivocation that this Government are utterly determined to tackle the scourge of illegal migration. Anyone who comes to this country illegally or remains here illegally should not expect to stay. In cases of an individual with no right to be in the UK absconding or disappearing, efforts are made to trace them and bring them back into contact with the Department. As the Home Secretary has repeatedly made clear, the ability of the state to determine who can come to this country and who must leave is an essential part of any functioning immigration system.
Public safety is paramount, and the hon. Member mentions some disturbing recent events, but we will do everything in our power to protect our citizens, our communities and our country. It has been a top priority to fix the mess that we inherited, and our efforts are having an impact. Removals of those with no right to be here have increased dramatically. Almost 50,000 people have been returned since July 2024. That is up 23%—a record increase. Deportations of foreign criminals have also increased significantly in the last year, with over 5,430 foreign national offenders having been returned as of the end of October 2025. That is an increase of 12% on the previous year.
I must stress that the mess we inherited is not fixed in a week, a month or a year. We inherited open borders. We inherited hotels full, costing taxpayers £9 million a day. In the Home Office, we inherited a system that had ground to a halt. Processing has now increased by 50%. That demonstrates very clearly that we are making progress, and that Britain will not be a soft touch for illegal migration. We have ramped up enforcement activity, whether against the criminal gangs, illegal journeys or illegal working here at home. In the past year, enforcement action to disrupt illegal working across all sectors reached record-breaking levels; there were over 11,000 visits and 8,000 arrests. That is up 51% and 63% respectively—the highest levels that this country has ever seen. On top of that, people-smuggling arrests, convictions and seizures have increased by 33% in the past 12 months. That all contributes to the Government’s comprehensive and systematic work to reduce the incentives that draw people here illegally and to scale up removals.
Sir John Hayes
My experience in this House over almost 30 years is that most people here—indeed, the overwhelming majority—want to do the right thing, irrespective of party, and I make that perfectly clear through you, Madam Deputy Speaker. But in that spirit, I know that you will take the view that it is critically important that parliamentary answers be full and accurate. That is something that I conjured with as a Minister, answering many, many written questions in a variety of Government Departments. Will the Minister address the specific issue raised about the accuracy and completeness of answers to questions?
Mike Tapp
I thank the right hon. Member for his two questions. On the first, I completely agree that the vast majority of those who come to this country are decent people. The sweeping changes to the asylum system over the past few weeks further encourage people to integrate and contribute, and further ensure that there is not the asylum shopping that we currently see across Europe. But there are bad eggs, and when we get those bad eggs, we will do what we can to deport them. That is why we have also seen changes in the last few weeks to make it easier to remove and deport people. I will come on to written questions shortly.
More broadly, we must never forget that the chronic problems we face long predate this Government’s time in office. When we took office, we inherited an asylum system overwhelmed by escalating costs, record hotel use and a backlog that undermined public confidence. We recognise that the current arrangements for accommodating asylum seekers are not suitable. The Government will close every asylum hotel, and we are on track to do that by the end of this Parliament. We are working to move asylum seekers into more suitable accommodation, such as military bases, to ease pressure on communities across the country.
It remains necessary to use hotels in the short to medium term to deliver our statutory responsibility to ensure that individuals are not left destitute, but whereas over 400 asylum hotels were open in summer 2023, costing almost £9 million a day, fewer than 200 hotels remain in use. This is not just about cost; it is about restoring control to our asylum system. International co-operation is key to improving returns, and through our landmark UK-France agreement, we have strengthened our ability to return individuals to France. Our efforts are having an impact, and they will go further.
Turning to the focus of the debate, I am aware of the interest in these issues, and specifically in absconders. I will not comment on leaked data, but I can set out to the House the steps that are taken to ensure that an individual remains in contact with the Home Office, and the consequences should they abscond. An individual granted immigration bail may be required to reside at a specified address, and to report at regular intervals, either in person to a reporting officer or a police station, or by telephone or digital messaging. In some cases, a person may also be required to wear an electronic fitted device. Where someone fails to comply with that, efforts will be made to re-establish contact through the most appropriate method, which might be a visit from an enforcement team.
Individuals can come into contact with the Department for a variety of reasons, but if they are considered to be an absconder, their details will be circulated on the police national computer. The Home Office has a range of tools to locate those who abscond, and a dedicated tracing capability, which works in partnership with the police, other Government agencies and commercial companies.
Tracing foreign national offenders will always be a priority, and tracing is just one of the ways in which contact with an individual can be re-established. Many individuals who are out of contact may also re-engage with the Department voluntarily or decide to leave the UK. Individuals are also encountered through routine immigration enforcement and police activity. In all cases, the Home Office will consider the most appropriate action, including arrest and detention.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
I am listening with interest to the Minister, but as a Member of this House, I would like to know whether the figures quoted by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) are correct or incorrect. Surely the House is entitled to know that.
Mike Tapp
I thank the hon. and learned Member for his question. We do not comment on unverified leaks.
After internal reviews, my officials have acknowledged that the interpretation of an absconder requires clearer definition in departmental policy. Work is under way to amend guidance and operational processes, so that it is easier for immigration officials interacting with individuals to know when an absconder marker should be associated with a person, enabling them to take the right action in a timely way. Of course, there is more to do. That is why we are implementing the most significant immigration and asylum reforms of modern times.
Mike Kane
When we talk about emotive subjects such as this one, it is important that we establish the facts. The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) recently railed on social media against illegal migrants coming to his constituency. They happened to be canoeists traversing the Atlantic and fundraising for motor neurone disease. Now he is Billy No Mates; he is like some latter-day King Cnut, without his courtiers, on the beach, railing at the tide to go backwards. Does the Minister not agree? For the record, Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope that I pronounced Cnut correctly.
Mike Tapp
In public life, it is important to ensure that we are not sensationalising, or raising the temperature on such an important and divisive issue. That is precisely why the Home Secretary is looking to restore order and control to the system—so that the likes of the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth cannot use it as a divisive tool for their own political ends.
I turn to the published figures, and will address the questions around them. The Government are not in a position to state the current number of illegal migrants whose whereabouts are unknown because the information is not available from the published statistics. The data would have to be taken from a live operational database, and would include historical records, which means that any figures would not be sufficiently robust and would not be verified.
I thank the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth again for securing this debate, and thank all Members who have contributed. These issues are a source of concern for many of our constituents, and it is right that they be discussed in this House. Perhaps inevitably, given the subject matter, a range of views and arguments have been advanced. Let me conclude by reasserting the Government’s stance: we will not stand for abuse of our immigration system, we will always put the safety of our citizens and the security of our nation first, and we will use every possible measure to find and remove those individuals with no right to be in this country.
Question put and agreed to.