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Monday 13th July 2026
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16:30
16:30
16:30
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Thank you. It's a pleasure to serve with you. I beg to move that this House has considered. E-petition 737105, relating to offshore detention and deportation of illegal migrants. I will speak today in my role on that committee, but in doing so, I am obliged to give not only my own views on the issue, but the views of the petitioner and campaigners who sought this debate. I will set out what the petition seeks, its merits and the points worth considering further.
Of course, I have my own views on this issue, which I will also share throughout this debate. I congratulate the petitioner for setting up this petition, which, unusually, is one of our colleagues, the honourable member for Great Yarmouth. Mr. Twigg, the petition calls on the government to establish offshore detention facilities for people who enter the UK illegally, to process them and arrange their deportation. It closed in March with over 720,000 signatures drawn from every part of the United Kingdom, including a great many of my constituents in Galashiels, Hawick, Kelso, Jedburgh and across the Scottish Borders.
Number of signatures to this petition attract. Sorry, the number of signatures this petition attracted reflects the strength of feeling on this issue of immigration. Let me set out the scale of the problem that has prompted this petition. Each year, tens of thousands of people are entering the United Kingdom illegally, mainly travelling by small boat across the English Channel. There is a process for those fleeing war and persecution to seek asylum in this country. The people coming here illegally are not following that process.
They are not doing the right thing. They are breaking the law when they get to this country. It becomes incredibly difficult for them to be removed. Nearly everyone who arrives here goes on to claim asylum, even if their claim is dubious. Even in circumstances where it is clear that they should not be here, perhaps because of a criminal record. It is challenging to remove those who hide behind the process. Those abusing the process benefit from the fact that our asylum system is broken.
Claims takes far too long, often years for the initial case and then potentially far longer upon appeal. As of March this year, over 10,000 people were waiting more than a year. Also, as of March, nearly 100,000 people were in asylum accommodation, including more than 20,000 in hotels. Because as these claims go on, people are housed by the state. This policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels is one of the main objections that the signatories to this petition have regarding UK asylum policy.
They are correct in their assessment of the moral flaws of this policy. A system has been created that seems to encourage and reward those who make an asylum claim, even if they have no real chance of success or fair basis for doing so. This is not about those who do fairly claim asylum, but those who abuse the system. The practice of using hotels for these people has led to justified public anger at a time when normal British citizens are struggling to make ends meet, working hard only to pay huge sums of taxes to fund services that are declining.
It is grossly unfair that people illegally entering this country are being put up in hotels at the public's expense. Mr. Twigg, the government has started to use larger, dedicated sites than hotels on the basis that concentrating provision is more manageable than dispersing tens of thousands of people across hundreds of hotels. The length and breadth of the country in the further information submitted ahead of today's debate, the petitioner argues that if consolidation into larger mainline sites is already accepted as an improvement on hotels, the logical next step is to consolidate provision entirely by offshoring at a single location with one integrated set of services, including accommodation, health care, legal support, translation and case management.
This would replace the costly current patchwork of provision. It would provide clearer entry and exit controls and, crucially, it is argued that it would provide a genuine deterrent effect that dispersed mainland accommodation cannot deliver. It happily give way.
Of course, I have my own views on this issue, which I will also share throughout this debate. I congratulate the petitioner for setting up this petition, which, unusually, is one of our colleagues, the honourable member for Great Yarmouth. Mr. Twigg, the petition calls on the government to establish offshore detention facilities for people who enter the UK illegally, to process them and arrange their deportation. It closed in March with over 720,000 signatures drawn from every part of the United Kingdom, including a great many of my constituents in Galashiels, Hawick, Kelso, Jedburgh and across the Scottish Borders.
Number of signatures to this petition attract. Sorry, the number of signatures this petition attracted reflects the strength of feeling on this issue of immigration. Let me set out the scale of the problem that has prompted this petition. Each year, tens of thousands of people are entering the United Kingdom illegally, mainly travelling by small boat across the English Channel. There is a process for those fleeing war and persecution to seek asylum in this country. The people coming here illegally are not following that process.
They are not doing the right thing. They are breaking the law when they get to this country. It becomes incredibly difficult for them to be removed. Nearly everyone who arrives here goes on to claim asylum, even if their claim is dubious. Even in circumstances where it is clear that they should not be here, perhaps because of a criminal record. It is challenging to remove those who hide behind the process. Those abusing the process benefit from the fact that our asylum system is broken.
Claims takes far too long, often years for the initial case and then potentially far longer upon appeal. As of March this year, over 10,000 people were waiting more than a year. Also, as of March, nearly 100,000 people were in asylum accommodation, including more than 20,000 in hotels. Because as these claims go on, people are housed by the state. This policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels is one of the main objections that the signatories to this petition have regarding UK asylum policy.
They are correct in their assessment of the moral flaws of this policy. A system has been created that seems to encourage and reward those who make an asylum claim, even if they have no real chance of success or fair basis for doing so. This is not about those who do fairly claim asylum, but those who abuse the system. The practice of using hotels for these people has led to justified public anger at a time when normal British citizens are struggling to make ends meet, working hard only to pay huge sums of taxes to fund services that are declining.
It is grossly unfair that people illegally entering this country are being put up in hotels at the public's expense. Mr. Twigg, the government has started to use larger, dedicated sites than hotels on the basis that concentrating provision is more manageable than dispersing tens of thousands of people across hundreds of hotels. The length and breadth of the country in the further information submitted ahead of today's debate, the petitioner argues that if consolidation into larger mainline sites is already accepted as an improvement on hotels, the logical next step is to consolidate provision entirely by offshoring at a single location with one integrated set of services, including accommodation, health care, legal support, translation and case management.
This would replace the costly current patchwork of provision. It would provide clearer entry and exit controls and, crucially, it is argued that it would provide a genuine deterrent effect that dispersed mainland accommodation cannot deliver. It happily give way.
16:34
Speaker 3
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Speaker 3
I wonder if the honourable member agrees with me that this issue is ultimately about fairness and fairness for our constituents that are paying their taxes and ultimately seeing someone who comes here illegally benefiting to services, much more so than what they may be able to as a resident that is paying tax. I wonder if he does agree with me that absolutely, we must be considering offshore detention. We must be considering offshore processing and saying that if you come here illegally, you will be deported.
16:35
16:35
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
Mr. speaker, my hon. Friend the member for Keighley and Ilkley is absolutely right. It's a sense of fairness, and it's not working in the best interests of our constituents. I am sure that the 1138 of his constituency signed this petition were feeling that sense of unfairness. The incentive of guaranteed mainland accommodation is removed. The numbers requiring processing at any one time would fall to the low thousands, not the tens of thousands currently housed. Petitioner has based his argument on evidence, such as that gathered by the Public Accounts Committee, which reported last month that the asylum system here in the UK is, and I quote, under severe pressure, with high costs and persistent backlogs.
The same inquiry found that repeated attempts to reform have failed to fix long standing problems, and that short term fixes have tended to push pressure from one part of the system to another. Rather than resolve it. More strikingly, Mr. Twigg, the committee recorded that the Home Office could only say that it knew where, and I quote the vast majority of failed asylum seekers were. The committee called this shocking and unacceptable. Mr. Twigg the vast majority of British people agree. The committee's own conclusion is that the current accommodation model is poor value for money.
On cost, specifically, when responding to this petition, the government said offshore detention would be costly and impractical. On this point, the government seems to be grasping at straws and woefully underprepared. It deems offshore detention to be too costly and impractical. Yet two words that would undoubtedly apply to the current system are costly and impractical. Offshore detention may well be costly and impractical, but the government has not proven that point. And what is worse, it has not come close to proving it would be less costly or impractical than the current system, which, as I have stated, was found by cross-party committee of this place to to not provide value for money.
The signatories to this petition would be well within their rights to ask the government to publish all the relevant figures for the current system, break down that system on a cost basis, and let people see how broken the system actually is at every stage. Stage. Has the government assessed the cost to every individual community of providing services to those claiming asylum?No is the answer. It certainly has not come close to doing so, nor does it want to, because the cost to local services is not just a simple number, but the ongoing cost to already strained local services and the breakdown in community cohesion.
Some of this cannot be calculated on a simple, simple ledger, but is nonetheless very expensive for our country. Now, many in the SNP, Labour and the Greens wish to portray an effective immigration system and a strong deterrent as somehow morally wrong. They regard any policy designed to protect our own borders as outrageous. Yet internationally, offshore detention and other similar measures have been effective and are increasingly being considered by governments of all political persuasions. Australia's move to offshore processing coincided with a sharp fall in boat arrivals from 2001, and the government maintains that offshore processing is very effective.
Other countries have brought in similar measures as the petitioner seeks, including Italy and Denmark. Many others, including Germany, Austria, Denmark and Greece, have considered return hub facilities outside of the European Union. No matter what some politicians think, those policies are not far right. They are right to be properly considered. This government has not done so appropriately. It has not seriously considered an approach that other countries have implemented, implemented successfully, and others are now looking at. It dismisses the views of the supporters of this petition and the huge numbers of people across the country who have supported it.
Its analysis is short on detail and long on assumptions about costs that do not seem credible. The truth of the matter is that our immigration system is broken beyond belief, and the British people know all about it. I represent a rural constituency in Scotland, but this issue fills my postbag and comes up time and time again on doorsteps and in my advice surgeries. It does so because my constituents, far from the English Channel, can see that they are paying and our country is suffering from this broken system.
They see that we struggle to to deport even serial criminals. That is why over 700,000 people have signed this petition. They deserve to be heard, and they deserve to hear from this government that all the substantive and reasonable options must be put on the table to fix this broken immigration system. This is not the time to to dismiss for political or ideological reasons proposals which are grounded in evidence and seek to provide a real solution to one of our country's biggest on going issues.
The government should take this petition seriously. It should consider a new approach to immigration. It must consider establishing offshore detention facilities for people who enter the United Kingdom illegally.
The same inquiry found that repeated attempts to reform have failed to fix long standing problems, and that short term fixes have tended to push pressure from one part of the system to another. Rather than resolve it. More strikingly, Mr. Twigg, the committee recorded that the Home Office could only say that it knew where, and I quote the vast majority of failed asylum seekers were. The committee called this shocking and unacceptable. Mr. Twigg the vast majority of British people agree. The committee's own conclusion is that the current accommodation model is poor value for money.
On cost, specifically, when responding to this petition, the government said offshore detention would be costly and impractical. On this point, the government seems to be grasping at straws and woefully underprepared. It deems offshore detention to be too costly and impractical. Yet two words that would undoubtedly apply to the current system are costly and impractical. Offshore detention may well be costly and impractical, but the government has not proven that point. And what is worse, it has not come close to proving it would be less costly or impractical than the current system, which, as I have stated, was found by cross-party committee of this place to to not provide value for money.
The signatories to this petition would be well within their rights to ask the government to publish all the relevant figures for the current system, break down that system on a cost basis, and let people see how broken the system actually is at every stage. Stage. Has the government assessed the cost to every individual community of providing services to those claiming asylum?No is the answer. It certainly has not come close to doing so, nor does it want to, because the cost to local services is not just a simple number, but the ongoing cost to already strained local services and the breakdown in community cohesion.
Some of this cannot be calculated on a simple, simple ledger, but is nonetheless very expensive for our country. Now, many in the SNP, Labour and the Greens wish to portray an effective immigration system and a strong deterrent as somehow morally wrong. They regard any policy designed to protect our own borders as outrageous. Yet internationally, offshore detention and other similar measures have been effective and are increasingly being considered by governments of all political persuasions. Australia's move to offshore processing coincided with a sharp fall in boat arrivals from 2001, and the government maintains that offshore processing is very effective.
Other countries have brought in similar measures as the petitioner seeks, including Italy and Denmark. Many others, including Germany, Austria, Denmark and Greece, have considered return hub facilities outside of the European Union. No matter what some politicians think, those policies are not far right. They are right to be properly considered. This government has not done so appropriately. It has not seriously considered an approach that other countries have implemented, implemented successfully, and others are now looking at. It dismisses the views of the supporters of this petition and the huge numbers of people across the country who have supported it.
Its analysis is short on detail and long on assumptions about costs that do not seem credible. The truth of the matter is that our immigration system is broken beyond belief, and the British people know all about it. I represent a rural constituency in Scotland, but this issue fills my postbag and comes up time and time again on doorsteps and in my advice surgeries. It does so because my constituents, far from the English Channel, can see that they are paying and our country is suffering from this broken system.
They see that we struggle to to deport even serial criminals. That is why over 700,000 people have signed this petition. They deserve to be heard, and they deserve to hear from this government that all the substantive and reasonable options must be put on the table to fix this broken immigration system. This is not the time to to dismiss for political or ideological reasons proposals which are grounded in evidence and seek to provide a real solution to one of our country's biggest on going issues.
The government should take this petition seriously. It should consider a new approach to immigration. It must consider establishing offshore detention facilities for people who enter the United Kingdom illegally.
16:40
16:41
Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate and to the 1744 people in Hartlepool who signed the petition. That is a significant number of my constituents, and their concerns deserve to be heard and taken seriously. So let me begin by saying something very clearly. The people of Hartlepool are entitled to be angry about illegal immigration. They are entitled to expect secure borders. They are entitled to expect that those with no right to be in this country are removed.
They are entitled to expect fairness in the asylum system and fairness for the communities that feel they have carried more than their fair share. And I share in those expectations. I have supported the Home Secretary's measures to reduce illegal immigration, strengthen border security and increase returns, and I will continue to support this. Home Secretary, including the measures that will be laid before the House later today, which I hope are passed in full as they take their passage through this House. The truth is that progress is being made.
Net migration has fallen dramatically from the peak under the previous government's Boris Wave, down 82%, delivering the reduction that was promised for years but never achieved. Indeed, we are now entering the tens of thousands that previous conservative administrations promised for so long. Small boat crossings are down this year 41%, while deportations of those arriving by small boat are up 16%. In Hartlepool, the number of asylum seekers living in dispersed accommodation has fallen by 14% since the general election, and the new immigration asylum legislation will further strengthen the powers available to remove those with no right to be here, and deter those attempting to enter illegally.
That is the serious work of government. It requires law enforcement, international cooperation, proper returns, agreements, faster decisions and a system that can distinguish between genuine asylum claims and those who have no right to remain. So I fully understand why people sign a petition like this. They see boat crossings in the channel. They see asylum accommodation in their communities. They see the pressure on housing, schools, public services and community cohesion. They feel that for far too long, the broken system broken by the Conservative Party that they have seen has not worked.
And they want action. They are right to expect it. But we also have a responsibility in this place, to be honest. Offshore detention is something that, in principle, I support, but it is not a magic answer. It is expensive, legally complex, and it does not remove the need for returns, agreements, effective administration and tackling the criminal gangs who profit for human misery. But I reiterate, if we can make it work, then in principle I support it. But more importantly, the language we use matters.
It affects how people view their neighbours. It affects how communities feel and it affects people's lives. And that brings me to a point that I want to make very clearly today. A constituent of mine, Jasbir Singh, came to see me just a couple of weeks ago after experiencing repeated racial abuse in the community where he has lived and served for almost 30 years. He owns a local business. He has paid his taxes. He has contributed to Hartlepool.
He has built a life there. He has done exactly what we say. We value. Yet he came to see me because the rhetoric around immigration has made his life harder. Jasbir is not an illegal immigrant. He is not a criminal. He has every right to be here. He is part of our community. Yet a small minority accuse him of being an illegal immigrant, of arriving on a small boat and having no right to be here for one reason alone.
The colour of his skin. When politicians blur the line between legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and language that encourages suspicion of people because of their background and their skin colour, it is people like Javier who pay the price. That is why the rhetoric we use matters. There is a line between wanting to secure borders and stirring up hostility. There is a line between removing those with no right to remain and portraying whole communities as a threat. There is a line between legitimate concern and racist dog whistle politics, and it is my view that that line has been crossed repeatedly by the member for Great Yarmouth.
And when that happens, the consequences are not confined to Westminster Hall. They are felt like people like Jasbir. They are felt by families in Hartlepool. They are felt by children who hear abuse on their way to school. Words spoken in this place do not stay here. They travel into communities, into workplaces and onto social media. That does not mean we avoid the issue. Quite the opposite. We must continue to reduce illegal immigration.
We must continue to strengthen our borders. We must remove those with no right to remain. We must dismantle criminal gangs and restore public confidence. But we must do so in a way that is serious, lawful and above all, decent. Hartlepool understands the pressure that this issue creates. One of my first actions on being elected as the MP for Hartlepool was to meet with mayors, the company responsible for asylum accommodation locally, because Hartlepool was, and continues to carry more than its fair share compared with neighbouring areas.
I made clear that that system had to be fair, and that responsibility could simply not fall on communities already facing significant challenges, and that local people deserve answers and following those conversations, new asylum accommodation in Hartlepool was halted and numbers fall. I will continue raising this issue with ministers because fairness matters. We are a proud town. We are a welcoming town and we are a town that believes in fairness. Fairness means secure borders. Fairness means removing those with no right to be here.
But fairness also means standing up for the people who belong here and ensuring they are not made to feel like strangers because of the colour of their skin or the sound of their name. That is the balance we need. Strong border borders, faster removals, proper enforcement, serious government and politics. That does not make innocent people pay the price for failures in the immigration system. The people who sign this petition deserve answers. And my answer is this I will continue to support firm action to reduce illegal immigration.
I will support strengthening our borders. I will support practical measures that work, but I will not support rhetoric that puts my constituents at risk. I will not support language that turns legitimate concern into racial hostility. And I will not stay silent when people who have lived, worked and contributed to Hartlepool for decades are made to feel that they no longer belong. We can have secure borders without losing that most fundamental of British values. Common decency. We can have a firm immigration control without attacking decent people based on their skin colour, and we can tell the truth about illegal immigration without turning on our neighbours.
We will not import Trumpian politics into our country. That is not the British way. Thank you, Mr. Twigg.
They are entitled to expect fairness in the asylum system and fairness for the communities that feel they have carried more than their fair share. And I share in those expectations. I have supported the Home Secretary's measures to reduce illegal immigration, strengthen border security and increase returns, and I will continue to support this. Home Secretary, including the measures that will be laid before the House later today, which I hope are passed in full as they take their passage through this House. The truth is that progress is being made.
Net migration has fallen dramatically from the peak under the previous government's Boris Wave, down 82%, delivering the reduction that was promised for years but never achieved. Indeed, we are now entering the tens of thousands that previous conservative administrations promised for so long. Small boat crossings are down this year 41%, while deportations of those arriving by small boat are up 16%. In Hartlepool, the number of asylum seekers living in dispersed accommodation has fallen by 14% since the general election, and the new immigration asylum legislation will further strengthen the powers available to remove those with no right to be here, and deter those attempting to enter illegally.
That is the serious work of government. It requires law enforcement, international cooperation, proper returns, agreements, faster decisions and a system that can distinguish between genuine asylum claims and those who have no right to remain. So I fully understand why people sign a petition like this. They see boat crossings in the channel. They see asylum accommodation in their communities. They see the pressure on housing, schools, public services and community cohesion. They feel that for far too long, the broken system broken by the Conservative Party that they have seen has not worked.
And they want action. They are right to expect it. But we also have a responsibility in this place, to be honest. Offshore detention is something that, in principle, I support, but it is not a magic answer. It is expensive, legally complex, and it does not remove the need for returns, agreements, effective administration and tackling the criminal gangs who profit for human misery. But I reiterate, if we can make it work, then in principle I support it. But more importantly, the language we use matters.
It affects how people view their neighbours. It affects how communities feel and it affects people's lives. And that brings me to a point that I want to make very clearly today. A constituent of mine, Jasbir Singh, came to see me just a couple of weeks ago after experiencing repeated racial abuse in the community where he has lived and served for almost 30 years. He owns a local business. He has paid his taxes. He has contributed to Hartlepool.
He has built a life there. He has done exactly what we say. We value. Yet he came to see me because the rhetoric around immigration has made his life harder. Jasbir is not an illegal immigrant. He is not a criminal. He has every right to be here. He is part of our community. Yet a small minority accuse him of being an illegal immigrant, of arriving on a small boat and having no right to be here for one reason alone.
The colour of his skin. When politicians blur the line between legitimate concerns about illegal immigration and language that encourages suspicion of people because of their background and their skin colour, it is people like Javier who pay the price. That is why the rhetoric we use matters. There is a line between wanting to secure borders and stirring up hostility. There is a line between removing those with no right to remain and portraying whole communities as a threat. There is a line between legitimate concern and racist dog whistle politics, and it is my view that that line has been crossed repeatedly by the member for Great Yarmouth.
And when that happens, the consequences are not confined to Westminster Hall. They are felt like people like Jasbir. They are felt by families in Hartlepool. They are felt by children who hear abuse on their way to school. Words spoken in this place do not stay here. They travel into communities, into workplaces and onto social media. That does not mean we avoid the issue. Quite the opposite. We must continue to reduce illegal immigration.
We must continue to strengthen our borders. We must remove those with no right to remain. We must dismantle criminal gangs and restore public confidence. But we must do so in a way that is serious, lawful and above all, decent. Hartlepool understands the pressure that this issue creates. One of my first actions on being elected as the MP for Hartlepool was to meet with mayors, the company responsible for asylum accommodation locally, because Hartlepool was, and continues to carry more than its fair share compared with neighbouring areas.
I made clear that that system had to be fair, and that responsibility could simply not fall on communities already facing significant challenges, and that local people deserve answers and following those conversations, new asylum accommodation in Hartlepool was halted and numbers fall. I will continue raising this issue with ministers because fairness matters. We are a proud town. We are a welcoming town and we are a town that believes in fairness. Fairness means secure borders. Fairness means removing those with no right to be here.
But fairness also means standing up for the people who belong here and ensuring they are not made to feel like strangers because of the colour of their skin or the sound of their name. That is the balance we need. Strong border borders, faster removals, proper enforcement, serious government and politics. That does not make innocent people pay the price for failures in the immigration system. The people who sign this petition deserve answers. And my answer is this I will continue to support firm action to reduce illegal immigration.
I will support strengthening our borders. I will support practical measures that work, but I will not support rhetoric that puts my constituents at risk. I will not support language that turns legitimate concern into racial hostility. And I will not stay silent when people who have lived, worked and contributed to Hartlepool for decades are made to feel that they no longer belong. We can have secure borders without losing that most fundamental of British values. Common decency. We can have a firm immigration control without attacking decent people based on their skin colour, and we can tell the truth about illegal immigration without turning on our neighbours.
We will not import Trumpian politics into our country. That is not the British way. Thank you, Mr. Twigg.
16:50
16:50
Speaker 5
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Speaker 5
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. For three decades, successive governments have promised to get tough on illegal immigration. According to Home Office figures, in the last seven years alone, around half a million people have claimed asylum in the UK. 200,000 of those came in on small boats. Most of the others were visa overstayers. In that time, around 60% of all asylum claims have been granted refugee status, including those granted after appeal.
An estimate showed that 66% of adults with refugee status are now claiming Universal Credit. That means that up to 300,000 people who illegally entered or remained in the United Kingdom since 2019 have been granted refugee status. Most could now be claiming benefits, including housing benefit by. 2030. This number could be over 400,000. That is a city the size of Coventry comprised almost entirely of people who should have never been allowed to stay in the United Kingdom. And the frightening thing about these numbers going back decades.
We actually have no real idea just how many illegal immigrants and visa overstays are in this country, living under the radar in our communities. Poor record keeping by the Home Office means that the estimated population of people with no right to remain in the United Kingdom is highly likely to be over 1 million. Thousands go missing every year, and the government still fails to properly monitor whether migrants leave the UK after their visas expire. Labour say they're tackling the problem, but they're simply increasing the speed that illegal immigrants are granted asylum.
They have increased the legal age for appeals by 30% to over £60 million a year, and we currently have a record 80,000 appeals underway. And since Keir Starmer has been prime minister, we have seen more than 72,000 small boat arrivals with no serious attempt to stop them. But why is all this such a problem?Because their presence corrodes the rule of law cost billions in accommodation and welfare costs, distorts low wage labour markets, and signals to the world that Britain's borders are open, illegal. Patients from some countries have a medieval attitude to women and girls, sexual assault and rape by migrants from certain countries is far higher than our own indigenous population, 20 times higher for those from Afghanistan.
There are documented examples of illegal immigrants loitering outside schools, filming children following, girls trying to engage with them for sex. Let me give you some specific harrowing examples. Cherie's Malik, illegal immigrant of Pakistani origin, less than 12 months in the UK and he had raped a vulnerable young girl on a park in a park in Sutton in Sutton in Ashfield. Dengue. Illegal of Sudanese origin arrived in the UK July 24th. By October 24th, he had stalked and murdered 27 year old Rhiannon White.
Abdullah Ahmad Ibrahim Al Shafi. Karim al Nasrat. Illegal migrants of Iran and Egyptian origin arrived in the UK in June 25th. By October 25th, they had targeted a young, vulnerable woman on a night out in Brighton, beaten her, choked her and gang raped her. I could go on. There's pages of examples. The safety of women and girls in this country is at risk because of our immigration policy. Furthermore, we know that criminals are entering our country on small boats, bringing with them the contacts into ruthless organised crime gangs that operate on our high streets, laundering money, dealing drugs, selling illegal vapes and cigarettes to children.
Yet no DNA is taken on arrival. Why not?And what about our homeless veterans or those British citizens on housing lists who find themselves pushed aside and left behind in favor of housing illegal migrants?The total. Annual cost of the asylum system is over £8 billion and rising. We cannot sustain this situation. We are not a food bank or a hotel for the world. Illegal immigration is helping to bankrupt this country. Our high streets are being overrun by crime.
Our women and girls are under attack and our culture is under threat. Why does anyone think that that is okay?We need to detain and deport every illegal immigrant that lands on our shores. We need to put the Navy in the channel and stop them landing on our shores. That are here illegally need to be moved offshore and processed and returned to their country of origin. We need to leave the to. Put an end to the years of appeals that mean that hardly any illegal immigrants are ever deported.
We need to stop the invasion of our country by those that have no right to be here, and that come because they know they will get a free house, free food benefits, medical treatment ahead of our own citizens, and no one who has come here illegally or remained here should ever be granted British citizenship. To summarise, we need to detain. We need to deport. We need a zero tolerance policy. It is about the will of a government to do so. Other countries have secured their borders.
And if we are to survive, we must do the same. Thank you.
An estimate showed that 66% of adults with refugee status are now claiming Universal Credit. That means that up to 300,000 people who illegally entered or remained in the United Kingdom since 2019 have been granted refugee status. Most could now be claiming benefits, including housing benefit by. 2030. This number could be over 400,000. That is a city the size of Coventry comprised almost entirely of people who should have never been allowed to stay in the United Kingdom. And the frightening thing about these numbers going back decades.
We actually have no real idea just how many illegal immigrants and visa overstays are in this country, living under the radar in our communities. Poor record keeping by the Home Office means that the estimated population of people with no right to remain in the United Kingdom is highly likely to be over 1 million. Thousands go missing every year, and the government still fails to properly monitor whether migrants leave the UK after their visas expire. Labour say they're tackling the problem, but they're simply increasing the speed that illegal immigrants are granted asylum.
They have increased the legal age for appeals by 30% to over £60 million a year, and we currently have a record 80,000 appeals underway. And since Keir Starmer has been prime minister, we have seen more than 72,000 small boat arrivals with no serious attempt to stop them. But why is all this such a problem?Because their presence corrodes the rule of law cost billions in accommodation and welfare costs, distorts low wage labour markets, and signals to the world that Britain's borders are open, illegal. Patients from some countries have a medieval attitude to women and girls, sexual assault and rape by migrants from certain countries is far higher than our own indigenous population, 20 times higher for those from Afghanistan.
There are documented examples of illegal immigrants loitering outside schools, filming children following, girls trying to engage with them for sex. Let me give you some specific harrowing examples. Cherie's Malik, illegal immigrant of Pakistani origin, less than 12 months in the UK and he had raped a vulnerable young girl on a park in a park in Sutton in Sutton in Ashfield. Dengue. Illegal of Sudanese origin arrived in the UK July 24th. By October 24th, he had stalked and murdered 27 year old Rhiannon White.
Abdullah Ahmad Ibrahim Al Shafi. Karim al Nasrat. Illegal migrants of Iran and Egyptian origin arrived in the UK in June 25th. By October 25th, they had targeted a young, vulnerable woman on a night out in Brighton, beaten her, choked her and gang raped her. I could go on. There's pages of examples. The safety of women and girls in this country is at risk because of our immigration policy. Furthermore, we know that criminals are entering our country on small boats, bringing with them the contacts into ruthless organised crime gangs that operate on our high streets, laundering money, dealing drugs, selling illegal vapes and cigarettes to children.
Yet no DNA is taken on arrival. Why not?And what about our homeless veterans or those British citizens on housing lists who find themselves pushed aside and left behind in favor of housing illegal migrants?The total. Annual cost of the asylum system is over £8 billion and rising. We cannot sustain this situation. We are not a food bank or a hotel for the world. Illegal immigration is helping to bankrupt this country. Our high streets are being overrun by crime.
Our women and girls are under attack and our culture is under threat. Why does anyone think that that is okay?We need to detain and deport every illegal immigrant that lands on our shores. We need to put the Navy in the channel and stop them landing on our shores. That are here illegally need to be moved offshore and processed and returned to their country of origin. We need to leave the to. Put an end to the years of appeals that mean that hardly any illegal immigrants are ever deported.
We need to stop the invasion of our country by those that have no right to be here, and that come because they know they will get a free house, free food benefits, medical treatment ahead of our own citizens, and no one who has come here illegally or remained here should ever be granted British citizenship. To summarise, we need to detain. We need to deport. We need a zero tolerance policy. It is about the will of a government to do so. Other countries have secured their borders.
And if we are to survive, we must do the same. Thank you.
16:56
16:56
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
Serve under your chairmanship. I want to first acknowledge that whilst I disagree with the premise of this position petition, I do recognise the strength of feeling on this issue and the hundreds of thousands of people who have signed the petition. But I cannot support calls for offshore detention or processing centres, nor will I support calls to immediately deport those who enter this country through irregular routes, because seeking refuge and safety is not illegal, and many safe and legal routes don't actually exist. I strongly believe that members who are supporting this are not being honest with the wider public about what it would cost and and what it is as a risk, and also what the true problems are.
95% of the people who enter the UK via irregular route submit an asylum application. That means that we, as a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, have a legal duty to assess their claim and place them under the care of the state. While that process is ongoing. If their application is rejected, the state's duty to them persists until the appeals process is exhausted. If it takes too long, that is inefficient and rather is on us. Human Rights Watch and a number of other organisations have confirmed what most of us believe to be true that holding asylum seekers in offshore detention is in contravention of our obligations under international human rights and refugee law.
So regardless of whether a person's application is deemed legitimate or not, they cannot be held in an offshore site until their asylum claim and subsequent appeals have been denied. Now, the petition we are debating today raises the issue of asylum seekers being held in hotels and temporary accommodation, and I certainly agree that this is unacceptable. I've seen it for myself. The diabolical conditions of these accommodations and the Home Office is paying millions each day to house asylum seekers. But that is not the fault of the asylum seekers.
It's the fault of the Home Office and private contractors seeking to make profit off the backs of vulnerable people. Now, I don't dismiss the views of those supporting the petition again, but the public debate does not provide accurate information. It regularly conflates numbers of legal and so-called illegal migrants. Migration and asylum are amongst the most misrepresented issues in public debate. The UK receives far fewer asylum claims per capita than countries like Germany, France and Cyprus, and asylum seekers are also barred from working in most cases, so claims that they are taking jobs or living off benefits.
Um, instead of actually recognising the fact that they are desperate for the right to contribute and are rather trapped in the system and the language of swarms and invasions are just inflammatory, racist and dehumanising, and they continue to cause problems throughout the discourse and debate. Now, I think that whilst we're talking about the issue of what things are costing, and again, that is a huge, huge concern, we have to realise that offshore detention could never be a cheaper alternative. It's far more costly. And that was proven by the last government with its failed Rwanda scheme, which cost £700 million and only saw four people voluntarily transferred, and other examples of offshore processing centres are from Australia, Italy and Denmark.
Just show how costly these schemes can actually be. Another international example of offshore processing centres comes from um. Sorry Italy and Denmark as well. Now these these these particular centres I'm finding are not are not meeting the aims of those particular countries. They're not meeting aims of those countries and they are causing huge amounts of problems and continuing to, to have. Engaging in really, really awful rhetoric about migrants, just as, as we are. And just as the costs increase again and again, what I.
Want to see um chair, what I want to see is a situation where we talk about asylum seekers with some humanity. What I want to see is a situation where we don't cast off those in our communities that have actually come here and sought support from us. As I said, again and again, we have a duty to them under under the Refugee Convention, we have a duty to them. We have a moral duty to them. And the conversation that we keep on having about funding is completely missing the point.
It's missing the situation that the Home Office has, is is dealing with in terms of its backlog. It's missing the situation in which politicians in here continue to engage in negative rhetoric. And I think when we look at the issue of offshore detention, we have to be realistic with the country about how much it's going to cost and the fact that it will not solve the issue at hand. Thank you.
95% of the people who enter the UK via irregular route submit an asylum application. That means that we, as a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, have a legal duty to assess their claim and place them under the care of the state. While that process is ongoing. If their application is rejected, the state's duty to them persists until the appeals process is exhausted. If it takes too long, that is inefficient and rather is on us. Human Rights Watch and a number of other organisations have confirmed what most of us believe to be true that holding asylum seekers in offshore detention is in contravention of our obligations under international human rights and refugee law.
So regardless of whether a person's application is deemed legitimate or not, they cannot be held in an offshore site until their asylum claim and subsequent appeals have been denied. Now, the petition we are debating today raises the issue of asylum seekers being held in hotels and temporary accommodation, and I certainly agree that this is unacceptable. I've seen it for myself. The diabolical conditions of these accommodations and the Home Office is paying millions each day to house asylum seekers. But that is not the fault of the asylum seekers.
It's the fault of the Home Office and private contractors seeking to make profit off the backs of vulnerable people. Now, I don't dismiss the views of those supporting the petition again, but the public debate does not provide accurate information. It regularly conflates numbers of legal and so-called illegal migrants. Migration and asylum are amongst the most misrepresented issues in public debate. The UK receives far fewer asylum claims per capita than countries like Germany, France and Cyprus, and asylum seekers are also barred from working in most cases, so claims that they are taking jobs or living off benefits.
Um, instead of actually recognising the fact that they are desperate for the right to contribute and are rather trapped in the system and the language of swarms and invasions are just inflammatory, racist and dehumanising, and they continue to cause problems throughout the discourse and debate. Now, I think that whilst we're talking about the issue of what things are costing, and again, that is a huge, huge concern, we have to realise that offshore detention could never be a cheaper alternative. It's far more costly. And that was proven by the last government with its failed Rwanda scheme, which cost £700 million and only saw four people voluntarily transferred, and other examples of offshore processing centres are from Australia, Italy and Denmark.
Just show how costly these schemes can actually be. Another international example of offshore processing centres comes from um. Sorry Italy and Denmark as well. Now these these these particular centres I'm finding are not are not meeting the aims of those particular countries. They're not meeting aims of those countries and they are causing huge amounts of problems and continuing to, to have. Engaging in really, really awful rhetoric about migrants, just as, as we are. And just as the costs increase again and again, what I.
Want to see um chair, what I want to see is a situation where we talk about asylum seekers with some humanity. What I want to see is a situation where we don't cast off those in our communities that have actually come here and sought support from us. As I said, again and again, we have a duty to them under under the Refugee Convention, we have a duty to them. We have a moral duty to them. And the conversation that we keep on having about funding is completely missing the point.
It's missing the situation that the Home Office has, is is dealing with in terms of its backlog. It's missing the situation in which politicians in here continue to engage in negative rhetoric. And I think when we look at the issue of offshore detention, we have to be realistic with the country about how much it's going to cost and the fact that it will not solve the issue at hand. Thank you.
17:01
17:01
Speaker 8
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Speaker 8
Serve under your chairmanship today, Mr. Twigg, and I'm grateful for the honourable member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk for moving this motion and to the vast number of people, 720 000, including 1093 from my constituency of Tatton, who signed this important petition and prompted this debate calling for offshore detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. Now, according to the Home Office data, just under 77,000 illegal immigrants have arrived by small boat since labour took charge in July 2024. The average daily arrivals under labour is around 104 per day.
That is 94% higher than under the previous conservative government. An extraordinary increase. And on Friday just gone the 10th of July. Another shameful record was set. The highest number of illegal immigrants on a single dinghy, 128 arrived in the UK and in total on that day, 225 arrived in three dinghies. Now, this is from a government that pledged to reduce illegal migration, promising to smash the gangs. And yet those promises turned out to be just smoke and mirror.
And I'm saying it was just to secure a general election victory for reducing immigration is just not in Labour's DNA. Only a fleeting search on online. Is enough to show images of cabinet members clutching refugee welcome signs and without doubt, one of the biggest mistakes the Prime Minister made in a strong field of them was to cancel the Rwanda scheme, an offshore processing centre and permanent resettlement programme. We know that deterrence is an important component in tackling organised immigration crime and, as Steve Roadhouse, director general of operations at the agency, told the Home Affairs Committee in 2019, the people willing to make the journey across the channel know that there is a very low risk that they will be returned, and I'm sure that is more true today than it was even then.
Rwanda would have tackled this head on. The Rwanda agreement would have allowed for the forcible relocation of asylum seekers, people who have already been refused asylum, and those who make unauthorised illegal journeys to the UK. Rwanda would then grant them asylum or permanent residence. It was a scheme that the National Crime Agency described as a deterrent. In fact, we were starting to see dinghies from France heading to Ireland and other countries. There was a drop in channel crossings in 2023 after the plan was announced, going from 45,000 illegal crossings in 2022 to 29,000 in 2023, a 35% decrease without the Rwanda plan or deportation to another country.
We have been left with no way to remove illegal immigrants. Those who destroy their documents to hide their country of origin. And like much of this government's foreign policy, the weakness in this Labour government has become opportunities for other countries. Elsewhere, the United States have signed agreements with 34 countries to allow for third country deportations, and, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the US government has plans to contact at least another 50 countries about similar agreements, including, you guessed it, Rwanda. And the model has expanded across Europe to.
The EU is now in the process of adopting legislation permitting EU member states to reach agreements with non EU member States for the establishment of return hubs. These are logical decisions and logical policies. But the government failed to see this and as a result, illegal immigration has soared. And as the petition rightly points out, the current use of hotels and a temporary accommodation is unsustainable, costly and dangerous. We simply cannot have people breaking into our country and being rewarded for their criminality with hotel accommodation, healthcare, travel, translation services, recreational facilities and more costing the British taxpayer billions of pounds a year.
And we have seen just how dangerous it can be with horrific case after horrific case. Just as the brutal and frenzied murder of Warsaw hotel worker Rhiannon White by a Sudanese illegal immigrant who just arrived by small boats three months previously showed and may be new. A Somali national walked into a bank and stabbed a father of three dead. Haddish arrived by boat and was then convicted of multiple sexual assaults and then Ahmed Malaki, guilty of raping a 12 year old. This is the reality of not knowing who is coming into our country.
Not only are these policy failures putting communities in danger, but it is downright unfair on society to prioritise illegal immigrants in this way. Just look at the plan. There for Stoke Heath in Shropshire, where the Home Office was all set to move immigrants into brand new housing, an absolute kick in the teeth for local families who were told that that estate would offer affordable or social housing for them. Many who'd been waiting on a housing list for years. And what about veterans?Where's their brand new housing?Where are we housing them?No.
Thankfully, this community seems to have stopped that in its track. Having put up fierce opposition to this government. And the Home Secretary now tells us that new build estates like this will never be considered again. Well, we can only hope that that is true. Labour have not smashed the gangs as promised, but they are certainly succeeding in smashing our local communities, forced to play host to sudden influx of illegal immigrants. This government talks tough, but that's all it does.
Talks tough without action. The reality is that until the government develops a spine, reinstates the Rwanda scheme, takes the UK out of the. And repeals the Human Rights Act. We have no chance of deporting those who come here illegally.
That is 94% higher than under the previous conservative government. An extraordinary increase. And on Friday just gone the 10th of July. Another shameful record was set. The highest number of illegal immigrants on a single dinghy, 128 arrived in the UK and in total on that day, 225 arrived in three dinghies. Now, this is from a government that pledged to reduce illegal migration, promising to smash the gangs. And yet those promises turned out to be just smoke and mirror.
And I'm saying it was just to secure a general election victory for reducing immigration is just not in Labour's DNA. Only a fleeting search on online. Is enough to show images of cabinet members clutching refugee welcome signs and without doubt, one of the biggest mistakes the Prime Minister made in a strong field of them was to cancel the Rwanda scheme, an offshore processing centre and permanent resettlement programme. We know that deterrence is an important component in tackling organised immigration crime and, as Steve Roadhouse, director general of operations at the agency, told the Home Affairs Committee in 2019, the people willing to make the journey across the channel know that there is a very low risk that they will be returned, and I'm sure that is more true today than it was even then.
Rwanda would have tackled this head on. The Rwanda agreement would have allowed for the forcible relocation of asylum seekers, people who have already been refused asylum, and those who make unauthorised illegal journeys to the UK. Rwanda would then grant them asylum or permanent residence. It was a scheme that the National Crime Agency described as a deterrent. In fact, we were starting to see dinghies from France heading to Ireland and other countries. There was a drop in channel crossings in 2023 after the plan was announced, going from 45,000 illegal crossings in 2022 to 29,000 in 2023, a 35% decrease without the Rwanda plan or deportation to another country.
We have been left with no way to remove illegal immigrants. Those who destroy their documents to hide their country of origin. And like much of this government's foreign policy, the weakness in this Labour government has become opportunities for other countries. Elsewhere, the United States have signed agreements with 34 countries to allow for third country deportations, and, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the US government has plans to contact at least another 50 countries about similar agreements, including, you guessed it, Rwanda. And the model has expanded across Europe to.
The EU is now in the process of adopting legislation permitting EU member states to reach agreements with non EU member States for the establishment of return hubs. These are logical decisions and logical policies. But the government failed to see this and as a result, illegal immigration has soared. And as the petition rightly points out, the current use of hotels and a temporary accommodation is unsustainable, costly and dangerous. We simply cannot have people breaking into our country and being rewarded for their criminality with hotel accommodation, healthcare, travel, translation services, recreational facilities and more costing the British taxpayer billions of pounds a year.
And we have seen just how dangerous it can be with horrific case after horrific case. Just as the brutal and frenzied murder of Warsaw hotel worker Rhiannon White by a Sudanese illegal immigrant who just arrived by small boats three months previously showed and may be new. A Somali national walked into a bank and stabbed a father of three dead. Haddish arrived by boat and was then convicted of multiple sexual assaults and then Ahmed Malaki, guilty of raping a 12 year old. This is the reality of not knowing who is coming into our country.
Not only are these policy failures putting communities in danger, but it is downright unfair on society to prioritise illegal immigrants in this way. Just look at the plan. There for Stoke Heath in Shropshire, where the Home Office was all set to move immigrants into brand new housing, an absolute kick in the teeth for local families who were told that that estate would offer affordable or social housing for them. Many who'd been waiting on a housing list for years. And what about veterans?Where's their brand new housing?Where are we housing them?No.
Thankfully, this community seems to have stopped that in its track. Having put up fierce opposition to this government. And the Home Secretary now tells us that new build estates like this will never be considered again. Well, we can only hope that that is true. Labour have not smashed the gangs as promised, but they are certainly succeeding in smashing our local communities, forced to play host to sudden influx of illegal immigrants. This government talks tough, but that's all it does.
Talks tough without action. The reality is that until the government develops a spine, reinstates the Rwanda scheme, takes the UK out of the. And repeals the Human Rights Act. We have no chance of deporting those who come here illegally.
17:08
Speaker 9
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Speaker 9
Thank you, Mr. Twigg. It's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Firstly, I want to thank the 720,772 British men and women who signed our petition demanding the mass deportation of illegal migrants, a policy position that has moved from the so-called mad fringe to the acceptable mainstream. In less than two years. Question is no longer whether Britain has a problem. We know the problem. It's been well documented. Now we need solutions, restore Britain.
Britain is the first and only political party to publish a comprehensive plan not just to stop future illegal immigration, but to remove those who have no legal right to remain in this country. All of them, every man, woman and child, they must all be deported and a Restore Britain government will do exactly that. I'm not going to stand here and outline the problem. We all know what's wrong. I'm going to tell this Parliament exactly how we can remove millions of illegal migrants.
As we have seen time and time again, deportation is routinely frustrated by a carefully designed maze of legislation. International treaties and legal challenges. A Restore Britain government will repeal or amend the domestic legislation that prevents swift deportation, repeal the Human Rights Act, withdraw from the European Human European Convention on Human Rights and remove the Refugee Convention from domestic immigration law. It would also introduce what we call the Great Clarification Act, reaffirming that we. In Parliament, in these buildings, have the final say over immigration policy, allowing Parliament to overturn court rulings that obstruct the Democratic will on immigration, not activist judges, but elected politicians held to account by the British electorate.
But legal reform is just the start that simply sets the scene for the most ambitious set of deportations ever seen. Real question is this how can we remove all of those with no legal right to be in Britain?Answer is by making illegal residence impossible to sustain, as we call it, the hostile environment. No legal employment, no legal tenancy. No access to public services. No banking facilities. That single reform becomes the backbone of our immigration enforcement.
Make life so incredibly uncomfortable and unsustainable that many will simply deport themselves. Employers must face real time right to work checks the gig. Economy. Construction, hospitality and other sectors with persistent illegal working would face regular audits if Uber. Eats, Deliveroo and the rest are found to be employing illegal migrants, they will be fined, prosecuted and even shut down the farce of young Sudanese illegal migrant men delivering spring rolls and pepperoni pizzas on mopeds in every British suburb will end government. Itself must lead by example.
Every company bidding for public contracts would have to demonstrate strict compliance with immigration law before receiving any taxpayers money. G but for mass deportations, housing enforcement would change completely. Every landlord would be required to carry out right to rent checks at the beginning of every tenancy. Knowingly rent properties to illegal migrants would face severe financial penalties and persistent offenders could face asset seizure and prosecution HMO. Owners who impose gangs of feral illegal men on quiet British villages will be prosecuted. Public officials who knowingly place dangerous and unvetted migrants near schools and nurseries will be sent to prison.
Homelessness legislation must also be amended so that illegal migrants are no longer recycled through local authority housing systems, but instead enter the immigration enforcement process. Just house illegal migrant tramps. We will deport them. It's really that simple. Health care would no longer operate as a loophole. Loophole. So-Called safe surgeries must end. Proof of lawful status must become a requirement for routine NHS access. Illegal migrants in hospitals will, as they should now be reported to immigration enforcement.
We are not evil. Emergency care will be provided, but they will be then deported as soon as it's medically safe to do so across government. Departments. The departments will finally begin sharing data. The Home Office, HMRC, the NHS, local councils, the DWP, banks, instead of operating in silos, government will work as one system to identify those with no legal right to remain. Full power of the British state will be directed to implement this one policy mass deportation. Enforcement would become another powerful tool.
Banks would verify immigration status before accounts are opened. Existing accounts without lawful status will be frozen or closed. The hostile environment measures will force out hundreds of thousands. A concurrent programme of enforced deportations will be implemented alongside this to remove the rest. Britain proposes a major expansion of immigration enforcement, recruiting thousands of additional officers. Drawing on former police officers, military veterans and experienced investigators. A specified recruitment campaign for military veterans will be implemented, drawing former soldiers into field enforcement roles to.
Detention capacity would be expanded dramatically, including the use of purpose built detention facilities capable of holding thousands awaiting removal. Commercial airlines will continue to be used where appropriate. Dedicated charter flights would become routine. Military transport aircraft would also be available where operational, operationally necessary time will not be wasted. I will give way.
Britain is the first and only political party to publish a comprehensive plan not just to stop future illegal immigration, but to remove those who have no legal right to remain in this country. All of them, every man, woman and child, they must all be deported and a Restore Britain government will do exactly that. I'm not going to stand here and outline the problem. We all know what's wrong. I'm going to tell this Parliament exactly how we can remove millions of illegal migrants.
As we have seen time and time again, deportation is routinely frustrated by a carefully designed maze of legislation. International treaties and legal challenges. A Restore Britain government will repeal or amend the domestic legislation that prevents swift deportation, repeal the Human Rights Act, withdraw from the European Human European Convention on Human Rights and remove the Refugee Convention from domestic immigration law. It would also introduce what we call the Great Clarification Act, reaffirming that we. In Parliament, in these buildings, have the final say over immigration policy, allowing Parliament to overturn court rulings that obstruct the Democratic will on immigration, not activist judges, but elected politicians held to account by the British electorate.
But legal reform is just the start that simply sets the scene for the most ambitious set of deportations ever seen. Real question is this how can we remove all of those with no legal right to be in Britain?Answer is by making illegal residence impossible to sustain, as we call it, the hostile environment. No legal employment, no legal tenancy. No access to public services. No banking facilities. That single reform becomes the backbone of our immigration enforcement.
Make life so incredibly uncomfortable and unsustainable that many will simply deport themselves. Employers must face real time right to work checks the gig. Economy. Construction, hospitality and other sectors with persistent illegal working would face regular audits if Uber. Eats, Deliveroo and the rest are found to be employing illegal migrants, they will be fined, prosecuted and even shut down the farce of young Sudanese illegal migrant men delivering spring rolls and pepperoni pizzas on mopeds in every British suburb will end government. Itself must lead by example.
Every company bidding for public contracts would have to demonstrate strict compliance with immigration law before receiving any taxpayers money. G but for mass deportations, housing enforcement would change completely. Every landlord would be required to carry out right to rent checks at the beginning of every tenancy. Knowingly rent properties to illegal migrants would face severe financial penalties and persistent offenders could face asset seizure and prosecution HMO. Owners who impose gangs of feral illegal men on quiet British villages will be prosecuted. Public officials who knowingly place dangerous and unvetted migrants near schools and nurseries will be sent to prison.
Homelessness legislation must also be amended so that illegal migrants are no longer recycled through local authority housing systems, but instead enter the immigration enforcement process. Just house illegal migrant tramps. We will deport them. It's really that simple. Health care would no longer operate as a loophole. Loophole. So-Called safe surgeries must end. Proof of lawful status must become a requirement for routine NHS access. Illegal migrants in hospitals will, as they should now be reported to immigration enforcement.
We are not evil. Emergency care will be provided, but they will be then deported as soon as it's medically safe to do so across government. Departments. The departments will finally begin sharing data. The Home Office, HMRC, the NHS, local councils, the DWP, banks, instead of operating in silos, government will work as one system to identify those with no legal right to remain. Full power of the British state will be directed to implement this one policy mass deportation. Enforcement would become another powerful tool.
Banks would verify immigration status before accounts are opened. Existing accounts without lawful status will be frozen or closed. The hostile environment measures will force out hundreds of thousands. A concurrent programme of enforced deportations will be implemented alongside this to remove the rest. Britain proposes a major expansion of immigration enforcement, recruiting thousands of additional officers. Drawing on former police officers, military veterans and experienced investigators. A specified recruitment campaign for military veterans will be implemented, drawing former soldiers into field enforcement roles to.
Detention capacity would be expanded dramatically, including the use of purpose built detention facilities capable of holding thousands awaiting removal. Commercial airlines will continue to be used where appropriate. Dedicated charter flights would become routine. Military transport aircraft would also be available where operational, operationally necessary time will not be wasted. I will give way.
17:15
17:16
Speaker 9
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Speaker 9
Thank you, thank you. Well, thank you for your intervention. I'm not going to go into detail. It's all in this document. I'll give you one to take away with you. Not be wasted. Specialist detention facilities will be constructed near airfields to hasten the process. Will negotiate far stronger bilateral return agreements while working with allies to create a deportation. NATO, a coalition of like minded countries applying coordinated diplomatic and economic pressure on governments that refuse to accept back their own citizens, harmonised visa sanctions, coordinated suspension of visa issuance, foreign aid suspension, targeted trade measures and tariffs, remittance and dividend controls and taxation, rapid response returns taskforce Pakistan would be the first country to feel the full force of these measures.
Sanctions from a single country are easier to absorb, but a unified block of enemies and travel markets creates systematic and severe pressure. Coordinated restrictions would also close loopholes whereby nationals bypass one state's measures by moving to another jurisdiction, all delivered alongside the credible and proven threat of action. Do it once hard enough and it wouldn't be required again. We must also revoke all asylum grants awarded following illegal entry and retrospectively revoke protection, so that those individuals are also removed. If you arrive in Britain illegally on a small boat, you will be deported regardless of what your current status may claim.
People ask whether this is achievable. Restore Britain says yes, but only if government finally demonstrates the robust political will required. What about cost?Britain is already paying billions, billions every year on accommodation, billions on asylum, billions on public services for illegal migrants, billions supporting people who have no legal entitlement to remain here in the short term, ending those long term costs will offset the expenditure required to carry out removals, with estimated annual savings of more than £12 billion. Once the programme is complete.
Put simply, mass deportation pays for itself. It's popular, it's cost effective and its possible. I have just one question for my fellow MPs what are we all waiting for?This is accosted, comprehensive and legally sound plan that will allow those 720 000 772 British patriots demand remove the illegal migrant population. We have outlined exactly what needs to happen in excruciating detail. It can be done. It must be done. It will be done on your way out.
Please help yourselves to a mass deportation policy document. It makes glorious reading. Thank you.
Sanctions from a single country are easier to absorb, but a unified block of enemies and travel markets creates systematic and severe pressure. Coordinated restrictions would also close loopholes whereby nationals bypass one state's measures by moving to another jurisdiction, all delivered alongside the credible and proven threat of action. Do it once hard enough and it wouldn't be required again. We must also revoke all asylum grants awarded following illegal entry and retrospectively revoke protection, so that those individuals are also removed. If you arrive in Britain illegally on a small boat, you will be deported regardless of what your current status may claim.
People ask whether this is achievable. Restore Britain says yes, but only if government finally demonstrates the robust political will required. What about cost?Britain is already paying billions, billions every year on accommodation, billions on asylum, billions on public services for illegal migrants, billions supporting people who have no legal entitlement to remain here in the short term, ending those long term costs will offset the expenditure required to carry out removals, with estimated annual savings of more than £12 billion. Once the programme is complete.
Put simply, mass deportation pays for itself. It's popular, it's cost effective and its possible. I have just one question for my fellow MPs what are we all waiting for?This is accosted, comprehensive and legally sound plan that will allow those 720 000 772 British patriots demand remove the illegal migrant population. We have outlined exactly what needs to happen in excruciating detail. It can be done. It must be done. It will be done on your way out.
Please help yourselves to a mass deportation policy document. It makes glorious reading. Thank you.
17:19
Speaker 10
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Speaker 10
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's a pleasure and an honor to speak under your chairmanship. And if I could also start by thanking the 1673 members of my constituency of South East Thurrock who took the time to sign this petition when. The illegal migration. We must begin with a simple truth a nation that cannot control its borders, cannot fully control its future. Offshore detention and processing centres are not a perfect solution, but they can be an effective one. Their primary benefit, of course, being a deterrent.
If individuals know that arriving illegally will not guarantee entry into the country, the incentive to make dangerous journeys is significantly reduced. That matters not only for border security, but for saving lives. Every year, criminal gangs profit from putting vulnerable people into overcrowded boats and sending them across some of the world's busiest shipping lanes. And we should be focusing on that. And I thank the honourable members for the speeches they've given this afternoon, where they've leant into the importance of being considerate for all people.
Well, on top of the need for gentle language, I might I might advise them that what we should really be doing is protecting these lives by lives, by enforcing these laws properly and keeping them safe so that they don't risk their lives at sea. Now, offshore processing can also restore confidence in the immigration system. Most people are compassionate and willing to support those with genuine claims for asylum. However, public confidence is undermined when the distinction between legal and illegal routes become blurred a system that is firm, fair and consistently enforced is ultimately in the interests of both citizens and legitimate refugees.
Critics raise a number of concerns, and those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. The first is cost. Offshore facilities can be expensive. The answer, however, is not to abandon the policy, but to ensure that it is designed efficiently with clear agreements, streamlined processing and a strong focus on rapid decisions rather than prolonged detention. The second concern is humanitarian welfare. Nobody should be subjected to poor conditions or indefinite detention, and offshore centres should be subject to independent inspection, proper health care provision, legal oversight and strict maximum time limits on processing.
The objective should be swift assessment, resolution and resolution, not warehousing people for years as they effectively are on a basis where they are in this country and unable to work. And of course, we cannot allow them to work, because that creates a further incentive and a further pull for more illegal migration. The choice facing policy makers is not between offshore processing and an ideal world. The choice is between policies that deter illegal migration and those that leave criminal gangs and smuggling networks free to operate.
If implemented properly, offshore detention and processing can strengthen border security, reduce dangerous crossings, restore public confidence and saves lives while still maintaining high standards of humanity and the rule of law. This is a balanced approach. Firm on illegal migration, fair to genuine refugees and responsible to the taxpayers who expect their government to control their nation's borders. Thank you.
If individuals know that arriving illegally will not guarantee entry into the country, the incentive to make dangerous journeys is significantly reduced. That matters not only for border security, but for saving lives. Every year, criminal gangs profit from putting vulnerable people into overcrowded boats and sending them across some of the world's busiest shipping lanes. And we should be focusing on that. And I thank the honourable members for the speeches they've given this afternoon, where they've leant into the importance of being considerate for all people.
Well, on top of the need for gentle language, I might I might advise them that what we should really be doing is protecting these lives by lives, by enforcing these laws properly and keeping them safe so that they don't risk their lives at sea. Now, offshore processing can also restore confidence in the immigration system. Most people are compassionate and willing to support those with genuine claims for asylum. However, public confidence is undermined when the distinction between legal and illegal routes become blurred a system that is firm, fair and consistently enforced is ultimately in the interests of both citizens and legitimate refugees.
Critics raise a number of concerns, and those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. The first is cost. Offshore facilities can be expensive. The answer, however, is not to abandon the policy, but to ensure that it is designed efficiently with clear agreements, streamlined processing and a strong focus on rapid decisions rather than prolonged detention. The second concern is humanitarian welfare. Nobody should be subjected to poor conditions or indefinite detention, and offshore centres should be subject to independent inspection, proper health care provision, legal oversight and strict maximum time limits on processing.
The objective should be swift assessment, resolution and resolution, not warehousing people for years as they effectively are on a basis where they are in this country and unable to work. And of course, we cannot allow them to work, because that creates a further incentive and a further pull for more illegal migration. The choice facing policy makers is not between offshore processing and an ideal world. The choice is between policies that deter illegal migration and those that leave criminal gangs and smuggling networks free to operate.
If implemented properly, offshore detention and processing can strengthen border security, reduce dangerous crossings, restore public confidence and saves lives while still maintaining high standards of humanity and the rule of law. This is a balanced approach. Firm on illegal migration, fair to genuine refugees and responsible to the taxpayers who expect their government to control their nation's borders. Thank you.
17:22
17:22
Speaker 11
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Speaker 11
Mr. Twigg, it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. The Liberal Democrats believe in a fair and controlled approach to immigration and asylum, a system that treats people with fairness and compassion. My constituency of Woking has a proud and long history of supporting those fleeing persecution. It was home to the Ockenden Venture, a trailblazing charity founded in the 1950s. They help resettle refugees from post-war Europe, Vietnam and beyond. Humfrey Malins, the former conservative MP for Woking, even set up a national immigration service.
More recently in Woking we have known how life changing a functioning immigration system can be. Since 2015, my town has welcomed hundreds of refugees from Afghanistan, from Syria and Ukraine. These people have arrived, fleeing conflict and persecution, and they have been welcomed by my town. And they have added to our economy and our cultural vitality. And I am pleased that we have helped them rebuild their lives in Surrey. More recently, uh, and. Returning to today in 2026, it's right that we must hold Britain's up humanitarian traditions whilst whilst also having control of our borders.
This starts by bringing the end to asylum hotels. This starts by stopping unsafe channel crossings and ensuring that criminal gangs can't profit from their work, and they can face justice. We need safe and legal routes for asylum seekers and refugees. Ukrainians didn't cross the channel in dangerous small boats because this government provided a safe and legal route for them. We know safe and legal routes work. We need more of them, not less. Yet safe and legal routes are not in the immigration and asylum bill that is about to be debated in Parliament later today.
Arrivals via safe and legal routes are at their lowest level since 2023. As a result, before the Brexit referendum, there was almost no recorded small boat crossings. But since we left the European Union, more than 190,000 people have come here in small boats. That the fact that we are not in the EU has been a pull factor causing this crisis. People who have arrived on small boats have literally said the word Dublin. They are playing the system against us.
Failed asylum seekers are coming to the UK having failed first time in Europe by not being in the EU or working with neighbouring countries. We are creating more work at great expense to the British taxpayer. Following Brexit, the conservative and the conservatives disastrous immigration policies that has led to a huge rise in net migration, past governments have introduced five immigration acts since 2020. We need a watertight arrangement with the EU. That would mean everyone arriving by small boats are at risk of being returned.
That's how we ensure the gangs do not have a viable business model, and there is no proper deterrent to stop people making money in the first place. A key requirement for us to tackle this issue is to ensure that the Home Office improves. At the moment, they make slow and bad decisions. We need to process claims quickly. We need to open up Nightingale style processing centres, doubling the number of asylum caseworkers to clear the backlog and the. Refugee Council estimates that because of the bad decisions made by the Home Office, we are spending at least £974 million, maybe up to £1.2 billion.
Supporting people currently in the appeals backlog who will have their initial refusal overturned. Is the Minister looking into this issue to improve that decision making ability?I believe that the people signing this petition would welcome a swift and humane return for anyone with no right to be here, but they would want us to welcome genuine refugees. The Liberal Democrats have consistently set out changes required to restore control and compassion to the immigration and asylum system. We did this in the border bill with the previous minister.
We're doing that, this with the current ministers, and we will continue to do so as the government changes next week.
More recently in Woking we have known how life changing a functioning immigration system can be. Since 2015, my town has welcomed hundreds of refugees from Afghanistan, from Syria and Ukraine. These people have arrived, fleeing conflict and persecution, and they have been welcomed by my town. And they have added to our economy and our cultural vitality. And I am pleased that we have helped them rebuild their lives in Surrey. More recently, uh, and. Returning to today in 2026, it's right that we must hold Britain's up humanitarian traditions whilst whilst also having control of our borders.
This starts by bringing the end to asylum hotels. This starts by stopping unsafe channel crossings and ensuring that criminal gangs can't profit from their work, and they can face justice. We need safe and legal routes for asylum seekers and refugees. Ukrainians didn't cross the channel in dangerous small boats because this government provided a safe and legal route for them. We know safe and legal routes work. We need more of them, not less. Yet safe and legal routes are not in the immigration and asylum bill that is about to be debated in Parliament later today.
Arrivals via safe and legal routes are at their lowest level since 2023. As a result, before the Brexit referendum, there was almost no recorded small boat crossings. But since we left the European Union, more than 190,000 people have come here in small boats. That the fact that we are not in the EU has been a pull factor causing this crisis. People who have arrived on small boats have literally said the word Dublin. They are playing the system against us.
Failed asylum seekers are coming to the UK having failed first time in Europe by not being in the EU or working with neighbouring countries. We are creating more work at great expense to the British taxpayer. Following Brexit, the conservative and the conservatives disastrous immigration policies that has led to a huge rise in net migration, past governments have introduced five immigration acts since 2020. We need a watertight arrangement with the EU. That would mean everyone arriving by small boats are at risk of being returned.
That's how we ensure the gangs do not have a viable business model, and there is no proper deterrent to stop people making money in the first place. A key requirement for us to tackle this issue is to ensure that the Home Office improves. At the moment, they make slow and bad decisions. We need to process claims quickly. We need to open up Nightingale style processing centres, doubling the number of asylum caseworkers to clear the backlog and the. Refugee Council estimates that because of the bad decisions made by the Home Office, we are spending at least £974 million, maybe up to £1.2 billion.
Supporting people currently in the appeals backlog who will have their initial refusal overturned. Is the Minister looking into this issue to improve that decision making ability?I believe that the people signing this petition would welcome a swift and humane return for anyone with no right to be here, but they would want us to welcome genuine refugees. The Liberal Democrats have consistently set out changes required to restore control and compassion to the immigration and asylum system. We did this in the border bill with the previous minister.
We're doing that, this with the current ministers, and we will continue to do so as the government changes next week.
17:27
17:27
Speaker 12
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Speaker 12
it's a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Twigg, and I want to thank members for their contributions and actually thank the more than 700,000 people who signed this petition, including more than 1000 in my own constituency of Bexhill and Battle. And this is a very real issue in my part of East Sussex, the government forced on us the Crowborough asylum camp just over the border in the Madam Deputy Speakers constituency. We're very close to my own. We met with the minister just last week alongside local residents and councillors, and heard first hand about the groups of young men gathering in this small rural town to drink on the streets, smuggling alcohol back into the detention centre, working illegally and all the distress that that's causing them.
I'm not surprised the government targeted Wealden for a camp, considering it's run by the Lib Dems and Greens, and they're kind of refugee asylum safe haven policy, because at the heart of this debate is a question of control, whether the state and the people on whose behalf it operates have control of our borders or not. For the nation state to have meaning, whether it's because we want to send people to offshore processing or detention or deport them entirely, a country must be able to remove people from within its borders that have no right to be there and at scale.
So I welcome the opportunity to set out the overwhelming, rational and moral argument for ending small boat crossings and the illegal trade in people smuggling. That's at the forefront of this petition, because whatever opponents of strong border controls say, however much they attempt to demonise and caricature, those of us that want to see control returned, I know that not only is it what the vast majority of the British public want, it's the right thing to do because you have to be clear eyed about the status quo right now. Not only is our asylum policy effectively determined by the ability of people to pay to get here, the trade in itself is putting money directly into the pockets of criminal gangs that are also involved in other crime, like drug dealing and violence.
Whether or not you make the crossing is not a measure of your need. Your comparative level of desperation or fear or your vulnerability is in fact quite the opposite. Small boat crossings favour the able bodied those with sufficient money to pay for the journey, those closest to Europe. It's not based on anything Parliament or government has decided, or a reflection of humanitarian crises. We know for a fact that every single person making the crossing from France, because they're coming from France, is not fleeing directly from a war torn country where they're at risk of persecution, decent, caring, compassionate constituents of mine say to me all the time, they are safe.
They're in France now. People may have a preference, a desire to be here instead of in France, but that is not what the asylum system was set up for. That's not what the laws and protections were intended to enshrine and make sacrosanct. However much defenders of those laws and regulations choose to ignore that the British public can see through it. The first retort to these criticisms of the status quo is to say, well, that's our fault. That's our responsibility for forcing them to cross the channel.
As the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said. But proponents of that argument entirely failed to play through the consequences of the safe and legal routes that they advocate for. So I'll do so now in the hope that people might actually consider it. If we set up places whereby people can apply in third countries easily, what would happen?First of all, those places were then themselves become a focal point of potentially large numbers of people seeking asylum, as there are quite literally millions of people living under conditions that would qualify them to seek asylum here in the UK.
And however much people pretend otherwise, we clearly would have to refuse some of those applications. But of course, the Green Party advocate open borders and no restrictions. Maybe they wouldn't, but let's assume we wouldn't take everybody that applied via a safe and legal route. Then what would happen with those people?Simply turn around and say, oh, well, I tried to get in. I tried to use the safe and legal route. I'll leave it there. Of course they wouldn't.
Those then people would then turn to exactly the same people smuggling gangs and illegal crossings, and would be right back to square one. Only they would be coming on top of the ones granted asylum as part of safe and legal routes. Even the most humanitarian minded person would have to accept there would be limits. And if there are limits, you have to say no. And for no to mean anything, it has to be enforceable or the whole thing collapses. And those opposed to deportation for those coming here illegally have no answer to that moral and logical question.
It's what must we do?We must make it absolutely clear that if you come here illegally, you do not get to stay. No ifs, ands or buts. Everything else in terms of control and having a system that works is underpinned by that. If you don't have control and a meaningful control, because taking years to deport people will achieve nothing, then all the rest of the policies collapse, and to stand any chance of actually delivering that, we have to come out of the European Court on Human Rights.
Anyone who studied the expansion of the powers of that court cannot reasonably argue that it is fulfilling the same function intended for it. Some may argue they're happy with that, that they welcome that, but it's impossible to say it's operating as envisioned by its creators. Let's take one example. Article three the right to be protected from torture or inhumane and degrading treatment. This right was constructed in the wake of World War Two, where, alongside being murdered Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, other minorities were subject to the most horrendous treatment imaginable.
Medical experimentation, starvation, death inducing slave labor. How now is that right?That article three right interpreted. It's now used by potential deportees to successfully oppose their deportation. If the standard of healthcare in the country they would be returned to is not sufficient to meet their medical needs, the same standard of healthcare, that's all that's available to millions of their fellow citizens in the countries that we would seek to deport them to. When did a right to be protected from torture or inhumane or degrading treatment become a right to access a particular standard of healthcare?And we know the convention has now even gone as far as to be applied to questions of whether a particular government is doing enough to tackle climate change.
That's why even some of our most senior and respected jurists, like former UK Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption, are clear about the need to leave. I would recommend to anyone sincerely interested in this topic listening to his 2019 BBC Reith Lecture series on it, he explains clearly how human rights laws are increasingly used in the place of the practice of politics, democracy and elections because they have increasingly become questions of balancing. They always were, of course, but the balancing has become finer and finer, more and more nuanced.
And at their heart, those questions are societal and political ones, not legal ones. And we should ask how it's possibly come to this situation. It's come about because at its core, in the context of its willingness to expand, its remit, to take expansionist interpretations to the law, the European Court of Human Rights is at its heart, fundamentally misconceived. The law does not exist in isolation. In the nation state, there is interplay between the courts and judges, parliaments and executives and the people, and they balance each other out.
I'm not surprised the government targeted Wealden for a camp, considering it's run by the Lib Dems and Greens, and they're kind of refugee asylum safe haven policy, because at the heart of this debate is a question of control, whether the state and the people on whose behalf it operates have control of our borders or not. For the nation state to have meaning, whether it's because we want to send people to offshore processing or detention or deport them entirely, a country must be able to remove people from within its borders that have no right to be there and at scale.
So I welcome the opportunity to set out the overwhelming, rational and moral argument for ending small boat crossings and the illegal trade in people smuggling. That's at the forefront of this petition, because whatever opponents of strong border controls say, however much they attempt to demonise and caricature, those of us that want to see control returned, I know that not only is it what the vast majority of the British public want, it's the right thing to do because you have to be clear eyed about the status quo right now. Not only is our asylum policy effectively determined by the ability of people to pay to get here, the trade in itself is putting money directly into the pockets of criminal gangs that are also involved in other crime, like drug dealing and violence.
Whether or not you make the crossing is not a measure of your need. Your comparative level of desperation or fear or your vulnerability is in fact quite the opposite. Small boat crossings favour the able bodied those with sufficient money to pay for the journey, those closest to Europe. It's not based on anything Parliament or government has decided, or a reflection of humanitarian crises. We know for a fact that every single person making the crossing from France, because they're coming from France, is not fleeing directly from a war torn country where they're at risk of persecution, decent, caring, compassionate constituents of mine say to me all the time, they are safe.
They're in France now. People may have a preference, a desire to be here instead of in France, but that is not what the asylum system was set up for. That's not what the laws and protections were intended to enshrine and make sacrosanct. However much defenders of those laws and regulations choose to ignore that the British public can see through it. The first retort to these criticisms of the status quo is to say, well, that's our fault. That's our responsibility for forcing them to cross the channel.
As the spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats said. But proponents of that argument entirely failed to play through the consequences of the safe and legal routes that they advocate for. So I'll do so now in the hope that people might actually consider it. If we set up places whereby people can apply in third countries easily, what would happen?First of all, those places were then themselves become a focal point of potentially large numbers of people seeking asylum, as there are quite literally millions of people living under conditions that would qualify them to seek asylum here in the UK.
And however much people pretend otherwise, we clearly would have to refuse some of those applications. But of course, the Green Party advocate open borders and no restrictions. Maybe they wouldn't, but let's assume we wouldn't take everybody that applied via a safe and legal route. Then what would happen with those people?Simply turn around and say, oh, well, I tried to get in. I tried to use the safe and legal route. I'll leave it there. Of course they wouldn't.
Those then people would then turn to exactly the same people smuggling gangs and illegal crossings, and would be right back to square one. Only they would be coming on top of the ones granted asylum as part of safe and legal routes. Even the most humanitarian minded person would have to accept there would be limits. And if there are limits, you have to say no. And for no to mean anything, it has to be enforceable or the whole thing collapses. And those opposed to deportation for those coming here illegally have no answer to that moral and logical question.
It's what must we do?We must make it absolutely clear that if you come here illegally, you do not get to stay. No ifs, ands or buts. Everything else in terms of control and having a system that works is underpinned by that. If you don't have control and a meaningful control, because taking years to deport people will achieve nothing, then all the rest of the policies collapse, and to stand any chance of actually delivering that, we have to come out of the European Court on Human Rights.
Anyone who studied the expansion of the powers of that court cannot reasonably argue that it is fulfilling the same function intended for it. Some may argue they're happy with that, that they welcome that, but it's impossible to say it's operating as envisioned by its creators. Let's take one example. Article three the right to be protected from torture or inhumane and degrading treatment. This right was constructed in the wake of World War Two, where, alongside being murdered Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, other minorities were subject to the most horrendous treatment imaginable.
Medical experimentation, starvation, death inducing slave labor. How now is that right?That article three right interpreted. It's now used by potential deportees to successfully oppose their deportation. If the standard of healthcare in the country they would be returned to is not sufficient to meet their medical needs, the same standard of healthcare, that's all that's available to millions of their fellow citizens in the countries that we would seek to deport them to. When did a right to be protected from torture or inhumane or degrading treatment become a right to access a particular standard of healthcare?And we know the convention has now even gone as far as to be applied to questions of whether a particular government is doing enough to tackle climate change.
That's why even some of our most senior and respected jurists, like former UK Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption, are clear about the need to leave. I would recommend to anyone sincerely interested in this topic listening to his 2019 BBC Reith Lecture series on it, he explains clearly how human rights laws are increasingly used in the place of the practice of politics, democracy and elections because they have increasingly become questions of balancing. They always were, of course, but the balancing has become finer and finer, more and more nuanced.
And at their heart, those questions are societal and political ones, not legal ones. And we should ask how it's possibly come to this situation. It's come about because at its core, in the context of its willingness to expand, its remit, to take expansionist interpretations to the law, the European Court of Human Rights is at its heart, fundamentally misconceived. The law does not exist in isolation. In the nation state, there is interplay between the courts and judges, parliaments and executives and the people, and they balance each other out.
17:34
Speaker 4
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Speaker 4
They consistently and gravely make rulings out of keeping with the views of the public they serve. Parliament can step in the body accountable to the public, however much. In very many ways, we want our courts to be independent. It is vital that in the end, ultimately, they are not independent of the people. This delicate interplay secures legitimacy for each actor in the system, and there is no such in the European court. And that's how it's found itself so clearly removed from the expectations of views of the millions of people of the member states.
It seeks to advocate for. And you can see across the rulings over many years, member states seeking to oppose the expansionist rulings it's taking, and it has ignored them to its own detriment. And we see other countries Canada, Australia and New Zealand able to manage fair and balanced rules of law with rights for individuals without the need to be part of any supranational body. And so I say to anyone who argues against these ideas, you must be careful what one wishes for, because the patience and generosity of the majority of the public are at its utmost thinnest, if not exhausted entirely.
And if we don't respond to that, there are others with views. We are more widely unhappy with that will take back control, and that this government has failed to secure. It will be as much to blame as anybody else as we complete two years of this premiership of our current Prime Minister. I hope members can reflect honestly the promise of the government to make to take control of our border and smash. The gangs have undoubtedly been a failure. It gave the impression that tweaks could be made that could significantly alter the number of crossings, but that are simply proven not to be the case, and it has very little time left.
The only country with a proven track record is Australia, and they implemented a policy of not allowing people to stay. Tweaking won't help. One in, one out with France won't help, and the sooner they realise that, the better the better for the taxpayer, the better. For those who want to be compassionate but don't want to be exploited, the better for the crime agencies fighting the gangs that the people smugglers are part of. Virtually virtual signalling. Sorry. Virtue signalling won't achieve anything.
Doing whatever it takes to actually regain control of our borders is the only thing that will. And the government must get on and deliver it.
It seeks to advocate for. And you can see across the rulings over many years, member states seeking to oppose the expansionist rulings it's taking, and it has ignored them to its own detriment. And we see other countries Canada, Australia and New Zealand able to manage fair and balanced rules of law with rights for individuals without the need to be part of any supranational body. And so I say to anyone who argues against these ideas, you must be careful what one wishes for, because the patience and generosity of the majority of the public are at its utmost thinnest, if not exhausted entirely.
And if we don't respond to that, there are others with views. We are more widely unhappy with that will take back control, and that this government has failed to secure. It will be as much to blame as anybody else as we complete two years of this premiership of our current Prime Minister. I hope members can reflect honestly the promise of the government to make to take control of our border and smash. The gangs have undoubtedly been a failure. It gave the impression that tweaks could be made that could significantly alter the number of crossings, but that are simply proven not to be the case, and it has very little time left.
The only country with a proven track record is Australia, and they implemented a policy of not allowing people to stay. Tweaking won't help. One in, one out with France won't help, and the sooner they realise that, the better the better for the taxpayer, the better. For those who want to be compassionate but don't want to be exploited, the better for the crime agencies fighting the gangs that the people smugglers are part of. Virtually virtual signalling. Sorry. Virtue signalling won't achieve anything.
Doing whatever it takes to actually regain control of our borders is the only thing that will. And the government must get on and deliver it.
17:36
17:36
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
Thank you. It's a pleasure to serve with you. In the chair, Mr. Twigg. Let me start by thanking the honourable member for Berkshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk for clearly and comprehensively articulating the key facets of the petition, which has resulted, of course, in us all being here today. On this sunny afternoon. I am grateful to him, to the petitioners and to all other members who have spoken. We've heard a wide range of views. I've listened with interest to the arguments advanced and various points that have been raised, and I will seek to respond to as many as possible in the time available.
But before I get into the detail, I must first do two things. The first is to assert again, this government's unshakeable commitment to tackling illegal immigration. I am sorry to have to remind members of the situation we inherited, but it was so dire that two years on, the legacy of past failures do remain. When we took office, smuggling gangs saw this country's borders as a soft target. When we took office, the enforcement of basic rules had ground to a halt. When we took office, the system was in disarray.
Now, we have worked hard since July 24th to turn things around. Our efforts are having an impact. Over 44,000 channel crossings have been stopped in partnership with the French. Under our landmark returns agreement with France, those arriving can face immediate detention and removal, removals and deportations of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. Excuse me. Have gone up, as have illegal working visits. And we have more officers tackling organised immigration, crime and disruption of OIC at record highs, asylum costs, meanwhile, are down, as is the number of hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers.
We are reducing the pull factors and we will do whatever it takes to secure effective returns. Cooperation with our international partners. We will use every lever available to return those with no right to be in the UK. In November, we threatened visa penalties against Angola, Namibia and the DRC. Within weeks, my department successfully negotiated new arrangements and are now conducting returns on those basis, my message is clear if foreign governments refuse to accept the return of their citizens, then they will face the consequences.
This is just the start of our action. Countries that do not cooperate on returns cannot expect a normal visa relationship with the UK. We do all of this and more because the Home Secretary has said from day one, we must do whatever it takes to restore order and control to our borders. But we also know there is more, much more to do. I give way.
But before I get into the detail, I must first do two things. The first is to assert again, this government's unshakeable commitment to tackling illegal immigration. I am sorry to have to remind members of the situation we inherited, but it was so dire that two years on, the legacy of past failures do remain. When we took office, smuggling gangs saw this country's borders as a soft target. When we took office, the enforcement of basic rules had ground to a halt. When we took office, the system was in disarray.
Now, we have worked hard since July 24th to turn things around. Our efforts are having an impact. Over 44,000 channel crossings have been stopped in partnership with the French. Under our landmark returns agreement with France, those arriving can face immediate detention and removal, removals and deportations of illegal migrants and foreign criminals. Excuse me. Have gone up, as have illegal working visits. And we have more officers tackling organised immigration, crime and disruption of OIC at record highs, asylum costs, meanwhile, are down, as is the number of hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers.
We are reducing the pull factors and we will do whatever it takes to secure effective returns. Cooperation with our international partners. We will use every lever available to return those with no right to be in the UK. In November, we threatened visa penalties against Angola, Namibia and the DRC. Within weeks, my department successfully negotiated new arrangements and are now conducting returns on those basis, my message is clear if foreign governments refuse to accept the return of their citizens, then they will face the consequences.
This is just the start of our action. Countries that do not cooperate on returns cannot expect a normal visa relationship with the UK. We do all of this and more because the Home Secretary has said from day one, we must do whatever it takes to restore order and control to our borders. But we also know there is more, much more to do. I give way.
17:39
17:39
17:40
17:41
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
I thank him for his intervention. He's an absolute fact that our returns agreements, many of them are underpinned by our membership to the E, C and I will make some progress. That is why we are embarking on the most significant set of asylum reforms in a generation. Under our plans, the UK will continue playing its part in helping the world's most vulnerable. But to meet the challenges of today, we must address the fact that this country is more attractive to asylum seekers than elsewhere in Europe.
So we are acting, including through new legislation, to build a new, fair but firm asylum model based on contribution, on integration and respect for UK laws. Now, the reason I mention all of this, of course, is that it goes to the heart of the problem. This petition seeks to answer, which is the arrival of illegal migrants and their continued presence in this country. We understand why people are frustrated after years of chaos and crisis, and that is why we are taking concerted, decisive action to restore order and control.
I'll now move on to my second point, which is to address the specific thrust of this petition, namely, that the government should seek to establish offshore detention facilities for individuals who enter the UK illegally. We have been clear we will continue to work with international partners to tackle the global challenge of irregular migration, but interventions must work in practice. They must offer value for money and they must comply with the UK's international obligations. The government is doing whatever it takes to secure our borders, including through introducing the most sweeping asylum reforms in a generation.
The petition also refers to deportation, to which I would reply that more people with no right to be here are being removed from British soil under this government than at any time in years. We've removed or deported nearly 70,000 people who were here illegally since the election. Some of the more specific points made by members. The member for Hartlepool made an absolutely fantastic contribution, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. That rhetoric is absolutely important, that we get that right and it is our responsibility.
All of us in this room, to ensure that we do not pitch neighbor against neighbor. Unity is. British. Division is not. Turn to the comments and contribution made by the member for Runcorn. She made a good point about visa Overstayers that does make up a large proportion of those who are here illegally. We've paused the health and social care route. We've paused automatic family reunion. We are putting stricter measures on universities to ensure that that isn't abused.
And we've already seen those who are seeking to claim asylum after signing up to a university drop significantly. But of course, we're looking to go further across the board on legal migration and overstayers when she talks about rapists and paedophiles. Look, it's everyone here agrees with that. Of course, if you're a rapist, a paedophile, a criminal who's come to this country, then you should not be here. They should not be here. And and it's important that we make those changes to the Echr, which is ongoing at this time, to deport and remove those people.
So we are acting, including through new legislation, to build a new, fair but firm asylum model based on contribution, on integration and respect for UK laws. Now, the reason I mention all of this, of course, is that it goes to the heart of the problem. This petition seeks to answer, which is the arrival of illegal migrants and their continued presence in this country. We understand why people are frustrated after years of chaos and crisis, and that is why we are taking concerted, decisive action to restore order and control.
I'll now move on to my second point, which is to address the specific thrust of this petition, namely, that the government should seek to establish offshore detention facilities for individuals who enter the UK illegally. We have been clear we will continue to work with international partners to tackle the global challenge of irregular migration, but interventions must work in practice. They must offer value for money and they must comply with the UK's international obligations. The government is doing whatever it takes to secure our borders, including through introducing the most sweeping asylum reforms in a generation.
The petition also refers to deportation, to which I would reply that more people with no right to be here are being removed from British soil under this government than at any time in years. We've removed or deported nearly 70,000 people who were here illegally since the election. Some of the more specific points made by members. The member for Hartlepool made an absolutely fantastic contribution, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. That rhetoric is absolutely important, that we get that right and it is our responsibility.
All of us in this room, to ensure that we do not pitch neighbor against neighbor. Unity is. British. Division is not. Turn to the comments and contribution made by the member for Runcorn. She made a good point about visa Overstayers that does make up a large proportion of those who are here illegally. We've paused the health and social care route. We've paused automatic family reunion. We are putting stricter measures on universities to ensure that that isn't abused.
And we've already seen those who are seeking to claim asylum after signing up to a university drop significantly. But of course, we're looking to go further across the board on legal migration and overstayers when she talks about rapists and paedophiles. Look, it's everyone here agrees with that. Of course, if you're a rapist, a paedophile, a criminal who's come to this country, then you should not be here. They should not be here. And and it's important that we make those changes to the Echr, which is ongoing at this time, to deport and remove those people.
17:44
17:44
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
You, the member for his intervention. You had 14 years to make the changes. You absolutely failed. We inherited we inherited their open borders and their broken system. But we are working hard behind the scenes as we speak to make the Echr more fit for purpose. Move on to the member for Clapham and Brixton. Brixton Hill, Brixton Hill. Who made very good points about the costs of some of these proposals. Everything we do in the Home Office must be costed.
It must be affordable to the British taxpayer and, of course, that we have a duty to protect those who are fleeing war and persecution. That's one of the things that makes Britain so great. I move on to the member for Wirral West. She made a point about, um, excuse me, is that what we're West. My, my my apologies, my apologies. Um, she made a good point about, um, the single dinghy having more individuals on it over the weekend.
Now, the reason for that is because we are attacking the supply chains and we are taking boats out of the supply chain, which means they are forcing more people onto these boats. Now we acknowledge that that is dangerous, which is why we are working hard with our international partners to stop these boat crossings. Like I said, disruptions of boat crossings are now around 44,000. I will give way.
It must be affordable to the British taxpayer and, of course, that we have a duty to protect those who are fleeing war and persecution. That's one of the things that makes Britain so great. I move on to the member for Wirral West. She made a point about, um, excuse me, is that what we're West. My, my my apologies, my apologies. Um, she made a good point about, um, the single dinghy having more individuals on it over the weekend.
Now, the reason for that is because we are attacking the supply chains and we are taking boats out of the supply chain, which means they are forcing more people onto these boats. Now we acknowledge that that is dangerous, which is why we are working hard with our international partners to stop these boat crossings. Like I said, disruptions of boat crossings are now around 44,000. I will give way.
17:46
17:46
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
I thank the member for her passionate intervention. We. We took on your. Their open borders. And, you know, the last year has seen a reduction of around 41% in small boat crossings. It's not something that we celebrate because we know that we're only seven months into the year, but we're working hard with with the international partners. And I've already given the stats on the number of disruptions there and move on to the member for Yarmouth, who I know has been a, um, a voice behind this petition on social media, um, and in the media, you know, I, I haven't ever, um, referred to anybody who cares about this topic as a mad fringe or as a, as a racist.
And it's, I think people's, um, own perception. It's for them to decide whether they are racist or mad fringe. But I think, you know, having these concerns is absolutely, um, valid in general. But of course, as I said earlier, I'm agreeing very much with the member for Hartlepool that we must mind our rhetoric because the public do listen to what we say in this place. Uh, I haven't eaten much today. And he talked about some fine sounding snacks being delivered by Deliveroo.
But he is absolutely right that we must crack down on that. And we are making efforts to do that. Arrests are up around 81% on illegal working, but by no means is that finished, and we'll continue to work hard on that. I've talked about the already. Um, look, he's obviously produced a large book there, but he did say he won't go into detail. Maybe there's some in there. And I do respect seeing, you know, this sort of work going to policy development.
But like I said, we have to make sure we maintain our British values throughout. I certainly.
And it's, I think people's, um, own perception. It's for them to decide whether they are racist or mad fringe. But I think, you know, having these concerns is absolutely, um, valid in general. But of course, as I said earlier, I'm agreeing very much with the member for Hartlepool that we must mind our rhetoric because the public do listen to what we say in this place. Uh, I haven't eaten much today. And he talked about some fine sounding snacks being delivered by Deliveroo.
But he is absolutely right that we must crack down on that. And we are making efforts to do that. Arrests are up around 81% on illegal working, but by no means is that finished, and we'll continue to work hard on that. I've talked about the already. Um, look, he's obviously produced a large book there, but he did say he won't go into detail. Maybe there's some in there. And I do respect seeing, you know, this sort of work going to policy development.
But like I said, we have to make sure we maintain our British values throughout. I certainly.
17:48
Speaker 12
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Speaker 12
Thank you. I just listening, I think the British public have had enough of Labour blaming the Tories and Tories, blaming Labour. Meanwhile, this what I call national emergency continues to get worse. So do you accept the fact that just playing. He he said, she said, is not good enough. We need to change that attitude.
17:49
17:49
17:50
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
I'm absolutely fed up of being lectured by the opposition who gave us this problem. It's been lectured by the arsonist to put out the fire. So I'll go absolutely no further with that. The member for South Basildon and East. Thurrock, I believe. Um, excuse me, I'm failing to read my, uh, writing here. Um, look, it is absolutely right that we must remove, um, the pull factors, the, you know, we have to ensure that there are deterrents for people looking to come over.
And when we came into the Home Office, the fact was there was asylum shopping going on across Europe because the offer that we gave to those seeking asylum was better than many others. So we have brought ourselves in line with the rest of Europe, and that will make it less attractive to come here. Also, of course, moving individuals out of hotels and into larger sites. Again, removing one of those pull factors. I've already mentioned immigration enforcement, when it comes to illegal working, is up by 81%, and that's a removing another pull factor.
But of course, compassion is essential. That's what makes us great, as I've said. So considering and looking at safe and legal routes to be introduced in due course is another part of the solution. On to the member for Woking. Um, again, good points made about our duty to help those fleeing persecution, persecution and war. And that's what we'll see from cap safe and legal routes to ensure that we do our bit to, um, to help people. He talked about decision making.
Well, our initial decision making speeded up by 71%. There's still further to go. Um, and we have reallocated and re-employed and excuse me, employed more caseworkers to ensure we, we get through that. But our initial decision making is up 71%. To the um. Um. Yes.
And when we came into the Home Office, the fact was there was asylum shopping going on across Europe because the offer that we gave to those seeking asylum was better than many others. So we have brought ourselves in line with the rest of Europe, and that will make it less attractive to come here. Also, of course, moving individuals out of hotels and into larger sites. Again, removing one of those pull factors. I've already mentioned immigration enforcement, when it comes to illegal working, is up by 81%, and that's a removing another pull factor.
But of course, compassion is essential. That's what makes us great, as I've said. So considering and looking at safe and legal routes to be introduced in due course is another part of the solution. On to the member for Woking. Um, again, good points made about our duty to help those fleeing persecution, persecution and war. And that's what we'll see from cap safe and legal routes to ensure that we do our bit to, um, to help people. He talked about decision making.
Well, our initial decision making speeded up by 71%. There's still further to go. Um, and we have reallocated and re-employed and excuse me, employed more caseworkers to ensure we, we get through that. But our initial decision making is up 71%. To the um. Um. Yes.
17:52
Speaker 13
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Speaker 13
Another point that the honourable member made was around the Dublin agreement and the impact it had, uh, on the increased arrivals. I think they were right, um, to make that point, but wrong to, I think, associate it with the EU as there are countries like Norway and Iceland that are signatories. So I wonder if there is any consideration to joining some of these multinational returns agreements in order to speed up that decision making in the UK as well, I.
17:52
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
Thank my right hon. Friend for this important point. You know, we saw um, boat crossings. Uh, start after we left the EU. Um and of course the Dublin agreement did provide some sort of deterrence. Um however when it comes to reopening the Brexit wound, that's not something I want to do. And that's why we are, of course, looking at introducing more and more returns agreements so we can, deport and remove more people.
17:53
17:53
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
The member for his intervention, that's now on the, uh, on the record. I'd be keen to discuss why he thinks the numbers went up, and we saw around 180,000 cross after 2018. Perhaps that's for outside the room. Uh. Thank you. I will now just move on to some broader points. I've tried to get around everybody who's spoken. My apologies if I if I have missed anything, but I might pick that up now.
17:54
Speaker 11
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Speaker 11
Thank the minister, actually for being very generous with his time. So thank you very much indeed. Can he clarify this point?Um, because the Secretary of State was trying to stop some of the pull factors. And I welcome the one with the indefinite leave to remain extending from five years to ten years. But it seems that the new coming, the incoming Prime minister is now going to water those new policies down. Is that the case?
17:55
Speaker 7
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Speaker 7
Thank the honourable member for intervention. The Home Secretary made it clear on the in the House of Commons earlier that Home Office rules that the announcement of 5 to 10 years absolutely stands. We then opened a large consultation. We had 200,000 responses to that which is still being worked through, and announcements on transition arrangements, etc. will be made in due course. We expect around the autumn. Um, I'll move on to small boat arrivals more. More broadly, they are unacceptable.
And we have made a commitment to restore order and control by making it less attractive to come here and easier to remove people, but also by working with international partners. And we've now seen small boat crossings down 41% in the last year on foreign national offenders. In March, we extended the duty to deport flows, given suspended sentences of 12 months or more. So. Excuse me for those who have been a prison sentence, a suspended sentence or a community order are referred for deportation and foreign national offender removals are now up by 36%, and we will continue to remove those who shouldn't be here on hotel use.
Progress is being made to end the use of hotels, which we will achieve by the end of Parliament. Hotel use is down from 213 in July 24th to fewer than 170 today. Asylum support costs are down 15% and on illegal working, I've already covered that a number of times during interventions. So small boat crossings are down, decisions are up, hotel use is down, deportations and removals are up. Net migration is down by 82%. This isn't an overnight fix.
There isn't a silver bullet. But two years in and this government is heading in the right direction with a solutions based approach which includes safe and legal routes and increased deportations and removals. This doesn't have to sit anywhere on the political spectrum. It's about finding solutions. And that's what we are doing. I'll conclude there with thanks again to all who have participated in today's debate. I know the strength of feeling around these issues is significant on all sides.
This debate and the original petition are further evidence of that. While we may disagree on how best to respond to the very significant challenges this country faces from illegal migration, I think we are mostly united in believing that those challenges must be addressed if we are to be a strong, secure nation. Uh. At which the people we serve rightly demand, as I've set out, this government is taking more and stronger action than any in recent memory to restore order and control to our borders.
And that is the task. In that task, we will be unrelenting.
And we have made a commitment to restore order and control by making it less attractive to come here and easier to remove people, but also by working with international partners. And we've now seen small boat crossings down 41% in the last year on foreign national offenders. In March, we extended the duty to deport flows, given suspended sentences of 12 months or more. So. Excuse me for those who have been a prison sentence, a suspended sentence or a community order are referred for deportation and foreign national offender removals are now up by 36%, and we will continue to remove those who shouldn't be here on hotel use.
Progress is being made to end the use of hotels, which we will achieve by the end of Parliament. Hotel use is down from 213 in July 24th to fewer than 170 today. Asylum support costs are down 15% and on illegal working, I've already covered that a number of times during interventions. So small boat crossings are down, decisions are up, hotel use is down, deportations and removals are up. Net migration is down by 82%. This isn't an overnight fix.
There isn't a silver bullet. But two years in and this government is heading in the right direction with a solutions based approach which includes safe and legal routes and increased deportations and removals. This doesn't have to sit anywhere on the political spectrum. It's about finding solutions. And that's what we are doing. I'll conclude there with thanks again to all who have participated in today's debate. I know the strength of feeling around these issues is significant on all sides.
This debate and the original petition are further evidence of that. While we may disagree on how best to respond to the very significant challenges this country faces from illegal migration, I think we are mostly united in believing that those challenges must be addressed if we are to be a strong, secure nation. Uh. At which the people we serve rightly demand, as I've set out, this government is taking more and stronger action than any in recent memory to restore order and control to our borders.
And that is the task. In that task, we will be unrelenting.
17:57
17:58
Speaker 1
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Speaker 1
90 minutes to speak. I promise not to detain colleagues for long. Can I thank all members who have taken part, particularly the member for Great Yarmouth, who was the petitioner, the member for Hartlepool, Runcorn and Helsby, Clapham and Brixton, Tatton and South, Basildon and East. Thurrock and the various party spokesmen as well. I mean, it's quite telling. I think um I mean I've been on the petitions committee for um since the last election and this petition I think has had the second or third highest number of um signatures.
And yet I'm surprised there's not more MPs participating. And is it an example where Parliament is disconnected from, from what our constituents are telling us?I know the members here, my neighbour from Carlisle and her constituents, 2500, signed the petition, the second highest in the UK. And I've been at other petitions here, and there has not been enough space for all the MPs who wanted to participate. I think that is telling. Part of the problem with the greatest respect to the minister is whilst we hear all the achievements that the Minister thinks they have achieved, the reality out there in society, they do not see or feel those achievements.
They feel the pressures on their society. Because, because, because of the broken immigration system. I will just conclude, Mr. Twigg, in the last 12 months, between the 1st of April 2025 and 31st March 2026, 43,806 illegal arrivals took place in the UK, and that was up on the previous year. That is why our constituents feel so frustrated and why so many people signed this petition. Thank you.
And yet I'm surprised there's not more MPs participating. And is it an example where Parliament is disconnected from, from what our constituents are telling us?I know the members here, my neighbour from Carlisle and her constituents, 2500, signed the petition, the second highest in the UK. And I've been at other petitions here, and there has not been enough space for all the MPs who wanted to participate. I think that is telling. Part of the problem with the greatest respect to the minister is whilst we hear all the achievements that the Minister thinks they have achieved, the reality out there in society, they do not see or feel those achievements.
They feel the pressures on their society. Because, because, because of the broken immigration system. I will just conclude, Mr. Twigg, in the last 12 months, between the 1st of April 2025 and 31st March 2026, 43,806 illegal arrivals took place in the UK, and that was up on the previous year. That is why our constituents feel so frustrated and why so many people signed this petition. Thank you.