Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Bishop of Manchester Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Lords Chamber

These amendments offer a package of reforms based on self-interest. They demonstrate our commitment to fairness and common sense by transforming asylum seekers and trafficking victims from costly dependants into contributing members of society. I urge the House to support these three amendments.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, as well as Amendment 45 in my name, and that of the noble Lords, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Watson of Invergowrie, I also strongly support the other amendments in this group, to which the noble Lord, Lord German, has just spoken. In fact, I have added my name to two of them.

The current lengthy ban on asylum seekers working wastes talent. Lifting it would let an incredibly talented, resilient group of people—as those are the qualities they needed to even get themselves here—support themselves and their families. It would allow them to rebuild their lives with dignity and independence, at the same time as they would be filling vital UK labour shortages.

As the noble Lord has just said, it also makes financial sense. It could save the Treasury £4.4 billion a year in expenditure, generate £880 million a year in tax revenues and boost GDP by over £1 billion. As the noble Lord also said, it would cut the hotel and asylum support bill. Some 91% of people seeking asylum struggle to afford food. Against that background, the present work ban is actually driving people into exploitation and forced labour. It often means that they are paying exploiters for the so-called privilege of 14 hour-plus delivery shifts earning less than the minimum wage.

There are even more harmful forms of work. Surveys have shown that some 10% of women seeking asylum have felt forced into sex work to support themselves and their children. More raids, and more enforcement, will not stop this. It will only drive people into more hidden and dangerous situations to try to support themselves. Lifting the ban is the only way to protect people from exploitative and irregular work, and it saves the money that we currently spend enforcing that ban.

The stoking of division was exemplified by the riots last summer, but the community cohesion offered by letting people work side by side with those who are seeking asylum is invaluable. When we let people share their skills with their new communities, it helps them settle, improve their language skills and make friends; it leads to better integration outcomes. These are things that we are already seeing in the many churches in my diocese where asylum seekers worship while their claims are being processed. If they can also build those connections, meet people and become known, respected and loved sisters and brothers in the world of work, that can only help community cohesion.

I accept that, alongside the humanitarian and economic considerations to which I have referred, politics does understandably matter. Let me briefly address any concerns that lifting the ban would be an unpopular act in the country. YouGov polling shows 81% of voters support giving people seeking asylum the right to work after six months. That includes 87% of Labour voters and 81% of Conservative voters. On top of that, a Survation poll found that lifting the ban is backed by a two-thirds majority of business leaders. It is backed by the Confederation of British Industry, the Association of Labour Providers, the Entrepreneurs Network and the Federation of Small Businesses. That is a pretty widespread alliance, and it is not the sort of people who are normally associated with weeping-heart, left wing causes.

We have all heard the mantra from all sides of this House over many years that the UK needs to get people off dependence on benefits and into work. My amendment would seek to encourage us to do that. It is not the sort of amendment I believe should be taken to a Division, and I am not going to do that. However, I hope that, in responding to this debate, the Minister will be able to offer some assurances that we can make progress on this matter, not least so that His Majesty’s Government can achieve the target of closing the asylum hotels.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 42 seems to me to be something of a no-brainer. It would relieve the public purse in two ways. Local authorities might no longer have to find the cost of accommodation, and central government would no longer have to provide the pittance it does as a weekly allowance to people held in asylum hotels. It would be good for these people. It would be good for their self-respect and it would make it more likely that they would successfully integrate if they were, in the end, granted asylum.

The only people it would be bad for are people in the black economy. We all know that people in the situation we are describing tend to go out and find work and that work is available for them, thus they are launched into a criminal level of British society straight away. That is the wrong way to integrate people who have done no harm—people who are here fleeing persecution, famine or war elsewhere. It seems paradoxical and extremely dangerous that we do not allow people to work. I strongly support Amendments 42 and 43.