Immigration and Asylum Bill

Chris Murray Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Oh, the right hon. Gentleman tempts me with some attractive bait, but I will resist the temptation! I am sure that once the events of 20 July have taken place, all these matters shall become clearer still.

This Government have taken some considerable steps forward, but we must do more: around 94,000 people remain in asylum accommodation at a total cost of £3.7 billion per year; while asylum claims fell by 12% last year, they remain close to historic highs; and with the criminal gangs still at work, people continue to die in the channel, with over 100 deaths since the start of 2024, including women and young children.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

We always forget that people lose their lives in the channel—including last year, tragically, a young girl of four and a young man of 16 who had just tried to phone his parents. Does the Home Secretary agree that anyone with any humanitarian beliefs at all should be doing everything they can to stop cross-channel boats, and that it is incumbent on everyone that we do everything we can about that?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is really shocking that we no longer seem to give huge amounts of attention to the deaths that still occur in the channel; in fact, they barely make the news. Most people do not realise that so many still lose their lives when crossing on small boats in the channel. That is why there is a moral responsibility on all of us to think about how we deal with the particular challenge of small boats crossing the channel, how we play our part as a Government committed to our humanitarian responsibilities, and how we ensure that we finish off this trade once and for all. The only people who really benefit from this trade, and from the huge risks that people place themselves under, are the criminal gangs themselves. That money is going into the pockets of hardened criminals who would harm us in other ways, and we have got to put a stop to it.

This country has always provided sanctuary to those fleeing war and persecution, and I am proud of that fact, but we must accept that public consent for our asylum system is fraying, and unless we restore control, we will lose the British public’s support entirely. My goal as Home Secretary is to rebuild the public’s confidence, and thereby ensure that we can continue providing protection to those in need today and for generations to come. To do so, I believe we must restore fairness to our asylum system—fairness both to those who are fleeing war and persecution, and towards those communities already here who bear the burden of support.

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[Shabana Mahmood]

As the right hon. Lady will see, the authority will be fully independent, and the impartiality of this new authority is vital. As clause 1 makes clear, its decisions will be entirely independent of Government, with every Minister of the Crown compelled to uphold the independence of the authority. As is often the case with establishing a new body, the first chief executive and chief appeals officer will be appointed by the Home Secretary, but appointments thereafter will be made by the chair of the authority, as set out in clause 2. These will be made on merit and on the basis of fair and open competition.

The authority’s operations and performance will also be subject to external scrutiny, and it will be placed under the remit of the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration.

[Chris Murray]

rose—

[Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Shabana Mahmood]

I have given way to my hon. Friend before; I will make progress and come back to him.

In the new system, a single, faster appeal route will be established, as addressed in clauses 11 and 12. Today, too many claimants make multiple claims at different stages of the process, including at the last possible moment, often to thwart their legitimate removal from this country. To give just one illustrative and eye-opening example, one case involved a convicted rapist who was due to be sent home after serving eight years in jail. Despite not challenging his deportation at first, he went on to make a series of late claims, including a judicial review on the eve of being removed from this country. Although we eventually managed to remove him, it took more than four years to get this criminal out of the country. For that reason, alongside the new authority, we will create a single appeal route. That will require claimants to raise all relevant matters up front.

Where late claims are raised, particularly in the run-up to removal, they will be dealt with through an expedited process. That means that genuine issues will still be considered, but tactical claims can no longer be used to frustrate a removal. As is already the case, claimants may access advice and legal representation, with legal aid available to those who are eligible. That advice and support are vital to ensure that appeals progress fairly, without delay or disruption.

In clause 21, in part 3 of the Bill, we are introducing further measures to ensure that decision making is fast and fair. Today, there are two separate types of protection: refugee status and humanitarian protection. Both carry near-identical entitlements and eligibility for settlement. That creates near-duplicate claims and unnecessary complexity, which slows down our asylum system. The Bill therefore replaces those two forms of protection with one form—the core protection model. That means that each claim will be assessed once, with one outcome. A right of appeal will be available only to those refused protection, not those who wish to seek protection under a different status. That is a clearer, simple process that will make no difference to those lodging genuine claims, but will cut inefficiency in the system and ensure that those with genuine appeals get a faster, fairer decision.

An effective asylum system is one in which claims are heard fast and fairly. Those who have a legitimate claim receive the protection they need, while those who do not are removed from this country, without turning the bureaucracy against us. That is what the measures in this Bill seek to achieve.

[Chris Murray]

rose—

[Shabana Mahmood]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), if he still wants to come in. [Interruption.] No? I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) then.

[Chris Murray]

The Home Secretary is being very generous. The purpose of the Bill is to make the system more swift, but I am surprised to see that there is no component of mandatory reconsideration included in it. As we have seen in the Department for Work and Pensions, that has really made the system faster. We had a broadly similar system in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, which was replaced, and that did not make the system quicker. How will this situation be different from what we have had before?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think my hon. Friend means mandatory reconsideration in the context of a case when an appeal is made.

[Chris Murray]

indicated assent.

[Shabana Mahmood]

To reassure my hon. Friend, before a case proceeds to appeal, we already have an internal process whereby we check whether we should still defend the claim at appeal stage. If the facts have changed or if there are issues with the original decision, we remove cases from the list of those proceeding to an appeal under the current system. We are doing something similar already. I do not want to create additional bureaucracy and ever-more complication, but that is part of the Home Office’s current process. We have removed cases from the appeals backlog where we know that they should be granted.

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[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon). He was absolutely right about the tone we need to employ. I recognise the comments he made about his constituents. I suspect that his constituents have a very similar view to my constituents—we are not too far apart. I refer him to the Home Affairs Committee report on asylum accommodation, which talked about the point he made about the disproportionate numbers of asylum seekers in lower-cost accommodation areas. We did ask the Home Office to look at that. I also suggest that he avoids X and Facebook in the morning. It will probably make his life a lot better.

I rise to speak briefly on the Bill, which I broadly welcome. These are matters on which our constituents expect action to be taken. It may not go as far as some would like in some areas and it may go too far for others, but on Second Reading we look at the principle of a Bill, and I agree that it should have a Second Reading and then be considered in Committee and on Report.

There are a couple of points I want to make before I move on to my main comments. On article 8 of the ECHR, the Chişinău declaration was very encouraging. It is a good step forward to see agreement across the Council of Europe area on the way article 8 and other parts of the ECHR are being abused. I suggest that the Minister look at section 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which states that the UK courts “must” refer to decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Perhaps the wording could be changed to “may” to make it easier for courts to disregard clearly ridiculous decisions that should not have any bearing on the decisions being taken in our courts. I also refer him to the work done in the coalition Government on the European arrest warrant, when we were still a member of it. We changed the rules in the UK so that only somebody who was guilty of a crime that would be a crime in the UK could have an arrest warrant applied to them. Previously, we had all sorts of spurious claims such as not paying tips to Greek waiters and so on. The Minister may want to look at that.

On small boats, the Select Committee visited northern France. The hon. Members for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) and for Bassetlaw (Jo White) were all there to see the work being done. It is very impressive to see the work being done jointly with the UK. We heard a lot from UK law enforcement and others who were working closely with their French counterparts. I encourage more of that.

However, I cannot stress enough how important ministerial oversight is. I pay tribute to our former colleague James Brokenshire, who as Immigration Minister insisted that he receive an update every single day on the number of people entering the country, the number who were in claims and the number of visas being issued. He kept on having a daily update. Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a delight that you are in the Chair, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) was also an Immigration Minister and she employed a similar approach. It would be fair to say that the evidence we have heard on the Select Committee indicates that that level of ministerial oversight has not happened at all times, and perhaps that is why we saw some big spikes.

[Chris Murray]

The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and I were in northern France together. Does she share my impression from that trip that the scale and complexity of the operations the French Government were undertaking was quite astonishing? Will she join me in welcoming the new iteration of the Sandhurst treaty? This may be stretching the bounds of bipartisanship too much, but does she agree that it is good to reset the relationship with our European friends and neighbours? In cross-border channels, when difficult issues arise, it is only through those joint working operations—now that we have left the European Union—that we can collectively tackle the small boats, which are as much of an issue for France as for the UK.

[Dame Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Member—my friend from the Select Committee—for an enjoyable visit. We learned a lot, but it was a challenging visit, as there was an awful lot to take in. This is a problem that affects countries across the world; it is not an issue that can be solved by one country alone. We have to work together. We also came away agreeing that if everybody who arrived from France was immediately taken back to France, it would kill the trade of the people smugglers. That is something that we should start trying to negotiate with our friends in France.

In the short amount of time that I have left, I will focus on part 5. I declare that, as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery, I have some concerns. Apart from anything else, human trafficking and modern slavery is not an immigration crime. Someone’s immigration status may make them more vulnerable, but it is a financial crime—it is the exploitation of one human being by another for financial gain. Although I understand the reasons and we are grateful that there are some good points in the Bill, it is concerning that it keeps being put into the migration bucket, rather than being seen as the financial crime that it is.

I am in contact with a number of organisations, and the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, has been in touch with me. There is general agreement that there are some good things in the Bill—the strengthening of civil orders and the support for children are welcome. However, the abuse of the modern slavery protections needs to be looked at, because nobody can self-declare as a victim of modern slavery. A first responder has to say that this person is likely to be a victim of modern slavery, so what is going wrong with the first responders? Why is it that first responders are being dragged into, as the Government say, declaring people to be victims of modern slavery to avoid deportation? That is something that should be looked at without removing protections for victims.

One has to have a victim-centred approach to this crime in order to solve it; it cannot be solved only by pursuing the bad guys. The victims have to be at the centre, because it is an extraordinary crime in which the commodity that money is being made from is the human being. It is not a drug, a firearm or any other product; it is a human being. That human being needs to be prepared and able to give evidence, to speak out and to recognise the crime that has been committed against them.

Victim support is essential to solve this crime. If one wants to see the issue in a hard-nosed way, the only way we are going to kill the trade is by looking after the victims so that we can stop the bad guys. That is the basic point. I do not have time to go through the specifics, but I urge the Minister to engage with the many authorities—in particular, the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner—to see where the measures that the Government have introduced may have unintended consequences that make it harder to tackle this crime. With that, I will sit down and let other Members speak, as there are many others who wish to do so.

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[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), who was the author of the mess that we are discussing clearing up; I am sure she will look forward to sharing her comments with Count Binface soon enough. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The Government are absolutely right to be tackling the appeals process—as a supporter of humanitarian protection, I accept that it needs reform if it is to be resilient—but I will focus on part 4, which creates powers to recover the costs of asylum support. I am pleased that the Bill discusses the cost of asylum system, and I support the principle that refugees who go on to earn a lot should contribute back what they received from this country. I suspect that many of them would be happy to do so.

However, let us be clear that those refugees are not responsible for the extraordinary costs of the asylum system. Since entering Parliament, I have been on a one-man mission to highlight the biggest public procurement scandal in Britain—a system causing untold damage but costing the taxpayer £15 billion. The real problem lies with the asylum contracts, signed by the previous Government and overseen by the right hon. and learned Member, with three private providers. The contracts generated eye-watering profits; a founder of one of the companies entered The Sunday Times rich list at taxpayer expense. When these companies come before the Home Affairs Committee, they refuse to answer even the most basic questions, while serious concerns about misconduct in their supply chains remain.

I recognise that this Government inherited those contracts from the right hon. and learned Member and are roped into them for the foreseeable future. I support asking successful refugees to contribute, but that is a peripheral issue.

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Gentleman is almost making my argument for me. The whole reason the Home Office has to enter into expensive contracts and spend £5 million of British taxpayers’ money every day to house asylum seekers is that the ECHR imposes onerous duties on the state to accommodate unlimited numbers of asylum seekers, without any thought as to cost effectiveness.

[Chris Murray]

No, it is not. It is because the right hon. and learned Lady passed the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which allowed the backlog to soar. It is because the right hon. and learned Lady signed off on putting asylum seekers in hotels, which cost £34,000 per asylum seeker, as opposed to £14,000 per asylum seeker when she came into office. It is because the right hon. and learned Lady failed to get the Department to grip the use in public procurement of taxpayers’ money, which she wasted then tried to instrumentalise to sow division in the country.

These outsourcing contracts have allowed extortionate profit at taxpayers’ expense. They have damaged communities, failed the vulnerable and exposed serious weaknesses in Home Office procurement. Are the Government certain that they do not need further powers to sort out these contracts and recoup the costs that have already been wasted? If not, why is that not included in the Bill?

Second Reading is about principles. I believe that this Bill identifies the right areas for reform—appeals, protection and costs—and, for that reason, I will support it tonight. I look forward to seeing concerns about the detail, implementation and asylum contracts being addressed as it progresses.