Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Chris Murray Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 19th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Forster]

The hon. Gentleman and I, and others, worked really hard in Committee, proposing humanitarian visa amendments, and trying to lift the ban on asylum seekers working—both measures that would have made things better for taxpayers and for vulnerable refugees. Sadly, we were not listened to, but I hope that we will be listened to if we have the pleasure, or the unfortunate duty, of serving on the Bill Committee for the next Bill.

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

Since we all served on the Committee for this Bill, the Government have announced a “one in, one out” deal with France, and this week, new safe routes were announced by the Home Secretary as part of the new package. Under the “one in, one out” deal, the “one in” will arrive by a safe route, so will the hon. Gentleman welcome the Government’s reforms to the immigration system, given that that is what he has been calling for?

[Mr Forster]

I am pleased that the Home Secretary and the Government are finally listening to what I and others have been saying for years: that safe and legal routes are important. However, the “one in, one out” deal with France is not delivering what the Government wanted. The humanitarian visas and the safe routes that we proposed would have done so. We have not seen a flood of Ukrainians crossing the channel, because we have a genuine safe route for them, and we need to expand such initiatives to others.

Let me make some progress. The Liberal Democrats—and others, I assume—welcome parts of this Bill, but the glaring reality is that it falls far short of what is needed to keep our borders and people safe. The Government say that the Bill gives authorities stronger tools, and some of that is true. For example, clauses 19 to 26, which were added in Committee, give the Border Force and the police further powers to seize electronic devices, and I think that is broadly sensible. A Government amendment on Report on tightening offences linked to the supply of equipment used in organised crime was also a reasonable step.

The Liberal Democrats and I also welcome changes that our peers pressed for in the other place, including the exemption for hygiene products, which came from a recommendation by the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I know the Minister mentioned that. I am grateful to the Government for listening in this instance to the suggestions of my colleagues.

The Government were defeated in the other place on an amendment that required the collection of data about overseas students who had visas revoked due to criminal offences. That Conservative Lords amendment would not help to tackle organised crime, or to improve border security, and I do not believe that it strengthens this Bill, so Liberal Democrat MPs will not support it today.

The Government pushed Lords amendments on data sharing, the EU settlement scheme and conditions on leave or bail, many of which tidy things up, or respond to the Liberal Democrats’ human rights concerns. Those are fine as far as they go, but they do not change the overall picture.

In summary, if the Government truly want to stop small boat crossings, they must work more closely with our European partners. Tough talk at home will not achieve what co-operation abroad can, and this Bill and the tabled Lords amendments will not tackle the huge asylum backlog, or reduce the hotel bills that this Government inherited from the Conservatives. Unless the Government support what we are calling for, this Bill will not deliver the safe borders and fairer system that the public expect, and they will remember that at the ballot box.

[Chris Murray]

I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to the support that my office receives from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project.

It is good to see us making progress on this really important Bill, which is utterly essential to what the Government are trying to achieve on the reform of asylum. Nobody can argue that the asylum system in Britain does not need reform. Public trust has been draining from it, because of the growth in illegal crossings and asylum hotels, and because asylum seekers are drowning in the channel as a result of this vile trade. Only last month, a one-month-old baby drowned off the British coast. That is unacceptable. Some 14 children died last year; if that number of children were dying in any other circumstances, people would call on the Government to go hell for leather in tackling it, and to do anything it took to do so. We must do the same for children who are asylum seekers.

I strongly welcome Lords amendment 8. Asylum crossings in the channel are driven by two factors: supply and demand. “Demand” means the causes of asylum, such as war, climate change, conflict and repression. “Supply” relates to the supply of small boats, gangs who facilitate the crossing, the ability to get over the channel, and the networks upstream funnelling them to Calais. A big part of the operation is the social media enterprise.

More than 10 years ago, I was a justice and home affairs attaché in Paris, working on channel crossings. They took place on lorries at the time, and we were able to clamp down on that, but the fundamental difference between now and then—it was more than 10 years ago—is the existence of social media. There is an incredibly sophisticated network of human traffickers, who are incredibly well financed, as a result of the costs that they put on migrants and organised crime. They use social media, exploit migrants and put them in the boats.

Lords amendment 8 is really important in criminalising the facilitation and advertisement of illegal immigration. My question to the Home Office is whether it is properly stepping up its capabilities, and its engagement with private sector and social media firms, to ensure an impact. It will change the calculus for asylum seekers on the path to the UK if they are given proper information, not misleading information by traffickers.

I turn to the Opposition’s Lords amendment 37, on data collection and international students. Public data on migration is incredibly important. The public want to see control of the immigration system; transparency and data are central to that. However, this Lords amendment is not the way to go about getting proper data and scrutiny of the migration system. That is partly because amendments to primary legislation lead to selective, partial or mandated publication of data that is highly controversial and can be selectively and partially used by people on all sides of the migration debate to make their specific point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Norris]

As I said in my opening speech, it is right that we take our time to develop the right package of data, so that we can publish it and the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) and I can sit down and discuss it in great detail. [Interruption.] As always, the hon. Member for Hamble Valley wants it now, but as I suspect he is learning, opposition does not always work on a “now” timeline. The Conservatives may well have some time in which to find that out.

[Chris Murray]

Does the Minister agree that we have a very strong ecosystem of data on migration in this country? For example, the Home Office publishes enormous amounts of data every quarter. The ONS publishes a lot of data, and the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration publishes and analyses lots of the data that the new occupant of that role collects. We also have an ecosystem of think-tanks, research organisations and universities—for example, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford does amazing work in this space. The challenge is not that data on immigration is not available; it is that people interpret it selectively for their own purposes.

[Alex Norris]

That is always the challenge, because we live in a world of misinformation, disinformation and, I am sad to say, occasionally bad faith. However, my antidote to that is the same as my hon. Friend’s: better transparency is the best way to see our way through. He is exactly right that we already publish a vast amount, including on visas, returns and detention. He is exactly right that we keep things under review in line with the code of practice for statistics.

I say gently to Opposition colleagues that we have made a commitment. Many of them did not see my opening speech, so it perhaps bears repeating. We understand the heightened interest from parliamentarians, the media and members of the public in the number and type of criminal offences committed by foreign nationals and what happens to them. It is in everybody’s interest for that to be known. It is also in everybody’s interest for that dataset to be as good as possible.