Illegal Immigration

Craig Mackinlay Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member will remember, I am sure, that after the Windrush situation data sharing was stopped in a range of different places and has not restarted. We will be restarting data sharing with the banks, so that when someone tries to open a new bank account, and on a quarterly basis for existing bank accounts, the banks will have to check against the database of illegal migrants that we hold to ensure people cannot disappear into the black economy having arrived here illegally and then participate in a normal way. That is not right and not fair, and I am glad he will be supporting the proposals.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I am very pleased to hear about the new approach to Albanians, which is both obvious and very sensible. My question to the Prime Minister is on how we bridge the gap. We approve 76% of all asylum applications, but the EU average is just 14%. We are all ECHR signatories. They are not held out as international pariahs or as breaking any abstract of international law. The Prime Minister may be surprised to hear that I have no issue with the ambit of the ECHR as long as we have an outcome of about 14%, too. What has been going wrong with our approvals and refusals process?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. A big part of that difference is how we are treating Albania. That will be changed as a result of our new guidance and deal. More broadly, one of the changes that we have made today is to increase the threshold that someone has to meet to be considered a modern slave. It was based on simply a suspicion that someone may be; we are changing that to make sure that there is objective evidence that they are. That change will help us to close down some of those grant rates, but there is more work to do and that is what our legislation will deliver.