Immigration and Asylum Bill (Ninth sitting)

David Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 22nd October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we will come to that. Even within the existing rules, there was an opportunity for the previous Administration to take tougher action to prioritise this. Instead of using those rules, they looked at fanciful arrangements with other countries, with completely empty planes taking off. They wasted huge amounts of public money on schemes that were little more than a gimmick.

The stats that I mentioned—that 70% of appeals are successful, and that there are 20,000 foreign offenders in a clogged appeals system—do not demonstrate a system that is fair or working at full capacity, or indeed working as it should.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a powerful speech. It is right that our immigration and asylum system should, first and foremost, be fair to the population of the United Kingdom. Does she agree that, on the question of whether we can remove people who have committed serious crimes, it is also unfair to legitimate asylum seekers, who risk being tarred with the same brush, with their reasons for fleeing often serious and horrible situations in other countries coming under suspicion?

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Where people seek to game the system, it undermines it for those with legitimate claims. That is where we start to see a real breakdown of trust in the system, with everybody being put into the same category. In my view, that creates even greater civil unrest and the potential for pretty heinous actions to be taken by those in local communities. We have seen the situation around the country spiral in recent times, with very vulnerable individuals being targeted because of an improper and unfair narrative due to those who have sought to exploit weaknesses in a system that was left abjectly under-resourced under the previous Government.

The Minister and my hon. Friends have mentioned that around 70,000 people have been deported since July 2024, an increase of over 41%. It has probably gone up since I made these notes, because my next sentence says, “of these, 10,000 were foreign national offenders.” As we have heard, it has gone up to 12,000, and the increase is 41%, not the 36% that I noted. That is a remarkable achievement within the confines of a system that is straining at the seams, and it demonstrates this Government’s determination to try to fix a broken system and give that reassurance to the British public. It is worth reiterating that at every opportunity.

There are other signals that the Home Office is intent on providing that reassurance, as enforcement funding is rising. Immigration enforcement spending will increase from £681 million to £1.33 billion by the end of this Parliament. Staffing numbers will rise from 4,500 to 7,300. Those are not small measures, and they not only reassure the public but make the system work as it is supposed to. Although deportations have increased, there remains a substantial backlog, so new powers allowing immediate deportation after sentencing for most determinate sentence offenders will start to show a reduction in the coming months and years. There is also the added benefit that earlier removal will reduce pressure on prison capacity, which we all know is under great strain.

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[Matt Vickers]

We welcome deportations of people with no right to be here, but when we start going back through the records to see who arrived and who left without us even knowing, we have the Home Office scratching numbers together to work out who has gone. It is a positive that we can improve deportations, but in recent times, we have gone from the point where we said that somebody who arrives in this country illegally cannot claim citizenship—there was legislation in place—to a point where that has been unpicked by this Government. We sat through the debates on the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 on that subject.

This is an opportunity to improve things. We are determined to get among it. We are determined to improve it. Whatever the deportations are, they need to be significantly higher for my constituents to be happy.

I will correct the record—7,042 arrivals from Eritrea, two were removed; 4,490 from Afghanistan, one was removed; 4,389 from Sudan, zero removed. That is not a satisfactory system. That is not working. This is the opportunity to improve that.

[David Smith]

Notwithstanding the abject failure of the last Government to manage our immigration system, there are many ways to skin a cat. The hon. Member mentioned Eritrean immigrants or asylum seekers and deportations. He may have noticed that the Government are looking to work with the Eritrean Government to say that there will be no access to visas to the UK for Eritreans unless that Government agree to take people back. There are many ways to address this.

Those on the Opposition Benches repeatedly mention the ECHR. We have had a long debate about the part of this Bill that addresses article 8 of the ECHR, which has been problematic, but does he ultimately want to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Do he and his constituents care about article 2, the right to life; article 3, the prohibition of torture; article 4, the prohibition of slavery; article 7, no punishment without law; or article 9—something very close to my heart as the UK special envoy for freedom of religion and belief—the freedom of thought, conscience and religion? Is it not true that the Opposition’s approach is to simply throw the baby out with the bathwater?

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[Melanie Onn]

Did I say “you”? Apologies, I am normally very good at avoiding that, Mrs Barker.

When Ministers and the Government look at the payment and repayment schedules further down the line, they will have the opportunity to look at that point in greater detail and see whether flexibility is required. But the anticipation is that people who are here and were given the opportunity to settle and start their life again—as we have seen with so many people who have come to this country in asylum circumstances and have gone on to do great things—will be able to make the contribution as it is set out.

[David Smith]

Not to do my hon. Friend’s work for her, but the hon. Member for Wimbledon asked why anyone else in receipt of benefits should not make a contribution. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a clear distinction? By definition, if someone coming here to seek asylum has not contributed to the wider economy—and if we can guarantee that historically—that differentiates them from someone who is already here and most likely did, in most cases, make a contribution, through work or otherwise, to the benefits that they receive? As I have already mentioned, before my time in Parliament I ran a homelessness charity, and we often had asylum seekers in our accommodation—which is literally behind where we are sitting right now, in Southwark—who were desperate to make contributions. They repeatedly told us—they made it very clear—that they wanted to make a financial contribution to the country that had given them sanctuary.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I am going to come to that, because making sure that what is and will be expected of people is clear and up front, without any ambiguity, will help those applying to understand the expectations that will be conveyed upon them. That will also give some reassurance to the UK public that this country is not seen as a soft touch. It might help to reset some negative views about how migrants who arrive here to claim asylum are, in some way, only here to milk the system and get all they can, or that they only want to take, take, take, and are not prepared to give, give, give. My hon. Friend’s example proves the exact opposite: people claiming asylum want to contribute.

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[Blake Stephenson]

The hon. Member has proved my point: if you turn up to scrutiny meetings and make your point, sometimes the Government listen. They did so by taking on one of my earlier amendments. Turning up and contributing is helpful.

[David Smith]

I am delighted to hear the Opposition spokesman say that this is not a refugee tax. Does he agree, as we approach other issues in the Bill and elsewhere, that redistributions of funding and contributions in other areas are not always a tax?

[Blake Stephenson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is not a refugee tax.

On 18 March 2025, Labour Members voted down that new clause 37. The then Minister told that Committee that it was not sufficiently developed to be put into primary legislation. Interestingly, we heard the same criticism from witnesses about clause 23 of this Bill, and even the Government’s own impact assessment rates the impact of these measures as “uncertain”. I ask the Minister what amount and what income threshold the Government intend to set. The Home Office has spoken of £10,000; will that be a flat rate per adult, and over what period? How will the threshold be set so that the charge does not deter people from taking work or declaring their earnings—a risk that the Government’s own impact assessment identified?

Amendment 76 would prevent any payment that would leave a person or household with below 60% of median household income. Clause 23(5) already provides that no one will be required to pay if it would make them “destitute”. Amendment 76 would go far beyond destitution: with a 60% median test, very few people who had been supported by taxpayers would ever pay anything; it would turn into a repayment scheme in name only.

Amendment 81 would cut the amount owed by 20% for every 30 days beyond six months that the Home Office took to decide a claim. I understand the point being made—delays cost money and are not the claimant’s fault—but it is the taxpayer who has paid for those months, and the answer to delays is making faster decisions, not giving a discount. What is the current average time to an initial decision, and what is the Government’s target?

Amendment 79 would cap repayments at the cost of the support received. I would be surprised if the Government intend anything else. Will the Minister confirm that nobody will be asked to repay more than the support they receive, which is the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton Pavilion? If so, the amendment is unnecessary.

Government amendment 124 will enable repayments to be reduced, waived or refunded, including by giving the Secretary of State discretion. Amendments 125 and 126 deal with insolvency. The supplementary memorandum to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee says that the powers will be subject to the negative procedure because they can only benefit individuals. The Opposition will not oppose the measures, but the use of a discretion to waive, exercised on a case by case basis and never reported, is how schemes like this quietly stop working. What criteria will govern waivers? Will the number and value of waivers be published each year? Will a person be able to clear the debt by making themselves bankrupt?

The Committee is entitled to know whether the scheme will ever recover meaningful sums. Migration Observatory expects that unless the threshold is set significantly below the minimum wage, the number of people earning enough to reach it will be relatively small. That is set against the enormous cost to the British taxpayer. Around 97,500 asylum seekers receive taxpayer-funded support, costing the taxpayer roughly £4 billion in 2024-25. Simple division of that figure suggests that the costs are close to £40,000 a year per person supported. A £10,000 contribution, if it were ever collected, would recover only a small proportion of the initial cost.

During the Committee’s oral evidence session, when my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West asked the Minister what measurable difference the Bill will make, she said:

“I do not want to put a specific figure on it.”––[Official Report, Immigration and Asylum Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2026; c. 72, Q127.]

Can she do so now? How many people do the Government expect to pay? How much will be recovered each year, and over what period? How much will it cost to build and run the system? Given that the Government do not have a good history of running systems, can she assure us that the scheme will raise more money than it costs?

Amendment 141, tabled in my name, would ensure that where an individual has been required to repay asylum support costs, any unpaid amount can be considered when deciding applications to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, including for settlement. That would give the scheme more weight by providing that the debt will influence settlement decisions until it is paid off. If amendment 141 is not made, the consequence of not paying will depend on earned settlement rules that have not been laid before Parliament. Will the Government support the amendment?

The Opposition oppose amendments 81, 76 and 79, but not Government amendments 124 to 126. As I mentioned, the principle of clause 23 was originally in a Conservative proposition, so of course we support it, but our concern is that a repayment scheme with discretionary waivers and no consequences for non-payment will be ineffective. We look for assurance from the Minister on that. I will be pressing amendment 141 to a Division.