Illegal Migration Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that comment. As an important aside that relates to other issues he has raised, nothing in the Bill disapplies the Children Act, which will continue to apply in all respects with regard to the children we deal with in this situation. In answer to his particular point, we are taking this power so that in the very small number of judicious cases in which we set out to remove a child, we can take them from the care of the local authority into the responsibility of the Home Office for the short period before they are removed from the country. I have given two examples of situations in which we would use that power, and I will happily give them again. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is concerned about this point.

The first situation is where we are seeking to return a young person to their relatives in another country. I think it is incredibly important that we keep the ability to do so, because that does happen occasionally. It is obviously the right thing to do to return somebody to their mother, their father, their uncle or the support network that they have in another country.

The other situation is where we are removing somebody who has arrived as an unaccompanied minor to another safe country, where we are confident that they will be met on arrival by social services and provided with all the support that one would expect. That happens all the time here with unaccompanied minors; I think the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned, drawing on his experience as a local Member of Parliament around Heathrow, that it happens regularly. It is important that we continue to have that option, because we should not be bringing people into local authority care for long periods in the UK when we can safely return them home, either to their relatives or to their home country, where they can be safeguarded appropriately.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Minister respond to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire)? Where is the impact assessment for the Bill?

[Robert Jenrick]

The impact assessment will be published in due course.

Let me continue with the points I was making. I return to a question that has been raised on several occasions about our policy on the detention of minors. Let me say, speaking as a parent, that of course we take this incredibly seriously. We do not want to detain children. We have to apply the highest moral standards when we take this decision.

The circumstance in which we would use that power is where there is an age assessment dispute about an unaccompanied minor. It is easy to dismiss that, but it happens all the time. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) was correct to raise his experience as a local authority leader. There are a very large number of such disputes: between 2016 and December of last year, there were 7,900 asylum cases in which age was disputed and subsequently resolved. In almost half of those cases —49%—the people in question were found to be adults.

Where there is a live age assessment dispute, it would be wrong for the Government to place those people in the same accommodation as minors who are clearly children, creating safeguarding risks for them. I am not willing to do that. I want to ensure that those children are properly protected. When I visited our facilities at Western Jet Foil recently, I asked a member of staff who was the oldest person they had encountered who had posed as a minor. They said that that person was 41 years of age! Does anyone in this House seriously want to see a 41-year-old man placed with their children? I do not want to see it, and that is the circumstance in which we are going to take and use these very judicious powers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) raised a number of important points in respect of his amendment on mandatory scientific age assessments. I can say to him that not only are those valid points, but the Government are considering carefully how we should proceed in this regard. The UK is one of the very few European countries that do not currently employ scientific methods of age assessment. In January, the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee published a report on the issue. The Home Secretary and I are giving careful consideration to its recommendations, and I hope to be in a position to say more on Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

With reference to amendment 189 and the contribution of Afghans, Sabir Zazai tells a story of when he was given a letter from the Home Office saying, “You are a person liable to be detained and removed.” More recently, at a celebration to mark his being awarded an OBE, he said he had received a different letter telling him he was being awarded this great honour of the British state. He said he would put those two letters on the wall next to one another, because they show that, regardless of the circumstances by which someone came to these islands, there ought to be nothing they cannot achieve.

There ought to be nothing—but this Bill pulls up the drawbridge. It makes this country smaller, it makes this country meaner and it makes this country crueller—for every Sabir Zazai, for every Abdul Bostani, for every person that the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) is outraged about. People can come here and make a contribution. They could live a dull, boring, ordinary life, they could be an OBE, they could be the First Minister of a country, but they have a contribution to make and they deserve to get to make that contribution without the UK Government pulling up the drawbridge and saying that they are unwelcome.

[Debbie Abrahams]

On amendment 189, which deals with Afghan citizens, it is striking that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs said this afternoon that there are no safe routes for Afghans to come to this country. Those Afghans have protected many of us as citizens and protected our armed forces, yet there are no safe routes for them to come here. Does the hon. Lady not think that is an absolute disgrace, given the promises made to them in 2021?

Illegal Migration Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me make a small amount of progress and then I will give way to the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams).

I turn to the first issue of substance, which is Lords amendment 2. That would provide that the duty to make arrangements for removal applied to persons who entered illegally from the date of commencement of clause 2, rather than on or after 7 March 2023, as originally provided for in the Bill.

We acknowledge the position advanced by some in the other place and in this House about the retrospective effect of the Bill, but these Lords amendments go too far in resetting the clock. The closer we get to commencement of the Bill, the greater the risk that organised criminals and people smugglers will seek to exploit that, and we will see an increase in crossings as the deadline looms, which would only put more people at risk.

To guard against that, we have brought forward amendments in lieu to move the application of the duty from 7 March to the date of Royal Assent. The date of 7 March, however, would continue to apply for the purpose of the Secretary of State’s power to provide accommodation for unaccompanied children and for the purposes of the bans on re-entry, settlement and citizenship. That Government amendment in lieu has a particular advantage with respect to the concerns about modern slavery expressed by my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), but I will come to that in a moment.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Can the Minister tell me how many Afghan women have been able to avail themselves of the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme phase 3 programme? That is the Government’s position on a safe and legal route. As we have understood from various Westminster Hall debates, we are looking at a handful in phase 3. Everything else refers to what has happened in 2021. I also draw his attention to the recent horrific drownings off Greece. This included a number of Afghan nationals and people from Pakistan-administered Kashmir. What really is the point of these ineffective, supposed safe routes?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady and I share the same objective: to ensure that the schemes that the Government have established are operationalised as quickly as possible, so that people who are eligible—perhaps including the women she is in contact with—can come to the United Kingdom, settle here and find sanctuary. It is incredibly important that the UK is a beacon in the world for resettlement schemes. We have already supported more than 20,000 people under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the ACRS to come to the United Kingdom. I appreciate her point that the numbers in recent months have been lower than she or we would like. One reason is that there is so little capacity in the UK today to properly house individuals, and one explanation for that is that the sheer number of individuals entering the country illegally on small boats has placed an intolerable pressure on our social housing and the contingency accommodation that we have available. If we are to bring further individuals to the UK—as we want to do and are continuing to do—they risk being housed in hotels, which is an unacceptable way to house vulnerable people and, in particular, families.

[Debbie Abrahams]

The Minister is being generous with his time. We in the all-party parliamentary group on Afghan women and girls have hundreds of civilians who would like a “homes for Afghans” scheme. These people are waiting and have already volunteered. This scheme is ready and it is equivalent to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, so I urge the Government to take us up on it and make sure that the supposed safe routes are actual safe routes.

[Robert Jenrick]

I strongly endorse the hon. Lady’s comments. The Homes for Ukraine scheme has been superb and we should all be proud of it—I took part in it at one point. If it is possible to create a comparable scheme for Afghans, we should consider that. I know that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, who has responsibility for that issue, is considering it.

On the broader point about resettlement, the UK has a strong record in this regard. Of course, we would all like to go further, but since 2015 we have welcomed 550,000 people to this country on humanitarian grounds, mostly on resettlement schemes. We are one of the world’s leading countries for such schemes.