James Daly
Main Page: James Daly (Conservative - Bury North)
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is completely right. Over the last five years, the Conservatives have let criminal gangs take hold along our borders, along the channel. That is undermining our border security. We should be strengthening our border security and fixing the asylum chaos that has built up over the last few years. That includes going after the criminal gangs and stronger border security measures.
The Court of Appeal says that the Rwanda scheme capacity will be only about 100 people. Rwanda’s asylum system is used to deciding only about 100 cases a year, and the Immigration Minister has admitted that the likely number of people is only in the hundreds. The current backlog is over 100,000 people, and last year over 90,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. We have a policy that will likely cover less than 1% of those arriving in the UK, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds that the Government will not come clean about. That raises another important question.
Yvette Cooper
Before I get to that important question, I will give way briefly to both hon. Members in turn.
James Daly
Will Labour’s policy, or proposed policy, for addressing border security be to allow offshore processing claims in Turkey?
Yvette Cooper
In theory, someone who was in Turkey and applied for the Homes for Ukraine scheme would be processed while in Turkey. However, it is not clear what the Government are proposing, or what the hon. Member is proposing, because nothing has been proposed by the Government. Labour’s proposal is to go after the criminal gangs through a new cross-border unit, with stronger security powers, and a new security agreement with other European countries, and to stop the boats before they reach the French coast by going after the supply chain of the criminal gangs. Under the Conservatives there has been a 30% drop in the number of people smuggling convictions, which shows that they are not taking action on the smuggler gangs but instead have let them take hold, and we will tackle that.
Tim Loughton
I completely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend, because once those people make it into British territorial waters, they are in effect guaranteed to be living in the UK at the UK taxpayers’ expense for the foreseeable future, and that is what the Rwanda scheme aims to address. It is a deterrent to stop people making that dangerous journey in the first place, and it will become a lottery whether they end up in a hotel in Kent or on a plane to Rwanda. As I have said time and again, when the Home Affairs Committee went to Calais in January, we were told by all the officials dealing with the schemes over there, that when the Government initially announced the Rwanda scheme, there was a surge of people at Calais seeking to regularise their migration status in France, because they did not want to risk being put on a plane to Rwanda, so we know that it has a deterrent effect.
James Daly
As a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee, would my hon. Friend agree that the same official said it was crucial that the United Kingdom Government have a strong deterrent policy as part of other policies to protect our borders?
Tim Loughton
That is exactly right. Other countries have shown an interest in the scheme, as did the officials when we spoke to them in France, and other countries want a part of the action that Rwanda may be getting once this scheme actually starts. It can unlock a whole host of opportunities, and I hope that we can ultimately have a series of European countries, particularly in north Europe, working together as a multifaceted network on a Rwanda-type scheme.
People smugglers thrive on any attempts to suggest that schemes such as this will not take off, so the Opposition are doing us a disservice. They are only playing into the hands of the people smugglers by trying to undermine the Rwanda scheme without coming up with any alternative that would seriously damage the trade of the people smugglers in the first place. So it is right that we should give the Rwanda scheme space to get off the ground—literally—and it is also right that we should scrutinise the effectiveness of the scheme.
The scheme needs to be put in the context of the alternatives. What is the cost of accommodating asylum seekers who have entered the UK illegally in hotels or other rented accommodation while awaiting their decisions? On the basis of £6 million or £8 million a day for hotels alone, every additional £100 million estimated to be spent on the Rwanda scheme would accommodate people in hotels for just 17 days. Let us put it in that context. What is the cost of multi-agency control and operation centres, and of Border Force and others patrolling the English channel and picking up the boats? Where is a reference in this motion to more transparency about how the £480 million subsidy we now give to the French police force is being spent? Despite the fact of that record subsidy, interception rates by the French authorities actually fell last year, and there is evidence that some of our money is being used in operations on the Franco-Italian border, rather than on the channel. Those are the comparisons that need to be made.
Labour—the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)—came up with the five-point plan in March last year, but it turned out that most of those five points were already being undertaken by the Government anyway. Before Christmas, there was a story that Labour is considering detailed plans for a so-called offshoring scheme, and that the last Labour Government—David Blunkett and others—apparently discussed a scheme for offshoring to Tanzania, something that has been described by the current Labour leader as a “gimmick”, so why the change of heart? What is different in the principles of what they are apparently looking at now from those of the Rwanda plan for offshoring migrants? Is this a change of heart on the policy, and if so, why are they still objecting to the Rwanda scheme? Is it that they just do not like Rwanda, or that they just do not like the cost of it, in which case, what is the cost of their own scheme? If they are going to criticise what the Government are doing because of a lack of transparency, their potential schemes, which have been denied and then not denied, are completely and utterly opaque.
This is a sham, a shambles, a Labour gimmick and a con. It is a feeble attempt to show that the Opposition are somehow tackling illegal migration by talking about it, attacking the Government and voting against every attempt to bring forward practical measures, while having no credible working plans of their own. They need to be called out for it, and I shall be voting against this motion.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The unworkability and cost of the Rwanda scheme are representative of this Government’s dysfunctional approach to asylum applications as a whole. Faced with an election this year, and having failed to stop the boats—indeed, the failure was such that 2023 had the second-highest number of boat crossings ever—the grand plan is now to embark on a £400 million gamble on the promise to stop the boats. That is £400 million of taxpayers’ money being effectively lumped on one number at the roulette table with nothing other than blind faith being relied upon that the scheme will deal with the problem. What started as distraction tactics as part of Operation Save Big Dog has become central Government policy as part of Operation Save Ourselves.
I am probably overstating it by saying that blind faith is being shown in the plan. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the previous Home Secretary and the previous Immigration Minister all seem to have privately had doubts about it in office, and nothing I have heard from those on the Government Benches has persuaded me that this is being driven by anything other than desperation. Indeed, the Prime Minister was challenged on “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” about his time as Chancellor, when he supposedly examined the scheme. In effect, he said of the deterrent effect that it would supposedly have, “We have not tried this before, so we might as well give it a go.” His precise words were:
“This hasn’t been tried before in our country. It’s fair to say it is novel. I’ve been very clear that this is a novel scheme.”
I am all for innovation, but £400 million being spent on something on the basis we have not tried it before ought to be ringing alarm bells, particularly when nothing else that this Government have tried has stopped the boats either. It seems that the Government’s approach now is, in effect, third time lucky.
Justin Madders
No, I have not got time, sorry.
It is £400 million at least, and there may be other costs that we do not know about, and that is why our motion is so important. I thought that taking back control meant an end to handing over millions of pounds to foreign powers without anything coming back in return. The Government’s impact assessment for the Bill states that it is
“uncertain what level of deterrence impact it will have”,
and given that deterrence is its whole point, there could not be a clearer case of the headline-first approach that this Government take on so many things, which is why, from housing to health to education to the economy, we are in such a mess.
In the most optimistic scenario, about 1% of those who cross the channel can expect to be sent to Rwanda—that is if all the numerous hurdles that we have talked about are overcome. Will anyone say, “I won’t take a chance on that 1% risk”? Of course not; it is just a giant smokescreen to cover up the Government’s many failings.
Those who work day to day in housing asylum seekers do not appear to have much confidence in the likelihood of there being any deterrent effect, either. We can go online and see that Serco, which is responsible for housing asylum seekers in private housing, is still advertising to landlords that it can guarantee rents for up to five years for doing so. It would hardly be doing that if it thought the Rwanda scheme would be a success or any other Government policies in the area were likely to have any effect.
I see nothing in the Rwanda agreement that will deliver on the claims being made about it. Never before has so much been given by so many for so little in return. When we have record taxation levels, public services on their knees and record Government debt, it is right that we challenge and question whether all that expenditure does what it says on the tin. It seems that the Prime Minister agrees with Labour’s approach. I will end with some words from his appearance on “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”. When asked about the examination of the scheme, he said:
“You should always ask probing questions. You should always approach things from a position of scepticism to ensure that you get value for money for taxpayers.”
That is exactly what Labour’s motion seeks. The fact that the Government are set to oppose it says everything we need to know about why there is so little confidence that the scheme will deliver.
Putting Rwanda rhetoric ahead of reality is a really poor way to run the country. With that approach, it is no wonder that the Government are running scared of the people’s verdict.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
Listening to the debate, I think there may be a complete misunderstanding about the fundamental point of the legislation. It is a deterrent. I could pluck any figure out of the air and if the deterrent effect, together with other measures, is to hopefully reduce to zero the number of channel crossings, that will be money well spent. It is a deterrent.
I agreed with absolutely every word said by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee. I do not know how many Members present have actually been to the beaches in Calais, engaged with people and asked for their views on whether this is a deterrent or not. There has been talk about Select Committees, but I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and one of the best politicians I know, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—I hope the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) does not mind me being nice to her in the Chamber—have actually been there. French officials who are working on the frontline support this policy.
What evidence could be cited to suggest that there is a deterrent effect? Well, as my hon. Friend said, when the policy was announced there was a rush to get over here before it was actually in place. This may come as a shock to Opposition Members, but when we were speaking to people on the beaches, who were almost universally single males in their 20s, the vast majority of those I, at least, spoke to—I stand to be corrected—said that they were coming here for purely economic reasons. They saw the streets of the United Kingdom as streets paved with gold. The only piece of evidence that can be advanced by the members of the Select Committee who have actually been to Calais shows that this policy will have a deterrent effect and that it will work. There is not a shred of evidence from the Opposition that it will not work.
My right hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee—I will call her my right hon. Friend—is an extremely good politician. As a member of the Committee, I know that the questions asked about costings are extremely fair, and I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will answer them this evening, just as he has answered many of them when he has appeared before the Committee, but I do wonder sometimes when we talk about the principle behind the Bill. I asked the shadow Home Secretary whether the Labour party was considering the use of offshore processing. There was no answer, and we know that that is because Labour is considering it. The Leader of the Opposition has said that he will consider any plan that works. Rwanda will work, so on the basis of that logic, he will have to accept Rwanda.
I wonder what Opposition Members make of the fact that the Austrian and German Governments are considering processing asylum seekers abroad. Denmark, that bastion of right-wing extremism, passed a law in 2001 allowing refugees to be moved to asylum centres in third countries for processing. The EU, which is exactly the organisation on which the Labour party bases itself, indirectly supports offshore asylum processing as part of broader efforts to stop refugees coming across the Mediterranean and—I cannot believe I am saying this—the bloc has spent not millions but billions of dollars to prevent refugees from reaching Greece and funded the Libyan coastguard to push migrant boats back to north Africa from Europe. Perhaps we could ask the French to do it, but I will leave that question hanging in the air for my hon. and learned Friend the Minister.
To top it all, there is even a UN programme, the emergency transit programme, under which more than 3,000 people who were heading for Europe were moved from Libyan detention centres to Niger—a scheme similar to the Rwanda scheme for asylum seekers. Every international body supports what we are doing. They are all spending money, and they all believe that this will have a deterrent effect. The Opposition have no policy. This debate is a complete gimmick. The Government’s policy is the only policy in town, it is being followed by other countries, and it will work.