Population Growth: Impact of Immigration

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of immigration on population growth.

It is a delight to speak in this Chamber on a subject which is not a delight; it everything but a delight, as I shall articulate briefly in this important debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.

The greatest Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli—of course, a Conservative, but I suppose that is implicit—said that

“change is inevitable…change…is constant.”

I want to speak about the course, character and consequences of change.

Each of us encounters change in our lives. The ultimate change is death, the first change we enjoy is birth, and those between can be either joys or sorrows, but our capacity to adapt to change is not limitless. The enduring touchstones of familiarity help to give our lives certainty and assurance, and it is vital that we understand that that applies communally and collectively as well as personally. Yet the changes that this country has seen in population growth have been dramatic.

So much of the political debate that we cherish and thrive upon in this place is about change, and yet the Government have made no real measure of the effect of a rapidly growing population and have no mechanism across Government to deal with its consequences. When I first ran for Parliament in 1987—I know there are people in this Chamber thinking, “How can that be possible?” and it is true that I was all but a boy in those days—net migration was just 2,000. Up until the mid-1990s, migration was essentially balanced. We had people leaving the country and people coming, and that is what all advanced countries enjoy, for it is the inevitable consequence of being an advanced economy.

When I was first elected to this House in 1997, 10 years later, net migration was 47,000. Ten years later—10 difficult, and some would say tragic, years under the stewardship of Mr Blair—net migration was 233,000. Under the previous Labour Government, total migration was 3.6 million, and nearly 1 million British citizens emigrated, so net migration topped 2.7 million. The rate of inflow between 1997 and 2010 equated to one migrant arriving every minute. Every year since 1997 bar one—when the world was locked down—net migration was in excess of 100,000, and often by a much bigger margin than that. Indeed, net migration has averaged about 250,000 a year over the past two decades.

The most recent figures published by the Office for National Statistics last month are truly shocking: they heralded record net migration of 606,000.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend find it even more, frankly, antidemocratic that at no point in that whole process since the 1980s have the electorate been asked whether that outcome is what they want?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

That is entirely true. Indeed, there is a huge gulf between the expectations and the sentiments of the vast bulk of the British population on this subject and those of that awful marriage of greedy plutocrats and doubt-fuelled liberals, who seem to think that endless migration is acceptable. My hon. Friend is right: this has been done without consent—indeed, without as much as consultation, let alone consent.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the right hon. Gentleman on bringing this forward. I understand the direction he is going in, but my understanding is that 1.2 million people migrated to the UK and 557,000 left to go elsewhere. That leaves a balance, as the right hon. Gentleman said, of 606,000 at the end of June ’22. Does the right hon. Member accept that many of the people who are coming here have a contribution to make to society and can build society alongside us? I understand that economic migrants are outside of this system, but there are many who want to make a contribution. Does he accept that fact, and does he think that the contributions they make to the NHS and to families are important?

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, of course I accept that and I will say a bit more on that later on. Of course it is true that people come here and make remarkable contributions to our communities and to our society. This is not about a failure to acknowledge that contribution; it is about dealing with the unprecedented scale and pace of it. It is impossible to sustain this level of migration for reasons I will set out.

To be clear about the relationship to population, migration alone accounts for 57.5% of population growth in England and Wales. Since 2001, the UK population has increased by 8 million, of which nearly 7 million was due to immigration. Just imagine that figure for a moment. To put it in context, that equates to the combined populations of Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Peterborough, Ipswich, Norwich, Luton and Bradford. A much higher population increase can be expected in future years unless we do something radical to address this problem.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

My point relates to the ratio of numbers of individuals who have come to certain regions of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, we have a fairly small population—maybe even in comparison with some of the cities that have just been mentioned—and yet we have received a large percentage of the people coming in. I am talking about illegal immigrants, of which we took 3,356 in Northern Ireland. We were told that we would take 1,000. Those people are in 21 hotels, which are part of one of our growth industries in Northern Ireland, and are taking up more than 1,100 rooms. That is a big problem. Unfortunately, Scotland has taken a lot fewer. People will ask what is going on there. It is not fair.

[Sir John Hayes]

Of course, when people arrive in the country, there is no accounting for where they choose to go. They will typically go to places where there is work, understandably; we would, too, after all. When I speak of these general numbers, the impact in certain parts of the country, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, has been much more profound than in others.

To go back to my point about change. The ability to cope with that level of change economically, socially and culturally has placed immense burdens on those communities that have enjoyed the greatest levels of migration. The population of this country grew by 606,000 last year. The fact that that is unprecedented is a matter of fact. The fact that it is unacceptable is obvious. The scale of growth will put unbearable pressure on already stretched—

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will be happy to do so in a second, but I just want to illustrate my point.

My hon. Friend may have been about to intervene to tell us this, but last year, we built around 180,000 houses. Bear in mind that the population increased by 600,000. We did not, and could not, build enough surgeries, clinics and hospitals to cope with more than 600,000 additional people. We cannot build enough new railways and roads to deal with the extra demand. We are simply adding 600,000 people to an infrastructure already in desperate need of being upgraded. The pressure on the NHS, which my hon. Friend will know a great deal about, is immense. There were 700,000 new GP registrations last year by people entering the country.

[Dr Poulter]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. I wonder whether he might reflect that last year was slightly unusual in that this country rightly took in approximately 130,000 Ukrainian refugees. There was also a net inflow of about 90,000 British citizens returning. There were other refugees from Afghanistan and Hong Kong to whom we rightly held out our hand as a country to give refuge.

On a wider point, my right hon. Friend is at slight risk of suggesting that immigration per se is bad, when we recognise that people who come here and work hard for the NHS can make a great contribution to our country. Frankly, a number of our public services could not operate without them.

[Sir John Hayes]

People come with an economic need as well as providing an economic benefit. There are costs and benefits to every individual in this room and every person who arrives in the country. The degree of cost they bring will depend on their circumstances. If someone comes who is sick, elderly or infirm, their demand on the NHS will be much greater. If someone comes who is young and fit, economically active and skilled, their contribution to the economy will be much greater.

My hon. Friend is right that last year was exceptional, for the reasons he gave. When I spoke of a typical figure over the period of 250,000, he will understand that that is the size of several substantial cities. Just housing those people alone is proving impossible. The biggest single driver of housing demand is migration, and has been for a very long time indeed.

My hon. Friend is also right that our health service benefits immensely from people born overseas. Both of my sons were delivered by people born overseas. I have been treated by all kinds of specialist doctors, nurses and others born overseas, as have members of my family. I thank them for that service, and fully recognise and appreciate the contribution they have made.

[James Daly]

It is important to say, in respect of that, that the reason why that contribution is required is that we have palpably failed to train home-grown people, who could take the same jobs. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we fall into a lazy argument if we simply talk in platitudes, rather than look at the lives and opportunities of our citizens?

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend encourages me to digress, though within the scope of the matter before us. There is a macroeconomic lesson that needs to be taught to the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility. There is a lazy assumption that increasing population is an automatic good for the economy. It is certainly true that an economy can be grown by those means, but that does not mean per capita growth. It means growth of an altogether cruder kind.

Moreover, the macroeconomic fact is that doing so displaces investment in recruitment, skills and modernising the economy. The economy is stultified in a high-labour mode. Britain’s chance to succeed and prosper in future is as a high-tech, high-skilled economy. Rather than displacing our attention, and subsequently policy and investment, in those skills, by recruiting labour from abroad, we should indeed look closely at the kind of economic future we want to build, and drive policy forward towards that future. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the myth that pervades the economic debate about migration.

I want to make two more points. One is on the likely future population. Experts estimate that the UK population could grow from 67 million to between 83 million and 87 million by 2046 if current immigration trends continue. Growth to 80 million-plus will result in the need to build between 6 million and 8 million more homes. That is equal to between 15 and 18 more cities the size of Birmingham by 2046. I do not say it lightly or blithely, but this is by far the greatest challenge facing the Government.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I would like to expand on that very point and return to the issue of housing. My right hon. Friend might be interested to know of a visit I made to a housing development site in the midlands, where the vast majority of sales were to British national overseas people from Hong Kong, who were buying homes en masse on a development. When the development had been planned, it was not known that this migration route would be open, so the planners did not have that population level in mind. Does that not illustrate the challenges of long-term planning—how long it takes to build the homes we need—and show that the very quick changes in migration patterns have the impact he has described?

[Sir John Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend and pay tribute to her work in her constituency and more widely to highlight these issues.

To put this in perspective, if the UK continues to welcome the number of people we are admitting now, we would need to build 6.5 million more homes solely to cope with population growth over that period. Current immigration numbers require a home to be built in England every five minutes to meet skyrocketing demand. By contrast, even modest changes such as cutting net migration levels back to about 100,000 would help young people to get on the property ladder and prevent more of our countryside from being lost forever to house building.

Given the dramatically increased numbers of people coming here, driving immigration to levels never seen before in British history, urgent action must be taken. I look forward to hearing what action my right hon. Friend the Minister has in mind, but let me make some suggestions. Some work has been done already, due to the exceptional Home Secretary and Minister for Immigration that we are proud to have as members of the Government. The measures to limit master’s degree students bringing their dependants is welcome but insufficient. As I said at the time, it is odd—I will put it no more strongly—that those who are studying a taught master’s can no longer bring their dependants, but those who are studying a research master’s can.

Frankly, we need to be more bold altogether. We should raise the wage threshold for those entering the country on employment visas. We must look closely at the health service and the charges for accessing it—after all, it is a national, not international, health service. We need to focus on building domestic skills, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), which would reduce the need to bring in people with skills that should be home-grown. We certainly need to look at the number of spouse visas issued and the criteria for issuing visas of that kind.

More than all of that, we need to recognise that people coming here can do an important job for us and welcome them accordingly, but they must know that they too will be disadvantaged if the infrastructure creaks to the point of breaking due to this unprecedented level of population growth.

The best way forward would be for the Government to take a holistic look at this challenge. My good friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, in excellent paper he published through the think-tank Civitas, wrote of the need for an office for demographic change along the lines of the Office for Budget Responsibility. It would be missioned to establish proper evidence, provide expert advice and recommend actions for the Government and other agencies to deal with population change. It would set out long-term strategies to meet the needs that are inevitably the product of population growth. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that very sensible idea.

We need to reduce the period that graduates can stay after completing their degrees from two years to about six months, and we must look again at the shortage occupations and skilled workers routes to ensure we are bringing people into the country only when strictly necessary and not allowing businesses to simply hire cheap labour. There is real evidence of declining working conditions. That point has been made very well by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock): working conditions, salaries and so on have been detrimentally affected because some of the people I described as greedy plutocrats—that was an understatement, by the way—would rather employ people on the cheap than do the right thing by their workers. I thought he made a strong case about that when he spoke about it recently in the House.

Disraeli also said:

“Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.”

The prevailing circumstances this country faces in respect of population growth cannot be ignored any longer. We need leadership—I know my right hon. Friend the Minister is well placed to offer it—across the whole of Government because this affects every aspect of government. I have spoken about health, housing and infrastructure; I could have spoken about transport. Every time someone complains about roads and potholes —as they often do—they should know that every extra 10,000 or 100,000 people using the roads puts extra pressure on the infrastructure. I could pick almost every aspect of government—every Department. We need urgent action; otherwise, we will fragment our society, undermine our sense of shared belonging and alter our communities forever. More than that: we will not be able to sustain the good quality of life that British people rightly expect and want the Government to help them enjoy.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. Oh my goodness, where to start with this debate? Well, I will start with my own constituency of Glasgow Central, in which 24.7% of the population were born outside the UK. In the constituency of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who brought forward this debate, 8.9% of the population were born outside the UK; in the constituency of the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton), 5.7%; in Bury North, 8.4%; in Christchurch, 5.5%; and in the Minister’s constituency, 5.7% of the population were born outside the UK. Before we get started on any of this, Mr Paisley, let me say that I will not take any criticism from anybody about immigration or attitudes towards it in Scotland, because I am in a far stronger position to talk about these issues than any of them are, given the demographics of my own constituency.

The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings approached the debate by talking about the lack of housing, healthcare capacity and schools. Those infrastructure problems were caused, in huge part, by a lack of investment from the party that has been in government in the UK for the past 13 years. Investment has not kept pace with population growth in this country. The right hon. Gentleman should be addressing those concerns to this Government, because that infrastructure investment has not taken place. That is why there is not enough housing: he and his colleagues stand up and go, “Oh, we don’t want any housing in our constituencies; we don’t want housing in this place, that place or other places,” then they wonder why there are not enough houses. An absolute mystery, I must say, Mr Paisley.

[Sir John Hayes]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

No, I will not. I listened with patience to the right hon. Gentleman’s comments, and he can listen with patience to mine.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about issues with skills and labour. I agree that there needs to be more investment in skills in the population. Again, the Government have cut back on education infrastructure over all these years at the cost of education, so people have not been able to go into it. For example, the UK Government removed nursing bursaries. We kept them in Scotland, and people are going through that system and becoming the nurses who we so need.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the fact that people here are perhaps not having children. Gosh, is that because there are no nursery places for them because this Government have failed to invest in those places? The lack of childcare is preventing women from having children, and that is a significant problem that this Government have caused—[Interruption.] He did talk about the issue of families here not having children and those demographic challenges. Other Members talked about it too.

[Sir John Hayes]

On a point of order, Mr Paisley. Hyperbole is one thing; calumnies are another. I did not mention people in this country not having children. I did not mention families. I do not know whether that was an invention or a misunderstanding, but it was one or the other.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. That is not a point of order, as you know. Throughout this debate, people have been listened to quietly and all their points have been made. Allow the SNP representative to make her points quietly and with dignity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Huge, vast population growth may be seen by out-of-touch bourgeois liberals as a quick fix for our economy, but what the vast majority of the public know is that it fuels a dependence on low-skilled labour, stultifying our economy over time. The ease of employing workers from overseas displaces investment in domestic skills, including the upskilling of the existing workforce, automation, better working practices and fair pay. The consequence is to inhibit productivity and damage British competitiveness.

More than that, it changes the places we call home beyond recognition. Unless the Government act quickly and decisively, we face the grim future of a weakened, uncompetitive economy and a fragmented disparate society robbed of any sense of shared belonging. The bulk of the public, regardless of their origins, know this. The Minister, gauged by his articulation of his excellent case today, clearly knows it. We know that the Home Secretary understands this too. It is time the whole of Government took back control.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of immigration on population growth.

National Security Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We still have three more speakers, so I would urge brevity.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Brevity is my middle name, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I shall illustrate in this short, pithy but powerful address.

I have only three points to make. The first is that, as members of the ISC know and as the Security Minister knows, the threats to this country are dynamic. They change rapidly and the means of countering them must change accordingly. It is critically important therefore that we understand, as the shadow Minister said, that there are foreign powers—many of them state powers, though not exclusively so—who are determined to effect things in this House through contacts with political parties, with the institution itself and with politicians. Being aware of that, we need to counter it using all the necessary methods, including legislation.

The second point is that, in order to exercise the power to protect us, those missions to do so must act in a way that is secret.

Their work cannot be transparent. They need to protect their sources, their methods and, most of all, information. To legitimise that kind of power, which is by its nature extreme, it must be accountable and it must be scrutinised. A body that does so must, by definition, have a very particular kind of constitution, in that it has to have a means and method of doing so that is itself secret.

Student Visas

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The Home Secretary and I are completely at one in our determination to reduce net migration. That is what our party stood on a manifesto to do and that is what we intend to achieve. The Home Secretary and I want to find ways in which we can tackle abuse and unintended consequences within the system, and the package of measures that we have set out this week will do so in this important area and, as Labour appears now to support it, in a clearly significant cross-party way.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As the Minister considers work visas, which have exploded, displacing investment in domestic skills and investment in modern working practices fit for the future, will he also answer this question: why it is right and fair for people studying a research degree to be able to bring their family into the country but not for people who are not doing primary research? Surely if those studying for MAs that do not require research cannot bring their family, no one should be able to do so?

[Robert Jenrick]

We said in the announcement this week that, with the Department for Education, we will launch a consultation with the university sector to design a longer-term alternative to the system that previously operated, which could be a more nuanced approach. But I think that the determination that we have made this week is the right one, which is that those people coming into the UK to study will be able to bring in dependants only if they are doing those high-value, usually longer-term, research-based courses such as PhDs, and those coming for short courses will invariably not be able to do so. That will cut out some of the abuse that we have seen in the system and will focus universities on their primary responsibility, which is teaching and education, rather than in some cases being a back door to immigration and to work.

Public Order Act 2023

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

Of course, the suffragettes, at the time they were protesting, did not have the vote and were not represented in Parliament. These days, we have a universal franchise, and everybody over the age of 18 who is a citizen is entitled to vote and stand for Parliament in a way that the suffragettes could not. That is the fundamental difference between the suffragettes and adults in this country today. People who are deliberately disrupting the lives of citizens are seeking to achieve by disruption and direct action what they cannot achieve by argument and democratic election, and that is wrong.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

I am immensely grateful to the Minister for giving way. Is it not true that every contemporary polity —I am speaking now of democratic countries—has some constraints on protest? A protest is limited where that protest becomes so violent, so extreme and so disruptive that it damages the lives of law-abiding people. The countries on the continent that SNP Members seem to revere in so many other ways certainly have those constraints, so the Government are doing nothing unusual, extreme or unreasonable—far from it.

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend is, as usual, absolutely right. The concept that the right to protest does not extend to disrupting other people is one that other countries accept, and indeed article 11.2 of the ECHR, a text Opposition Members hold in very high regard, expressly concedes on the rights to protest that

“the exercise of these rights”

cannot exceed levels that are

“prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime”.

So the ECHR itself recognises that the law may impose constraints and restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly and association, or indeed the article 10 right to freedom of expression, in order for the prevention of crime,

“for the protection of health or morals”

and so on and so forth. It is recognised that these are limited rights in the way my right hon. Friend has eloquently described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

No doubt. I think the information I have in front of me predates the release of the information the hon. and learned Lady is referring to, so I do not think I can answer her question. From the facts I have seen publicly reported, it would appear that subsequently, upon investigation, there was not a reasonable basis to detain the lady concerned. Obviously, at the time it occurred, it is likely that the officer had some reasonable basis, but upon further investigation they discovered there was nothing further to be done. Clearly, in policing—[Interruption.] Let me finish the point. Clearly, in policing an event with probably hundreds of thousands of people present, 11,500 officers present and a great deal of confusion on the ground, mistakes occasionally—unavoidably—get made. I suspect, by the way, that she was not arrested under the provisions of the new Act, but I do not know for sure, so I do not state that with any certainty. It is very easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to say what was right and what was wrong, but given the context and the circumstances of the day—a huge event, with the eyes of the world upon us and a very threatening intelligence picture—I do not think it is reasonable to be unduly critical.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way again. I do not, unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), revere the European charter, the Human Rights Act or even John Stuart Mill.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I was being ironic.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am pleased to hear that. But I do revere Edmund Burke. It was Burke who said:

“Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.”

So when the Government act in anything but a feeble way, they are acting justly and rightly in defence of law-abiding, decent patriotic people. [Interruption.] I see the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) chuntering. Burke also said, of course, that liberty cannot exist in the absence of morality. When the Government act to do what is right and just, they deserve credit, praise and congratulations. They have mine.

[Chris Philp]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his words of support and for quoting that great thinker, Edmund Burke. It is necessary that the Government and Parliament pass laws, and that the police implement those laws, in defence of peaceful protest of course, but also in defence of law-abiding members of the public who want to go about their day-to-day business.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[Alison Thewliss]

Is the right hon. Member going to disagree with the British Dental Association?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady will know that I tabled an amendment in Committee which the Government have now refashioned and tabled on Report, precisely because there is a pedigree for such testing across European countries. Many European countries routinely use such testing to establish whether children are actually children and to avoid the eventualities that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) has just mentioned.

[Alison Thewliss]

The British Dental Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and Unison’s experts disagree with the right hon. Member. These are professionals. [Interruption.] The Minister is laughing on the Front Bench and denigrating a trade union. Given the Government’s current position with respect to industrial disputes, I do not think that that is particularly wise of him. He might want to think about that.

I acknowledge Government amendments 134 and 136, but I am afraid I have real problems trusting the Government, because detaining children is wrong: that is the fundamental point here. The Government want to make regulations specifying the circumstances in which unaccompanied children should be detained, and further regulations on time limits. They do not have the courage to put those proposals into the Bill, and they know that we cannot amend statutory instruments should they deign to introduce them at some point in the future. We do not trust them to do the right thing here, because children are children, and it would be extremely harmful for them to be detained.

We tabled amendment 47 to try to humanise the Bill. Much has been said about hordes of people coming here and trying to claim asylum, but this, fundamentally, is about individual people, many of them fleeing circumstances that Conservative Members cannot even imagine. Accordingly, the amendment seeks to disapply the provision in clause 2 from people in a range of categories. The first, in subsection (a), covers

“a person who was under the age of 18 when they arrived in the UK”,

such as Shireen, whom I mentioned earlier, and many others like him.

Subsection (b) refers to a person from Afghanistan

“where there is a real risk of persecution or serious harm…if returned to that country”.

In Committee, I tried to personalise my amendments by putting a name to each of them. I could call this “Sabir’s amendment”, after Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council. He came here as a child in the back of a lorry, but he would be prevented from so doing, criminalised and removed to Rwanda if the Government had their way. He makes an outstanding contribution to Scotland. He has two letters which he said he would put on the wall in his house. One is from the Home Office, saying, “You are a person liable to be detained and removed.” The second was sent on behalf of the royal family when he was awarded the OBE.

Subsection (c) specifies

“ a person who is a refugee under the Refugee Convention or in need of humanitarian protection”.

That would cover many people who are currently fleeing from Sudan. Earlier, the Minister failed to identify a proper “safe and legal” route—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I hate the crossings. I hate every single aspect of the crossings. For a start, it is a traffic that turns people, in particular extremely vulnerable people, into a commodity. I have heard stories that traffickers often deliberately buy dinghies that are more dangerous, because they are hopeful they will be picked up by other people. That is despicable. They are deliberately putting other people at risk. They are also a sign of a failure of international diplomacy in other parts of the world, most notably in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. No doubt we will have people from Sudan in the not too distant future, too. They are chaotic and unregulated. There is no opportunity for justice or proper priority for those who are most in need, so I absolutely hate them.

Emotions run extremely high, most notably emotions on behalf of those who are being trafficked. They are in fear for their lives. They are terrified of being spat at, of being hated, of being in an environment they do not know and where they do not speak the language properly, and all the rest of it. Also, many people in this country watch with compassion that is mixed with anxiety and fear. That is why the language that we use is so, so important. I say very gently to the Minister that I really did not like it when, in a previous debate, he started using language about breaking into this country, and his using the word “cannibalise” today is very, very unfortunate. I know he is a decent man; I urge him to think about that language.

I do not, incidentally, buy the fundamental premise of the Bill either. If it really were trying to provide some kind of deterrent, it would have been thought through much more carefully. I do not believe that deterrent is really the matter of it. The push factors to the UK are far more significant than the pull factors in determining who ends up on a boat. Insofar as there is any evidence as to what the pull factors are, they are: that we speak English in the UK and lots of people are more likely to speak English than French, German, Italian or Spanish; that people already have family connections in the UK, so they think they might be able to base themselves here more easily; and that we have the rule of law. Those three things are not going to change.

I passionately dislike the Bill’s interaction with UK modern slavery legislation. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said it far more effectively than I can, but I just look at Government amendment 95. It is the worst piece of gobbledegook I have ever seen introduced:

“The Secretary of State must assume for the purposes…that it is not necessary for the person to be present in the UK…unless she considers that there are compelling circumstances…In determining whether there are compelling circumstances…the Secretary of State must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”

She is going to be in endless discussion with herself! It is just preposterous and completely undermines the good efforts, made over many years, to try to ensure we really can crack down on the traffickers. The best person able to reveal a trafficking ring is a victim of that trafficking ring. Without willing co-operation from those people, we simply give more power to the traffickers.

I also dislike the interaction with our international commitments. The former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), made the point earlier that, in essence, the Bill is asking us to say deliberately that a Minister can breach our international commitments. As somebody who has probably been the longest standing critic of President Putin in this House and has been saying this for a very long time, I do not want us to be in a very small group of countries with Russia and Belarus who have left the European Court of Human Rights. That, in the end, would do a terrible disfavour to British prosperity in the world.

[Sir John Hayes]

What the former Attorney General said—I thought it an extraordinarily contradictory contribution to our affairs—was that these judgments were not compelling. We are not compelled to abide by them—indeed we did not in respect of prisoner voting—yet he complained that there was something wrong with saying in law that we are not compelled to do so. Either we believe we are obliged to follow the judgments or we do not. The truth is that we should not be following them.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

There are times when we want to disagree with a Court ruling. The Labour Government certainly did over whether prisoners should have the right to vote. There was a lengthy process, and I cannot even remember where we ended up. I am not opposed to a disagreement with the Court—that can sometimes happen—but the Bill, and especially the amendments in the name of the right hon. Gentleman and others, deliberately ask the Government to front it up with the European Court and the European convention on human rights. In the end, that will do us long-term harm. When we want to have a conversation with China about abiding by international rules-based order, it will be more difficult for us to do that when we are offending our own treaty obligations.

Labour MPs are often asked the perfectly legitimate question: “If you don’t believe in this Bill, what would you do?” As I said earlier, first, I want a comprehensive security treaty between the United Kingdom and the European Union. I think that was what we always wanted at the beginning of the Brexit process—the right hon. Member for Maidenhead was quite right to argue for it. I do not know why that is not on the table again now. It would solve many of the problems that we are seeking to address. Secondly, we should make it easier to arrest the traffickers. We need to devote more time, energy, money and international co-operation to making that happen. Thirdly, we need to process the backlog faster. The more people stuck in the backlog for months, the more the cost to the British people from hotels or whatever other arrangements are made. That is wrong.

Finally, I honestly do not think that anyone will be proud of this legislation in five, 10 or 20 years’ time. I hope that it will all be undone by a future Government. I do not even think that the immigration Minister will mention it in his memoirs.

[Sir John Hayes]

Edmund Burke said:

“Justice is itself the greatest standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

Defending our borders and our ability as a sovereign nation to remove people who have no legal right to be here is a matter of justice—it is legally just and socially just. So is our right as a Parliament and a Government to say how many people should come here lawfully. I suggest gently to the Minister that he needs to look next at legal immigration—the record numbers of people coming here and the visa system that allows that. All that matters to my constituents. I humbly propose that it matters just as much to the constituents of Members of this House from Ruislip to Rhondda, and from Worthing to Walthamstow.

Every poll or test of public opinion says that the British people want to stop the boats crossing the channel. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) said, not only does that endanger the lives of the people in the boats, it offends the principle that I just set out that a nation is no nation if it cannot control its borders. Despite the rhetoric that we have heard, Opposition Members are paying lip service to immigration controls. I believe, as do the vast majority of the people I represent, that there has been too much immigration into Britain for too long. Immigration is a salient for them in a way that it is just not for many Opposition Members.

Outside this place, the shrillest opponents of this legislation and the fiercest critics of the Home Secretary include those who are deluded and those who are devious. They are deluded in refusing to accept the reality that many of the people arriving in the boats are economic migrants, gamed by dodgy interest groups and devious lawyers to support spurious claims exploiting the capricious perversity of European judges, who no one in my constituency chose and who are not accountable to anyone in this Chamber or this country. The trouble is that some people do not believe in the integrity of our borders because, in essence, they do not believe in the integrity of our nation.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to my hon. Friend, who I hope does believe in the integrity of our borders and our nation.

[Laura Farris]

I do. I listened to what my right hon. Friend was just saying about the problem of European judges, but can he refer to a case from the European Court of Human Rights where those judges demonstrated a lack of respect for our immigration laws?

[Sir John Hayes]

I gave the example of a case that was not about immigration but about something as vivid as the issue of immigration: prisoner voting. Successive Governments—Labour and Conservative—opposed prisoner voting, and in the end the matter was dropped. That is a very good example of where the European Court of Human Rights was dismissive of the traditions and character of how we do things here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not because time does not allow.

The amendment I tabled in Committee, which has now been brought forward by the Government, will put in place scientific tests to establish beyond doubt the age of claimants.

Almost 90,000 people have come here in small boats in recent years. It costs £6 million a day to accommodate them in more than 300 hotels. The Government and this House must re-establish the faith of the British people that we understand their concerns. It is as simple as this: we must deliver the legislation because we must stop the boats.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I am interested to know whether I am part of the liberal establishment. As a working-class girl from Yorkshire, I am struggling a little with that concept. I wonder whether the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) is part of the liberal establishment that has been spoken about.

We on the Opposition Benches are clear that the tide of illegal migration to this country must be stemmed. We are also clear that the appalling rise in the number of people risking their lives in small boats to cross the channel is a damning indictment on this Government’s failure to secure our borders. Deflecting blame for their failure on each and every person who gets in a boat, at great risk to themselves, because they have no other option, is shameful and wrong.

I rise to support amendments 2 and 3, in the name of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), in the hope that Ministers will recognise the inherent injustice in this blanket approach and that they will reflect on the need to address the issue on the basis of what works, not what they believe will reverse their poor poll ratings on immigration.

The truth is that people are sick and tired of hearing from successive Tory Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries that they are finally going to get tough and sort out the mess that they themselves have made of our immigration system. If we want to address the growing cynicism in the country about promises made from the Dispatch Box that turn out to be hollow, Ministers have to give up their addiction to divisive and dangerous language and headlines, and get serious about the issue of illegal migration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank and commend right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for what has been a measured and thoughtful debate over the course of this afternoon. The Bill before us is probably the most significant immigration Bill in my lifetime; for that reason, it is important that we get it right. Today’s debate has centred on a number of significant issues. I will not reprise all my earlier remarks, having spoken then for the best part of three quarters of an hour and taken many interventions, but I will touch on the five principal areas that were discussed by Members on both sides of the House and attempt to provide any further reassurance that is required.

The first significant issue was the removal of minors. As I said earlier, the Government’s approach in respect of children is one in which we take the interests of the child extremely seriously. These are morally complex issues, and I and all the Ministers involved in the Bill’s preparation have thought very carefully about how we can protect children, both at home and abroad, as we have produced the Bill and the scheme that underpins it.

I hope that the ways in which we will approach the removal of children are now clear, thanks to the work we have done with several right hon. and hon. Members, including in particular my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). We will seek to remove unaccompanied children only in exceptional circumstances. As we have now made clear, the two principal purposes are for family reunion and for a child’s safe return home to the loving care of social services in their home country.

We have taken the issue of the detention of children extremely seriously, because we do not want to detain children. We will do so only in the most exceptional circumstances. The circumstances that we have now clarified in the Bill and in the debate, again with the helpful guidance and support of right hon. and hon. Members, are for the purposes of initial processing when children and families arrive irregularly in the United Kingdom in small boats or via other forms of clandestine entry, and then for the limited and defined purposes of removal from the country that I mentioned a moment ago. We understand the desire of many Members for there to be carefully thought through and limited time limits on detention. I hope that the amendment we tabled and my remarks today give reassurance that we will bring forward that regime and that it will be as short as practically possible.

There is a significant exception to that rule, which is, of course, for those cases in which there is a serious age-assessment dispute. In such cases, the undoubted desire to limit the amount of time for which a child is ever detained by the state has to be balanced against the equally important safeguarding issue of young adults posing as minors—indeed, not all so young, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said earlier with regard to the recent allegation about a 42-year-old posing as a minor. We have to get the balance right so that young adults do not regularly pose as minors and create an enormous and very concerning safeguarding risk for our young people.

[Sir John Hayes]

I rise simply to say that the engagement we have had with my right hon. Friend and his Department throughout this process has been exemplary. It has been a model for how good scrutiny can improve legislation. I thank him and, in particular, the Home Secretary for the stand they have taken.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and return the compliment. It is important that we in the Government listen to the expertise we have among Members from all parties. I hope Members will agree that that is the approach we are taking to these sensitive issues, of which age assessment is certainly one. I do not want to see a situation in which young adults are regularly coming into the UK illegally, posing as children, and ending up in our schools, in foster-care families and in unaccompanied-minor hotels, living cheek by jowl with genuine children. That is an evil that we have to stamp out, and the approach we are taking in the Bill will help us to do so.

The third issue that was the subject of debate and, again, a high degree of unity—certainly on the Government Benches, but perhaps more broadly—is the approach to safe and legal routes. We want to stop the boats; we also want to ensure that the United Kingdom continues to be one of the most respected countries in the world for the way in which we provide sanctuary to people who are genuinely in need. We are doing that already, as evidenced by the fact that since 2015, half a million people have come into our country legally on humanitarian grounds. We have safe and legal routes today, but I appreciate the views of a number of right hon. and hon. Members, including most notably my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.

That has led us to the agreement that we will rapidly bring forward the consultation with local authorities that grounds the desire of this House to be generous with the reality on the ground in our communities and councils. Within six months, we will bring forward the report that will result from that consultation, and as soon as possible over the course of next year, we will set up or expand the existing safe and legal routes so that the UK can be an even greater force for good in the world. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) laughs at that—of course, Scotland could step up to the plate as well. Since she tempts me, I will just say that her and her colleagues asked for an extension to today’s debate, but as far as I am aware, only two spoke in it. Fewer SNP Members spoke in the debate than could fit into Nicola Sturgeon’s battle bus.

Police Uplift Programme

John Hayes Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am delighted to say that we now have more female police officers, by a very large margin, than at any time in history. In the most recent recruitment over the last three years, 43% of the new recruits were female, which is a very big step. We would like it to be 50%, but 43% is a very big step forward. On the prosecution of rape and serious sexual assault, by the end of June this year, we will have Operation Soteria Bluestone, an academically endorsed method for investigating rape cases, rolled out across the country. In early adopting forces such as Avon and Somerset, we have seen material increases in the number of charges and prosecutions. On specialist officers, every force has specialist officers. Some are organised into units and some are not. That is something I will look at in the coming months. The Government conducted a rape review. We have a violence against women and girls strategy. The safeguarding Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), is leading work in that area, but I fully acknowledge there is more work to do on prosecutions and confidence. It is an area that the Government are working on extremely actively.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Our diligent Policing Minister deserves great credit for what he has achieved and for his statement today. He serves under an outstanding Home Secretary, of course. However, does he recognise that in rural areas such as Lincolnshire there are profound problems with the police funding formula? He will know that Lincolnshire is one of the lowest-funded police authorities in the country. Indeed, sadly, the force has had to cut the number of police community support officers this year. He has previously agreed to look at that. Will he now agree to an urgent meeting with me, so that Lincolnshire can benefit in the way that so many other areas have?

[Chris Philp]

Of course, I would be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend to discuss police funding in Lincolnshire as soon as possible. It is a topic I discuss with the excellent police and crime commissioner Marc Jones regularly. The current police funding formula has been around for quite a long time and needs refreshing. We intend to consult on the formula to start the process of getting it updated, so that areas such as Lincolnshire, which the police funding formula does not treat as generously as some other areas, can be addressed.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

Contrary to the title of this Bill, nobody is illegal. Claiming asylum is an international human right. Desperate people arriving in the UK by whatever means they can, because there are no safe routes, should not be criminalised. I could say much more, but for now let me assure the Committee and the people listening and watching at home that my party will oppose this vicious, unfair and damaging Bill again in the Division Lobby tonight.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Several calumnies have found form in the contributions of Opposition Members in the course of our consideration of the Bill so far. Principal among them is that there is no factual basis that has provoked this legislation. That is simply not so.

Since 2018, some 85,000 people have entered Britain illegally, 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Roughly 75%—in fact, I think it is 74%—are men under 40. Nearly nine in 10 of those arriving are male; 18% are Albanian—and, by the way, Albanians make up 10% of the foreign prisoner population, with some 2,000 of them—and 100% have travelled through safe countries in which they could have claimed asylum in order to get here. Accommodating these people is costing the British taxpayer £3 billion a year. That is why we need urgent action to deal with the channel crossings but also, more fundamentally still, to reform our asylum system to make it fit for purpose and to cut immigration—and, I say to the Minister, not just illegal immigration, because we will need to turn to legal immigration too during the course of this Parliament.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not. I have great respect for him, but I promised you that I would be brief, Dame Rosie, and I know that if I take interventions that will not be true, and I will break my promise. You would never forgive me for that and, worse still, you would not call me again.

I shall speak to some of the amendments that stand in my name, which I hope will help the Government in that endeavour. My amendments, along with those tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stone (Sir William Cash), among others, are designed to improve the Bill rather than to frustrate the Government’s efforts. Indeed, they are framed in order to make the Bill work—for the Bill must work.

The British people are at the end of their tether, tired of a liberal establishment blinded by its own prejudices which seems oblivious to the needs of working-class Britons but ever more indulgent towards economic migrants and anyone else who comes from abroad, for that matter. The British people demand and deserve something better than that. They deserve a Government who take their concerns seriously.

Just in case there is any doubt about those concerns, I refer Members to the work of Professor Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent, who has studied these matters. He has revealed the opinions of an immense number of voters in so-called red wall constituencies. You will remember, Dame Rosie, that those are the seats that Labour hopes to win back, but it will not, because they are in the hands of very able Conservative Members of Parliament, many of whom take a view of the Bill that is similar to mine, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North. Interestingly, 59% of people in those constituencies think that we

“should withdraw the right of asylum-seekers and illegal migrants who cross the Channel illegally in small boats to appeal against their deportation.”

That number

“jumps to more than three-quarters”

of 2019 Conservative voters and 39% of Labour voters. A large majority, six in 10, support

“stopping migrants in small boats from illegally crossing the Channel using any means necessary”.

Benjamin Disraeli said that

“justice is truth in action.”

My amendment 283 is designed to restore justice to our asylum system by affirming the truth. Little epitomises the anger felt by my constituents and many others about the unfairness of the system more than those economic migrants with no legal right to be here who arrive in Dover claiming to be younger than they are in order to game our asylum rules. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) pointed out when she was Home Secretary, in two thirds of age dispute cases, it has been found that an individual claiming to be a child is over—sometimes considerably over—the age of 18. This is a widespread problem.

Amendment 283 would introduce a scientific age assessment to ensure that those under 18 who need to seek shelter here can do so, as well as to find out those over 18 who lie to cheat our rules. The amendment is in keeping with the practices used in Europe by countries that verify the ages of those crossing their borders. The scientific age assessments used in many European countries for these purposes include dental and wrist X-rays in France, Finland and Norway, and CT or MRI scans in Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere.

I would be amazed if anyone who believed in the integrity of our asylum system opposed such an amendment, and I hope the Minister will confirm when he sums up that the Government intend to adopt it. Without such a change, we cannot properly break the business model of the people smugglers. These vile traffickers will simply tell the people whose lives they are risking to lie about their age to prevent them from being removed.

My amendments 129 and 130 would strengthen the Bill by ensuring that those who have no right to be here are swiftly removed. At present, the language in the Bill promises to “deport”. However, deportation is a distinct legal process from removal. Deportation is reserved for those who are a “risk to the public good”—typically foreign national offenders. By contrast, removal is a legal term for a process by which certain people may be removed from the UK, usually because they have breached immigration rules by remaining here illegally, but who do not necessarily pose a public risk or danger by so doing. Again, I hope that the Minister will enter into a discussion with me about how we can improve the Bill in that way and make it more effective.

I know, too, that the Minister will look at the amendments that aim to toughen the Bill further in terms of its language. Amendment 135, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, is vital as it will block courts from ordering that individuals who have been removed be return to the UK. If those removed to Rwanda were allowed to return to the UK following legal challenges, the deterrent gained from successfully sending them there would be diluted or lost altogether, so it is essential that those who want to join the small boats and the smugglers who organise their dangerous journeys know that the deterrent is credible.

Amendment 132 would ensure that other provisions of the Human Rights Act were disapplied. Right hon. and hon. Members know my view on the Human Rights Act: I would repeal it. And they know my view on the convention: I would leave it. But that is not what we are debating today, and it is not what these amendments seek to do. They simply aim to ensure that the Government’s policy, which has found form in this Bill which I hope is soon to be an Act, is not once again mired in appeals to foreign potentates and powers who will frustrate the will of the Government, this House and, more fundamentally, the British people.

I will not comment on amendments 139 and 140 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), except to say that they are arguably well-intentioned, but not necessarily so. A report last year, as my hon. Friend must know, showed that nearly two thirds of asylum seekers suspected of lying when they were unaccompanied children were found to be over 18. Of course care and sentiment matter, but we must exercise sense to avoid being naive about this subject.

For the sake of brevity, Dame Rosie, I will not say much more, except to conclude in this way: the British people want to deal with the boats. They want to restore order to our borders. They believe in the integrity of a system that determines whether someone is a genuine seeker of asylum in fear of persecution and in profound need or an economic migrant gaming the system in respect of their age. That is what the British people want, and that is what this Bill will do. By the way, just a quick word about judicial activism: it is a well-established concept and I would advise the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) to read about it in more detail, as he does not seem to have heard of it.

I say to the Minister that we must avoid listening to the bleats and cries of a bourgeois liberal establishment who will go out of their way to stop the Government doing what is just and right. I look forward to further engagement with him and, assuming that he says something sufficiently generous—indeed, slightly more than that; I would like to feel flattery—I will not press the amendments that stand in my name.

[Stella Creasy]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), a knight of the realm, lecturing us all on being in touch with the people and on class warfare. What a dystopian vision he paints of this country. I will confine my remarks to the three amendments in my name, because he does not speak for the majority in this country with his callous disregard for people seeking sanctuary, and in his callous disregard for the evidence and facts.

Amendment 293 reflects the challenge set by the right hon. Gentleman and by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who complains about people with visas. He must be disappointed that the Illegal Migration Bill does nothing about people who overstay their visa, which is clearly illegal. If this Bill were actually about things that are illegal in our asylum system, it would tackle visa overstayers. The Bill says nothing about people traffickers, and it contains no further sanctions and makes no further efforts to catch organised crime gangs. I now realise why it does not, having heard how the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North objects to the European Court of Human Rights standing up for British citizens who face the death penalty—he could not even say that stopping people being sent to their death for standing up to Putin is a good thing.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

None of this is ideal, but when people arrive in their hundreds—one day last summer it was more than 1,000—and all of a sudden become the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government, there is a practical limitation on what accommodation is available physically to house them. That is why our hotels are being taken over and are full and why various military bases have been used, with mixed success. It is why the Government are having to look at other solutions. However, we have a serious problem accommodating our own constituents, as we all know, because of the shortage of local authority accommodation, and we just have to be realistic about how we can properly look after people coming across the channel.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

This is not just about illegal migration. The population of this country is growing in net terms, as a direct result of illegal and legal migration, by something like a quarter of a million a year. That cannot long be sustained. Over 10 years it is 2.5 million people, which is the size of many significant cities. That cannot go on, because the housing situation for all of those people is an insuperable challenge.

[Tim Loughton]

I think I have made the point that whatever migration system we run needs to be effective, efficient and sustainable, but at the same time we need people to fill job vacancies in this country, and many of the people who have come here are self-sustaining. I had a meeting this afternoon with about 60 Hong Kong British national overseas passport holders who came here in flight from Hong Kong, and they are making a good go of starting a second life in this country. However we think we should operate migrant numbers, the numbers are not the important thing. It is being able to look after people safely and sustainably for all of our community that is the major consideration.

The other truth that is put about that we need to challenge is that the European convention on human rights is everything. If we look at the record of the judgments issued under the ECHR by the European Court of Human Rights in the last 10 years, we see that 47% of them—almost half—have not been complied with. In certain countries that figure is higher. For example, 61% of judgments again Spain from the European Court of Human Rights have not been complied with, and for Italy it is 58%, while for Germany it is 37%. In many cases—particularly France, where the figure is a little bit lower—they are mostly for non-compliance with immigration laws. So let us not try and kid ourselves that the measures in this Bill are in some way completely absurd and out of court compared with what other countries have been doing.

Having said all that, doing nothing is not an option. It allows people smugglers to continue the human misery. It is condoning bogus asylum seekers, and it is allowing those bogus asylum seekers to bump the queue of genuine asylum seekers to whom we do have a duty of care that the vast majority of people in this country want to see carried out. So we need to get the balance right on continuing our generous tradition of allowing safe haven for genuine asylum seekers escaping danger with much more robust action to clamp down on those who have no legitimate claim to be resident in the UK. They are gaming our system, taking advantage of the UK taxpayer’s generosity and, worst of all, queue-jumping over the genuine asylum seekers who need help.

This is where safe and legal routes and the main amendment I am putting forward today come in, and I will be prepared to press it to a vote unless I have some substantial reassurances from the Government, because this is nothing new and it is not rocket science. It is actually something that the Prime Minister has quite rightly committed to in principle. My new clause 13, which is the basis of the safe and legal routes amendments, would require safe and legal routes to be part of this legislation. The regulations referred to in the Bill would have to set out specific safe and legal routes by which asylum seekers can enter the United Kingdom in an orderly and sustainable way.

The routes specified must include any country-specific schemes that we have already. Specifically, we have routes for Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Hong Kong, but we need additional ones. Additionality is key to this, because as the Bill stands, the Government could just say, “Well, we’ve got those safe and legal routes, and we can just tinker with those.” However, let us take the example of the 16-year-old orphan boy from east Africa —he is not from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong—who has a single relative legally settled in the United Kingdom. There are precious few opportunities for him to be able to come to the UK on a safe and legal route. It is in such cases that we need to offer an opportunity, capped in numbers and capped with all sorts of considerations. We need to offer such people a realistic opportunity that they may be able to get safe haven in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

I will not give way again, sorry. I have taken loads of interventions and I am testing everyone’s patience; my speech is now 11 minutes in.

France could say the same to Italy or Spain, and then Italy or Spain could say, “Stay in the sea.” What we are seeing now is an attempt to undermine Britain’s part in the globe. We were told by some Conservative Members that we were leaving the European Union but not Europe, and that we would now be “global Britain.” Ignoring for a moment the moral obligations we have to people seeking sanctuary, let us remember what message it will send to our neighbours, friends and allies around Europe and elsewhere if we unilaterally decide that we are not going to play the game. This undermines our soft power and our sovereignty. This is why we support new clause 3, which deals with setting a target and gives a clear sense of Britain stepping up to the plate and being part of a global operation.

The Government talk about deterrence, but the Bill fails to understand the horrors that people have been through. People who have left Sudan or Eritrea often go through Libya, and I would ask Conservative Members to spend a moment to research what it is like for a refugee passing from the horn of Africa, for example, through to Libya and then crossing the Mediterranean. What are their experiences? We tell those people that it will be scary and that we are not going to treat them very nicely when they cross the channel, but that is nothing compared with their experience of crossing Libya. I ask Members to inform themselves about that in particular.

The Bill is clearly not aimed at tackling the criminal gangs. The simple fact is that the criminal gangs’ business model will remain alive and well. Why? Because people will arrive on these shores and then not claim asylum. They will go under the radar, which fuels modern slavery and criminality. More people will be exploited, especially women and girls. There is no question whatsoever that this Bill will do anything to tackle the business model of those gangs—it is clearly not intended to, which is another outrage. It is indeed a traffickers’ charter. It will therefore lead to more deaths in the channel. It is a recipe for uncontrollable borders, because there will be nobody applying for asylum. They will just slip under the radar. If the Government had done an impact assessment, they would know that. Maybe they did, but they have not shared it with us.

The simple fact is that we need safe and legal routes. People from Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Hong Kong stand a chance, one way or another, of having a safe route to the United Kingdom. But if you are a young Christian man seeking to avoid being conscripted in Eritrea, a woman seeking sanctuary from Iran or a person from a religious minority in Sudan, you have no chance whatsoever of getting here. That is morally outrageous. We are turning our back on our long-held principles and obligations. That is why new clause 6 is so important and why, with your permission, Dame Eleanor, we will push it to a vote tonight.

New clause 6 would ringfence asylum seekers from those countries that already have an 80%-plus grant rate—places such as Sudan, Eritrea and Iran. It proposes a pilot scheme for 12 months—this is measured, small and not all that ambitious—just to give the Government an opportunity not to be duplicitous about this and to show that we are at least providing an experimental and evidence-based safe route. I urge the Government to accept the new clause; otherwise, we will seek to divide the House. New clause 4 talks about a humanitarian travel permit, and new clause 7 deals with refugee family reunion.

If the Government seriously want to make the case that the Bill is going to undermine the business case of the people traffickers, evil as they are, they will fail to do so unless they provide meaningful, tangible, credible safe and legal routes. Those routes do not currently exist, and these new clauses allow the Government the opportunity to create them. If they will not accept them, this will prove that they do not have a plan to stop the boats and that they are just getting into the gutter to grub for votes.

To be fair, I think the Government have misjudged those who seek sanctuary here. I have met many of them. I have been to Calais and other places, and I have had to interrogate why people would choose to come to the United Kingdom. The hon. Member for Devizes set out many of those reasons, but I have never discovered among those people any who have heard of the national health service or our benefit system. The lie that they are somehow coming over here to sponge off or threaten us is just that: it is simply untrue.

But those people have heard of something: they have heard of a Britain that is safe, where they can raise their children, where they can be who they are and have whatever faith they may be and whatever political views they may hold—a place where they can raise and feed their family in safety. I cannot imagine anything making me more proud than that being the reputation of this country. No amount of small-minded attempts to change the law by this “here today, gone tomorrow” Tory Government will dent that reputation. I think the Government have misjudged not only the asylum seekers, but Britain too.

Let me tell the House a story about my constituency, and then I will shut up. Let us be honest, the Lake District is not the most diverse part of the United Kingdom, yet in August 1945 half the children who survived the death camps, including Auschwitz, came to Windermere to be rehabilitated and to start their lives afresh, because that is who we really are. That is who Britain really is and we should be proud of that. Let us absolutely stop the boats, but let us do so in a way that makes sense and that is neither dozy nor dangerous.

[Sir John Hayes]

It is conventional in this place to say that it is a delight and a joy to follow the preceding speaker, and generally one does so as a matter of convention, but I am always pleased to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), even though I disagreed with almost everything he said. I know that he speaks with integrity and that he believes in his heart what he has said today, but I have to tell him that his purity—if I may put it in those terms—and his absolute Christian dignity have got the better of his reason in respect of this issue.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents, like mine, expect this House to be where power lies, for it is this House that is answerable to them. He owes his political legitimacy to his relationship with the people he described in his constituency, as I do to those in mine. When other powers in other places supersede the authority of this House, in the way the European judges did when they held up the planes for those being sent to Rwanda, our constituents feel not only frustrated but let down. They feel let down because they see the will of this House and the will of our Government being impeded, and indeed frustrated, by those overseas powers.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to the hon. Lady, who is deeply confused about the difference between treaty law and statute. Perhaps she will explain that.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s mind to the 1970s when, in this country, a Conservative Government passed legislation saying that a married woman, or any woman, coming to this country had to go through a virginity test, and it was the European Court of Human Rights that overturned that British legislation. Are you really telling me that you think that legislation was correct?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Is the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) really telling me that he thinks that decision by the European Court of Human Rights was wrong?

[Sir John Hayes]

I never knowingly defend the Heath Government, so I will not accept any connection with their measures. Indeed, it was Edward Heath who, against the interests of the British people, took us into the European Union in the first place, but I will not go down that road as it is not relevant to the amendments before us.

In the spirit I have just outlined, I will address the significance of the Bill and the amendments before us, in the context of the Government’s determination not only to tackle the issue of immigration per se, but to deal, in particular, with illegal immigration in the form of boats arriving in Dover. Just as we won the referendum campaign with the simple slogan “Take back control,” so it seems to me we will win this argument with a similar slogan: “Stop the boats.”

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I give way to my hon. Friend, who is an authority on all matters of this kind.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

When I arrived in this country as an immigrant in October 1978, I was bowled over by the hospitality and kindness I came across. Does my right hon. Friend recognise that, in order to maintain the British people’s welcome for outsiders coming here, we have to deal with illegal migration? That is why it is so important that we support the Bill this evening.

[Sir John Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right, of course. In a sense, his comments reflect the remarks of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, but the spirit, character and reputation that Britain enjoys depend on both lawfulness and propriety. It is not unreasonable to suggest that our generosity should be defined by proper rules and standards.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) challenged the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale on the issue of people not bringing documents, I was left to wonder, as others may have been, why on earth a legitimate asylum seeker who is pleased to come here on the basis he outlined would want to discard the documents that would prove their case. Why would they do that? That is the kind of question my constituents ask me. I have to conclude that many people disguise their identity and discard their documents not because they want to make it more straightforward for the Home Office to deal with their claim, for clearly it would not make it more straightforward, but because they have something to hide.

Last year, 33% of the people arriving in small boats were from Albania. That proportion has now fallen because the Government have done something about it. So much for inefficient Ministers and the inefficient Home Office. They dealt with the Albania issue, and they will now deal with this issue with equal alacrity and skill.

[Stella Creasy]

I fear the right hon. Gentleman may have misread the statistics, because it was Afghans who made up 33% of arrivals. Between October and December 2022, only 9% of small boat arrivals were Albanian.

Perhaps, as a general principle, we should not try to process claims in the Chamber. We should look at the evidence. Many of us who deal with asylum seekers have had that conversation, about why papers are missing, and we have been told very clearly that the traffickers tell them to tear up and remove their papers because that makes it easier for the traffickers. When was the last time the right hon. Gentleman spoke to someone who came to the UK by an irregular route and who did not have their paperwork? What did they tell him? Can he tell us about the evidence he has from actually working with these people and understanding the pressures they are under?

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady informs many of her arguments in this place with anecdotes, sometimes with undue success, but I will not be drawn into an anecdotal debate because I want to address the issue in a rather more serious way—I do not mean to disparage her, of course.

In addressing amendments 133 and 134 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), amendment 131 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) and amendment 132 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), I want to be clear about the purpose of this Bill and why these amendments make sense. The purpose of the Bill is to deal with this matter as definitively as it can reasonably be addressed. The purpose of the Bill is to tighten the arrangements in respect of illegal immigration, and the amendments strengthen that aim. Our job, against a backdrop in which people are arriving in small boats and breaching our borders with impunity, is to re-establish the sovereignty of this country and the integrity of our borders by delivering legislation that does just that.

These amendments are designed to do two things. First, they would give the Government more power to achieve this objective. Secondly, they would limit the opportunities, which we know will be taken, to frustrate the Government’s will and, by extension, Parliament’s will to do more to address this matter.

I commend the Minister and the Home Secretary for their work on the Bill, but I am certain that the expectations it creates, the time it absorbs and the opposition it will undoubtedly generate, mean that, if it fails and the Government are found wanting, Conservative Members will pay a heavy price. The Minister knows we have been down this road before with the Nationality and Borders Act, which we were told would do the job. I do not think Ministers were deceiving us—they genuinely believed it would do the job—yet, although we did exactly what I described by devoting time and political capital, raising expectations and bringing about opposition, we found that we could not achieve what we wanted to and that we needed additional legislation to do so.

We will not be given a third chance. This is our second chance to deal, once and for all, with the boats arriving at Dover and with the tidal wave—the Home Secretary described it as a “swarm”—of people who know they are arriving illegally and are breaking the law, for they know they have no papers and no right to be here. They therefore make a nonsense of an immigration system that must have integrity if it is to garner and maintain popular support.

Of course, people enter and leave countries, but they need to do so legally. Surely it is not too much to express that simple statement. It is not too much to expect a Government to maintain lawful control of our borders, yet I constantly hear from Opposition Members that this is militant, unreasonable, extreme. It is anything but. It is modest, moderate, just and virtuous to have a system that ensures the people who come here do so lawfully, and that people who arrive here seeking asylum are dealt with properly. That is a modest aim, and it will be made more achievable by the amendments in the name of my hon. Friends the Members for Stone and for Devizes and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.

Given that the Minister is an old, trusted and good friend, I hope that, when he sums up the debate, he will agree to enter into a dialogue with those of us who speak for the people. We claim no more—no greater plaudit—than that we are the spokesmen of the hard-working, patriotic, lawful majority of the people of this country. In speaking for those people, we hope that he will enter into a dialogue with those of us who have tabled and supported these amendments with the aim of improving the Bill, of doing his work with him and for him, and in so doing honouring the pledge that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have made to the people of this country. Honouring that pledge is the right thing to do, the just thing to do and, indeed, the virtuous thing to do.

[Joanna Cherry]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dame Eleanor. It is convention to say that it is a pleasure to follow the previous speaker, but I find it hard to say that because I do not agree with anything that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) said. It is an extraordinary proposition to say that, to use his words, it is virtuous and just for the United Kingdom to pass legislation that is in breach of our international obligations. These are not obligations that have been imposed on us from above. They are obligations to which we freely signed up. If the Government and Conservative Members do not like the obligations to which they freely signed up, they should have the courage of their convictions and join their chums in Russia and Belarus as non-signatories to the European convention on human rights. [Interruption.] They do not like it, but it is true: those are the other two countries in Europe that cannot live with the obligations in the European convention on human rights.

I want to make another preliminary point before I go any further. The right hon. Gentleman does not speak for my constituents—he does not speak for the people of Edinburgh South West. The contents of my mailbox and my conversations with constituents show that he does not speak for them. He does not speak for other voters in Scotland, either. We are proud of our international obligations, and we would like to remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

There is widespread concern about this Bill, and not just from lefty lawyers, to whom the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) referred earlier.

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[Laura Farris]

It is genuinely a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I will try to avoid too much mince in my own speech, but to continue in the respectful tone that she has struck.

I wish to take a little of the heat out of this debate and to say that I think the British people would recognise in the United Kingdom a country that has honoured its commitments since the launch of the 1951 refugee convention to offer sanctuary to those with a well-founded fear of persecution. The record of the past seven years, where close to half a million people have been granted asylum on humanitarian grounds, bears testimony to that.

I think that the British people would also recognise that there are peculiar and unique problems that have arisen with the small boat crossings. Five years ago, in 2018, 300 people made that journey; last year, it was 45,000. Of those, 80% were men aged between 18 and 40, all of whom had paid a people smuggler and all of whom had the physical strength and wherewithal to make a journey across continental Europe through the small boat route. We know that a third of them arriving last year were Albanian.

I just want to read what Dan O’Mahoney told the Home Affairs Committee—I see that the Chair is in her place—when he appeared before it last October. I am quoting verbatim. He said about the Albanian arrivals:

“The rise has been exponential, and we think that is in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and have begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants… Whatever sort of criminality you can think of…there are Albanian criminal gangs dominating”—

in this country—

“whether it is drug smuggling, human trafficking, guns or prostitution.”

He said that a lot of the Albanian migrants

“are not actually interested in seeing their asylum claim through… We typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days, and then they will disappear”

into the underworld.

That unique and specific problem requires a unique and specific answer. We all agree on safe and legal routes. I will not improve on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in his powerful speech. I heard from those on the Labour Front Bench, for the first time tonight, that they also endorse quotas, which is part of this Bill, and we agree with that.

In case my intervention earlier was not clear enough, I was simply saying that Harvey Redgrave, writing in a thoughtful piece for the Tony Blair Institute last July, talked about not only safe and legal routes, out-of-country rights of appeal and quotas, but an absolute prohibition on small boat arrivals. That really is the disputed issue in this legislation.

I rise to speak in response to amendments 131 and 132, which were tabled by two Conservatives, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), is in his place.

[Sir John Hayes]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, many countries have a cap per se on immigration. In Australia, Parliament debates an annual cap; when David Cameron and George Osborne were running the Conservative party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Home Secretary, we said that that number should be counted in the tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what we should go back to.

[Laura Farris]

It is certainly true that the promise inherent in the refugee convention—an offer to the world at large, conceived in an era before easyJet, before people going on holiday to any country and before mass migration—must be looked at through a different lens in the year 2023. Many of our international partners are now talking in that way, and we may have to have a debate on a different occasion to talk about the issue more broadly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

On the Government side of the House, I am probably the Member who has most recently been in the immigration tribunals, so I have an idea, but it is not my principal practice area.

The other thing that I think is relevant is that Parliament has in the past successfully recalibrated the interpretation of the convention and changed the way it is interpreted, and had no difficulty with that. The Bill already takes a number of novel steps in relation to established law. First, it creates an absolute duty of removal on the Home Secretary that applies irrespective of any human rights claim, with the exception of the non-refoulement principle. Secondly, the Bill expands powers of immigration detention, granting the Secretary of State a power to determine the period that is “reasonably necessary”, in some ways overriding established Hardial Singh principles. Thirdly, it limits the rights of appeal: the individual has a right of appeal, but that is capped at one. In my respectful submission, the Government must have the opportunity to see those clauses enacted, because I believe that they will be upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.

Back in 2012, the coalition Government changed the immigration rules in relation to the deportation of foreign national offenders and the application of article 8, which is the right to respect for private and family life. Parliament took the view that that was too often being interpreted in favour of the ex-convict, and, as a result, set new rules—from paragraph 398 onwards of the established immigration rules—to make it clear that there were limited circumstances in which article 8 should be engaged. Parliament said in terms that the balance should be struck in favour of the overwhelming public interest in deportation, above any article 8 claim unless there were very compelling circumstances to the contrary. That was upheld in successive decisions by our appeal courts, beginning with MF (Nigeria) in the Court of Appeal.

The decision by Parliament to circumscribe the ambit of article 8 when it applied to criminals was taken to the European Court of Human Rights for years, but the court would not hear the issue at all until 2017 in the case of Ndidi. I reminded myself today of how that case was approached. In fact, a quite compelling article 8 argument was made: the person had arrived in the United Kingdom as a baby and had never been anywhere else, and the offending was quite low level—drug dealing rather than any harm to the person. The courts here had said that he must be deported to a country that he had never been to before. He challenged that in the European Court of Human Rights, which said, “No, the British Government are absolutely entitled to circumscribe the application of article 8 in the way that they have.” His claim was rejected.

My simple point is that we can do things—in the way that the Government are seeking through the Bill—that may well be compatible with the European convention on human rights, and I have struggled to find any example of the court overturning primary legislation, which is what the Bill is, or constructing it in a way that is disadvantageous to the member state. The fact that so many Members refer back to the prisoner voting case does not enhance their argument. That case is 20 years old and has been reversed. I accept without reservation that it was wrongly decided—I think there was overreach—but I have heard no example from the last 20 years to suggest that the Court is still making the same mistakes.

We have talked about the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 not being a success, but that was not because the European Court of Human Rights said that it was unlawful or overreached; we simply concluded that it did not yet work. For those reasons, I think that the Bill already goes very far and should be given the chance to work through.

[Sir John Hayes]

This is a fascinating description of the three ways in which we can deal with this matter. One way is to leave the convention altogether, which is what I would favour but is not what we are proposing or debating tonight. The second is to have some kind of “notwithstanding clause” of the kind that has been proposed. The third is to assume, through the interpretation of the Court of the will of Parliament and Government, that we will have our way. My hon. Friend is making a good case for the third way, but the problem with that is that it places a great deal of faith—although she says that she does so on the basis of precedent—in the Court to honour the will of this House. I am not sure that I would have the same degree of faith. If she does not like the work of Professor Ekins and so on, I recommend that she look at the speech given at Cambridge University by the Home Secretary—when she was Attorney General —on the interpretative matters that my hon. Friend describes.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should sit down when allowing an intervention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister knows that that is not how the scheme has worked; he knows that only 22 people have been resettled. He already has in his inbox the case I mentioned—it is long overdue his attention. Every single day, I think about that family. They were told that they should go to the Baron hotel. They could not get there because there was an explosion. They are now separated—the family are in hiding and the father is here, desperate and out of his mind about what to do. He was promised a safe and legal route by this Government, but of that promise there came no reality.

That is why I cannot support this Bill in its current form. First and foremost, it does nothing to the smugglers themselves. We all agree that the smugglers are the people we want to stop. Why is there not a single measure in the Bill that directly affects them? The idea that we can cut off their market does not recognise that we have seen these kinds of measures before. All that happens is the prices go up. People disappear; modern slavery increases.

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I am looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

[Sir John Hayes]

When we tackle illegal immigration, we are doing several things. We are attacking it at source by getting to the smugglers, we are dealing with the issues in the channel and on the coast, and we are creating a legislative framework fit for purpose. They are separate parts of a strategy.

[Stella Creasy]

I look forward to having a debate with the right hon. Gentleman tomorrow about my amendment 293, which would remove the word “Illegal” from the title of the Bill. It is not illegal to seek asylum. What he is talking about is not what the Bill will do. I have tried to urge him before not to process people’s claims in the Chamber; this is about the evidence of what we see.

I have multiple anecdotes about people who have been failed by our asylum system, the processing and the promises they were given of a safe and legal route. That is why this evening I wish to speak to the amendments about safe and legal routes. If the Government think this legislation is about illegal migration, by default there must be a legal process—so those safe and legal routes deserve much more scrutiny and attention. The Government have failed to provide a children’s rights assessment and equality impact assessment. It is so worrying that they are asking us to trust them when they cannot set out how they think people who are entitled to seek asylum because they are fleeing persecution should do so.

When I look at this Bill, I see that it needs a drastic overhaul even to meet its own ambitions or the pledges in article 31 of the refugee convention that somebody destroying their documents should not be penalised by the suggestion that their claim must be malicious. We should look at the actual evidence as to why smugglers encourage them to do that. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings suggests that somehow the Bill will do what the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 failed to do and what this Government’s policies keep failing to do. Let us learn from Einstein—that most famous refugee, who this country turned away. He said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

My new clause 17 is a probing one, on that basis. If the Government talk about safe and legal routes, we should know what those are intended to do. It simply says that the Government should set out what a safe and legal route is and which countries are therefore unsafe and require a legal route. After all, the Bill sets out countries considered to be safe. Ergo, all the countries not listed must be unsafe. The Government should tell us in Parliament how people should be able to access those routes and therefore not make dangerous journeys.

I also support new clause 13, tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) in new clause 10. We would all agree that all these new clauses need further work, but they all get towards a simple principle: to ask what is the role of a safe and legal route in this legislation. If the Bill is about illegal migration, what is the point of safe and legal routes? My amendment 138, which will be debated tomorrow, is about how that might then play a role in asylum processing itself.

There is a simple message in all this work. I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash); that might surprise people, and I am sorry he is not in the Chamber to hear it. He said that the processing and assessing of claims matters. Absolutely, and that is why the failures we have seen for a number of years have not been to do with the refugees themselves but to do with the politicians and their failure to get to grips with this. That is why it matters that the Government are not using the correct figures from the statistics authority. They are not showing us the true scale of the problem, which legislation has consistently failed to deal with. That is why we need to do something different, such as clarifying what a safe and legal route is and how it fits into the refugee convention and our processing. In a war, there are not simple processes of admin and bureaucracy that we can push people towards, so it matters all the more that we respect and recognise that in how we treat people who still think that life is better than death and who still choose to run.

I say to some Conservative Members that one of the top countries from which the people in the boats come is Iran. I have sat in this Chamber and heard people call out the Iranian Government and speak of their concern about the persecution of people in Iran. Not half an hour later, those people talk about how awful anybody in the boats is, although Iranians are the third most common country represented in them. There is no safe route from Iran.

Illegal Migration Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Countries mean more than their borders. National character, shared heritage and the institutions that give that history life matter. But borders matter too, for they are what mark the territory that defines citizenship, with its implicit entitlements, responsibilities, opportunities and duties, and the plain fact is that our kingdom’s borders are being breached day after day with impunity. Since 2018, some 85,000 people have entered Britain illegally, 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Seventy-four per cent. are men under 40 and 100% have travelled through safe countries, where they failed to claim asylum, to get here. Accommodating them is costing the British taxpayer every single day £6 million. It cannot go on.

Of course, Britain should provide a safe haven for people in fear—in genuine need—but it is a deceit to pretend that the asylum system has not been gamed and the British people taken for a ride by economic migrants with no legal right to be here, enabled by fat cat law firms that have grown rich on the proceeds, aided and abetted by militant interest groups that are determined to subvert the will of the people and cheered on by vacuous self-indulgent celebrities leading millionaire lifestyles. It may be uncomfortable for the bourgeois liberal establishment, but polls show that the British people want tough action on illegal immigration. Indeed, polling last week showed that people support the principles of the Bill.

Benjamin Disraeli said that justice is truth in action. Today, the Government are giving voice to the true wish of the British people to restore justice to our immigration and asylum system. It is not extreme to want to cap all kinds of immigration; it is not immoderate to deport illegal immigrants; and it is not unreasonable to give the Government the tools they need to do just that. It is time to take back control of our borders. It is time to stop the boats.

Public Order Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

Much of what it is claimed the buffer zones will deal with is already dealt with in law, and more effectively, under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Which is precisely why successive Prime Ministers and Health Secretaries, including the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, took the view that there was no need for further action, Indeed, they did not see this as a matter for a free vote, which abortion, as a generality, rightly is. This is about freedom: it is not about the purpose of that freedom or the location of it. It is about the ability to think, speak and pray freely.

[Andrew Lewer]

It is, and that is an important point. This is not a debate about opinions on abortion. Opinions about abortion are varied and differ hugely throughout the House. The 2022 Act already gives the police the power to

“place any condition on a public assembly (that is necessary to prevent disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation)”.

That is far more targeted and proportionate. If Members do not feel those powers are sufficient, that is a conversation about altering public space protection orders, not imposing nationwide buffer zones.

Those who do not accept amendment (a) must be able to justify to both themselves and the public why they do not believe that private prayer is a fundamental human right in the United Kingdom. The Bill must absolutely not outlaw our fundamental human rights and I remain far from convinced that, unamended, it will not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

The hon. Gentleman and knight of the realm makes a completely incontestable point. When we last voted on it in this place, we voted in favour by almost 3:1. In the other place, the vote was taken on voices, because the support was overwhelming. Hon. Members should not fall for a wrecking amendment; they should reject it.

This is about not the rights and wrongs of abortion—that question was settled in 1967—but the rights of women to go about their lawful daily business. It is not even a religious issue: the Bishop of Manchester in the other place made a barnstorming speech on the day.

As we said after the tragic killing of Sarah Everard, she was only walking home. Women should be allowed to use our pavements unimpeded. We saw the re-sentencing of her killer yesterday, so it all came back, and sadly, Sabina Nessa and Zara Aleena have been killed since. We cannot stand by, do nothing and say, “This is all okay.” It is obviously not, when 10,000 women a year are affected. Who could argue with safe access? I urge hon. Members to support Lords amendment 5 unamended.

[Sir John Hayes]

I was elected to this place in a free and fair election, and I come here and say not what I am asked or told to, but what I believe. Similarly, my constituents make representations to me in a free and open way, fearlessly. They sometimes agree with me and they sometimes disagree. Part of the glory of our democracy is that we can exchange views, we can learn from others, and we can disagree openly, fairly and, as I have said, without fear. That would once have been taken as read as a way of describing not just this place and our representative democracy, but the character of a free society in which we are all proud to live.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Surely the point that we have to be careful about is the use of words—which the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), whom I regard as a personal friend, did use—such as “impede”. Thinking and praying is not impeding. Actually shouting, livestreaming and doing offensive things to people who are going to have a procedure is impeding. If I understand correctly the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), he is talking only about things that do not impede. I think that is right, and that is the only basis on which I could vote for his amendment.

[Sir John Hayes]

My right hon. Friend will be pleased—but not surprised, given that he knows me so well—to hear that I entirely agree with him. I would not support loud, aggressive protests outside abortion clinics. They do take place in some other countries, but the evidence that they take place in this country is extremely thin. Indeed, a previous Health Secretary conducted a review to establish that fact. If that was in any way likely or possible, or was made more possible by this amendment, I would not be speaking in support of it, so my right hon. Friend is entirely right. This is about peaceful, silent protests.

In moving this Bill at its inception, the Government rightly said they were doing so because they were against violent disruptive protests. They had in mind people gluing themselves to roads, and stopping ambulances that were rushing to save lives. I support this Bill. I support its objectives because that kind of disruptive and violent protest is incompatible with a free, open and peaceful society. But it is extraordinary that, simultaneously, having said that they were in favour of peaceful protests—the defence being, “We are in favour of an open society, different opinions, the right to put your case by protesting peacefully”—the Government are now failing to support an amendment, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South because the Government refused to table it, to protect people’s right to protest in the very peaceful and indeed silent way that a few weeks ago they were saying they were prepared to defend.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is not a matter of interpretation, because it seems to me that this amendment would create exactly the kind of conflict and disruption to public peace that it is intended to avoid? If somebody kneels ostentatiously to pray in front of someone on their way to an abortion clinic, what is that intended to do? This amendment says that

“such communication or prayer shall not, without more, be taken to be—

(a) influencing any person’s decision”,

but why else would somebody kneel down and pray in front of a woman on her way to an abortion clinic unless it was intended to influence that person’s decision? There is a balance to be struck between the rights of people who pray, like my right hon. Friend and me, and the rights of people trying to avail themselves of a perfectly legal service to which they have a right.

[Sir John Hayes]

I do not know how often my hon. Friend prays—maybe more often than I do, although my need to do so is probably greater—but he must understand that prayer does two things: it sends a message, one hopes, to the Almighty; and it provides solace for the person praying. So the person praying outside the clinic may well be sending a message, but that message is just as likely to be transcendental as to be intended for any individual in proximity.

The idea that we should interrupt the relationship between an individual and their God seems to me to be pretty monstrous, particularly as amendment (a) states specifically that any activity, communication or prayer shall not influence any person’s decision or, more especially, instruct or impede any person. This is not about interfering with another. Rather, it is about expressing a view to oneself, to the Lord and perhaps to others; but that could surely be said of any prayer at any time. Are we going to arrest people in other public places? Once this is allowed and the police are permitted to apprehend people for what they think and what they are praying about, why not arrest them in other public places? Why does this have to apply only to abortion clinics? Once we open this door, why would the police not arrest people outside mosques or temples, or in any other public space where they are praying to illustrate an opinion—or indeed, as I have said, to express it not horizontally but vertically, to a greater power above us?

[Christine Jardine]

This is an extremely important point. I do not think anyone in this House wants to restrict anyone’s right to pray, but we are trying to differentiate here and consider the impact of that action on the women who are going in for a very traumatic experience. Many of them will be grieving and many will have been through a traumatic experience to get them to this point, only to then be presented with someone telling them that what they are doing is wrong, increasing that trauma. Regardless of the intention of the person praying, which I would defend forever, the impact on the women is the problem.

[Sir John Hayes]

But in a free society the impact we make on others by our sentiments, by what we do, say and, indeed, by what we pray about, is the inevitable consequence of the openness that I would have thought all of us in this place would celebrate. In this case, the amendment states specifically that we should not influence or obstruct, but the more general context in which we are having this debate is a world in which the ability to express a view that others might find offensive or unreasonable is being curbed every single day as our freedom is being eroded, and all the things we hold dear put at risk.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir John Hayes]

I will not give way again; I see that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, if not yet on your feet, are edging forward in your Chair, and so asking me to bring my remarks to a conclusion.

Freedom is not just about the capacity to hear from others with whom we agree; a free and open society is one in which we hear from those with whom we do not agree. That freedom is at risk. Amendment (a) is most reasonable, and I urge the House to accept it with these final words from the author and statesman John Buchan:

“You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilisation from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.”

Today I will vote against barbarism by voting for this amendment. I mission everyone in this Chamber to exercise their conscience and vote for it with me.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I will confine my comments to the amendments that touch on the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair. We did not look at the debate on abortion buffer zones because that was not part of the original Bill, so I will not comment on that. In general terms, some of the points made by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) could be carried across. I could very well ask of him why, if that is what he so clearly believes, he would support a power to stop and search without reasonable suspicion? So it cuts both ways.

However, I will confine my comments to support for Lords amendments 1, 6 to 9, 20, 21, 23, 27, 28, 31, 32 and 33, which can basically be grouped into suspicion and stop and search, serious disruption prevention orders, and the meaning of the phrase “serious disruption”. I will speak to the Joint Committee’s report on our legislative scrutiny of the Bill, which was published on 8 June last year. It was a unanimous report of our cross-party Committee, which of course contains both MPs and peers.

The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, which should be championed and protected rather than stifled. The Joint Committee concluded that while the stated intention behind the Bill was to strengthen police powers to tackle dangerous and highly disruptive protest tactics, its measures went well beyond that to the extent that we feel the Bill poses an unacceptable threat to the fundamental right to engage in peaceful protest. We have heard speeches about the historic basis of that right, and of course it is also protected in modern times under article 10 of the European convention on human rights, which deals with freedom of speech, and article 11, which deals with freedom of association.

In our report, we recommended that the power to stop and search without reasonable suspicion should be removed from the Bill. Other hon. Members have spoken about that in some detail. Basically, what we said was that the power to stop and search without reasonable suspicion inevitably gives rise to a risk of arbitrary or discriminatory use, and that it is disproportionate and inconsistent with the right to engage in peaceful protest. As we heard from other hon. Members, the police themselves said it is counterproductive and I do not understand that it is a power the police actually want as a whole. Lords amendments 6 to 9 take that out of the Bill, and I think that should be supported by this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have immense respect for many people who have spoken in the debate. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is no longer in his place. He and I might be in different political parties, but on issues of civil liberties, we often find common cause. I am not sure that my 15-year-old self would have thought that possible, but it is certainly true—for example, we are working, as Back-Bench Members of Parliament, to raise concerns about the restrictions on parliamentary sovereignty in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

I have been very struck by the debate, which I believe crosses party political lines. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who I knew as the hon. Member for Colchester back when I was that 15-year-old who could not conceive of points on which I might find common ground with Government Members. But there are such points, and this—speaking up for freedoms—is one.

I am very struck that the concept of freedom that has been articulated in the Chamber so far is a myopic one. That myopic freedom comes from a blind spot that I believe most of the Members in this Chamber must recognise when talking about access to abortion, which is exactly what we are talking about. By definition of who they are, they will never have been in the position of the women for whom those buffer zones make a difference, so their experience of the human rights at stake in the legislation, and of the issues that we face, is inevitably tempered by their own understanding, in which they focus on the idea that this is purely an issue of freedom of speech and fail to recognise that other, much-cherished right in this country: the right to privacy. My remarks will be very much about that and about how we cannot be a free society if women, just as much as men, are not able to exercise those rights equally.

I am very taken by the fact that it is International Women’s Day tomorrow. I have to say that I have become increasingly cynical about that day. It deflates me. We spend a year talking about how we are going to celebrate women, but precious little time working on advancing their rights. Well, I see Lords amendment 5 and opposition to amendment (a) as being about advancing women’s rights and doing what the suffragettes told us to do: “Deeds, not words”. Why do I see that? I see that because I think we must start by clarifying some of the myths that have been presented to the Chamber.

I listened respectfully to the hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) because this is the time and place for him to exercise that most important democratic right of freedom of speech. I have listened to many speakers talk about how we are somehow criminalising prayer. Let us be very clear for the avoidance of doubt: no prayer is being criminalised. Nothing in the Bill will do that, except, perhaps, for a gardener who is carrying a spade because they are praying that their carrots or green-sprouting broccoli will grow but who is stopped by the police—as clause 2 will allow—who argue that the gardener’s intent in carrying the spade is to dig a tunnel. The gardener’s prayer for the vegetables is secondary when they explain to the police why they were carrying a spade.

Let us be very clear: nothing in Lords amendment 5 criminalises prayer. It says what most people would recognise: that there is a time and a place for everything and a balance in those rights—in the freedom of speech to tell a woman that you do not think she has a right to make a choice over her own body, and her right to privacy. When she has made her choice, she should not be impeded.

Let us be honest about this: the people praying outside abortion clinics are not finding the right time and place for it. That is not just what I think; it is what the vast majority of the British public think because they recognise that when a woman has made that choice, she should not face someone trying to change her mind right up to the wire. She should be respected for her choice.

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will intervene with some rhetorical flourish about the purpose of freedom in this place. What about the freedom of a woman to make her choice in peace? That is what the Lords amendment does. I will happily give way because I am sure that he wants to come in on that point.

[Sir John Hayes]

The hon. Lady has provoked me to intervene and to be rhetorical as well, but I simply say this to her. She suggests that someone could be impeded by silence. Given that that is entirely irrational, will she answer this question: does she support the arrest and charging of a woman, as has happened? Does she endorse that, and does she want to see more of it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

Yes, it would. My right hon. Friend pre-empts my next point, which I think an Opposition Member raised earlier. Where a protest has been authorised and licensed in advance by the police, of course these provisions will not be engaged. Protests such as the Iraq war protests aimed at the former Labour Government would, of course, be licensed. Protests against this Government would no doubt be licensed as well and could properly be held.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who I see is back in his place, made a point about whether the Bill could be used to disrupt strike action. I draw his attention and that of the House to the Bill’s original clauses 6 and 7, which as a result of the Lords amendments have been renumbered as clauses 7 and 8. Subsection (2)(b) of each clause makes it clear that it will be a defence to offences under the Bill that the act in question was undertaken

“in…furtherance of a trade dispute”,

so trade union protests and anything to do with strikes are exempted from the provisions of the Bill.

I think that the definition we have set out is reasonable. The police have asked for it, the former Deputy President of the Supreme Court supports it, it backs up the case law and I strongly commend it to the House.

Lords amendments 2, 3 and 4 deal with tunnelling. They are clarificatory amendments, making it clear that the offence of causing serious disruption by being present in a tunnel, as defined by clause 4, is committed only if the tunnel has been created for the purposes of a protest. Lords amendments 10 and 16 relate to some clarifications involving the British Transport Police which we think are important. Lords amendments 6,7, 8, 9 and 36 pertain to so-called suspicionless stop and search.

[Sir John Hayes]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to this subject, will he give way?

[Chris Philp]

In just a moment.

As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) correctly said in an intervention, these so-called suspicionless stop and searches can only take place in the absence of personal suspicion, when an officer of the rank of inspector or above believes, or has reason to believe, that in the next 24 hours a number of offences may be committed in the locality. That reasonable belief is required before any suspicionless stop and search can take place, and even then it is time-bound to a period of 24 hours. We think that that is proportionate. We have heard some views from the police and, in particular, from the His Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which has said: “On balance, our view is that, with appropriate guidance and robust and effective safeguards, the proposed stop and search powers would have the potential to improve police efficiency and effectiveness in preventing disruption and making the public safe.” So this is something that HMIC has supported.

[Chris Philp]

I do not accept that. When there is a reasonable suspicion that in the next 24 hours offences may be committed which may themselves have a profoundly disruptive effect on members of the public, it is reasonable to prevent that. Let me point the hon. Gentleman to the example of the protests on the M25 last November, when a 10-mile tailback was caused. I suggest that preventing that would be a reasonable thing to do.

Lords amendment 17 deals with the question of journalists. As I have said previously, although the law as it stands does protect journalists—in fact, an apology rapidly followed the arrest of the journalist in Hertfordshire —the Government accept that clarification and reaffirmation of journalistic freedom is important, so we accept the spirit and the principle of the amendment. We have improved the wording slightly in our amendment in lieu, but we accept that journalists need special protection.

Lords amendments 18, 19 and 20 deal with serious disruption prevention orders. There has been some confusion over this, on both sides of the House, so I will reiterate the point for the purpose of complete clarity. The Government have accepted the point made in the Lords that a conviction is required before a serious disruption prevention order can be made. That is a significant concession. However, we do not accept Lords amendment 20, because clause 20—as formerly numbered —simply allows for an application to be made at a time after conviction, but a conviction must previously have taken place. We have therefore tabled an amendment in lieu.

I think it important to emphasise that there will be a free vote on buffer zones, at least on the Government side, because it concerns an issue of conscience, namely abortion. There is no Government position on this matter, and Members will vote according to their consciences. We have heard Members on both sides of the House speak about this issue passionately and with conviction.

[Sir John Hayes]

I hear what the Minister says about that, and he has heard the strong opinions expressed from this side of the Chamber in favour of the freedom to pray silently. Speaking personally and for the guidance of the House, will he tell us whether he will be supporting the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), which allows free and silent prayer?

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend is putting me on the spot a little bit. I would like to reiterate that the Government are neutral on this position. It is a free vote and there is no Government position, and in my capacity as a Government Minister I do not have a view. Obviously, as a Member of Parliament, I will be voting as an individual on this question. I do think, speaking personally, that women should be free to use these services without intimidation or harassment, which is why I voted for the amendment from the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) when it was first tabled, but I do not think the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South undermines that, particularly given the words in proposed subsection (3B), which say that prayer

“shall not, without more, be taken to”

influence a person’s decision. So, personally, I will vote for that, but I emphasise again that the Government do not have a position and this is a free vote. We have heard some extremely thoughtful, well-considered, well-argued and sincerely held views on both sides, and Members will no doubt make up their own minds. up.