Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Fairfax of Cameron Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 10th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fairfax of Cameron (Con)]

My Lords, as other speakers said, we now live in an age of mass migration. As my noble friend Lord Hague often says, the population of Africa and the Middle East is expected to increase by about 1 billion people by the middle of this century. Of course this country has benefited over the centuries from immigration, but this is now an increasingly crowded island, with all that that means for our already hard-pressed housing and public services.

For many years, debate on this subject has often conflated economic migrants with genuine asylum seekers, which is why it is absolutely right that the Bill distinguishes legal from illegal migration. This very difficult issue is faced not only by this country, as many noble Lords know—you only have to look at Italy, Greece, France and Germany to see that—and our recent agreements with France and Algeria reflect an important recognition of that reality.

The Government recognise that the current asylum system is not working. As noble Lords heard, there is a backlog of 160,000 cases, more than £2 billion per year is being spent on accommodation, and, apparently, more than 80,000 people have illegally entered the UK since 2018, often having travelled through multiple safe countries to reach the UK, due to our so-called pull factor. So I welcome the Bill, as do a majority of our citizens. It is the Government’s genuine attempt to remedy our current broken system.

Today, we have heard plenty of outrage from various sections of this House but very little by way of alternative workable solutions to this admittedly very difficult problem. As an earlier speaker said, it is about deterrence —to cut off demand from the organised criminal gangs that are gaming and profiteering from our current system —and I agree with that. No doubt the Bill can be improved here, but it should not be mauled unrecognisably; in my view, that would not be understood or accepted by a majority of our citizens.