Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Harper on a very deft, excellent and accomplished maiden speech. It is a pleasure and a privilege to follow him. My noble friend was introduced to this House as recently as 13 May, so in speaking so soon he has helped to prove an important point, which is that if one is of sufficient seniority and knowledge, one should not be afraid here to get stuck in. My noble friend is of great seniority and knowledge as a former Minister for Disabled People, as a former Minister for Constitutional Affairs—he referred to some of his travails in that duty—as a former Secretary of State for Transport at Cabinet level and as a former Chief Whip, where he always conducted himself with the discretion that we associate with those who have held that office.

Above all, of course, he is a former Minister for Immigration under the leadership of my noble friend Lady May, who is in her place. He therefore knows how the nuts and bolts of the system work. I look forward to the Minister responding to what he said. I congratulate him once again on his maiden speech; we look forward to hearing from him many times in the future.

Today, however, I want to follow a slightly different path. His speech was focused on what the Bill will seek to do, whereas I want to address whether it is capable of doing it. I ask at the very start: how much do we really know about migration into and out of the country? How many migrants are in Britain today? Where do they come from? For how long are they entitled to be here? What are they doing while they are here? How many overstay and how many are removed? Finally, are they making a net contribution to the economy or are they a cost to the taxpayer? I ask these questions in the wake of data uncovered by my Commons colleague, Neil O’Brien. He has discovered that benefit claims by households with at least one foreign national have doubled to nearly £1 billion a month in the past three years.

Finding answers is made no easier by the absence of systemic exit checks and the asymmetry of entry checks. On exit checks, we rely on advance passenger information from carriers, selective Border Force checks and administrative data—council tax information, DVLA data, NHS records and so on. On entry checks, the bedrock of the system, the International Passenger Survey, was designed to monitor tourism, not migration. The databases used by different departments to record migration often define it differently. Further, published ONS statistics break down migration data only into EU, non-EU and British categories, but not specific nationalities. Anyone coming to the country on a visitor visa to see family or for tourism, for example, is excluded from migration statistics by default, as is anyone on a temporary work visa.

Therefore, what will this Bill do, in its sharing of information provisions under Part 1 or elsewhere to: on exit, increase the number of exit checks and standardise the information received from them; and, on entry, ensure that the databases used by government use the same definitions of migrant and can talk to each other? Additionally, what will the Bill do, if anything, to break down migration data into specific nationalities, so that we can find answers to some of the questions that I posed at the start of my speech? Further, what impact will the Bill have, if any, on the Inter-departmental Task Force on Migration Statistics, set up as long ago as 2006, to improve the quality, coherence and accessibility of migration statistics?

To return to those who overstay on visitor visas and temporary work visas, how many of the roughly 2.2 million people who arrived last year on visitor visas and the 78,000 people who arrived on temporary work visas overstayed? Is it correct that, annually, 92,000 visa nationals across all visa types, and up to 250,000 non-visa national visitors, may not depart on time? Is it also correct that as few as 1,000 visa national overstayers of these 92,000 or so, and as few as 500 of these 250,000 or so, are removed each year? To look at visa types more closely, is it correct that as many as 15,000 non-EU student visa holders may overstay annually, and as few as 1,000 of these are removed each year; that as many as 5,000 family visa holders may overstay annually, and as few as 500 are removed each year; that as many as 30,000 asylum seekers may become unauthorised annually by remaining in the UK after their claims are refused and their appeals exhausted, and as few as 5,000 of these are removed each year; and that as many as 900 people enter the UK irregularly each year without claiming asylum, and as few as 50 are removed each year?

Regardless of whether these totals are accurate or not, what targets do the Government have to increase the number of removals for this year and future years, if any? I do not expect the Minister to answer this barrage of questions when he replies to the debate at the Dispatch Box, but it is vital that we get them, both for the purposes of planning for the future and for maintaining confidence in the system. Will the Bill enable us to craft a more selective and efficient, as well as a more restrictive, immigration system? That should be a key test for the Bill.