Immigration and Asylum Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Paul Foster Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 29th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Kohler]

We are trying to push forward a cost-benefit analysis. As I said in my first intervention in this Committee, we do not use Committee stage well when we sit like this—pretending we are in the Chamber—and get into party political arguments with each other. The House should address how we use Committee. We should sit as a Committee, discuss things and really enter into line-by-line scrutiny. I have covered that before, so I will not bore the hon. Lady with it any more.

I have now utterly forgotten where I had got to, so I will start again. In fact, I had not yet said this bit, and it will goad the official Opposition even more, I suspect: the Liberal Democrats enjoy talking about the European Union. We make no secret of the fact that closer relations with the bloc would go a long way to resolving the small boats crisis and illegal immigration. However, it should not be a question of ideology or party political posturing; it must be a question of what works and how much it costs. The Government talk about reducing pull factors for migrants, but they seem unwilling to face the realities. Ensuring a coherent international approach to irregular migration is the single most powerful weapon that the Government could utilise to reduce the pull factor. I suspect that Government Members secretly agree with that.

I understand the Minister’s reticence about new clause 6, but understanding the costs of joining the migration and asylum pact would enable us to do a value-for-money comparison with the current bilateral deals that the Government have made and are negotiating.

[Mr Paul Foster (South Ribble) (Lab)]

The hon. Member’s new clause proposes a cost-benefit analysis of each bilateral immigration and asylum agreement or arrangement in force. How many individual agreements are we are talking about?

[Mr Kohler]

I will start with one: since Brexit, the Government have spent more than £1 billion on the agreement with France. We do not yet know the costs of intelligence sharing with Belgium, so I cannot give an answer on that. However, those deals fail to recognise that people who seek asylum are desperate. Sadly, making the French coast a more difficult place from which to embark pushes asylum seekers towards longer, more dangerous routes. Small boat departures from Belgium used to be rare, but that has changed since the start of 2026. There were 32 attempts to launch small boats from Belgium between January and April of this year, of which five were prevented. In comparison, there were just two launch attempts in the whole of 2025. We believe that agreeing a deal with the entire bloc would be more effective in preventing dangerous small boat crossings, by implementing a deterrent that encompasses all of Europe.

I take the Minister’s point, however. We do need some evidence, which is why the Liberal Democrats suggest a cost-benefit analysis. New clause 7 calls on the Home Secretary to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of bilateral arrangements, to compare their costs with the estimated costs of joining the pact. Does the Minister acknowledge the benefits that that information could yield? Hon. Members have shown that they are interested in the answer, so let us give them the answer. I would like to hear what the Minister thinks.