Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the publication of the impact assessment on the Illegal Migration Bill.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The Illegal Migration Bill is critical to stopping the boats. Its intent is clear: if someone comes to the UK illegally, they should be detained and swiftly returned to their home country if safe, or relocated to a safe third country such as Rwanda. The impact assessment published yesterday makes clear that inaction is simply not an option. The volumes and costs associated with illegal migration have risen exponentially, driven by small boat arrivals. Unless we act decisively to stop the boats, the cost to the taxpayer and the damage to society will continue to grow.

The asylum system currently costs £3.6 billion a year and £6 million a day in hotel accommodation, but that is not the true cost of doing nothing. As this impact assessment shows, the cost of accommodating illegal migrants has increased dramatically since 2020. If these trends continued, the Home Office would be spending over £11 billion a year, or £32 million a day, on asylum support by the end of 2026. In such a scenario, the Bill would only need to deliver a 2% deterrence in arrivals to enable cost savings.

The figure of £11 billion is an extraordinary amount of money—nearly 10 times the amount of money the taxpayer spent on the asylum system as recently as 2021—and anyone opposing this Bill needs to explain how they would pay those costs. Given the Labour party’s opposition to this Bill, it represents another £11 billion black hole in its fiscal plans.

The impact assessment suggests that passing this Bill could directly save the UK taxpayer over £100,000 for every illegal migrant deterred from making a small boat crossing. It also finds that the Bill could lead to a much wider set of benefits—including reducing pressures on local authorities, public services and the housing market—that could not be monetised, meaning that the savings will in fact be much greater.

The British public are clear that they want to stop the boats. That is why we must keep using every tool at our disposal to do just that and to secure our borders, and why this Bill must become law.

[Yvette Cooper]

I was going to ask if the Immigration Minister had seriously signed off this garbage of an impact assessment, which no self-respecting Minister could possibly think was serious, but actually the nonsense he has just said is even worse and even less coherent. This is not an impact assessment. According to the Government’s own guidance, it is supposed to include the

“costs, benefits and risks...and a consideration of a range of options.”

However, we have something that does not even include some of the most basic options to assess, such as speeding up the asylum system and making savings that way. Instead, it says that this impact assessment

“does not attempt to estimate any costs of implementing the Bill…or estimate the volumes of individuals that will be impacted by the Bill.”

Really, what is the point of it, given that the document itself admits that people “may not be deterred” by any of this, and it cannot answer the most basic questions? I have never seen anything more clueless and chaotic.

The impact assessment does provide evidence of the scale of Conservative failure. The cost for one person in the asylum system for just one night has gone up fivefold in four years. That is just the cost of Tory mismanagement. It has gone up faster than mortgages or energy bills, and it has even gone up faster than the price of cheese. It is all Tory Home Office mismanagement. It shows the shocking fact that people are now staying in the asylum system for four years, and there is no alternative to try to speed up the system or to look at that.

The Government do say that it will cost £169,000 per person to pay another country to take asylum decisions for us. So far, the Government have sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda, but how many people are they actually budgeting for? The Prime Minister says he wants to send everyone, so can the Minister tell us where the billions of pounds it would cost to send everyone to Rwanda this year will come from, and if not, can he tell us how many he is really budgeting for and what in fact is going to happen to everyone else instead?

The impact assessment says it costs £7,000 per person to keep someone in detention for 40 days. That is more than double the current average cost of keeping people elsewhere in the asylum system, so where are the hundreds of millions of pounds for the detention plan going to come from, and where are these detention facilities going to come from? The Minister has not attempted to cost speeding up the system and he has not attempted to cost what we really think will happen, which is that tens of thousands more people will be in indefinite detention or indefinite asylum accommodation. The Treasury bailed out the Home Office by £2.4 billion last year. How much is it going to be this year?

The Government have crashed the economy, and now they have crashed the asylum system too. We have an impact assessment that shows the Home Office does not have a clue and the Treasury does not have a grip, and the Prime Minister who claims to be Mr Fix-It is instead Mr Muck-It-Up. The country deserves better than this.

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Lady misses the point entirely. The impact assessment bears out the cost of the current broken system and makes it clear that there is no option but to completely overhaul our asylum system and make it fit for the decades ahead. The reality, as those of us on the Government Benches see it, is straightforward: if people continue to cross in small boats, the cost to the taxpayer in one form or another will continue to increase and that is a completely unacceptable outcome—but it is the one that can be expected with Labour’s recklessly naive approach to border security.

When the right hon. Lady said that this document was “garbage” and “clueless”, I thought she was referring to her own five-point plan to tackle illegal migration, because we cannot grant our way out of the problem, we cannot simply arrest our way out of this and do nothing to dismember and dismantle the business model of the gangs. We cannot provide a safe and legal route to every single person eligible for refugee status or every economic migrant who views this country as a better place, and we certainly cannot reheat the tired old policies like the Dublin convention that she looks back on through her rose-tinted spectacles. Even members of the European Union have moved on from that, but not the Labour party. She cannot even bring herself to call these unnecessary and dangerous journeys what they are under British law: illegal.

The truth is that Labour’s do-nothing approach to stopping the boats is the fastest route to more crossings, greater taxpayer spending and more pressure on our communities. Left unchecked, the cost will spiral to £11 billion by 2026. That is the cost of a Labour Home Secretary; that is the cost of Cooper. Only the Conservative party will truly tackle the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. We are determined to secure our borders and stop the boats, and the British public can rely on us to do so.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Opposition seem to think that the Rwanda scheme is purely about displacing people who have entered illegally from Kent to Rwanda. In fact, it is about deterring them from coming in the first place and instead encouraging them to use the safe and legal routes that are now in the Illegal Migration Bill, because it will become a lottery whether someone ends up on a plane to Rwanda or in a hotel in Kent. Given that the French authorities admitted to the Select Committee on Home Affairs that when the Rwanda scheme was first announced there was a surge in migrants approaching the French authorities about regularising their position in France rather than hazarding the channel crossing, what discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the French and Germans, who have expressed interest in a Rwanda-type scheme, about having a joint multinational scheme to get this thing up and running?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a view expressed by some, mainly on the left, that the UK is somehow an outlier in pursuing a policy like Rwanda. I can tell him, having spoken to our European counterparts and Home Affairs and Interior Ministers in north Africa and beyond, that leaders across the world are looking to the UK not as an outlier but as a leader in this field. They are looking to the Rwanda policy as one of the most innovative and comprehensive approaches to a problem that everyone is facing. In an age of mass migration, with millions of people on the move, it is right that the UK leads. We will invest in border security, and that is the difference between us and the Labour party. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) does not want to invest in border security; we do. We will pursue the Rwanda policy, we will secure our borders, and other countries will follow our lead.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Scottish National party spokesperson.

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[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The Tory Illegal Migration Bill has almost completed its journey through Parliament and only yesterday did the Home Office deign to publish this ludicrous economic impact assessment, which is as revealing in what it omits as what it includes. There is nothing about the backlog they have created; it is all about the boats.

We know the cost of this cruel Tory ideology is £169,000 per soul deported, costing more than if people were allowed to stay. We know the figures for asylum processing claims, which are estimated to take four years, but we do not know the set-up costs for the wildly expanding detention estate or those left in immigration limbo or the staffing in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to deal with this.

The Government say that this will save money, because victims of modern slavery will no longer be entitled to support. How despicable. This is an egregious waste of public money in a cost of living crisis, and it fails to recognise the value of human potential. We have just celebrated the Refugee Festival in Scotland—an incredible experience that celebrates the contribution of those who come to our shores for sanctuary. It is increasingly evident that the only way that Scotland can uphold our humanitarian values is by regaining our independence. As Winnie Ewing would have it, stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady celebrated Refugee Week. I do not know if any refugees came to it, because the SNP does not house refugees in Scotland. The point is that we are proud of our record as a country. Since 2015, under a Conservative Government we have welcomed into the United Kingdom more than half a million people seeking genuine sanctuary from war and persecution—individuals coming from Hong Kong, Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan. SNP Members continuously pose as humanitarians, but we all know the truth is that at every single opportunity, they fail to live up to their fine words. If they cared about this issue, they would welcome asylum seekers into their own part of the UK, but they do not.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

When it works, it will be a bargain, won’t it?

[Robert Jenrick]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Border security is the first priority of any Government. We understand that, and that is why we are investing in it and ensuring that we can stop the boats. I am only surprised that the Opposition care so little about our national security.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Two weeks ago, when the Home Secretary gave evidence at the Home Affairs Committee, I asked her when the impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill would be published. While I welcome the fact that it has been published today, or last night, it is after the Bill has completed all its stages in the House of Commons and is three quarters of the way through the House of Lords. That is wholly unsatisfactory for Parliament to undertake its role of scrutinising Government legislation. At that Select Committee sitting, the Home Secretary also said:

However, I would also say that to my mind it is pretty obvious what the economic impact of the Bill will be. We will stop spending £3 billion a year on our asylum cost. It is a Bill that will lead to the cessation of 45,000 people in hotels and £6 million a day. To my mind, those are savings that we cannot ignore.”

The Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee that those savings would happen. Can the Minister help me by pointing to where those savings are in the impact assessment? I am struggling to find those figures in the document that the Government have produced.

[Robert Jenrick]

The document makes it abundantly clear that, were costs to continue to rise on the current trajectory—we are in an age of mass migration and the numbers of individuals looking to cross, for example from north Africa to Europe, are extremely high so there is reason to believe that numbers will remain high for a sustained period—by 2026, which is just a few years away, the system would be costing an additional £11 billion. We cannot countenance such waste of taxpayers’ money. As we have seen in other parts of the world such as Australia, where systems of this kind have been implemented, by delivering this system and ensuring a genuine deterrent effect, we will ensure that we save the taxpayer that money. But, more important than merely saving money, we will save the British public the stress and the strain on public services, housing, integration and community cohesion that tens of thousands of illegal migrants bring to our country. That is a prize worth fighting for, and that is why we are delivering this Bill.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

May I just say to my right hon. Friend that in the past week we have seen arrests and convictions in Essex? One example was over the tragedy that befell the Vietnamese a few years ago, but another was a new gang that has been identified that is trafficking people to work in modern slavery locally, in Grays. Although the British public want us to stop the boats, the British public are also generous in spirit, and what they really want is to make sure that this country is not being taken advantage of. The responsibility to tackle that lies with the machinery of Departments, our criminal justice system and our law enforcement agencies. If they can all get a grip, will that not be a better solution than sending people to Rwanda?

[Robert Jenrick]

Our policy with respect to Rwanda is not the totality of our approach; we are also, as my hon. Friend has just noted, investing significantly in law enforcement at home and abroad. We have increased the number of illegal working raids by 50% just this year alone. We have signed two landmark deals with France and a memorandum of understanding with Italy. We have signed a returns agreement with Georgia. I have recently travelled to Belgium and met my counterparts there, where we spoke about that horrific incident with the Vietnamese individuals who died in the back of an HGV. We agreed to further deepen our collaboration and law enforcement co-operation. She has my assurance that we are working around the clock and tackling this issue from each and every dimension, and that is why I believe that the UK has the most comprehensive plan to tackle illegal migration of any country in the western world.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Minister is proposing, according to the document, to spend eye-wateringly large sums—£169,000 per person—to process claims in Rwanda. He wants to spend that money to treat people with great cruelty. How can that possibly be justified?

[Robert Jenrick]

I usually have the utmost respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but he is wrong in each respect of that question. First, the figure that he quoted is a gross figure, not a net figure. Secondly, that figure does not relate to the Rwandan partnership, but is an indicative figure based on the Syrian resettlement scheme. We chose not to publish the commercially sensitive nature of our relationship with Rwanda for good reason, because countries and partners working together in good faith should not publish details that we said we would not. His last point, that individuals will be treated with great cruelty in Rwanda, is categorically untrue. I wonder whether he has been to Rwanda—I certainly have. It is a country that is safe and where we have a good working relationship. The High Court exhaustively analysed Rwanda’s safety and the treatment that it would propose to give to those coming from the United Kingdom, and the High Court concluded that the scheme was appropriate and in accordance with our legal obligations. We will shortly hear from the Court of Appeal, but I very much hope it will uphold the High Court’s judgment.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

What is nonsense is to deny that it makes economic sense to offshore. Nobody is going to spend thousands of pounds to a people smuggler just to be detained and sent back to Rwanda. In terms of deterrence, will the Minister accept that if someone is fleeing chaos in Syria or Iraq, they will not be deterred to come if they are going to be put up in a cosy, warm, former airman’s bedroom in RAF Scampton, rather than a hotel in bracing, cold Skegness? Is not the solution to get the Bill through and pass it into law and for the House of Lords to stop its silly games?

[Robert Jenrick]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, although not necessarily his comments about Skegness. The point is that we have to look at each and every one of the pull factors to the United Kingdom. The approach that we are now taking to accommodating asylum seekers is not an outlier within Europe. I have spoken to my counterparts in almost every European country in recent weeks, and they are all considering options such as barges and sites such as former military bases. Many are considering tents. Many are bailing people to no fixed abode with vouchers and essentially leaving them to sleep on the streets. We have to ensure that the UK is not perceived to be a soft touch, and I will never allow that to happen.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Who would have thought that a policy designed for shallow political purposes would turn out to be an expensive embarrassment? It is not about what is in this assessment; it is about what is not. Where is the estimate of the savings if the Government chose competence over posturing and efficiently cleared the 160,000 backlog of asylum seekers? Where is the impact assessment for the effect of these proposals on the victims of modern slavery? Has the Minister made any assessment at all of the likelihood that people will still come to our shores by small boats but simply not claim asylum, slipping underneath the radar and ending up in slavery and criminality? Where is the comprehensive assessment of this ridiculous policy?

[Robert Jenrick]

On the hon. Member’s penultimate point, we have gone to great lengths to ensure that individuals do not arrive on our shores without our knowledge. That happens in only a tiny number of cases because of the good work of our small boats operational command. We meet individuals and ensure that they are properly security checked before they flow into the system. That is the right thing to do.

The costs to the UK taxpayer of the current levels of asylum seekers are extremely high. Then, as the impact assessment says, there are non-monetised costs such as the effect on the housing shortage and public services, and the challenge to community cohesion and integration. It is for all those reasons and others that we must get a grip on this challenge. I do believe that border security is worth investing in. The hon. Member may not, but I do, and I think that the British public do as well. They want us to secure our borders and they are willing to see us invest in that.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

May I again caution my right hon. Friend against the Gerald Ratner approach to Government policy? Will he answer this direct question: how long did it take on average to process an asylum seeker’s claim five years ago, how long does it take today, and why?

[Robert Jenrick]

The last time my hon. Friend asked me a question, he said that we would not be able to produce a barge to house asylum seekers. Actually, days later we signed the agreement to do that, and that will be coming forward, so he knows that when we say things, we mean them and we will deliver.

With respect to the time it takes to process asylum claims, it is too long. However, that is the product not just of management within Government and the Home Office, but the sheer number of people crossing every year. I have spoken to my opposite numbers in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, and every one of those countries is struggling with backlogs of cases as much as we are—more so in some cases—because the asylum systems across Europe are being placed under intolerable pressure by the number of people making these dangerous and unnecessary journeys. That is why we have to instil deterrence, and the Rwanda policy gives us the ability to reduce the numbers and restore sustainability to the system.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Instead of effective measures to tackle the people smugglers and speed up the processing of asylum claims to reduce the backlog, the Bill means that the Minister’s Department will need to requisition more and more accommodation, as it is doing with the Stradey Park Hotel in my constituency. In spite of promises of job opportunities from Clearsprings, his Home Office contractor, all 100 staff have had the devastating news today that they face redundancy. What will the Department do to help those staff and those who are in similar circumstances because of the Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

The best thing that the hon. Member could do is support the Bill when it returns from the House of Lords to enable us to get the flights off to Rwanda so that we imbue the system with the deterrence that it requires. The impact assessment that we laid yesterday makes it clear that if we do nothing, the costs to the system will spiral by £11 billion a year. She, like other Labour Members of Parliament, writes to me day in, day out complaining that the way in which we accommodate asylum seekers is too rudimentary. They say it is not specialist enough, that we should be spending more money on asylum support, not less, and that a hotel is not good enough and needs to be more luxurious. We have the Labour leader of Westminster City Council saying that individuals being housed in a hotel in Pimlico were being poorly looked after and that they should have their own single ensuite bedrooms. How out of touch with the British public can they get?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Local residents in the Kettering constituency are appalled that two local hotels—the Rothwell House Hotel in Rothwell and the Royal Hotel in Kettering—are being used as asylum seeker accommodation. I am convinced that the answer is to get the Illegal Migration Bill through and to stop people crossing the channel in small boats. Is it not the case that we are spending £3.6 billion a year and that that will rise to £11 billion in just three years? Is it not the case that doing nothing is simply not an option?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He and his constituents see every day the harm that doing nothing could cause, with the loss of more than one valued hotel in his constituency. We want to stop this once and for all, and the dividing line is between those who want to deal with the symptoms of the problem by tweaking the system and managing failure and those of us who want to transform the system, stop the boats, secure our borders and ensure that we have a sustainable system for an age of mass migration.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We can tell that we are in the dying days of the Government ahead of a general election, because they always resort to dog-whistle rhetoric. Nobody on either side of the House wants open borders. We want a secure border around the United Kingdom, but what we do not want is more unworkable propositions from the Government. They have brought forward Bill after Bill after Bill, and none of it has worked. The impact assessment shows that this Bill will not work either. There is no attempt to estimate the total costs or benefits of the proposals. It uses the word “uncertain” 24 times in 40 pages and does not cover the costs that we need to know. Will the Minister tell us how much this will cost and where the money will come from?

[Robert Jenrick]

The difference here is that if we do nothing, we will see the British taxpayer spend billions of pounds. [Interruption.] That is not on us; that is on the Labour party. We are not doing nothing; we are taking forward the Rwanda partnership, which is one of the most innovative and novel approaches to tackling this issue of any country in the world.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

May I extend my most sincere thanks to the Minister for his words today in response to the urgent question? I have been very loud about exactly this matter in the Chamber since I was first elected, and this is without question what the British people voted for back in 2019. Does he agree that the Labour and the Lib Dem response of simply saying, “Oh, speed up the asylum system,” equates to saying, “Just let them all in”?

[Robert Jenrick]

I could not agree more strongly with my hon. Friend. There is a naivety to the Labour party’s position. If Labour Members think that they can solve the problem just by granting people asylum quicker, doing a few more arrests and trying to reinvent the Dublin convention, which even European leaders have moved on from, they do not know what we are dealing with. Just the other day, the shadow Immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), supported a proposal to loan Ukraine the small boats that we have seized to help its citizens deal with the recent floods. Does he have any idea what these boats are like? They are the most unseaworthy craft that I have ever seen, produced by the most evil and ruthless people smugglers and human traffickers. That suggests that Labour Members do not understand the problem. If we are to beat the people smugglers, we need to take robust measures, and that is what we are doing.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The Minister is claiming that, without the Bill, the cost of the current system will rise to £11 billion—by the way, that figure is not in the impact assessment. Will he confirm that his calculation is based on the idea that per-person accommodation costs will keep rising at the same pace as they have over the last few years as a result of his Department’s failure to get a grip both on the asylum system backlog and, as I have said before, on the rip-off merchants who are scamming the Home Office for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on dodgy contracts?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will always hold the providers to account for the quality of the service they provide for the taxpayer. I take that very seriously, as I have said to the hon. Lady in the past, but I am afraid that, like the shadow Home Secretary, she is missing the point. The more illegal migrants who come to the country, the greater the cost to the taxpayer. If we want to tackle the problem, we need to break the business model of the people smugglers. Tinkering around at the edges and trying to manage the system better, which seems to be the Labour party’s approach, will never work.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Residents in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke are rightly outraged to see hotels used, people losing their jobs, levelling-up projects undermined and the hospitality and retail sectors destroyed. This is the right scheme because, like the successful Australian scheme, it will act as a deterrent to people coming to this country, therefore bringing down the need for hotels and the burden on the Home Office.

Sadly, the only plan we hear from the shadow Home Secretary is to process people quicker. That is amnesty in another name. We are currently accepting 70% of them, and the right hon. Lady will not even commit to getting down to France’s level of 18%. Is the truth not that the shadow Home Secretary may belittle the scheme but she does not say whether she would scrap it if she were Home Secretary? Ultimately, Labour is getting ready for another embarrassing flip-flopping U-turn.

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not know whether the shadow Home Secretary would scrap the scheme—I have heard all sorts of conflicting reports in that regard—but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that this a world-leading partnership. Time and again, I speak to Interior Ministers throughout Europe who look to it as an innovative approach. I would not be surprised if other countries follow us once we have operationalised it.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

For the Minister’s information, Motherwell and Wishaw has been welcoming refugees for more than 100 years—Lithuanians, Vietnamese, Congolese and Syrians. Please do not make that mistake again.

The economic assessment says:

“By setting an annual cap this should reduce the inflow of people entering the UK and therefore reduce the cost associated with processing asylum claims”,

with secondary benefits—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not feel well.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend apologise for the delay in producing this impact assessment? Will he also explain to the House why the four countries of Scandinavia have been able to reduce the number of asylum applications from 239,000 in 2015 to 28,000 last year? Why have they been able to do that when we cannot? Why is our asylum process still taking longer than it ought to? The rate at which asylum applications are being dealt with is currently at its slowest ever.

[Robert Jenrick]

First, I am sorry that the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) is feeling unwell, and I hope she recovers quickly.

With respect to my hon. Friend’s question, I can report good news: we are making good progress on the pledge we made at the end of last year to eliminate the legacy asylum backlog. The number of caseworkers is rising rapidly and we are on course to achieve our ambition to double them. Productivity is increasing. We will see those results flow through very rapidly. That is the right thing to do, although it is not the totality of the response to this challenge, because the reason we have a backlog in cases is the sheer number of people crossing. We published the impact assessment yesterday. I hope my hon. Friend will read it and it will inform any further discussions we have in this House following their lordships’ deliberations.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The impact assessment illustrates the cost of the Government’s decisions. Nobody else is to blame. The Government have had 13 and a half years, but we are in this mess. On 25 May, when I asked the Minister about dealing with asylum claims, he told me that increasing the pace of dealing with asylum claims would likely increase the number of people coming across on small boats. He also said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck):

“the faster the process, the more pull factor”.—[Official Report, 25 May 2023; Vol. 733, c. 439.]

Where are those statements borne out in the impact assessment?

[Robert Jenrick]

The point I made then and have made again today is that the Labour Party’s policy is merely focused on the symptoms of the problem. It is saying that, if we can grant the decisions faster, everything will be fine. That will not resolve the problem; in fact, it is dangerously naive. We are dealing with the most evil people smugglers and human traffickers, and highly determined economic migrants. That is why we need a much broader approach. At the heart of it has to be deterrence. The Rwanda policy is part of that. That is why we have brought forward the Illegal Migration Bill. The sooner we get it on the statute book, the sooner we can implement it.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is clearly right that this is a multifaceted approach. We need to break the business model of the evil people smugglers, but also speed up the process of dealing with those people who have genuine asylum cases, and then remove those who do not. Will he join me in sending this signal: if someone enters this country illegally, we will remove them to Rwanda where their case will be considered and, if they have a case, they can return.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want to build a system whereby the UK is a generous and welcoming country to those in genuine need of sanctuary. That is why we have pursued the resettlement schemes that we have in recent years, and we want to do more in future. The Illegal Migration Bill envisages that through its clause on safe and legal routes. For those who come here in breach of our laws, breaking into our country in an irregular manner, we will pursue the most robust approach. They will be returned home if it is safe to do so, or to a safe third country such as Rwanda. That is a sensible and robust approach that will help us to create a sustainable migration system.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

The Minister was correct when he said that the system was broken—broken by this Government, which is why we are paying £6 million a day to house people fleeing conflict and persecution. Liverpool, as a city of sanctuary, has extended its support to people fleeing persecution, not illegal migrants, to the sum of 2,800. Will the Minister agree that it is unacceptable for the Government to expect us to rehouse 237 people from Afghan hotels with five months’ notice? Will he agree to meet me and other Liverpool MPs to discuss this matter and solve it urgently?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am happy to discuss that with the hon. Lady, or she can speak to the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), who is leading on the resettlement of Afghans. I respectfully disagree with her. Those individuals who came across in Operation Pitting under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, have in some cases been in hotels for approaching two years. That is not right for them or for the country. We need to help them now into sustainable forms of accommodation. That is why we have established a generous new scheme. We are working with local authorities, with dedicated triaging teams going into the hotels and helping those individuals into vacant service family accommodation, the private rental sector and social housing. I strongly encourage her to work with her local authority to do the same in Liverpool.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

The Immigration Minister is right that the current level of illegal migration is unsustainable, due to not only the billions of taxpayers’ money being spent but the pressure on public services and housing and, therefore, on our environment. Will he assure me that, in addition to the Illegal Migration Bill, we will always uphold the decisions of this Parliament and the British courts above those of the European Court of Human Rights?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support for the action that we are taking. This Conservative Government brought forward the Illegal Migration Bill, a robust measure that is probably the most significant change to our immigration legislative framework since the second world war. We believe that it is in accordance with our international law obligations. We are determined to tackle this challenge, and we will do whatever it takes to do that.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I hope the Minister is prepared to correct some of his earlier claims, because Glasgow remains the local authority with the most dispersed asylum seekers per head of population; it has more than any other local authority in the country. If he does not believe me, he would be very welcome to come and meet some of the asylum seekers and refugees at the Maryhill Integration Network, people who trained as accountants, nurses and teachers. They do not want to cost the taxpayer money; they want to become taxpayers. But his failed immigration processing means they are not having their claims processed in time. Will he come and hear some of their genuine stories about why they had to flee their home countries in the first place, and the contribution that they could and want to make now?

[Robert Jenrick]

First, I agree that Glasgow is taking in a large number of asylum seekers. It is just a pity that nowhere else in Scotland is. That is the approach the SNP Government have established. Only last week, we approached the SNP Government to suggest that the vessel that has been housing Ukrainians in Leith be used to house asylum seekers. The SNP Government said that they did not think that that was a good idea—Ukrainians were welcome, but asylum seekers were not welcome. That is emblematic of an approach that is rhetorical and never backed up by reality. I would be happy to speak to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, but the truth is that the SNP is letting them down.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Much of the media reporting this morning focused on the £169,000 cost of transporting an individual and processing them in Rwanda, but what are the alternative costs of ongoing open illegal migration, leading to problems with accommodation, access to public services, lack of infrastructure, increasing house prices and social integration? Could the Minister tell us more about the costs of those, please?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Not only is maintaining a system without taking robust further steps like the Rwanda policy likely to be extremely expensive—that is detailed in the impact assessment—but there are non-monetised costs as well, which are hard to calculate with certainty, such as the impact on scant social housing and housing more broadly, the cost to public services and the fact that many of these individuals come to the UK speaking poor English. Many require great support by the British state to help them to integrate and build successful lives in this country. That is a very challenging situation. We have to be honest with ourselves about that. We need to take action to stop the boats, so we can ensure that the finite resources we have as a country are not directed at young men who are in a place of safety such as France, but can go to the people who really need it most in and around conflict zones: families and those people we would want to resettle in the United Kingdom.

[Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister claims he is ready to take tough financial decisions, such as not giving our NHS heroes a pay rise, leaving them struggling to pay ever-increasing mortgages and the cost of living caused by those on the Government Benches voting measures through and crashing our economy just a few months ago. The Rwanda scheme is set to cost even more billions than the already crashed asylum system, delivered by those on the Government Benches over there. So how can the Minister truly sit there and justify spending £169,000 to send one single asylum seeker to Rwanda? I accept that the Government are working with local authorities on housing in the private sector—deregulated housing in the private sector that cannot be given to any of our people. That is what he is doing. You cannot justify what is going on here. You’ve crashed it and you go on to—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady is experienced enough to know that she does not address the Minister directly like that, but through the Chair.

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady is wrong on a number of counts. First, the impact assessment does not say that it costs £169,000 to send somebody to Rwanda. The figure is an indicative one based on the Syrian resettlement scheme, as I said in answer to a previous question. The partnership with Rwanda is rightly commercially sensitive, so she is wrong to draw the inference that she does. With respect to accommodating asylum seekers, we want to ensure we bring those costs down and we want the best possible relationships with local government to do just that. But the truth is that the driver of those costs is the sheer number of people crossing the channel every year. Unless we take decisive action, I am afraid that will continue to rise. That is why she should support us when the Bill returns to the Commons.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

Clearly, the best way to reduce the costs of illegal migration is to increase deterrence, in particular with the Rwanda plan. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he is doing everything possible to ensure that once the Court of Appeal has made its decision we can get on with the flights to Rwanda immediately?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Deterrence has to be at the heart of our approach, whether domestically in terms of making it harder to live and work illegally in the United Kingdom, or internationally with the work we are doing upstream. The Rwanda policy is a critical part of that. The Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and I meet every week to ensure we are ready to operationalise the policy as soon as we have the ability to do so. We will await the judgment of the court. Of course, we hope it will uphold the very strong judgment we received from the High Court earlier in the year.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The Government’s failing asylum seeker policy also impacts on local areas in the UK where large numbers of asylum seekers are accommodated. The Government promised not to increase the number of asylum seekers in the north-east, but the Minister told me in a letter this week that that would not stop a large barge being sited on the Tees. Is Teesside getting hundreds or thousands more asylum seekers, yes or no?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s approach because he voted against every measure we brought forward to tackle this challenge. As a result, more people will come to the United Kingdom illegally on small boats. I suspect he cannot even bring himself to call these individuals illegal migrants. We are taking the tough steps we need to tackle this issue. We are also looking at new ways to accommodate people. Barges and vessels are options being pursued by the Irish, the Belgians, the Dutch and the SNP in Scotland.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

The Minister spoke earlier about investing in border security, but it was only in April that Border Force were on strike over pay and conditions. He also spoke earlier about humanitarian approaches to migration, yet I still have constituents in Ilford South whose families are in Afghanistan fleeing the Taliban and facing every day being murdered by the Taliban. The Government have failed to bring those people safely to this country. We then turn to the impact assessment on the Bill, which exposes what it is: an absolute dog’s breakfast. It is designed for one thing only: to try to win an election. It is nothing to do with serious migration policy. It is not properly costed. It is total nonsense. Mark my words, Madam Deputy Speaker, I doubt a single flight will go to Rwanda. It will be an incoming Labour Government who will, yet again, have to clean up this Government’s incompetent mess.

[Robert Jenrick]

Let’s see about that, shall we? I think we have the right policy. It is one we are pursuing. As soon as we have the ability to do so through the courts, we will get those flights off to Rwanda. On the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that the UK is cruel or inhumane, I could not disagree with him more strongly. The facts bear that out. The fact that we brought more than 500,000 people to this country, including from places such as Afghanistan, on humanitarian visas shows that we are one of the world’s leading countries in that regard. One of the challenges we have, to be frank with him, about helping some people we would like to help from Afghanistan, or those who fled to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan to come to the UK, is the fact that so many people have come across on small boats from a place of safety such as France that they are putting intolerable pressure on our system. The sooner we stop the small boats, the more we can do for people who really deserve our help.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The impact assessment confirms that the Government’s Rwanda scheme, which I have criticised previously in this House for its senseless cruelty, will also come at huge expense to the British taxpayer. Does the Minister accept that there is both a more humane and financially prudent alternative to the Government’s plans, and that should begin by allowing asylum seekers to seek paid work, which the Lift the Ban coalition estimates would lead to the Government receiving more than £366 million in tax and national insurance alone?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not support allowing asylum seekers to work in this country. The approach that we are taking under the Illegal Migration Bill means that individuals who come here will be processed swiftly—in days and weeks, not months and years—and then either returned home or sent to a safe third country such as Rwanda, so that issue will not be relevant. Let me also point out that the hon. Gentleman recently opposed the proposal for a number of asylum seekers to stay in his constituency, despite having said that it was a place of sanctuary.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Excessive cost for nil result—does not that assessment sum up not just the Minister’s flawed Home Office plans, but the incompetence at the heart of the whole sinking Government?

[Robert Jenrick]

No. As I have said on many occasions, the approach we are taking is to introduce one of the most creative and robust systems of any country in the western world.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I recognise that the Minister and the Government have a big illegal migration issue to sort out, but the economic impact assessment does not paint an accurate picture. Without foreign staff our NHS would collapse, and without the support of grandparents to help with children our workforce would collapse. The assessment does not do justice to the fact that we as a nation are infinitely richer thanks to those who choose to come here to work and raise their families, and who make the choice to be the best of British alongside those of us who were born here.

[Robert Jenrick]

The difference is that the people to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred come here legally. We welcome people who come here legally—as visitors on tourist visas, as workers on work visas, as NHS workers on NHS and social care visas—but it is very different if people break into our country, flagrantly breaching our laws. No other country in the world would tolerate that, and neither should we.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

That brings us to the end of the urgent question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Immigration Minister told me earlier:

“I do not know if any refugees came to it”

—Refugee Week—

“because the SNP does not house refugees in Scotland.”

That statement seems to me to be as insulting as it is inaccurate, and I would like some clarification of it.

Let me say first that it is up to the Home Office, not the Scottish Government, to decide where people are dispersed. Glasgow supports about 5,000 asylum seekers, Scotland took well over its population share of Ukrainians, and every single local authority in Scotland took people as part of the Syrian resettlement scheme. The Minister also mentioned the luxury cruise ship in Leith that was contracted by the Scottish Government to house Ukrainians. The Ukrainians on that ship were afforded comprehensive wraparound support. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether he would offer refugees the same comprehensive wraparound support on that basis, because if he would not, I would understand why the Scottish Government would be nervous about it.

[Robert Jenrick]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps it would be helpful if I sent the hon. Lady a copy of the letter that I wrote to the Scottish Government recently, which debunks many of the points that they had raised with regard to the vessel in Leith. If there is still time, the hon. Lady could ask them to change their mind, because if they are willing to accommodate Ukrainians, surely, given how strongly they feel about asylum seekers, they would want to do the same in this instance.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am not entirely sure—

Migration

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for leading this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I welcome the opportunity to put a few points on the record. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), my case load tells a sorry tale about the UK Government’s approach to migration. The volume is something to behold and it is because of their approach. Today alone, I am pulling my hair out because of someone in vain trying to help their elderly mother who has had to flee Sudan. The UK Government do not seem to be interested. I also have a wee baby stuck in Pakistan and again the UK Government do not seem to be interested. I feel often like I am banging my head off a brick wall when trying to help people who deserve the UK Government’s help. If the Minister can stop flicking through his paperwork, perhaps he will indicate whether he feels able to help with either of those thorny cases.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

indicated dissent.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The Minister shakes his head. What a shameful way to behave. I am trying to assist people in grave need and this says everything about the UK Government’s approach to migration. It should not be like this, Minister. Migration and migrants can bring a positive benefit to our communities and people who are in the gravest peril deserve a good deal more support and respect. It is not just me and the Scottish National party saying that. Opinium polled a large number of UK adults on the Illegal Migration Bill and the people it spoke to felt that the way people seeking asylum are described in political debate is “overly negative”. I thought that was interesting because that is not what someone would believe if they stood in the Chamber and listened to the UK Government.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am going to continue, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, as time is limited. We all see the impact of migration policies. There are labour shortages and skills shortages, and Scottish need is certainly not taken into account by the UK Government. Whether it is the kind of cases I talked about, floating internment camps, boat pushbacks, deportation flights or the circumventing of international law, the depths that this Government will sink to on migration are frankly depressing. They are hostile in every way. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North put that well.

The Prime Minister has had his say, too. He said:

“If you are coming here illegally, claiming sanctuary from death, torture or persecution”.

That is Orwellian doublespeak because international law determines that, if someone is fleeing death, torture or persecution, they are seeking refuge legally. Nobody is illegal. It is not only confusing in that way. The Home Office’s own logic is not logical. It said:

“Alternative accommodation options”—

that is how it puts things—

“including barges, will save the British taxpayer money.”

But the very same Home Office is set to spend up to £6 billion over two years on detention facilities and ongoing accommodation and removal costs, and Treasury insiders say that the deterrent effect has not been reliably modelled, meaning that the numbers are likely to be wrong and costs much greater. The Refugee Council correctly says that barges are

“entirely unsuitable for the needs”

of those seeking refuge and are a

“direct consequence of the chronic delays and huge backlog in the asylum system”.

Not only that, but a third of the UK’s international aid budget is actually being spent on domestic asylum costs. The system is not working because it is underpinned by policies that are simply wrong.

The Illegal Migration Bill has been widely condemned across civil and political society. A coalition of 176 civil society organisations is calling on the UK Government to immediately withdraw it because it potentially breaches multiple international conventions and agreements. That is on top of the fact that UK family reunion rules are already among the most restrictive in Europe. The Dubs scheme for refugee children was prematurely closed. Brexit—that elephant in the room that neither the Conservative Government nor the Labour Opposition want to talk about—means that Dublin family reunion applications are no longer possible. My constituents really care about this. I hear a lot from constituents who are deeply worried about why we are not showing compassion for children who seek to come here for sanctuary, and why we are turning our back and turning our face away. I understand their concerns, and I agree with them. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is “profoundly concerned” about the direction of travel, saying that it

“would amount to an asylum ban—extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for people who arrive irregularly, no matter how compelling their claim”.

The chief executive of the Refugee Council is also concerned.

I spoke to the ladies from the VOICES Network whom the British Red Cross hosted here yesterday, and the main thing they want is a safe place to live for women seeking asylum. It does not seem like very much, does it? They are just looking to be treated with a bit of dignity, and the SNP wants to see migrants being given that dignity. We want them to have the right to work and to contribute to the society they call home, but they have no right to work here and no access to social security support in too many cases. The right to work, as article 23 of the universal declaration of human rights tells us, is a fundamental right, not that you would believe that here. People can apply for the right to work only after they have been waiting for more than one year, and even then very few are granted permission. People are essentially banned from working. Not only is that very unfortunate and difficult for them, but it is very unfortunate and difficult for us, as we miss out on the skills and talents that they bring with them.

The UK is an outlier. Other countries do not deal with things this way. Imagine the benefit to our NHS of allowing doctors trained elsewhere to come here and to work to look after the people here who need it. We are also completely opposed to the “no recourse to public funds” policies, which are blocking migrant groups from essential safety nets. Migrants, who are already likely to be vulnerable and in low-paid and insecure work, are therefore disproportionately likely to be at risk of destitution.

Then there are the unaccompanied children. Over 4,000 have been placed in hotels since 2021, and 200 children remain missing. That is shocking; it is inconceivable. The UK Government clearly cannot be trusted as a corporate parent, and the Scottish Government are deeply concerned about this. Scotland does take its responsibilities seriously. The Scottish Government want no part of the UK Government’s “hostile environment” approach to refugees and asylum seekers, or people who are among the most vulnerable in the world—[Laughter.] I do not know why the Minister finds this funny, because I do not think it is funny at all.

[Robert Jenrick]

The Scottish Government are not doing anything!

[Kirsten Oswald]

The Scottish Government will do absolutely what is needed for refugees if given the power to allow us to actually do so, and it is high time that the Minister stopped this damaging narrative, which is neither accurate nor fair. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I join hon. Members across the House in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), the Father of the House, and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for securing this general debate on migration. By the standards of immigration debates, it has been a thoughtful and reflective one. I plan to use the short time I have to answer directly as many of the questions raised by right hon. and hon. Members as possible.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton opened the debate with an understandable message that the UK should be a country in which those people genuinely seeking sanctuary can find safety and a new life, and we should be looking to continue to develop safe and legal routes. The Government share in that, and we believe that we have done that in recent years. Since 2015, almost 550,000 people have come to the United Kingdom on humanitarian grounds, which is more than in any comparable period in our modern history. They have come on individual country schemes, including those mentioned by many colleagues, from Ukraine, Syria and Hong Kong, and indeed on the global scheme operated on behalf of the United Kingdom by the United Nations. A small number have also come on the community sponsorship scheme, which enables any one of us, our communities or faith organisations to assist people directly in moving from places of danger to a new life in the UK. The Government strongly encourage others to take part in that if they care deeply about these issues.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton raised visa costs. I appreciate that, in particular for those people who have lived in the UK for many years and want now to settle here permanently, as well as for those who have settlement but want to obtain British citizenship. The Government believe that citizenship is important and something that everyone who lives here for a sustained period of time should aspire to. I appreciate that the costs of some of those routes are high, and we take that into account, but we have to balance that against the cost of managing the broader immigration system. It is right that the system should be as self-sustaining as possible, so that it places as low a burden as can be on the wider UK taxpayer. We have made concessions for certain types of visa. He mentioned the health and social care visa. Almost 100,000 were granted in the year ending March 2023. That visa carries a reduced fee and an expedited service for good reason.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the UKVI and its service standards. As I have said in the House on recent occasions, the UKVI is well run. It is important, as a Home Office Minister, to give credit where it is due. Not all things work well, but where they do and where the leadership is performing a strong service, it is right we recognise that. The UKVI is meeting its service standards in all regards, according to the last data I saw. It does have service standards, whether published or internal, for every type of visa or application and it is meeting those requirements.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about labour shortages, we take them very seriously. We have to be pragmatic as a Government to ensure that business has the workers necessary to drive forward the economy. We have to recognise that net migration last year of 606,000, which included about 300,000 work visas, is very high by historic standards. That means many, many people are coming into the country for work purposes, the system is working and businesses can access that labour, but we have to balance their need for labour against shortages of housing, access to public services, in particular in the health service, and the ability of this country, like any, to integrate people successfully and to build a cohesive and united society. I am concerned that the current levels of net migration are too high and are not sustainable in the long term.

I also do not believe that it is a way to drive long-term prosperity and productivity by allowing companies, in some instances, to reach for the easy lever of foreign labour. Instead, they should be reaching for technology and automation, and above all investing in local people in the British workforce to help them into the labour market in the first instance. Those are the principles underlying the points-based system that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), the former Home Secretary, established, which allows for a degree of pragmatism through the shortage occupation list and other bespoke visa routes, such as the health and social care visa. They give us, for the first time in our modern history, the ability to make changes where necessary.

One of those changes is the change to student visas, which we announced last month. That now enables us to take action against dependants coming with students who are here on short courses, such as one-year master’s. I think that is the right decision because universities, although undoubtedly an incredible force for good here in the UK and around the world, should be primarily in the education business and not the immigration business, enabling a back route to life in the UK for individuals and their families. That is what we want to refocus the system on.

The hon. Gentleman raised, as did many others, the issue of the backlog. Let me be perfectly clear that one of the priorities for the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and me, since we came into office last year, has been reducing the backlog. To develop an efficient system, it is important to reduce the reliance on hotels, which we all agree is inappropriate, and to enable people who will ultimately be granted status the ability to get on with their lives and contribute to society here in the UK. I am confident we will be able to eliminate the legacy backlog over the course of this year. We put in place a number of further measures recently, some of which have been referenced today. We have also brought into play more resources, drawing not just on caseworkers—a growing pool of individuals in the Home Office thanks to our recruitment efforts—but on skilled workers from within the UK visa service and within the Passport Office as well, to bolster those efforts and give us a greater prospect of achieving our ultimate aim of reducing the backlog.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly spoke of the international context underlying the present situation. It was for that reason that I have been to France, Italy, Tunisia and Algeria in the last few weeks—to work with partner countries together on our shared challenge and so that UK assets, such as the National Crime Agency, Border Force and the police, can work with those countries further upstream. They will help them stop migrants from leaving transit countries such as those in north Africa and getting anywhere near the UK. That is an incredibly important part of our broader plan.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham was right to raise the question of France. It is a significant achievement in the past six months that the relationship with France has improved significantly. That has led to more interception rates and more arrests, but there is more work to be done there in our relationship with the French. We have signed other agreements with Albania and Georgia, and a memorandum with Italy. We are working with the EU to develop a partnership with respect to Frontex. I am sure that there will be other opportunities with partner countries both within Europe and beyond. That is something I personally want to take forward to deepen those relationships.

Having spoken to my opposite numbers from a range of countries in the past two weeks, it is clear that we are all grappling with a very substantial challenge. The UK is not alone and is not considered an outlier. In fact, many of the steps that we are taking, including the Rwanda policy, are attracting great interest from other countries. If it is operationalised, it is likely that other countries will seek to pursue something similar. We want to work as closely as possible with other countries to tackle this challenge together.

On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and others made about our ODA budget, it is incredibly important that we tackle illegal migration precisely because it is a very poor use of our resources. We are spending a great deal of money on things such as hotels, primarily to assist young men who have been in a place of safety such as France to come to the United Kingdom to continue their lives here. Those resources could be used far better upstream to support people in and around conflict zones, whether through international organisations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or otherwise. By tackling illegal migration, such as through the Illegal Migration Bill, we can help the United Kingdom to be a greater force for good in the world.

I am conscious that there is little time, but the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) raised concerns about the performance of the Home Office and the manner in which we house asylum seekers. We want to work with the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities so that they can play a greater part in appropriately housing asylum seekers and refugees. We are currently in one such live discussion at the moment, and I very much hope that they will encourage their colleagues in Scotland to assist with those negotiations. I apologise for overrunning my time, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Illegal Migration Update

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Provisions within the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (NABA), which came into force on 28 June 2022, set out the framework to differentiate between two groups of refugees who ultimately remain in the UK: “group 1” and “group 2”.

The primary way in which the groups are differentiated is the grant of permission to stay: group 1 refugees are normally granted refugee permission to stay for five years, after which they can apply for settlement, whereas group 2 refugees are normally granted temporary refugee permission to stay for 30 months on a 10-year route to settlement.

The differentiation policy was intended to disincentivise migrants from using criminal smugglers to facilitate illegal journeys to the UK. This was the right approach. Since then, the scale of the challenge facing the UK, like other countries, has grown— and that is why the Government introduced the Illegal Migration Bill. The Bill goes further than ever before in seeking to deter illegal entry to the UK, so that the only humanitarian route into the UK is through a safe and legal one. The Bill will radically overhaul how we deal with people who arrive in the UK illegally via safe countries, rendering their asylum and human rights claims (in respect of their home country) inadmissible and imposing a duty on the Home Secretary to remove them. This approach represents a considerably stronger means of tackling the same issue that the differentiation policy sought to address: people making dangerous and unnecessary journeys through safe countries to claim asylum in the UK.

We will therefore pause the differentiation policy in the next package of immigration rules changes in July 2023. This means we will stop taking grouping decisions under the differentiated asylum system after these rules changes and those individuals who are successful in their asylum application, including those who are granted humanitarian protection, will receive the same conditions. Our ability to remove failed asylum applicants remains unchanged.

Individuals who have already received a “group 2” or humanitarian protection decision under post-28 June 2022 policies will be contacted and will have their conditions aligned to those afforded to “group 1” refugees. This includes length of permission to stay, route to settlement, and eligibility for family reunion.

On 23 February 2023 the Home Office announced the streamlined asylum processing model for a small number of cases of nationalities with high asylum grant rates: Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, Yemen. Because this model focuses on manifestly well-founded cases, positive decisions can be taken without the need for an additional interview. No one will have their asylum application refused without the opportunity of an additional interview. Those claims made between 28 June 2022 and the date of introduction of the Illegal Migration Bill (7 March 2023) will be processed according to this model. This will also include claimants from Sudan. Sudanese legacy claimants are already being processed in-line with established policies and processes and will be decided in-line with the Prime Minister’s commitment to clear the backlog of legacy asylum claims by the end of 2023.

[HCWS837]

Asylum-seeking Children: Hotel Accommodation

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who gave a typically eloquent and heartfelt speech. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for securing this important debate and for her powerful introduction to it.

In July 2021, bypassing councils and operating outside the statutory national transfer system, the Home Office started using hotels to house unaccompanied children who have experienced unimaginable horror and upheaval coming to our country in search of safety. This was initially characterised by Ministers as an emergency measure and, as we have heard, since then there have been 447 missing episodes, and 186 children are still missing, according to figures revealed in a parliamentary question in April. A significant number of those children went missing from a hotel in Hove, which neighbours my constituency. Brighton and Hove prides itself on being a city of sanctuary, and the safeguarding crisis created by the Home Office remains a matter of profound concern to our community.

I shall touch on just three things: first, the lack of legal basis for this Home Office practice and regulatory failure; secondly, the Government legislation that makes matters worse; and thirdly, what safeguarding for these truly vulnerable children should really mean.

First, Brighton and Hove City Council has been raising concerns about the dangerous practice of using these hotels for the best part of two years, since Ministers first started bypassing councils. After months of obfuscation, on 24 January, when Mr Speaker granted my urgent question about the hotels and missing children, the Secretary of State did not even show up; instead, she sent the Immigration Minister, who again is here today. Meanwhile, as we have heard, multiple children’s charities have been clear that they consider there to be

“no legal basis for placing children in Home Office hotel accommodation”.

In April, UN experts called for the UK Government to

“put an end to the practice of placing unaccompanied children in hotels”.

While there has been a significant reduction in the practice in the first quarter of this year, shockingly, the Government are now legislating to provide a legal basis for hotel use to continue.

These hotels quite simply should not be used, and when they have been, serious safeguarding questions have gone unanswered. For example, earlier this year, I met both the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration—the ICIBI—and the Ofsted chief inspector. I raised the concern with both of them that the use of these hotels amounts to the Home Office running unregistered children’s homes with no inspection framework. I have since written to and questioned Ministers repeatedly to ask: if they persist in using these hotels against all the advice, will they at least consider an Ofsted-led inspection regime? As with many other important questions, the non-answer is that Ministers consider the best place for children to be a local authority placement—well, yes, it is, but the Government are not doing that. I have had yet another letter to that effect this week, which makes it clear that, in fact, they expect hotel use to continue. Indeed, Brighton and Hove City Council has just been warned that the Government may use the hotel in Hove again, despite the time that has been available for proper planning to avoid that. Will the Minister commit today to a full and immediate consultation with the local authority on all aspects of the scheme, including its legality, before any more children are placed there?

I sincerely hope that the steps the Government are taking to increase foster placements work, but I know from discussions with directors of children’s services that there is an acute national shortage of such placements, and we should not forget that, with their 13 years of cuts, that is something for which Ministers are also responsible.

As we have heard, the Government are now pushing through their unspeakably cruel and immoral Illegal Migration Bill, which breaks international law. It will strip children of their rights to claim asylum, legislate for the use of hotels, and increase the risk of children going missing. Like the Children’s Commissioner, and in concert with the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, I am gravely concerned that, as a result of young people’s fear that they will be deported at age 18, potentially to Rwanda, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will be more likely to go missing from care to avoid that, and therefore be at even greater risk of exploitation and abuse by traffickers.

I have asked Ministers what unaccompanied children are told about their rights when they are first placed in hotels. What will unaccompanied children be told now? Is it really the Minister’s intention to legislate to strip them of their asylum rights the day after they turn 18, when they could be put on a plane to Rwanda? Is that really what he intends?

Safeguarding surely means remaining shocked that the Home Office has been housing children without legal basis and that we still do not know where nearly 200 of those children are. I and other Members have repeatedly questioned the Minister about the need for a national dedicated operation to find them. His answers have not instilled confidence. On the contrary, the Government’s plan to degrade children’s rights even further will increase the risks.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

After the hon. Lady’s debate, I invited her to visit the hotel in Hove that she says she is profoundly concerned about. Has she visited it? If so, what are her reflections having visited it?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am delighted to take that intervention because, alongside the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), I did indeed visit those premises. In fact, we took some food there from a local restaurant that was offering its food to that hotel because a concern had been raised that the food people were getting was pretty inedible most of the time, so they were delighted to have more suitable and appropriate food.

I have no problem with the conditions inside the hotel. As the hon. Member for Hove and I have repeatedly said, our concerns stem from what happens when the child steps outside that hotel. Frankly, everything that I saw does not take away the concern that young children, particularly traumatised young children, simply should not be housed in such hotels. However, I am glad to put the Minister’s mind at rest about the fact that I have visited the hotel and that I know of what I speak.

Safeguarding means that Ministers should close their nasty, hostile environment playbook. They should back more generous family reunification rights and support safe, functioning legal routes. Safeguarding means not housing children in hotels at all and scrapping the illegal and immoral Illegal Migration Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will come first to the points raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who secured the debate. I think it has to be said that it is surprising that she would choose this topic, important though it is, given the extremely poor record of the Scottish Government.

Just to be clear on the facts, there have never been any temporary UASC hotels in Scotland. They were all in England. In Scotland as a whole, the Home Office’s internal unverified data suggests that there are currently 398 individuals in Scottish local authority care. That compares with 8,206 in local authority care across the United Kingdom. I add the caveat that those numbers require further assurance, but they suggest that Scotland is not taking its fair share.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will make the point, please. I have listened to the comments that were made earlier.

With respect to accompanied children, there are currently 24,300 children under the age of 18 in our accommodation across the United Kingdom. Of those, 1,353 are in Scotland. That represents just 5.6% of the overall population, when Scotland’s total population makes up 8% of the United Kingdom. Of the unaccompanied children in Scotland, only 27 are in a hotel—that is one hotel. That is not a hotel in the constituency of the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith, but I am told that there are no reported issues in that hotel.

The point I am making is twofold. First, the Scottish Government are doing nothing to resolve this issue, so, with the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, this is humanitarian nimbyism. It is posturing of the absolute worst kind. If the hon. Lady cared so deeply about this, the first thing she would do after leaving this debate would be to go and speak to the Scottish Government and then to each and every one of the SNP local authorities that are not playing their part in the national transfer scheme. That is the best thing that she could do to help vulnerable children who are currently or might in future be in hotels in England to get the good quality care that they deserve.

With respect to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who raised a point about the hotel in Hove, the reason I asked her whether she had visited the hotel—I am pleased that she has done so—is that I was aware that the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) had visited the hotel. I am pleased to see that they visited together, but when I visited I was told by the staff that certainly the hon. Member for Hove, who is not in his place any more, left satisfied that the accommodation was of a high quality and that the individuals working there were doing a good job. In a previous debate, the hon. Member said that I was ignorant and that I did not know what was happening in the hotel. Well, I went to visit the hotel immediately after that, and not only did I see extremely good work being done there, but I heard from the people doing that work that the hon. Member felt that the work was of that quality.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

I will not give way. What I saw when I visited the hotel was security guards, social workers, and team leaders who previously worked for the police and the military all doing a superbly good job. [Interruption.]

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister heard the debate in its entirety with courtesy. I want the Minister to be heard with courtesy in his response. Mr Grady, you have been very well behaved throughout the whole debate. Let’s not spoil it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is important that we approach this debate in the spirit not of posturing but of seeking to find solutions to this difficult problem. Obviously, the enduring solution is to reduce the number of unnecessary and dangerous crossing across the channel all together. That is the purpose of the Illegal Migration Bill. If we cannot do that, or until we do it, as soon as a young person arrives in this country we have to treat them with the greatest decency, respect and compassion, and the way to do that is to get those young people into local authority care as quickly as possible.

Given the numbers of people crossing the channel at the moment, it is not possible to do that instantaneously. On a single day last autumn, 1,000 people arrived at Western Jet Foil. The UK had literally saved their lives. We then had to feed, clothe and water them, and do security and health checks on them—all, incidentally, in 24 hours. To the point from the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), that is why I changed the law to 96 hours. I will never compromise on security checks when people arrive in this country. It is not possible to security check 1,000 people in 24 hours, and I wanted to make sure that the police and our counter-terrorism officers have the powers they need. Ensuring those young people leave Western Jet Foil and go as quickly as possible to good quality local authority care has to be the mission of us all. That means supporting local authorities in every single part of the United Kingdom to step up and play their part.

The Home Office is doing this in a number of ways. We have provided financial incentives; I created a further financial incentive—a pilot of £15,000 per young person to encourage local authorities to take those individuals as swiftly as possible on the national transfer scheme. That has had success. Today there are no unaccompanied young people in hotels whatsoever. There may well be more young people in the future if more small boats cross in the months ahead. We need to encourage more local authorities to take part in that scheme.

I completely appreciate the points that have been made by a number of hon. Members that there are huge capacity constraints within local authorities and local authority care homes, and that there is a desperate shortage of foster carers. Those are issues that we should all be united in trying to tackle. The Home Office, in the short period when we house people in an emergency situation in hotels, will always do so decently and will always ensure that those hotels are as well run as possible, but we have to get people out of hotels and into local authority care as quickly as possible.

[Dame Nia Griffith]

Will the Minister clarify whether, if he goes ahead and uses the Stradey Park Hotel in my constituency for asylum seekers, he is considering housing any unaccompanied children there? What measures will be taken to prevent them from going missing?

[Robert Jenrick]

As far as I am aware, we do not intend to use that location for unaccompanied children. I will confirm that in writing, but that is not my understanding. To the point that the hon. Lady and others made about what we do when a young person goes missing from one of the hotels, as a parent and a Minister I take this responsibility extremely seriously. When I heard that young people had gone missing from the hotels, I wanted not only to visit them, but to meet all the officials involved in the task.

When I visited the hotels, including the one in Hove, I wanted to meet the social workers privately, not with Home Office officials or others present, so that I could hear directly from them, in private, whether they believe that we are doing everything we can and that we treat a missing person who is a migrant in exactly the same way as we would treat a missing person who is a British citizen—my child or your child. I was told, time and again, that we do: that we follow exactly the same processes in reporting missing people; that we engage thoroughly with the local constabularies, which are fully involved; and that we have created a specific new process called the MARS—missing after reasonable steps—protocol by which we report missing persons

That MARS process has had some success and has enabled us to track more individuals than we did previously. Crucially, every single step is taken as it would be if any other young person in this country went missing. We also have as thorough procedures as is possible in the hotels for checking people in and out, when they leave to go to the park or for a walk, as they can in such facilities.

On that point, it is worth noting that the facilities are not detained facilities. In the debate, I heard no hon. Member urging us to create detained facilities for young people. As long as the facilities are non-detained, inevitably some young people will decide to use the opportunity to leave, which on the intelligence we have is mostly to meet family or friends, or to prearranged meetings with individuals whom they had already agreed to meet, who would no doubt then help the young people to work in the grey or black economies. We have heard no evidence that people have been abducted from outside hotels. In this important debate, we have to trade in fact, not anecdote.

[Patrick Grady]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will give way briefly to the hon. Gentleman, but I must wrap up soon, because we have only a few minutes left.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman intervenes, I should say that the Minister has two minutes left.

[Patrick Grady]

The Minister says he met staff and officials. Did he meet any of the children? Did he look any of them in the eye and tell them that they should not be here and were not welcome?

[Robert Jenrick]

Well, I regret giving way. I thought that the hon. Gentleman wanted to make a serious point; sadly, he wanted to make a frivolous one. I did talk to the young people—of course I did—to understand their perspectives. We care deeply about their safety. We want to ensure that fewer young people cross the channel illegally in small boats. I urge the hon. Gentleman to go to see the conditions that those young people are in when they get into those small boats: the risk to personal safety that the crossing involves; the cruelty and depravity of the people smugglers and traffickers behind the trade; and, at times, the irresponsibility of parents and others who put their children through this journey.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot, because I have to bring my remarks to a close.

The purpose of the Illegal Migration Bill is to put an end to this trade once and for all, so we can focus our resources as a country on supporting young people and families, among others, who are in great need, directly from conflict zones—through our world-class resettlement schemes such as those we have established in recent years—from Ukraine, from Syria and from Afghanistan, and through the global scheme that the United Nations runs on our behalf. We want the UK to be an even greater force for good in the world, and we do that—

[Caroline Lucas]

On the hotels, will the Minister give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I cannot give way because there is no time left.

We do that by beating the people smugglers and stopping the boats.

British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Bill

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & 3rd reading
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Given the short nature of the Bill, I will not delay the Committee unduly, but I want to explain briefly the nature of the clauses.

Clause 1 amends the British Nationality Act 1981 to confirm that an individual exercising a free movement right in the UK in the relevant period was not subject to restrictions on the period for which they could remain. The aim of this clause is to provide legal certainty on the citizenship status of individuals born in the relevant period to a parent who was considered settled on the basis of living in the United Kingdom and exercising a free movement right here, or those who registered or naturalised based on that policy.

The clause does not create new British citizens where there would previously have been no reasonable expectation, on the basis of published policy and operational practice, of being British. It does not change anything for people who have always been considered British; rather, it simply confirms in law the position they have always been in. The clause does not necessitate that they make a separate application to become British and is not related to the UK’s departure from the European Union. This issue has arisen separately and has been highlighted by the recent domestic legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

If only all Home Office Bills were as smooth as this one. It is a pleasure to speak on Third Reading and to use this opportunity to thank my officials at the Home Office for the good work they have done in producing this Bill in quick time, which provides the legal certainty that a significant number of people in this country—our fellow citizens—deserve. It is absolutely right that we put their citizenship status beyond doubt as quickly as possible, so that they are in no way disadvantaged and can continue their lives with the same rights and entitlements they have always enjoyed.

I thank all those who have prioritised the passage of the Bill through the House, including the House authorities and the Bill team. I particularly thank representatives from the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens, the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association and the3million, which have worked collaboratively and fruitfully with Government officials as the Bill has been developed.

I also thank the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for their support, which is appreciated, and Members on both sides of the House who came today to represent cases that had arisen in their constituencies. They can now report to their constituents, as we all can, that this important matter is being resolved. For the reasons I have set out, I urge all Members to support the Bill in its passage to the other place.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister.

British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Bill

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Bill seeks to address a technical legal issue identified by the Home Office with a long-standing policy that operated from 1983 until the early 2000s under successive Governments of both parties, relating to the criteria for determining whether European economic area nationals living in the UK during that period were “settled”.

The concept of settlement is important. The British Nationality Act 1981 defines it as being ordinarily resident in the UK and without restriction on the period for which one may remain, and it is also referred to as “free from immigration time restrictions”. As many Members will know, the Act introduced changes for acquisition of citizenship, shifting from a “birth on soil” approach to a requirement for at least one parent to be British or settled in the UK at the time of the birth. Thus the issue of whether or not an individual is settled has a knock-on effect on the citizenship of any children born to that individual in the United Kingdom.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I thoroughly welcome the Bill. I have a constituent who falls into this category. She had to prove her nationality, although, having lived here for 33 years—this is the only country she ever knew, and English is the only language she has ever spoken—she did not even know that she was not British until she had to apply for a passport. She was estranged from her mother, and therefore found herself having to have very painful conversations with a family member to prove that she was what she had always thought she was. Does the Minister agree that the Bill will sort out issues of that kind?

[Robert Jenrick]

I strongly agree with the hon. Lady. The Home Office would argue that her constituent has always been British and should be considered so, but there has been a degree of legal doubt following the recent case, so it was right that we brought forward this legislation at the earliest opportunity and that it is retrospective, so that all constituents who have been concerned can know that, clearly in law, they are and have always been British citizens.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I warmly welcome this piece of legislation. I have a constituent whose son falls into this category and it was frankly alarming for him to be told that his citizenship was in jeopardy. It is really good that the Government have acted so swiftly and I urge everyone in the House to support this legislation. I hope that we will see it on the statute book as soon as possible.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. She has raised the case to which she referred with me to represent her constituent. As she says, being a citizen of this country is an important and special status, and nobody should be in doubt about whether that is truly legally sound. The Bill puts that beyond doubt, and I am pleased that we have been able to do this expeditiously. I am grateful for her support and, I suspect, that of Members on both sides of the House today.

During the period from 1 January 1983 to 1 October 2000, individuals lawfully exercising a free movement right in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland—for example, as workers—were considered by the Home Office to be free from immigration time restrictions. Consequently, they were treated as settled for nationality purposes and any children born to them during that period were regarded as British citizens. This interpretation was supported by Home Office policy documents and guidance.

However, as I have just referenced, recent litigation, while not directly challenging that historical approach, has exposed a legal technicality suggesting that it was not correct and that EEA nationals in exercise of a free movement right were not in fact settled, as their residence should always have been deemed subject to immigration time restrictions. This has understandably led to concerns about the citizenship status of individuals born in the UK in the relevant period to parents exercising a free movement right who had always thought themselves to be British and been treated as such by successive Governments. Given the passage of time and the volumes of people potentially affected, the House will appreciate that this uncertainty is not something that we wish to countenance.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Hopefully the Bill will proceed with support from both sides. On a directly related matter, the Minister will be aware that there are thousands of citizens across the United Kingdom, many of them in Northern Ireland, who were born a few miles across the border in the Irish Republic after 1948 but who are currently not allowed to get a British passport. Technically, even though they reside in the UK, have lived in the UK for decades, are taxpayers in the UK and vote in the UK, they cannot get a British passport without naturalising at a cost of £1,300. They have the support of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of this House and they have cross-community support in Northern Ireland. Once the passage of this Bill has concluded, will the Minister undertake to look again at this matter, revise it, and hopefully come forward with a proposition that will alleviate the problem?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. This is an issue that I am aware of and I would be happy to have a further conversation with him and to give it further thought. We want a fair system whereby British citizenship is available to all those who are naturalised and who have lived here for sustained periods, and a system that is as accessible as possible.

To continue the point I was making, legislating quickly and proactively to provide reassurance is the right thing to do. The Bill will operate by confirming in law the previous policy position. This will protect the nationality rights of people born in the UK to parents who were considered settled on the basis of exercising a free movement right and those who registered or naturalised as British citizens based on that policy. The Bill also clarifies when EEA nationals could be considered settled on the basis of exercising an equivalent right in Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man, which are part of the United Kingdom for nationality purposes. It is right that this approach is adopted in those locations to ensure that no one loses out on a citizenship right to which they have a reasonable expectation of being entitled, based on published policy and operational practice.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), I fully support and welcome the Bill.

I am not sure whether the Minister is aware that, last week, a former leader of Sinn Féin said that, when Unionists talk to Sinn Féin about a united Ireland, it would be Sinn Féin and the Republic of Ireland that would be handing out British passports. I am very proud to have a British passport and the benefits it brings, so will the Minister put it clearly on the record today that people born in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland will have a British passport; that it will be the Minister, the Government and the Department that will be handing out those passports; and that Sinn Féin and the Republic of Ireland Government will never hand out a British passport to any citizen, and nor should they?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and he is right to make that point. I will restate it for him, if that would be helpful.

I want to be clear that the Bill is not about creating new British citizens. These are people who have always considered themselves to be British, and whom successive Governments have also considered as such. They may have lived here, worked here, had children here and organised their lives based on policy published under both Conservative and Labour Governments confirming that they are British. It is essential that we provide them with legal certainty as to their citizenship status as soon as possible, so they can continue their lives in our country with the same rights and entitlements they have always enjoyed.

I think we can all agree that this short but important Bill seeks to do the right thing by putting the citizenship status of affected individuals beyond doubt, and I urge all colleagues on both sides of the House to support its quick passage.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Members for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for their support for the Bill. Hopefully, this spirit of unity will be contagious for other legislation shortly to return to the House.

Let me reply to the specific and valid questions. First, on statistics, I will not repeat the numbers that the hon. Gentleman raised. Those are the best assessment that the Home Office currently has. We do not have a plan to ask the ONS, or any other body, to do further, deeper research. We do not feel that that is necessary, primarily because, by virtue of this piece of legislation, the rights of those British citizens will be confirmed. It will be retrospective, so those individuals should not need to do anything now, other than the small category of individuals whose passport applications were paused. We will need people at the Home Office and the Passport Office to process those applications as soon as possible.

The hon. Lady asked how many applications had been paused. As of 26 May, 95 passport applications were on hold. We are in communication with those affected to keep them updated. Once the legislation passes, it will be beyond doubt that they are British citizens in law and have always been so and we will be able to proceed with their passport applications. I will ask the Passport Office to process their applications expeditiously, so that any inconvenience they may have been put through can be resolved as quickly as possible. There will not be a need for them to pay any additional fee beyond what they have already paid, which will be the normal fee for a British citizen renewing their passport or applying for a first-time passport.

[Alison Thewliss]

When I have experienced casework delays with the Department for Work and Pensions, a consolatory payment is sometimes offered to people where there have been extensive delays. Given that only 95 people are involved, would that be appropriate in this case?

[Robert Jenrick]

We have not considered that, and I do not think it is necessary. We are of course sorry that those individuals have been inconvenienced; that was never the Home Office’s intention, either today or in the past. This litigation was unexpected and we have set out to remedy it as quickly as possible. I hope the hon. Lady will appreciate that we have brought forward this legislation quickly and, as she rightly noted, we have tried to consult relevant stakeholders so that there are good communications prior to its introduction.

The hon. Lady also mentioned Windrush; that is a very serious situation, but is a quite a different situation from the one we find ourselves in here. In this legislation we are reflecting a position that has existed in policy and guidance for several decades. We have responded quickly to implement the legal change necessary, following the court case heard in October last year, to provide that certainty. As I said in my opening remarks, we are not creating any new British citizens here, but recognising the citizenship of that cohort in law whom we had always believed existed and reflected in policy.

We remain absolutely committed, of course, to righting the wrongs of Windrush, whether through the Windrush compensation fund or more broadly, as she referred to, through ensuring that the Home Office makes good on its commitments to the Wendy Williams review. That is something we take very seriously.

In terms of any other impacts upon the individuals concerned here, there should be none. Once we have processed the remaining passport applications, those British citizens can and should continue with their lives as previously. We will ensure that Home Office staff, Passport Office personnel and any relevant stakeholders are properly trained so that, should people come forward with concerns in the weeks, months or years ahead as a result of this case, we can reassure them that, once this has been settled in law, they are and have always been British citizens.

I hope that responds to all the points made. With that, I shall conclude my remarks.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Electronic Travel Authorisation

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The Government’s No. 1 priority is keeping the UK safe. In order to further strengthen our border security, the Government are launching an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) scheme in October 2023.

The ETA scheme will be implemented in a phased manner, on a nationality basis, by the end of 2024. Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will be the first countries to benefit from the ETA scheme. The Home Office will provide further details about which country will be next to benefit from the ETA scheme in due course.

However, today I am announcing that the Home Office intends to charge £10 for an ETA application during the initial roll-out period. This fee level is competitive with that of equivalent systems run by other countries, and will ensure that the Department’s costs in delivering the scheme are effectively covered across a range of volume scenarios.

In order to support the charging of this initial £10 fee, I am today laying an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Order 2016 to introduce the necessary enabling provisions, including a maximum chargeable fee. I will then lay regulations before Parliament in the autumn to amend the Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2018 so that the initial fee of £10 will be established from October 2023.

The Home Office will review the fee charged for ETA applications in advance of further roll-out of the scheme across 2024, including to the EU and other non-visa national countries. Details on any further planned updates to the fee level following the initial roll-out period will be communicated in due course.

[HCWS821]

Net Migration Figures

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on net migration figures.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Net migration to the United Kingdom is far too high. That was already clear from the previous set of official data. The Office for National Statistics has today amended its previous published estimate of net migration for the year ending June 2022 to 606,000. The statistics published today indicate that net migration has flatlined since then. In the year ending December 2022, it estimates that net migration remained at 606,000. These particularly high figures are in large part due to temporary and exceptional factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong British nationals overseas schemes. Last year, more than 200,000 Ukrainians and 150,000 Hong Kong British nationals overseas made use of the routes to life or time in the United Kingdom. Those schemes command broad support from the British public, and we were right to introduce them.

The Government remain committed to reducing overall net migration to sustainable levels. That is a solemn promise that we made to the British public in our manifesto, and we are unwavering in our determination to deliver it. This week, we announced steps to tackle the substantial rise in the number of student dependants coming to the UK. The package of measures will ensure that we can reduce migration while continuing to benefit from the skills and resources our economy needs, because universities should be in the education business, not the immigration business. We expect this package to have a tangible impact on net migration. Taken together with the easing of temporary factors, such as our exceptional humanitarian offers, we expect net migration to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term.

The public rightly expect us to control our borders, whether that is stopping the boats and addressing illegal migration or ensuring that levels of legal migration do not place undue pressure on public services, housing supply or integration. The Government are taking decisive action on both counts. Under the points-based system that we introduced post Brexit, we can control immigration, we must control immigration, and we will.

[Yvette Cooper]

Today’s extraordinary figures, including the doubling of the number of work visas since the pandemic, show that the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration. They show the chaos in this Government. Work visas are up 119% since before the pandemic. The Conservatives have totally failed to tackle endemic skills shortages and get people back to work. Net migration is more than twice the level that Ministers were aiming for and considerably more than the Home Secretary’s claimed aims. The asylum backlog is at a record high—the opposite of the Prime Minister’s promise to clear the backlog this year. Less than 1% of last year’s small boat arrivals have had a decision. Where is the Home Secretary, who is in charge of these policies? She has gone to ground. There are reports that she is not even going to do media. She has not come to this House. She is in internal meetings—presumably, more private courses arranged by civil servants. What is the point of her?

Net migration should come down and we would expect it to do so, but the continued gap between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality is very damaging. Rightly, the UK has given support to Ukraine and to Hongkongers. Rightly, we welcome international students who bring substantial benefits, but changes on family are sensible. International recruitment will always be important so that we get the skills and talent we need, but we have a major increase in employers turning to overseas recruitment, and the Government have no plan to increase training or to properly tackle those skills shortages here at home.

On health and social care, one of the biggest areas, why will the Minister not agree to Labour’s plan to increase the training for nurses and doctors in the UK, paid for by getting rid of the non-doms exemption? Will he ditch the unfair 20% wage discount that means that shortage occupations can undercut and pay below the going rate, making it even harder to get the training, skills and fair recruitment we need? Everyone should be paid the going rate.

There has been no action at all to address the huge backlog in the asylum system and to make sure that claims are properly processed. Immigration is important to this country, and we need a system that works, but it has to be properly controlled and managed, rather than the chaos that the Government have created.

[Robert Jenrick]

The Labour party feigns interest in cutting net migration, but I can assure the right hon. Lady that nobody is buying it. Last week, the chair of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said that under Labour net migration would go up in the short term. The leader of the Labour party stood on a campaign pledge to defend freedom of movement if the UK remained outside the EU. He has said that there is a

“racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.

Does the shadow Home Secretary agree with that?

At every possible opportunity, Labour Members have voted against every measure this Government have brought forward to control migration. They voted against ending free movement and, at every turn, they voted against measures to tackle illegal migration. Just recently, they voted against the Illegal Migration Bill. The truth is that the Labour party has no interest in controlled and orderly migration. The Conservative party is taking tangible steps to bring down net migration. Yesterday, we took a decisive step to clamp down on student dependants, because universities should be selling education, not immigration. Belatedly, the shadow Home Secretary says she agrees with that. The Conservative party made a solemn promise to the British public to reduce net migration. Thanks to Brexit, we now have the tools at our disposal to do that. We can and we must deliver.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am sorry that, while my right hon. Friend was replying to those questions, four of the Labour Front Benchers were talking at the same time. I think that was to disguise the fact that their spokesperson appeared to agree with virtually every sensible element of the Government’s immigration control policy.

Does my right hon. Friend agree with me about this? Beyond the admission order office, there is the memorial plaque for the Kindertransport. Some of those who feel most strongly against immigration now feel proud of what we did then. We have to remember that there were then and there are now tens of millions of people around the world suffering because of violence in their own countries, and there are others with bad Governments who stop them having economic success where they are. Can I say that, as well as having a good immigration policy, we ought to do all we can around the world to have better governance and a flexible economic system, so that people can be happy living where they are, not feeling that they have to come here for refuge?

[Robert Jenrick]

I strongly agree with the Father of the House. We have made two very significant interventions in the last two years. The first was to provide sanctuary here in the United Kingdom for Hong Kong BNOs, to whom we have a moral and historical obligation, to enable them to escape creeping authoritarianism in Hong Kong and make a new life here in the UK. We are proud of that, and I expect that, in the years to come, that scheme will be looked back on as a great success for this country. Secondly, the Ukraine schemes have now led to 200,000 Ukrainians coming to the UK and seeking sanctuary here, with hundreds of thousands of British people opening up their homes to support them. Those were great schemes.

We want to ensure schemes such as those can continue, and that the UK can be an even greater force for good in the world. That does not mean, however, that we should go slow on further measures to bring down net migration, because net migration does place very significant burdens on communities in respect of housing, public services and our ability to integrate people. That is why we made further interventions this week, and we will consider further ones in the future.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I was not expecting a question today arguing that net migration was too low—that seems to be the position of the SNP—but the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point; we need a pragmatic approach to particular sectors that are facing skills shortages, and we need to think about regional disparities across the whole United Kingdom. We do not believe that there should be separate immigration systems for the nations of the UK, and the evidence bears that out: there is no material difference in either unemployment or economic inactivity between Scotland and the United Kingdom average. We do take account, through the shortage occupation list, of particular sectors that are facing challenges, and some are of course more focused in some parts of the UK than in others. Earlier in the week, for example, we decided to add further fishing occupations to the shortage occupation list in order to support the offshore fishing industry, which I hope will be supported by the hon. Gentleman and fellow Scottish MPs who have connections with the industry.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Some people in the Treasury seem to think that a good way to grow the economy is to fill the country with ever more people, but that is bad for productivity and bad for British workers, who are being undercut by mass migration from all over the world. Why is it that under the points-based system we allow into the country people earning only £26,000 a year, while the median UK salary is £33,000? Is not an obvious solution to insist that everybody who comes in is skilled and earns the median UK salary, as then we can boost productivity and get British people back to work?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which he has made in the past and with which I have a lot of sympathy. We both believe that we need a controlled migration system and that net migration has a number of impacts on communities, including further pressure on public services and housing supply and making it more difficult to integrate people into our country and maintain community cohesion. In some instances, high levels of net migration also put downward pressure on wages for the domestic economy and enable some employers to reach for the easy lever of importing foreign labour rather than training up their own British workforce. It is for those reasons what we created the points-based system that has a salary threshold—a freedom we only have as a result of leaving the European Union—and if further changes to that system are necessary in the future, we will make them.

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Local residents in my constituency are rightly shocked and concerned to hear that the Minister’s Department is planning to house 300 asylum seekers in the Stradey Park hotel, a totally disproportionate number for the village of Furnace and local services. Will the Minister meet me to hear about local concerns, and what is he doing to prevent the need to commandeer the Stradey Park hotel and to clear the Home Office backlog of 160,000 undetermined claims so that those from safe countries can be returned and those who are genuine refugees can move out of hotels and be integrated in small numbers into suitable communities?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am delighted to hear that the Government have just chalked up another vote for the Illegal Migration Bill, because Members cannot say they want open borders, with unlimited numbers of individuals coming into this country, whether legally or illegally, but they do not want them in their own constituency—it is an inconsistent approach. If the hon. Lady feels so strongly and is getting such strong representations from her constituents, she should support the Government’s efforts to clamp down on illegal migration.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

When they take effect, what estimate has the Minister got for the impact of the measures that the Government announced yesterday?

[Robert Jenrick]

We believe that the measures we announced yesterday with regard to student dependants will have a tangible effect on the number of student dependants coming into the country, which, as the figures published by the Office for National Statistics show, is currently very considerable. It is not right that universities are in some cases in the immigration business rather than the teaching and education one. We are clamping down on those practices and that will help us bring down net migration in the medium term. But let me be abundantly clear to my right hon. Friend: net migration is far too high and we need to take measures to bring it down. We are not complacent; we want to make good on our promise to the British public.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Immigration Minister seems to be making a very good case for increased wage inflation. I wonder what his Treasury colleagues make of the overall impact of that on the economy. Sector after sector, whether agriculture, hospitality, fishing or care services, tell us that they all need access to more skilled staff, and they simply do not have that access at the moment. He stands at the Dispatch Box and talks about adding fishing to the shortage occupation list, but he completely ignores the fact that his and the Home Secretary’s refusal to lower the standard of English language skills required renders that absolutely meaningless for the fishing industry and, as a result of his decision, fishing boats in my constituency and right around the coast are tied up today. When will he start listening to business? When did the Conservative party stop doing that?

[Robert Jenrick]

The case I was making was that we sustainably increase productivity by encouraging our employers to invest in their workforce and in technology, rather than simply by reaching for the easy lever of further international labour. With respect to the fishing sector, this measure that we have made this week has been broadly welcomed by the fishing sector. I fundamentally disagree with the right hon. Gentleman if his contention is that we should allow people who cannot speak or write in English into the United Kingdom on visas that have a route to settlement. That is wrong. The standard of English that we maintain is a low standard, and we need it for health and safety at the workplace, to prevent exploitation and to ensure that people can integrate into our communities. That is absolutely the right approach.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

People who come to this country and want to work here and add value are welcome. Clearly the concern is the illegal migration figures, which have continued to grow. Given that the net migration figures have almost flatlined, will my right hon. Friend lay out what has happened over that period of time and what his plans are for the future to ensure that the total comes down?

[Robert Jenrick]

The ONS has changed its methodology and increased the estimate it made in the middle of last year, to say that net migration was 606,000 at that point, when it previously published its data, and it sees no evidence that it has increased since then, which suggests that numbers are now flatlining. There are reasons to believe that the number of individuals coming on our humanitarian schemes from Hong Kong and Ukraine will reduce over the course of the year, although it is difficult to predict that with certainty, particularly with respect to Ukraine. The measures that we have taken this week with respect to student dependants will have a material impact, so it is reasonable to assume that numbers will now be on a downward trajectory. But I do not want to give any impression of complacency, because there is clearly a great deal more to be done. If we need to make further interventions, we will.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Government have clearly lost control of all aspects of immigration and migration. Labour voted against the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Bill because we said that they would not work, and the figures show that they have not worked. Will the Minister explain why fewer than 1% of the people who arrived on small boats last year have had their asylum claims determined, and why the figure is so low?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Gentleman and his party have voted against every measure that the Government have brought forward to control migration, whether legal or illegal migration, so his contention that Labour would get control of migration is laughable. It is important that we bring the backlog of cases down. That is why the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I have set out a clear plan to do that. We see the dividends of that, and we expect the legacy backlog to be cleared over the course of the year, as we promised. It is not correct, however, to suggest that if illegal migrants’ claims are processed faster, that will reduce the number of people coming into the country. In all likelihood, that would lead to an increase.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

The anger and frustration of my constituents has been focused on illegal migration up until now, but that anger and frustration will grow when they consider these legal migration figures. We are creating, roughly speaking, eight new parliamentary constituencies with this number. If that continues, it is clearly unsustainable. The Minister spoke about medium-term plans to reduce the numbers, but what my constituents want to know is what short-term plans there are. Other than those that have been announced recently, what else is the Department considering?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend makes a number of important points. I think few Members of this House have argued more consistently than I have that we need to build more homes and that there needs to be a proper join-up between the numbers coming in and the way we accommodate them. There are, I am afraid, intolerable pressures placed on the country’s public services and housing supply by sustained very high levels of net migration. That is one of the reasons why we need to take action. We announced a package of measures this week, which includes changes to the rules with respect to student dependants and increased enforcement activity to clamp down on egregious abuse of the system by education agents. As I said in answer to earlier questions, if we need to make more changes, we will do so.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

There is a huge gap between the Government’s rhetoric and reality. The Minister just said that the net migration figure would return to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term, so can he please say what his assessment is for the net migration figure for the year ahead?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said in answer to earlier questions, we expect numbers to reduce. We are taking further steps this week, which we think will make a material difference. If we need to do more, we will, because net migration is far too high. I hope the hon. Gentleman, by his question, agrees with me in that regard, and that he will support the measures we take to bring numbers down.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

If it were possible for everyone who crosses the channel illegally in a small boat to be returned to France, that would be not only in our interests but in the interests of France, because we would stop people buffering on its north-east coast to try to get into this country. I know it is very difficult, but what are the chances that that could happen, because it would solve the problem?

[Robert Jenrick]

We are making considerable efforts to deepen our relationship with the French Government. In fact, next week I will be in Paris to meet our counterparts in the French Interior Ministry. The Prime Minister achieved, in short succession, two significant deals that are leading to an increase in activity on the beaches, increased joint working on counter-organised immigration crime, and a new joint working centre in Lille that I will be visiting shortly. If there was a possibility of a readmissions agreement with France, that is certainly something the Government would welcome and we have made that clear. In our conversations with both President Macron and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, we offered a range of solutions that could lead to that.

I would just say, however, that the previous readmissions agreement—Dublin—which operated during our time in the European Union, was not successful. In the last years of its operation, more people were being brought from France to the United Kingdom than were sent from the UK to France, so this is not a panacea. But if there are ways in which we can take this forward, we will.

[Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

The Tories on the Government Benches and the Tory-lite Labour party would have the public believe that a rise in net migration is something to fear. That could not be further from the truth. Immigrants across all four nations make a contribution to society, politically, economically and socially, from running small local businesses in our high streets to developing groundbreaking technology and working in the NHS—they are integral to society. In my maiden speech, I called for immigration to be devolved. Scotland wants immigration and our needs are different. Does the Minister agree that now is the time for immigration to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady. As I have already said in answer to other questions, there is a limit to the number of individuals who can come into any country, regardless of the benefits they might bring, because we have finite resources, for example in housing and access to public services. Independent advisers, including the Migration Advisory Committee, have said that there is a range of reasons why in some cases migrants choose to come to other parts of the UK over Scotland. There is a role for the Scottish Government in tackling those issues.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

Unsustainable levels of migration continue to have a significant impact on housing in the south-east. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must do all we can to reach sustainable levels of migration? On illegal migration and processing of asylum claims, we must ensure that the Home Office cracks down on the people smugglers while ensuring that the likes of Scotland take its fair share of people, rather than continuing to turn up here and virtue signal.

[Robert Jenrick]

I strongly agree. It is critical that we take action to bring down net migration. My hon. Friend represents a community where there is intense pressure on housing, and it is a struggle for many young people and those on lower incomes to get on the housing ladder. We must be cognisant of that when setting our migration policies. He is right on the SNP; it is a party of humanitarian nimbys. Its Members come here and preach, but their words are always greater than their actions.

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

Somewhat unusually, this morning we seem to have learned something new from the Dispatch Box: the Home Office’s inability to process applications, resulting in many people living in hotels across the country—including in Bristol—means that the holding pattern will remain for some time. In fact, that may be a deliberate policy, as the Minister said that if they were processed, there would be more. That is what he said—he can clarify. How long are people expected to live in hotels in cities across the country? What support is being given to local authorities, as my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) just asked, and what is the Government’s ultimate plan for these people?

[Robert Jenrick]

I did not say that. The hon. Lady should check the record after this urgent question. I said that the Labour party’s approach, as I understand it, is to let more people in and to process their claims faster. I gently pointed out that that is very unlikely to result in fewer illegal migrants crossing the channel. We need to suffuse our entire system with deterrence. That is why we are bringing forward new sites, such as the large sites and barges, and the Illegal Migration Bill. We want to clear the backlog, but above all we want to stop people coming in the first place. The sustainable answer to that is to break the business model of the people smugglers and back the Illegal Migration Bill.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

Today’s figures are too high, and my constituents will expect to see them fall. I welcome what the Office for National Statistics has said about them flatlining, and I welcome, again, what my right hon. Friend announced yesterday about student dependant visas, which will help them to fall. Does he agree that my constituency will not buy the line from the shadow Home Secretary, because the Opposition is led by an arch remainer who favours freedom of movement, and it has voted against every single measure that we have brought to control legal and illegal migration, including our Bill to stop the boats?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is right. Nobody believes the position of the Labour party because time and again, when it is offered the opportunity to vote for legislation to tighten control of migration, whether legal or illegal, it always votes against it. We all know that our borders would be open under a future Labour Government. That is why we need to take the steps that we have, and why his constituents should continue to back him and the Conservative party.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The number of people waiting for asylum applications to be processed for more than six months has risen by 10,000 to 128,000. The Minister suggested that reducing the backlog, which is a Government objective, will not make any difference. Can he tell us whether he does want to reduce it, whether he thinks it will not make any difference and on what basis he is making that assessment?

[Robert Jenrick]

I have been clear that we want to reduce the backlog, as part of our 10-point plan to tackle illegal migration. We have put in place a series of measures to reduce bureaucracy, to streamline the process and to double the number of asylum decision makers. Those investments are already paying dividends. We are confident that the legacy backlog will be cleared over the course of the year.

The point I was making, which I am happy to reiterate, is that the faster the process, the more pull factor there is to the United Kingdom. That is not a reason to maintain an inefficient process, but we need a process where deterrence is suffused through every element, else we will never break the business model of the people smugglers.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

My old home state of Western Australia has just announced even further investment in additional support for international students, saying:

“It is important we provide international students…with a safe and welcoming environment for them to flourish in”.

Education is a global market, so can the Minister explain why it is a good thing that international students simply take their money, skills and enthusiasm elsewhere, deterred by this crackdown on their families and the support they offer, rather than choose the UK, where life for them is made ever more difficult?

[Robert Jenrick]

I presume the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that the Government have met their target of 600,000 international students coming to the UK every year—as set by our international education strategy— 10 years early. Last year, 605,000 international students came, and I suspect the number this year will be higher still. There is absolutely no sense that the Government are reneging on those commitments or creating an environment that is unwelcoming to international students. We want universities to focus on teaching, and not inadvertently create a backdoor to immigration status here in the UK. That is why we have made the changes we have made this week, which have been broadly welcomed by both the public and the sector.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

The Office for National Statistics has this morning published the record net migration figure of 606,000, including 114,000 long-term arrivals from Ukraine and 52,000 from Hong Kong, so well below 170,000 in total. We all remember a previous Conservative Prime Minister falsely promising the British people that he would bring net migration down to the tens of thousands, and the last-but-one Prime Minister promising that he would bring net migration figures to below 250,000, although he also failed miserably. I will not mention the previous Prime Minister, because she did not even last two months before crashing the economy. The last Conservative party manifesto pledged that

“overall numbers will come down”.

How is that going? What went wrong?

[Robert Jenrick]

We would not have the tools to tackle net migration had we taken the hon. Gentleman’s advice and remained within the European Union. It is only as a result of our new freedoms that we can control our immigration system. He has voted against every possible opportunity to tackle either legal or illegal migration, so on this argument he has no foot to stand on.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

In reviewing the net migration numbers, has the Minister had time to review the number of missing unaccompanied migrant children in the United Kingdom? The figure last week stood at over 200. If he has not had time to review that, will he come back to the House to tell us how many of those missing children have been found and what his Government are doing to make sure the situation never happens again?

[Robert Jenrick]

I have looked into the issue in great detail. I have spent time with officials from the Home Office and local authorities where we have hotels for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, speaking privately to the social workers and support staff who care for them, to ensure that we have the right processes in place. I am confident that we do. The hotels have a range of very considerable support around them. When a young person goes missing from a hotel, all the same processes are followed as for any other missing person, whether that be a child of a migrant or our own children.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The shadow Secretary of State raised very important questions about work visas that the Minister has not yet addressed. The number of work visas has doubled since the pandemic. Are the Government satisfied with that increase?

[Robert Jenrick]

We want a system that enables businesses to bring in foreign workers where there are sustained skills shortages, but we want British employers to focus, in the first instance, on training British workers to fill those vacancies, because there are large numbers of people who are economically inactive. The first duty of employers and the Government is to help those people back into the workforce.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Immigrants make an invaluable contribution to our economy and enrich our communities. International students, in particular, are needed and valued, especially in this post-Brexit labour shortage era. The reactionary and hostile plans that this Government are determined to put in place, as well as the Minister’s tone in the Chamber today, speak clearly of a desire to impede our ability to make the right arrangements for Scotland. Does he recognise how out of tune his Government are with the views of people in Scotland and with the needs of the Scottish economy? Does he not appreciate that it is absolutely essential that we have the powers to make the right immigration arrangements for Scotland, in order that our economy can thrive?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady’s argument is not borne out by any available evidence. There is no material difference in unemployment and economic activity between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The reports produced by the Migration Advisory Committee raise a number of questions for the Scottish Government about the policies that they could implement to make Scotland a more attractive destination for migrants and, indeed, workers from elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

There are now 172,758 people in the growing asylum backlog. I have met asylum seekers in my constituency who have been housed for well over a year in overcrowded hotel rooms, many of them with small children who have nowhere to play. Will the Government finally admit that their illegal Illegal Migration Bill will make the backlog, and those people’s traumatic wait, worse rather than better?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady is entirely wrong about that. The Illegal Migration Bill creates a fast and simple scheme whereby those who come here illegally, in small boats or otherwise, will have their claims processed not in months or years but in days or weeks, and will either be returned home to a safe country such as Albania or sent to a safe third country such as Rwanda. That will break the business model of the people smugglers by infusing the system with deterrence, and will bring about a substantial reduction in the numbers entering the country in this manner.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

In Bath the hospitality sector is a big driver of the local economy, but many of our wonderful hotels, restaurants, bars and pubs struggle to find enough staff, and there is the danger of closure or reduced working hours, which are bad for the economy. The Government’s chaotic approach of making and breaking headline-grabbing immigration targets has completely eroded public trust, including that of employers. When will they come clean with the public, acknowledge that legal migration is driven by the labour market, and listen to employers and others in Bath’s hospitality sector?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady seems to be arguing for significantly higher levels of legal migration than those that we have today. Given that 235,000 work-related visas were issued last year, which is a substantial number, I do not think it wise to advocate a significant further increase. We want to see the numbers coming down.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister has already accepted that we need immigration in this country to fill the skills gaps. Over the last 15 years, we have heard a number of vague promises about bringing immigration down—for instance, as we were reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), the former Prime Minister David Cameron wanted to bring it down to the tens of thousands—but that has clearly not been achieved. I am not trying to score political points, but may I ask the Minister what level of migration he considers to be right for this country, whether he can give a specific figure, and whether it is achievable in the next decade?

[Robert Jenrick]

We have made a clear manifesto commitment to see numbers falling sustainably, and this week we are taking action that will have a material impact. As I have said a number of times this morning, net migration is far too high, and I worry that that is placing intolerable pressure on public services, on housing supply and on our ability in this country to integrate new arrivals. Those are the reasons why we need to take action, and if we need to take further steps we will do so.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I think the Minister needs to get his story straight on the asylum backlog. Is he saying that he wants to get it down—in which case he is not doing a very good job, because it is up to 172,000—or is he saying that he is keeping it high, with all the attendant costs and misery, in order to deter fresh claims?

[Robert Jenrick]

I have made it very clear that we want to get the backlog down, but I have also pointed out that Labour’s only policy in respect of illegal migration is to clear the backlog faster. Open borders, faster processing —that is not going to work.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

The Minister and I will clearly never agree on whether immigration is too high, but we might be able to agree that it is too low when it comes to rural areas and the need for seasonal workers in the agrifood sector, given that a shortage of such workers left millions of pounds of fresh produce to rot in the fields. The Scottish Government have called for a bespoke rural visa scheme to help bring the labour that is needed to Scotland. Will the Minister agree to meet me so that we can tease out some of these issues, perhaps free from the pressures to generate headlines in tomorrow’s press?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to discuss that issue in the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman has raised it today. I am not persuaded that it is practical to create an immigration system whereby we have visas specific to certain parts of the United Kingdom or to rural as opposed to urban areas. We have a seasonal agricultural workers scheme; we recently announced that that will continue next year, and offered to increase it to 55,000 people a year. Last year, the scheme was capped at 45,000 and we had fewer applications than that, so it seems to be operating at the correct level, but we have to be careful about abuse, and last year, I am afraid, we saw a rise in the number of people who came across on that scheme and either were exploited by gangmasters or put in asylum claims. It would not be right to create a system that led to an increase in either of those activities.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Minister knows that I believe strongly that we have a moral obligation to help widows, children and orphans. That is why I believe we must have a robust immigration and asylum system that allows the vulnerable and the needy to find their new home. A constituent of mine, a hard-working young man, is seeking to bring his brother and his daughter to Northern Ireland—to my town of Newtownards, by the way—after losing all the rest of their family in the Turkish earthquake, yet we are at an impasse, which I find quite frustrating. What changes can be made to prevent an influx of unmarried young man but instead to focus on allowing in these devastated lone parents and their families?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to look at that specific case, if the hon. Gentleman wishes. We do have schemes for dependants of migrants into the UK, and the figures published by the Office for National Statistics today show significant numbers of migrants’ dependants or family members of British citizens entering the country.

On the broader point that the hon. Gentleman regularly champions, which is that the UK is a force for good in the world in welcoming people for humanitarian purposes, the numbers published today show that the UK is one of the world’s leading countries for humanitarian visa routes. We should be proud of that and not accept anyone saying otherwise.

Asylum Seeker Accommodation Off Wirral Peninsula

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) for securing this debate. The concerns of Members of this House and their constituents should be taken seriously, and they are being taken seriously. I will set out shortly the work we are doing and are looking to do with Birkenhead.

First, however, it is right to set this in the national context, as the hon. Gentleman did, because the situation we as a country find ourselves in is not sustainable. The number of people crossing the channel in small boats has placed the asylum system under enormous pressure. The continued occurrence of these dangerous, illegal and wholly unnecessary journeys has left us in the invidious position of having to resort to using hotels to house asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute in order to fulfil our legal obligations. The enduring solution is of course to stop the boats and break the business model of the people smugglers, which is why we have brought forward the Illegal Migration Bill. In the meantime, however, it is right that we take steps to minimise the impact on local communities and reduce the burden on the taxpayer of the use of hotels.

The Home Secretary and I have been clear that hotels are inappropriate and we must shift to more suitable forms of accommodation. The hon. Gentleman mentioned a hotel in Kirkby in the Liverpool city region which was the subject of violence—unacceptable levels of violence—earlier this year, but that highlighted the difficulties of pursuing this route for housing asylum seekers and the need to find better, more sustainable solutions.

The challenge we are facing as a country is a significant one and it calls for innovative approaches, such as the use of military sites and vessels. These sites are undoubtedly in the national interest and the UK Government approach is in step with those of our northern European counterparts. A number of other European countries, such as Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, are looking at similar approaches and how they can house very large numbers of asylum seekers in ways that are of lower cost to the taxpayer and more sustainable while they work to find solutions to the migration crisis that the whole continent is experiencing.

We have not made a final decision to place a vessel in Birkenhead port. However, we have identified the port as a potentially viable location and are seeking to engage the local authority, the local NHS, police, other emergency services and other public agencies to help to inform a final decision. A multi-agency forum is being established, and will meet imminently, to assess the risks and identify mitigating actions. The forum, like others that we have established elsewhere in the country, will include representatives from national, regional and local public sector agencies and the Home Office. I hope that local stakeholders, including Wirral Council, will participate in the forum in the collaborative manner envisaged. It is certainly important for statutory officers, such as those of the council, to participate and fulfil their responsibilities.

I will use this opportunity to answer some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. He asked whether the vessel would be, in his words, a “prison ship” or a non-detained facility. The Home Office has no intention of using the vessel as a detained facility. The migrants who would be housed on it would be living in a non-detained manner, which means that they could leave the boat and spend time on the shore, whether that be in communities nearby in Birkenhead or further afield. That would be carefully managed by the Home Office to ensure the safety of the migrants, community cohesion and the impact on local town centres and high streets. There are ways in which we are able to do that, which we have learned throughout our experiences elsewhere in the country, such as at the non-detained facility that we operate at Napier in Kent.

The hon. Gentleman implied that this was an unorthodox approach. It is one that is being used both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe today. The Scottish Government have used vessels to house Ukrainian refugees, for example, in Leith in Edinburgh, over the last year or two. My understanding is that that experience has been broadly successful both for the refugees and for the local community. The local council has been extremely helpful in supporting those individuals and the Government have rightly provided resource to the council to meet the costs of doing that.

The barges and ferries that the UK Government are looking at have in many cases been used by British workers, such as those working on large construction sites, or oil and gas projects. Indeed, some are ferries that have been used for police and other staff at the Olympics or at COP26 in Glasgow. It would therefore be wrong to characterise them as inhumane or indecent. That is not the intention of the Government.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the important regeneration project at Wirral Waters. As a former Local Government Secretary, I am familiar with that, as there was—and I believe continues to be—a role for Homes England in its development. Nothing that the Government do should in any way imperil the success of that important regeneration project. We have already made that commitment to the parties we have spoken to and, in our future engagement with Wirral Council, we will do everything we can, should that project proceed, to protect the integrity of the Wirral Waters scheme.

The use of a vessel, whether it be at Birkenhead or in any other location in the UK, would only be for a very limited period. In most cases, we have proposed using these vessels for 18 months, after which they would be moved away and a different solution found.

The hon. Gentleman raised the understandable concern about the impact on his local authority and other local services in his area. All parts of the country face pressures on public services, but I understand that Birkenhead has particular challenges in respect of deprivation and we as national Government should take those challenges seriously. If we were to proceed with the project, we would provide funding to Wirral Council to recompense it for any work it does to support the project. We would also provide funding for the police in Merseyside to ensure they are able to support the safety of the migrants on the vessel, the security of the port and the safety of residents in neighbouring communities. We would also work with the local integrated care board to ensure that there is suitable healthcare provision.

What we are offering on a similar vessel in Portland in Dorset is a basic primary care facility located on or beside the vessel sufficient to meet the immediate needs of the migrants, and reduce pressures on local GPs and primary care providers, and some funding to the local healthcare authorities to ensure they are able to provide that and that there are minimal knock-on consequences for the wider healthcare economy.

We are also working with the UK Health Security Agency to work through some of the challenges the hon. Gentleman raised around communicable diseases, and to ensure that, when migrants come to vessels of this kind, they have been properly health screened in advance and offered vaccines, where appropriate, and that the correct checks and processes are in place to ensure diseases do not spread throughout the vessel or into the local community. Those are exactly the sorts of questions that we would now want to work through with Wirral Council, the hon. Gentleman and other local stakeholders.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House, and for raising understandable and important concerns on behalf of his constituents. I believe that the policy of using vessels and pursuing larger sites such as disused military bases is overwhelmingly in the national interest, but I understand that there will be very serious concerns in the local communities that are most immediately affected. It is right that he raises those concerns and that we work with him productively to address as many of them as possible. The Home Office will continue to engage with the key stakeholders in and around Birkenhead as we work through our proposals. I hope that he and I can forge a productive partnership if we choose to take this forward.

Question put and agreed to.

Inshore Industry Fishing Crews: Visas

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate and for the constructive meeting that he and I had earlier in the year with representatives from the fishing sector. I am grateful to him and to all other hon. Members who have participated today. I was grateful for a recent meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), which was very productive. He made a number of important points, and in a moment I will respond to him as to how the Government intend to take them forward. I will pass on to the Prime Minister an application from my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) to be fishing Minister, although he might have competition from my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan.

The Government fully recognise the importance of the fishing industry to the UK’s economy. It has played an integral part in the UK’s heritage and will play an important part in its future. It is a mainstay of coastal communities. It provides employment, shapes infrastructure, and provides nutritious and delicious food for our domestic and international markets.

In recognition of the important contribution that fishing makes, the Home Secretary and I are of the view that, following the implementation of section 43 of the Nationality and Borders Act, which clarifies the long-standing position that migrant workers within 12 nautical miles of the UK require a work visa, it is vital that the Government do what they can to find further ways to support the fishing sector in using the immigration system.

In the Home Secretary’s letter to the sector last month, which has already been referred to, she set out that the Department stands ready to deliver a comprehensive package of support to the sector. The package includes guiding fishing firms through the visa and sponsor application process, as well as the broader immigration system; ensuring that there is sufficient capacity for English language testing slots; expediting visa and sponsor applications; further quickening the decision-making process for no extra charge; and having dedicated points of contact in UK Visas and Immigration for the sector. That is a broad package. It is based on one that we have produced for other sectors in the recent past that has been appreciated by those sectors and has generated dividends.

[Mr Carmichael]

Earlier today in the House, the Minister said that the package had been welcomed by the fishing industry. Who was he talking to who welcomed it?

[Robert Jenrick]

My Department has told me that stake- holders have welcomed it, and I think it is a good package. We are already starting to engage with firms and representatives who are responding to it. The sector is well catered for under the points-based system, but I will come in a moment to the changes that we propose to make. Those in a range of eligible fishing and processing roles—including deckhands, which the right hon. Gentleman referred to earlier—have had access to the skilled worker visa since April 2021.

We believe that with the right level of support, the sector should be able to further navigate the existing immigration system. Building on that, and further to representations from a number of right hon. and hon. Members present, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan, we have decided to add further fishing occupations—share fishermen, trawler skippers and deckhands on large fishing vessels—to the shortage occupation list, all of which the Migration Advisory Committee recommended in 2020 as part of its SOL review. That will ensure that the fishing sector can continue to access the talent that it needs at reduced cost, and the Government will implement that during the summer on an interim basis until the wider MAC review into the SOL has been completed.

[Brendan O'Hara]

What exactly is the definition of a large fishing boat?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Member’s knowledge of the fishing sector is superior to mine. I do not know the exact definition, but I will happily get my officials to write to him and we will place on record in the Library of the House what the Home Office considers the official definition to be.

We strongly encourage the sector to engage with us to ensure that firms can attract the workers that are needed. The sooner that happens, the less disruption the sector will face. My officials, along with officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stand ready to help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes said—echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan and others—the long-term, sustainable answer is not to rely solely on international labour but to train more domestic workers to embrace technology and automation to the extent that that is applicable. We all appreciate the challenges that the sector faces and the difficulty in recruiting domestically at present. Nobody is blind to that, and the Home Secretary and I are certainly not.

On broader non-immigration aspects—this point was raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), and others—DEFRA continues to run the access to labour working group that was launched in June 2022 with the purpose of improving relationships with the industry, ensuring that it has a voice at the table, and Home Office officials are represented on that working group. That includes representatives from the catching, processing, aquaculture and shellfish sectors across the United Kingdom. I have encouraged my officials to play an active part in that so that we can have the dialogue that everyone present seeks to achieve.

In terms of helping the sector to recruit and train the next generation of fishermen and women, the Government have provided funding through the £100 million UK seafood fund to remove some of the barriers that new entrants to the sector face, and DEFRA has awarded £1.1 million through the fund for skills and training to help industry with recruitment and retention issues. Seven projects across the UK have received funding to improve the quality of training, promote career progression and help to attract new people into the sector.

[Mr Carmichael]

What help is that to the constituent I referenced who still owes £680,000 to the bank, and who cannot go to sea because he cannot get the crew? He will not be around by the time these people are available for his ship.

[Robert Jenrick]

I appreciate the urgency of the issue, but it is important that the sector plays its part in considering the long-term future of training and recruiting new individuals. The funds provided by DEFRA will play a part in helping the sector to adapt to the future.

In addition to the grant schemes in England, the fisheries and seafood scheme offers extensive support aimed at attracting new entrants. Eligible projects include supporting new entrants into the industry, the creation of job opportunities and the provision of apprenticeship schemes for new entrants, perhaps including the one mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes.

[Mr Carmichael]

Is it the Minister’s position today that the same people—the same stakeholders in the industry —who have been telling him that they welcome this somehow or other did not realise they had a responsibility to upskill their own workforce?

[Robert Jenrick]

No, it is not. As with any sector of the economy, there is a role for Government in producing an immigration system that enables access to foreign labour on a pragmatic basis where there are skills shortages. There is also a role for the industry to adapt, evolve and train British workers to take those jobs, and both have to work together in harmony. I have just set out the funding streams available through DEFRA to help support the sector to do that, but I do not underestimate how challenging that will be for the sector.

[Jim Shannon]

I do not think that any of us here do not welcome the training money and the opportunities it will give the sector back home to try to gain employment. I am mindful that that is a challenging target to meet. What we have asked for today—if the Minister is coming to this point, I apologise—is short-term help with the English language requirement. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) put forward the idea that the English qualification should be A2, and I suggested it should be B2. We made it clear that that would be for one year, and then there would be a target to meet the B1 qualification. I felt that that was a positive and constructive way forward, and it helps us as representatives of the fishing sector. I hope the Minister will forgive me if I am labouring the point, but we need such a break- through.

[Robert Jenrick]

I was coming to that point. I was not going to conclude my remarks without addressing it properly.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I apologise to the hon. Member for Strangford for jumping in on the back of his question. The funds are welcome, but I urge the Minister to do all he can to encourage DEFRA to see that access to them is made as easy as possible. I am concerned that in my patch, we repeatedly fail to apply for the funds. There are certain levels of complexity that I do not think are necessary when we are trying to help the industry. It is becoming quite cumbersome, so perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will relay that to his counterpart.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that ask, and I will certainly relay the feedback to the Secretary of State for DEFRA.

I will turn to the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and then I will come to the ask of the hon. Member for Strangford. As the Home Secretary set out in her letter to the industry, although it is a long-standing Government policy that overseas workers in UK waters needed visas, we accepted that there was a need to legislate for clarity. The fishing sector has been using transit visas erroneously, in our view, for a number of years without consequence, and it was vital to correct that given the labour abuse that we saw in some parts of the sector.

Foreign nationals coming to work in the UK, on land or on our waters, should comply with the immigration system. That includes the firms that are looking to hire those workers. I do not believe that is controversial, and the fishing industry is no exception. None the less, as a result of the clarification there is a transition that needs to be managed, as right hon. and hon. Members have said today.

[David Duguid]

I do not think anybody in this Chamber today would disagree on the need to avoid labour abuse. But would the Department—I understand that if there are ongoing investigations, this is not appropriate—provide details of any convictions of labour abuse that have taken place? Perhaps not today, but will he inform Members of where abuses have taken place? I am not aware of any in my constituency, but if I was, I and other hon. Members would be helping the Government to throw the book at those people. I suspect it is not as prevalent as some in the media might want to make out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not want to overstate it, but I know from my conversations with officials in the Department that they believe there is evidence of abuse. If I am able to put any of that in the public domain to give a guide on the scale of it, I would be pleased to.

Section 43 of the Nationality and Borders Act simply clarifies what has been the Government’s policy position for some time, which is that foreign workers working in our waters need permission to do so. It does not introduce a new policy.

[Mr Carmichael]

Why did the Minister include Sule Skerry within the definition of waters to which the Act applies?

[Robert Jenrick]

I was interested to hear the point that the right hon. Gentleman made in his speech. As I understand it, the Home Office has simply taken the standard definition of 12 nautical miles, and all islands that fall within UK waters are in scope of the UK’s immigration system. It is not within the power of the Home Office to change where UK waters begin and end. If he contests that or would like to further discuss the matter, I would be happy to take it up with him.

[Mr Carmichael]

It is in our interests to try to polish this particular item, because it could make a real difference. Sule Skerry is about 90 or 100 miles out from Orkney mainland. Those waters are very different from the ones we are talking about. Boats often go there, and they rely on it for shelter. Including places such as Sule Skerry will put lives at risk. Is the Minister happy with that?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to make further inquiries and come back to the right hon. Gentleman. As I understand it, 12 nautical miles merely represents the standard definition of UK waters. If that is the case, it seems difficult to hive off particular parts of UK waters for the purposes of our immigration system. I am happy to be corrected if that is not an accurate description.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I appreciate that the Minister is being very generous. It is not about carving out certain parts of UK territorial waters. This affects the entire west coast—certainly of Scotland—and it takes in all of Northern Ireland and large chunks of England. It is not a small tweak that is required, but a complete change in our understanding of what the 12 nautical miles means for both the west coast and the east coast. This is not a tinkering point.

[Robert Jenrick]

I understand that, and I apologise if I gave the impression that this affects a small part of UK waters. Either way, the Home Office has taken a standard definition of UK waters and applied it for the purposes of our immigration system. Ostensibly, that sounds like a reasonable way to proceed, but I am happy to make further inquiries and revert to the hon. Gentleman if there is another way to do so within the confines of the law.

[David Duguid]

I suspect that the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) equally refers to somewhere such as Rockall. I do not think it is in anybody’s constituency, but it is so far away from the UK mainland that we think it should not apply. However, under the definition of the 12 nautical miles, the 12 nautical miles around Rockall—which is not inhabited—are impacted as well.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful for that. The point is registered. I will make inquiries and revert to all hon. Members present who are interested.

I turn to the point raised by the hon. Member for Strangford about English language requirements. In our 2019 manifesto, we committed to prioritising people who have a good grasp of English in our visa system. The English language requirement is fundamental to successful integration into British society, helping visa holders to participate in community life and work. As the hon. Member noted, the level we set is B1, or lower intermediate English, from the common European framework of reference for languages. That level of English is applied for skilled worker visas without exception, unless the applicant can prove that they are from a majority English-speaking country, of which there are some that provide fishermen and women to UK businesses.

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes said that workers from Belize, which is an English-speaking country, come to the UK in some numbers. That level is not fluency, but it is the ability to understand and deal with the main points likely to arise in conversation on matters relating to work, school, leisure and so on. Without that level, applicants may struggle to support themselves and their families in the UK.

A good grasp of English can also be important in the workplace, particularly in busy or potentially dangerous environments, and to fulfil health and safety requirements. Workers who do not have a good command of English are more likely to be vulnerable to exploitation and less able to understand their rights. That is vital in a sector that, as we have just noted, has had some issues with labour market abuses.

[Stephen Kinnock]

On labour market abuses, will the Minister set out the timeline for his Government’s implementation of their manifesto pledge to create a single integrated labour market enforcement authority?

[Robert Jenrick]

We do not have a timetable at present, but we are working with the relevant stakeholders, such as the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, which deals with abuses onshore, rather than offshore, to find the right approach to protect workers in all settings. I am happy to update the hon. Gentleman further on the likely timescales for that.

I would be happy to consider the proposal of the hon. Member for Strangford, which he set out well, although I do not want to give false hope that we are certain to take it forward. For the reasons I set out, we have principled arguments for maintaining a good degree of English. All of us, including the hon. Gentleman, care about preventing exploitation. We want the people who come to this country to speak a good degree of English, and we want to ensure that we have a well-integrated and cohesive country. As a matter of principle, we have taken the view that all those coming on skilled worker visas should have that level of English.

I appreciate that, in this instance, a high number of those coming for such purposes will ultimately return to their own countries, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan said. None the less, it is a route to settlement, and we have to be very careful about enabling people to live in the UK for sustained periods or settle here permanently if they cannot participate fully in life in this country.

[Jim Shannon]

If I heard the Minister right, I believe the Department was prepared to consider A2. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and I—indeed, all hon. Members who know fishing organisations—know that they are satisfied that A2, which is a lesser requirement, meets their safety requirements. It gives those people the level of understanding that the Government wish them to have. If that is the case, I suggest that the A2 qualification would be sufficient to move us forward in a constructive and positive way.

You are a very knowledgeable lady when it comes to fishing issues, Mrs Murray. You are not participating in this debate, of course, but I just want to make that point. In the past five years, I cannot recollect any abuses of fishermen. I am aware of that happening in Northern Ireland about 20 years ago, but the fishing organisations have moved forward because they want to ensure the safety and security of their fishermen and safeguard their rights. That is a positive policy, and I welcome that.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I assure him that I will take that request away and give it careful consideration. If there is any further information that he or the representative bodies would like to submit to us, I would be happy to consider that. But I think he understands the principles on which the decision is taken and that it is not an easy decision to give special treatment to one particular sector when others in the country would like similar treatment. Our overall policy is the right one. We want people to have a good degree of English if they are coming here for sustained periods or on a route to settlement.

I would like to update hon. Members following the conversation I had with my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan. He asked for two particular Home Office considerations. First, he asked whether the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, which, as he noted, we have extended into 2024 and increased to up to 55,000 workers, could be extended to include certain fishing occupations that are undertaken onshore and that could be construed to be seasonal in nature. I undertook that we would consider that. My hon. Friend undertook that he and the sector would build an evidence base to support and inform the decision by the Home Office.

Secondly, my hon. Friend asked whether the package of support set out by the Home Secretary to enable easier access to the skilled worker visa system could be extended to certain onshore activities. Again, I undertook to look into that. I will revert to him and other right hon. and hon. Members once we have taken those issues forward. If other Members or representatives from the sector who might be listening to the debate want to participate in informing those decisions, I encourage them to do so.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—although we still have an hour and a quarter. He has been generous with his time so far. The hon. Member for Strangford can still take time at the end of the debate, as I recall.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), told me on 20 April that she would pass on my request for a meeting. That request was to meet not just me, but fishing organisations as well. I do not know whether that maybe slipped her mind, or if there are other bases on which meetings are offered. Will the Minister meet me, other hon. Members who have an interest and fishing organisations, to hear from them, in early course? Those organisations may be different from the stakeholders who have given him the views that seem to inform his thinking today.

All joking apart, this really matters. It is having a massive impact on some of the most economically fragile communities in this country.

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be pleased to meet the right hon. Gentleman and his constituents. I have met the hon. Member for Strangford and representatives from the Northern Irish fishing sector, and I met my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan. That is a decent number—I have met two out of the four Members here. I would be pleased to do the same for the right hon. Gentleman.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing the debate, and all those who have spoken. I hope I have made clear that the Government are committed to supporting the fishing sector as much as we can. On top of the already good coverage that our immigration system has of the fishing sector, I hope that the additional support that the Home Secretary and I have brought forward in the last few weeks, both in the package to assist with navigating the skilled worker visa system and now the additional occupations added to the shortage occupation list, will further improve the situation.

I hope Members will assist the Government in encouraging full engagement with our offer of support, which in turn should enable the industry to make full use of the system. The sooner that engagement happens, the less disruption there will be. I look forward to working with the sector in the future.