argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Discomfort! What did the Minister have in mind when he referred to discomfort? Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is on the Front Bench today, will be able to explain what was meant by that term. It suggests someone who might have a mild medical condition Equally inadequate was Lord Bates’ reply when he was asked "what difference do the Government estimate that the Prime Minister’s so-called EU reforms will make to the figures" Lord Green had stated earlier that migration levels could lead to "an increase in our population of half a million every year, of which 75% will be due to future immigration" The Minister, Lord Bates, accepted that Lord Green had been "correct in saying that if you use the statistical data available to forecast, you arrive at roughly the numbers he referred to." He accepted the premise of the question, but when he was asked what the effect would be of the so-called reforms that the Prime Minister came back with following the renegotiations, he said: "Of course, we must see what effect they will have, going forward."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 February 2016; Vol. 769, c. 576.] If that is not an imprecise statement on what are being bandied around as essentially good reforms that will transform the status of our relationship with the European Union, I do not know what is. It is an extraordinarily vague response to a very precise question. The Government keep saying that our relationship with the European Union will be debated on the facts, but they cannot even bring any facts to bear in answer to that precise question The whole purpose of the Bill is to reduce illegal immigration by identifying, prosecuting and deporting those already here illegally and deterring others who might be planning to come here illegally. How big is the problem that the Bill seeks to address? The Government have very little idea how many foreign nationals are in this country illegally, or so they say. They certainly refuse to gather any data to inform the debate, because of the embarrassment that that would cause. I have some figures that have been produced by the House of Commons Library, and they basically show that the Government have no idea how many illegal migrants there are here. The most recent studies are more than 10 years old, but the figure then was in a range between 300,000 and 700,000. That was 10 years ago, so what would the figure be now? In my submission, it must be well in excess of 1 million.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the Government’s trumpeting of the now more widespread use of exit checks, it ought to be relatively simple to ascertain the number of illegals who are in this country by looking at how many have been identified by the exit checks as having left the country and who the records show were not even supposed to be here in the first place?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is perfectly okay if these "consequences" are phrased in terms of a friendly question. Although it is not the subject of today’s debate, one friendly debate that we could have is on the question: if a country leaves the EU and wishes to access the single market, to what extent does that country have to take migrants? If the debate takes place under those circumstances, I take back entirely what I said, because that would be a friendly debate. But there is the possibility, especially given what the Prime Minister said a couple of weeks ago, that alarm bells are deliberately being rung, and Downing Street might indeed be orchestrating that. Some people say that it is right to ring these alarm bells, but there is a fear that our border will be thrown open We all know this is a toxic issue; it is pointless to deny that. It is far more toxic with the general public than arcane debates about the single market and business regulation, and even the sovereignty of Parliament. This is the important point—the consequences point—and it is desperately important for the referendum. If it is felt that anybody can walk across the continent, as they are in their tens of thousands, from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan—of course we sympathise individually with the desperate plight of these people—and can arrive in Calais, get on a cross-channel ferry, arrive in Dover and, because of the present state of the law, will not be returned, because apparently neither the Bill nor anything like it will be passed, there are indeed consequences I happen to think that the existing law has an entirely wrong-headed point of view on this issue. We have the treaty of Le Touquet. It is nothing to do with the EU. I do not think it would be in the interests of most countries, and it would not surely be in the interests of France, to encourage more people to walk across France in the hope of getting to England. I believe that the treaty of Le Touquet would stand, but certainly it is a debate that we need to have. I believe also that it would stand anyway because, as I understand it—although I defer to the Minister, who deals with these issues every day and is presumably much more expert in the law—it is very difficult to enter the United Kingdom illegally on an aeroplane. Before boarding, your passport and ticket are checked, and if they are not in order you are not allowed to board Let us say we were to leave the EU—or even that there was no treaty of Le Touquet. Surely, before anyone was allowed on the channel tunnel train or the cross-channel ferry, the ticket collector would check their ticket and passport, and if they were invalid, would not let them board. I believe that the vague undercurrent of threats of "consequences" in terms of law and practice is complete rubbish.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): The point of these debates is to have a debate. If what I am saying is not right, it is incumbent on the Minister to explain why, because there is enormous public interest in this. It would be really helpful if the Minister, when he responds to the debate, said, "I listened to what my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Gainsborough said about carrier liability, the treaty of Le Touquet and all the other points, and the advice that we have received from Home Office officials is that this would not be a problem if we left the EU." That would be a marvellous statement. We might not get it, but it is at least something to ask for.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a very fair point. There is enormous concern in France and enormous resentment in Calais. By the way, I pay tribute to the Mayor of Calais, who has done sterling work in this whole area. I sympathise deeply with the people of Calais and with the French Government, who have had to bear the cost. I sympathise with the poor gendarmerie, who this week have been under appalling attacks, not primarily from the migrants, who are decent people seeking a better life, but from anarchists who are there deliberately to provoke aggression. My hon. Friend is quite right about that Surely we have to ask why the "jungle" in Calais is there. It is there because those people believe that, in the absence of a Bill such as this, if only they can make it on to a train or hide away in a lorry or car, once they get to the United Kingdom they can cry "Home" and they will never be sent back.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Absolutely. Let me be completely clear that nobody in the House questions the desperate plight of the people now trudging through Greece and those who are held up at the border, having fled the appalling events in Syria, Iraq and Libya. By the way, the west has a huge responsibility for that, and I have to say that those Members who voted to invade Iraq, to bomb Libya and to bomb Syria also have a responsibility for the chaos that has ensued. Nobody questions the desperate plight of those people, but let us be completely honest about this. The hon. Gentleman has to be honest. Is he now suggesting that the British Government should say to the 6,000 people living in the jungle, "Yes, you are decent human beings who have come from appalling places with dreadful Governments and where there is chaos, such as Eritrea and Somalia, so you can come here"? If he wishes to make such a statement, he has to juxtapose himself on to the Government Front Bench and say, "Yes, I will let in those 6,000 people", because tomorrow another 10,000 will come, and they day after 20,000.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We have to introduce the language of compassion. May I just defend the Government for a moment? There is not a single Government in the whole of Europe who have spent more money on aid to Syria. This Government have a perfectly logical and reasonable point of view, which is that, rather than simply giving comfort to the people traffickers, we should take people directly from the camps. I think that there is widespread support on the Government Benches for what the Government are doing in that regard. If I have not spoken the language of compassion, let me be absolutely clear now that this debate is not about being nasty to people who are desperately seeking a better life.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
David Nuttall (Conservative, Centre-right): I accept that these people are desperate and fleeing persecution. If that is the case, why are they not seeking a safe haven in the first safe country they reach, rather than trying to get to the United Kingdom? Is that not the question we ought to be asking?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the question that the public ask again and again in the letters and emails we receive. Why is the Dublin convention not being used? My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was a very distinguished chairman of the migration committee in the Council of Europe, and he is probably one of the House’s leading experts on the whole migration issue. He has spent many hours not just sitting in committees in Strasbourg, but making the effort to go to Lampedusa and all these places to talk about the Dublin convention. That convention basically states, quite rightly, that a person should get asylum or be returned to the first country they enter, so this is what people in this country do not understand: is France unsafe? I quite understand—in the language of compassion—why a person would want to be an economic migrant, but are they an asylum seeker? When they are taken out of the back of a lorry in Lincoln or found at the first service station on the M3, they do not say to the English gendarmerie that they want to get benefits or a job; they say that they are an asylum seeker. The question that the British people are asking is this: if that person is a genuine asylum seeker, given that France is a completely safe and civilized country, with a very generous benefits system, why do they not claim asylum there? It all boils down to why this Bill is needed. I know that this is only a private Member’s Bill, but for the life of me I cannot understand why the Government do not take action on this.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
David Thomas Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay homage to my hon. Friend for his prowess in this field. I would like to clarify the fact that people come from all over the world to Calais, where there is a bottleneck, in the hope of getting across the channel and claiming asylum, and they do so for one reason only: they perceive that life will be better here for themselves and their families. To be frank, I do not think anybody on the face of the planet, if they were in distress, would not do the same thing. They come to this country—I hope that my hon. Friend agrees with this—because, as has been said in this debate, the UK is a soft touch. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister has brought forward reforms to deflect people away from this country by cutting down the benefits and the perceived advantages?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That may be a fair point. I do not think that Mr Deputy Speaker would want me to get into a whole debate about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation of benefits for Poles—people who have an absolute right to come here anyway. I briefly make the point that the overwhelming majority of Poles come here to work, not for benefits, but let us leave that to one side The people sitting in Calais are not Polish, Lithuanian or Hungarian—those people can all come in anyway. I am afraid that the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) is completely irrelevant. By definition, the people whom we are discussing are not allowed here. They come from outside the EU It is true that our benefit system is a draw. I am told that in the "jungle", England is viewed as a kind of El Dorado—having lived here for 65 years, I have never thought of it as that. Apparently, it is the place where all one’s dreams come true—there are unlimited work and benefits, and all the rest of it. These people come from outside the EU, so I am afraid that my hon. Friend’s intervention was not relevant. The issue is entirely in the hands of the Government. We hear about the staggering level of net migration, at 300,000 a year. The whole of London and the south-east is groaning under the number of people, and that is a particular issue for native working class people.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Georg John Tugendhat (Conservative, Centre-right): I do want to ask about illegal immigration. I merely want to state on the record that I do consider this country to be an El Dorado and I do think that it is a sceptred isle set in a sapphire sea. I really do think that this is the best country in the world. We are a light on the hill and a beacon to the peoples of the world. I think there is a good reason why people do not stop on their way here; if I had the choice of coming to the UK rather than anywhere else, here is exactly where I would come and I am very proud that my family are here On a separate point, I should briefly say that, sadly, some of those attempting to enter through Calais are the interpreters from Afghanistan and Iraq, with whom I served and who served the United Kingdom armed forces with enormous courage and distinction. When we consider this matter, we should realise that some of the people may have a rightful claim. We should be a little more considerate, as I know my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is being; some voices, however, are becoming more strident.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is absolutely right. Some have put their lives on the line as interpreters for the British Army in Afghanistan and some, God forbid, may be living in the jungle in a shack. The Minister could make a good point about preventing illegal entry by people who put their lives at risk by trying to jump on a train. I do not know what the procedures are; presumably, the people mentioned in my hon. Friend’s intervention could find a British immigration official and try to enter legally. My hon. Friend makes a good point My hon. Friend’s first point was very apposite too. Why are there all these attempts at illegal entry into the UK? It is because getting a job in France is so difficult and joining the benefits system there is so complex. Those things are probably even more difficult in places such as Italy. That is why people will do anything and take any risk to try to jump on the train, put their lives at risk and cause disruption for hundreds of different people. That is why we need the Bill: so that they know that it is simply not worth it If the Government took the steps that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch suggests, I hazard a guess that the camp would dissolve. The whole issue would go away and our relations with France would improve immeasurably. People would simply make a perfectly rational and good decision, asking themselves what, if they knew that they were going to be caught, was the point of causing all the anguish in trying to get out of France and putting their lives at risk. Many might think that they would never be caught, but that brings us to the debate about ID cards and all the rest of it; presumably, that is another reason why they want to come here. At least if they knew that they would be sent back if they were caught, that would solve the problem to a certain extent.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): We all sympathise with the problems of the French authorities in Calais, but does my hon. Friend agree that one solution would be for the French to come out of the Schengen area? They could then control the border between them and, for example, Italy, and that would deter people from coming to their country illegally.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has recited some of the detailed research that the House of Commons Library has done on this. Does he accept that the implication of this research must be that by now there are well in excess of 1 million illegal migrants in this country—in fact, millions of them—and that it is about time the Home Office took an interest in trying to ascertain the exact numbers?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes. I personally think—I put this in a half-hearted way to the Prime Minister in his statement a couple of weeks ago when I asked him why he was banging on about Polish immigration—that we are obsessing too much about east European migration. That is legal and understood. We have a fair idea of the numbers coming in, although there is a lot of dispute about the national insurance figures, which suggest that those numbers are far greater than is admitted by the Government. This matter has also been raised in Prime Minister’s questions In this House we are obsessing too much about the Prime Minister’s renegotiation and what he achieved and did not achieve, and forgetting what is in our control. It is argued that the Government can do nothing about migration from eastern Europe, unless of course we leave the European Union, but the issue of illegal migration is surely under our control, and it is now running at staggering levels. The people want to know what the Government are doing about it. What are they doing to find these people? My hon. Friend talked about the level of deportations. I think, off the top of my head, that he said that there were 12,562 deportations last year. Is that not an extraordinarily low proportion of the hundreds of thousands that I have been mentioning This is not just a matter of figures.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
David Thomas Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): If I remember correctly, the previous Labour Government gave two amnesties to illegal immigrants and asylum seekers who should not be here. Will my hon. Friend clarify whether the 2005 figures that my hon. Friend quoted since been superseded, or are they now completely irrelevant?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is precisely what I am asking. We now want an up-to-date study from the Home Office, but because we have such weak exit controls, the Government seem to have very little idea of what is going on Questions have been asked about this. On 18 January 2016, my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) asked "the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what procedures are in place to ensure that illegal migrants to the UK are returned to their country of origin; and whether people deemed by her Department to be illegal migrants are only able to appeal that decision from their country of origin." That seems to be a very fair question. To be fair to the Home Office, I will give the answer provided by the Minister for Immigration: "The Home Office continues to take action at every opportunity to prevent immigration abuse, pursue immigration offenders and increase compliance with immigration law including arresting and returning illegal migrants to their country of origin." Yet another Immigration Bill is making its way through the House, but I do not think there is any point in passing more Immigration Acts if we are not enforcing the existing ones. The Minister’s answer continues: "The Immigration Act 2014 simplified the appeals system so that an appeal right only arises where a claim raising fundamental rights is refused, namely asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights claims. The Home Office has the power to require an appeal to be brought only once an individual has left the UK where the claim is clearly unfounded and where a person liable to deportation makes a human rights claim and it would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights to require them to appeal from overseas The Immigration Bill seeks to extend the power to require an appeal to be brought from overseas to all human rights claims where an appeal from overseas would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights. Similar provisions are set out in the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006" Will the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Refugees explain the deficiencies of the existing Immigration Act 2014 in processing illegal migrants, and how would the new Immigration Bill make any difference?
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-04
Topic: Immigration
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Perhaps my hon. Friend could also ask for an explanation of the implications of the judgment in the case of Mircea Gheorghiu, who has been allowed to come back into this country despite the Home Office’s promises.