argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Damian Howard Green (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend, a former leader of Hillingdon Council, will be more expert on this matter than I am. In various phases, I have been on either side of the argument between the Home Office and local authorities, so I shall declare a position of neutrality on that, but he makes a valid point Lords amendment 11 is modest in its ambitions. It sets a number, which I have heard Ministers claim is a limit, but the amendment actually states: "The Secretary of State must arrange for the resettlement in the United Kingdom of at least 10,000 refugees each year." So if the arrangements are there, the Secretary of State has met the terms. It is conceivable that in some years there will not be the need to resettle 10,000 refugees, but, sadly, looking around the world at the moment, I do not think that figure is at all unrealistic. This approach will have huge practical advantages because, as we have discussed, it will allow local authorities and others to plan ahead. As we see at the moment, this country is good at scrambling together a plan at the last moment, but for once let us do some proper forward planning.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Jonathan Edward Gullis (Conservative, Centre-right): We both served on the Bill Committee but we seem to have a very different recollection. George Brandis, the Australian high commissioner, talked about a three-part effect, with push-back, offshoring and deterring by having tougher sanctions for those who enter illegally all having worked in tandem with one another to deter people from making the journey. That is unlike what the hon. Gentleman is trying to portray, which is that one silver bullet was the magic answer—it simply was not. It is just a shame that only two local authorities in the entirety of Scotland take part in the asylum dispersal scheme, unlike Stoke-on-Trent, which is the fifth largest contributor.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Jonathan Edward Gullis (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way after mentioning Stoke-on-Trent. The leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council is annoyed about the asylum dispersal scheme because only a third of local authorities are currently part of it. The council is asking for other areas—such as the 30-plus local authority areas in Scotland—to step up and do their bit because our city of Stoke-on-Trent is now at the one in 200 threshold in terms of refugee versus local citizen. Instead of attacking Stoke-on-Trent City Council with some vague quote, let us get into the facts of the matter. If Scotland stepped up to the plate and did its bit, Stoke-on-Trent would not have to carry the burden for the rest of the country.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Other
Kevin John Foster (Conservative, Centre-right): Just to help and to keep this short, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that our intention is to operate in the spirit of the Lords amendment—that is, there will not be a fee for registration—but I am more than happy to outline in some detail at another time exactly how the process will work.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. As the House can see, a great many people wish to speak. I will try to manage without a formal time limit because it is not normal to have one at this stage of dealing with Lords amendments, but I will introduce a time limit if we cannot have a bit of discipline. If everyone speaks for around four minutes, all colleagues will have a chance to speak, so let us try to do it without a formal time limit.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
David Michael Davis (Conservative, Centre-right): I will be as quick as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker Unlike the Opposition, I take the view that this Bill is a serious attempt to deal with an almost intractable problem. Nobody should challenge that point. Nevertheless, we are a great nation, and our greatness rests on the fact that we take a moral stance on most things. That is not a formula for softness but it is an argument for rigour in what we do. Lord Kirkhope’s amendment 9 strips out the Government’s plans to create an offshore asylum-processing system, and I believe he is right. Asylum offshoring would be a moral, economic and practical failure. Previous international experience shows that to introduce it here would be an unmitigated disaster The first problem with offshoring is an ethical one. To get a sense of the issue, we have only to look at what happened in Australia when it adopted the same approach in 2013. It meant that children, modern slavery victims and torture survivors could be detained offshore. The Refugee Council of Australia has documented gut-wrenching stories of sexual, physical and mental abuse in the processing facilities. A 14-year-old girl who was held offshore for five years doused herself in petrol and tried to set herself alight. A 10-year-old boy attempted suicide three times. Another child starved themselves near to death and had to be removed back to Australia Those were not isolated cases. In fact, there have been numerous reports of assaults and sexual abuse relating to Australia’s processing facility on Nauru. Between January and October 2015 alone—just a few months—there were 48 reports of assault and 57 reports of assault against a minor. That is what we appear to be trying to copy. We cannot risk creating a similar situation here. I ask the House to remember what happened to the views of migration around Europe when we saw the body of a drowned child on a Turkish beach. That is what would happen if such stories started to come out of a British offshoring facility. The second problem with offshoring is its staggering cost. Australia ended up spending over £1 million per person detained offshore—around £4.3 billion for 3,127 asylum seekers. That is 25 times higher per head than what we spend now. We would expect to have many more applicants than Australia had. Last year alone we had 50,000 applicants. Despite what was said earlier, the Australians have learned the lesson. They have wound down their policy, shut down their processing centre in Papua New Guinea and have not sent any new asylum seekers there since 2014.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
David Michael Davis (Conservative, Centre-right): The one that I was citing was Nauru, not Papua New Guinea, which turned it down itself and refused to take any more. That is the actual fact of it. By the way, I talked to Tony Abbott about this issue last week and will recount a bit of that discussion in a moment. Since that centre was closed, there were 92,000 asylum applications, so it is not as though the story went away There is also a major practical problem: where is this facility going to be? Will it be in Ghana, which referred to the policy as "Operation Dead Meat"? Rwanda? We have heard more on Rwanda today, and I will leave it to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) to talk about Rwanda, as he knows more about it than I do. Albania? Moldova? Gibraltar? All these places have all been talked about—none has said yes. Even if we do find somewhere, we will have to pay it a spectacular bribe to get it to take in our dirty washing; that is what it is, in effect. The Government are simply proposing shifting responsibility for our problems to another country. That does not fit with the behaviour of the great country that I believe we are Given the time limit, I will finish on this point. I spoke last week to Tony Abbott, who was Prime Minister of Australia for some of the time we are discussing. We did not talk primarily about this policy, but I asked him what was most effective. I am afraid that he rather agreed with what the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) said—that the really effective policy was pushback Frankly, what we have to deal with, in the Home Office and with our French allies, is a series of practical problems, alongside the legalities of how we handle the channel, which is not yet resolved either. What we cannot do is put aside ethical standards in order to drive people away from our shores.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. My plea for Members to limit themselves to four-minute speeches simply has not worked. I point out to the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who intervened just now, that I consider that she has now made her contribution, because there is not enough time for everybody to get into the debate. We will now have a formal four-minute limit. I call Sir John Hayes.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
John Henry Hayes (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Disraeli observed: "How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct." Many of the amendments put forward by the Lords are carelessly critical. They are veiled, as these things so often are, in a thin covering of assumed moral superiority, but surely it is not moral to oppose a Bill that tries to make the asylum system fit for purpose. Surely it is not ethical to conflate illegal immigration with the immigration of those people who diligently seek to come to this country lawfully and to surmount the hurdles we put in their path, and who, having done so, take pride in making the contribution mentioned by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell).
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), even though, as is sadly often the case, he ruined some respectable points with absurd hyperbole. This Bill is not the living embodiment of meanness. It is actually a reasonable and proper attempt to try to deal with a system that has evolved to become very complex. It now has distinctions that are out of date because of our departure from the EU. Having worked with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on aspects of this Bill, I can say that it is in direct fulfilment of our manifesto commitment. There is no doubt in my mind about its importance and about the need for it to be passed There is, however, reasonable question to ask about the position of asylum seekers being able to undertake work after six months. I have long regarded as unnecessary the waste of not just lives but expenditure when asylum seekers have to stay in a state of limbo, often for years, before knowing whether their claim is to be accepted. It is unnecessary because people who are in this position have a contribution to make to our society. That is not particularly controversial or a view confined to political parties. It is supported by a broad coalition of people of all colours and none. Indeed, a YouGov poll showed that 81% of people who were asked agreed with the principle of allowing asylum seekers the right to work. As we reset the system through this Bill, we have an opportunity to do something that has the merit of being both practical and right. We are conferring the right to work on our friends from Ukraine who are arriving in our country after fleeing war and persecution, so why not do the same for others who are and fleeing persecution and seeking asylum After the Government did whatever it took to save millions of jobs during the covid pandemic, we now face a significant undersupply of workers. Allowing access to gainful economic activity for some asylum seekers achieves several things. It helps in some measure to answer that question about labour shortage. It will bring in revenue to the Exchequer—the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned a figure of £200 million, and the potential revenue is certainly in the hundreds of millions. When we put on the other side of the balance the fact that asylum accommodation costs £350 million a year, we can start to see why the numbers add up In my constituency, working with The Harbour Project in Swindon, which helps people in my dispersal centre to deal with the effects of the wait for resolution, I have seen for myself the effects on their mental health of having nothing to do. Even volunteering is different.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Thomas Christopher John Pursglove (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful for the constructive way my right hon. and learned Friend is making his case. If he is agreeable, I would be keen to meet him to discuss the issue and the arguments he makes, and to set out some of the work we are doing on transforming the speed at which asylum cases are processed, which I hope will also help to allay some of his concerns.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Robert James Buckland (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that offer, which I accept with alacrity. I would like to bring colleagues such as the noble Baroness Stroud, who did so much work on this issue, to meet him and officials to look into the detail of the volunteering question in particular. While we encourage asylum seekers to volunteer and they get reasonable expenses, even payments in kind for the volunteering they do are prohibited. There is a real issue there that is preventing many people from making a contribution to the local community, as I have seen for myself in Swindon We know the reality that many people under that pressure go off the radar. They end up being exploited, or even bound into modern-day slavery, and we lose them from the entire system. The effect of creating a right to work could deal a hammer blow to that type of exploitation. I therefore welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Minister and urge the Government, in the spirit of co-operation, to look carefully at how we can do what other countries such as Denmark have started to do in allowing some asylum seekers the right to work. The Migration Advisory Committee has said there is no meaningful evidence to suggest that doing so would create a pull factor. The question is begged: if that is a pull factor, why do we have small boats now?
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Henry Edward Millar Smith (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to thank the Government sincerely for amendment 1, the Chagos nationality amendment. I particularly thank the Minister, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove) for his comments earlier and his colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who is not currently in his place, for meeting me and engaging on the issue of Chagos nationality justice and finally, after many years of campaigning, seeing the matter resolved by this Government. I am truly appreciative I express my thanks to hon. Members across this House, both present and past, and present and past members of the other place for their work over many years on this important matter. I also do not forget the many members of the Chagos islands community: those visiting Parliament today, those across this country and those in other parts of the world. They have suffered an injustice of approximately half a century and the Government today have gone a significant way towards ensuring that those people who are descendants of British subjects rightly have the ability to apply for British overseas territories citizenship, and therefore ultimately British citizenship if they so wish In conclusion, I repeat my appreciation to the Government. The second campaign that continues for the Chagos islanders is a right of return to their homeland, but I promise the Home Office that I will tackle the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office with that one, and conclude my remarks by expressing my appreciation to Home Office Ministers and officials.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I commend the Minister for the moderate and sensible way in which he introduced the Bill and I urge him, when considering how we should vote on all the amendments, to be robust and to hold the line. When the Bill becomes an Act it will be crawled over by so-called human rights lawyers, and I believe that it is the bare minimum to try to deal with the scandal of channel crossings, which are putting so many lives at risk Let us pause for a moment and think about what we can agree on. The push factors are enormous, such is the misery in the world in places such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq and many other countries. There is no limit to the number of people who want to come here. Let us consider the pull factors. We have the most liberal labour laws in Europe. We speak English; we can do nothing about that. We have no national identity card, which I think will become increasingly essential in the modern world. People can vanish into the community, and we already have large communities from all over the world. The pull factors are enormous—in a way, President Macron has a point We have to ask people who oppose the Bill and seek to amend it, what is their solution? Everybody accepts that the cross-channel trade is appalling—it criminalises desperate people and lines the pockets of gangsters—but what is the solution? Such is the pull factor and the push factor that even if we did have offshore asylum claims for 2,000, 5,000 or 10,000, it would probably make very little difference to the number of people desperate to get into this country by any means at all I repeat that what we have in the Bill is the bare minimum to try to break the cycle of it being just about economically attractive to make the appallingly dangerous journey. We have to have a variety of measures in our toolkit. I do not know whether we will ever resort to pushback, although the Greeks have pursued it very successfully, and I do not know whether we will ever resort to offshoring, although the Australians have used it very successfully.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think that that is true. Actually, if we talk about our response to Ugandan refugees, Hong Kong and many other areas, we have been generous. We have to have a sense of proportion. Such is the overwhelming number of people who want to come here, we have to hold the line. If we did not, it would have a catastrophic effect on race relations. [Interruption.] Yes, it would, because people would be angry about it. They would think, "Why did I vote Brexit when I can’t even control my own borders? What are the Government doing?" The Government, to be responsible, have to respond by trying to deal with illegal cross-channel crossings. All the Lords amendments would just add to the pull factors. For instance, one amendment says that people should be allowed to work after six months. That is an extraordinarily attractive pull factor. I am afraid that the Government have to hold the line. My personal view is that until we are prepared to criminalise people who take the illegal route, until we are prepared to arrest them and until we are prepared to deport them, we will never have a chance of dealing with this trade The Bill is just the first step in trying to deal with this appalling problem. I ask those who support the amendments and oppose the Government today—I repeat the question—what is their solution? People are pouring across the channel every day. Sooner or later there is going to be a terrible tragedy. We have already had one tragedy in November. What is their solution? How are they going to stop that? How are they going to break the cycle used by criminal gangs? There is no solution, apart from what the Government are attempting to do today. It is a minimum solution. It is, actually, a humanitarian solution. It is about trying to prevent people from taking appalling risks. If we allow any of the amendments—any of the amendments—and if we do not hold the line, sooner or later there will be an even greater tragedy in the English channel.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Other
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): The wind-ups will begin at 12 minutes past 4, as the Minister has kindly agreed to truncate his wind-up to get more time in. We are going to a three-minute limit. At roughly 18 minutes past 4, we are expecting multiple Divisions.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2022-03-22
Topic: Immigration
David Timothy Simmonds (Conservative, Centre-right): It seems to me that many of the criticisms that are levelled at the Bill are more matters of Home Office administration than of law. I was particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who is no longer in his place, for accepting my earlier intervention in which I sought to make the point that the Labour party has a long history of talking a very good game in respect of refugees and asylum seekers but of not honouring its promises to those individuals in practice. We need to make sure that we all accept the broad responsibility of support for refugees Given the shortness of time, I will confine my comments to three enormously important areas. Having sat through a lot of scrutiny of this legislation on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I think there is a valid concern about the two-tier system. As I understand it, the case from the human rights lawyers who advise the Committee is that it would not be a matter for the Government to demonstrate that safe and legal routes were available in general; it would be necessary to show that each individual refugee had access to a safe and legal route but chose to come to the UK by another means. I know that the Minister is aware of that question and I would like to hear from him how the Government propose to address that concern, so that we can be confident that the two-tier approach will genuinely achieve what we want it to, which is to break the business model of traffickers That links to the wider issue that a number of Members have highlighted: we have yet to see the necessary practical proposals that demonstrate where those safe and legal routes will be. We know that the Home Office has invested an enormous amount in digital technology—that has been put to good effect in respect of Ukraine—so that people can make their applications abroad. There are a number of other ideas about how that might happen, and the response to Syrian refugees demonstrated that, through resettlement, we can do this better In my view, the situation demonstrates the importance of supporting the existence of the ability to process claims offshore. Although I agree with several Members that the Australian system is simply bonkersly expensive when applied to the UK, the ability to administer the application process outside the United Kingdom is critical if we are to make safe and legal routes work, so I very much support the Government in introducing it Having made the point that a lot of the issues are about administration, I hope that the Government are listening to the point about right to work. It frustrates me as a Conservative politician that taxpayers’ money is being spent on supporting people whose skills could be put to good use in our economy. The Home Office has made some helpful steps in that direction. I hope that the message from both sides of the Chamber tonight will be listened to and that we will see some movement on administration as the Bill moves towards becoming law.