hazylavender/hi huggingface dataset:
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not sure I follow the logic of it. He said that there was a deterrent effect, but it has not started yet, which suggests to me that there has not been a deterrent effect. If we look at the numbers, channel crossings continue to skyrocket, so I think what matters to this House is results and outcomes. As things stand, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Rwanda scheme has acted as a deterrent. This bigger backlog Bill is rotten to its very core, because it prevents the Home Secretary from considering those who arrive here on small boats as asylum seekers, and instead obliges her to detain and remove them. However, there is nowhere to detain them, and there is nowhere to remove them to either. We already have 50,000 asylum seekers in around 400 hotels, costing the taxpayer an eye-watering PS6 million every single day, and on average, each asylum seeker is waiting a staggering 450 days for a decision. The backlog now stands at 166,000, more than eight times larger than when Labour left office in 2010, when it stood at just under 19,000.  Incidentally, I am still waiting for the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration to apologise to the House and correct the record on that point.
Date: 2023-04-26
Diana R. Johnson: My hon. Friend mentioned detention, and a number of amendments have been tabled today on that topic. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about detaining unaccompanied children, but I also wanted to ask my hon. Friend for his views on detaining children, families with children and pregnant women. This House has made very clear in the past its view about safeguards being required for the detention of the vulnerable groups I have just described. Does he think that we now need to think again about the detention of pregnant women and families with children?
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. She is absolutely right to highlight this issue, and she has tabled a compelling amendment to deal with it. Members on both sides of the House fought very hard for these legal limits, as she rightly pointed out, and when we are talking about the detention of pregnant women, removing those limits and paving the way for vulnerable individuals to be detained individually is morally wrong, wrong-headed and deeply counterproductive. I have not heard any argument from Ministers to justify it. New figures reveal that this bigger backlog Bill could end up putting an extra 50,000 people into permanent taxpayer-funded accommodation this year, with hotel costs rising to more than PS13 million a day, which is more than PS4 billion a year during a cost of living crisis. That is because, according to the Government's own forecasts, 53,000 who cross on small boats will be classed as inadmissible, without any prospect of being removed. What is particularly astonishing is that the Government made this same mistake last year by including similar inadmissibility provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The result is a cost of PS400 million to the taxpayer in just six months, with only 21 people returned to their country of origin. This bungling Government just keep doubling down on their own incompetence. The more posturing they do, the more small boats we see. The longer they govern, the longer the asylum backlog grows, and the more our constituents will ask themselves, "With record-high immigration figures and a record-high asylum backlog, are our borders more or less secure under the Tories?"
Date: 2023-04-26
Stella Creasy: I understand why the Minister did not want to give way on this issue, despite saying that he would, but my hon. Friend raises the question of people being in hotels. Does he agree that the Government need to be honest with their own Back Benchers about the statutory instrument that they tried to slip out at the end of the previous Session that will remove the licensing laws from houses of multiple occupancy for asylum seekers? That will presumably prevent local authorities from refusing to license those places, and it will also have the consequence of meaning that we no longer require places where we are expecting families, pregnant women and small children to live to have fire alarms, smoke alarms or running water. Does he agree that the Government need to be honest about  how awfully they wish to treat asylum seekers and how they will avoid local authorities being part of that conversation?
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: I thank my hon. Friend for that powerful intervention. She is absolutely right. We are talking about basic standards of decency and humanity. Houses of multiple occupancy need to be properly regulated. They need a basic floor of certification and registration and of health and safety, particularly when we are talking about families. The Government should consider being more transparent and straightforward on that point. Fortunately, we on the Opposition Benches care about secure borders, and we will clear up the mess by delivering a firm, fair and well-managed system that will stop the dangerous channel crossings, because we know that good government is not about chasing headlines; it is about common sense, hard graft and quiet diplomacy. Those are the qualities that underpin our new clauses and amendments to the Bill.
Date: 2023-04-26
Tom Hunt: I intervened on the shadow Minister in Committee, and I found out that apparently the Labour party supports a cap for safe and legal routes, which was news to me at the time. Has he had any time to think about what that cap level would be? Bearing in mind how many people would like to try to get to our country, what would the approach be to those who failed in their application, but had still travelled here illegally and got here? Would any potential future Labour Government be open to deporting those individuals?
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: The cap has to be determined in consultation with local authorities and Parliament--that is absolutely right. In terms of removals, what we need is a processing system that actually works, so that we can get to a decision. People from safe countries who should be removed need to be swiftly removed from our country, and those who are genuine asylum seekers should be granted leave to remain, so that they can get on with their lives and we can start to clear up the abject mess that this Government have made of our asylum system. The first part of our five-point plan is to repurpose and redirect the funds currently being wasted on the money-for-nothing Rwanda plan into a new, elite, cross-border, 100-strong police force that will relentlessly pursue the ruthless criminal smuggling gangs upstream. The latest PS500 million payment that the British Government have made to the French Government will be having some effect on reducing the crossings, but the reality is that we will not succeed if we focus all our efforts on the hundreds of kilometres of French coastline, where resources are bound to be spread thin. We also need sophisticated operations with the British authorities working with EU member states, Europol, Interpol and Frontex to tackle the gangs upstream. New clause 16 instructs the Government to lay before Parliament a framework for a 12-month pilot co-operation agreement with those Governments and agencies to do just that and secure the prosecution and conviction of persons involved in facilitating illegal entry to the United Kingdom from neighbouring countries. New clause 16 also incorporates the second part of our plan: securing a returns agreement with the European Union, which is essential. Since the Conservatives botched  the Brexit negotiations and Britain left the Dublin convention, which had provided agreements on returns, the number of channel crossings has gone up by an astonishing 2,400%. For every one person crossing the channel in a small boat in 2019, 24 are crossing now. There are three vital points to make on getting a returns deals. First, international challenges require international solutions. Secondly, we need an agreement with our nearest neighbours that must include returns. Thirdly, we will only strike a returns deal with the European Union if we bring something to the negotiation, and that should include a proper plan for capped safe and legal routes for bona fide asylum seekers located in mainland Europe. We suggest that Britain prioritises unaccompanied children with family in the UK, and new clause 14 reflects that.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: My argument is about a negotiation. We clearly have to do a returns deal; it is an important part of the deterrent effect. We do not get a returns deal unless we have something on the table. There is a clear link between policies on safe and legal routes and getting a clear position in terms of negotiations with the European Union. The reality is that it is the only deterrent effect that will work. We are dealing with people who have risked their lives, fought their way across Europe and are prepared to spend their life savings to pay people smugglers to cross the channel. We will not deter them unless they know there is a returns deal in place, and one reason that the Dublin convention worked is that it acted as a deterrent. How else can we explain that the numbers have gone through the roof since we left the Dublin convention?
Date: 2023-04-26
Tim Loughton: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because this is just nonsense. In the last year that we were covered by the Dublin convention, before the pandemic struck, we applied to the EU for 8,500 returns under that returns agreement and only 105 were granted--that is 1.2%--so what he says is complete nonsense. It did not work when we were in the EU, and he is now expecting to magic up some agreement that the EU will not give us anyway. Stop misleading the House about those figures.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: I find the hon. Gentleman's response bizarre, because there are some simple facts, which are that we left the Dublin convention, and since then the number of small boat crossings has gone through the roof. It is not rocket science; it is a simple fact of mathematics. The point is that we cannot solve an international problem without international co-operation. We have to recognise the flow of asylum seekers coming across the European Union. The idea that we just say to the EU, "You can take them all; we are not going to take any" is for the birds. It is fantasy politics, and I am stunned that Government Members do not seem to understand that simple political fact.
Date: 2023-04-26
Chris Bryant: If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) does not mind me mentioning her, I remember that when she was Prime Minister the first letter that she wrote to the European Union in trying to trigger article 50 said that we wanted a security treaty with the EU. That is what I would dearly love us to have. One of the great flaws of how we have left the European Union is that we have not ended up with that. Surely this measure should be part of that security treaty, so that we have better relations with Interpol, Europol and Frontex and proper sharing of information, so that we know all the details of anyone arriving in the UK. Is that not where we need to go?
Date: 2023-04-26
John Martin McDonnell: I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Minister's flow, and I wholeheartedly support him, as we have time and again, with regard to the criticisms of the Government's lack of processing of cases, including the lack of staffing resources. On new clause 10 and the proposal for an expedited asylum process, can my hon. Friend reassure me that there will be no lessening of the legal rights of asylum seekers, of access to legal representation and of the application of international human rights treaties and conventions?
Date: 2023-04-26
Stephen Kinnock: I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Absolutely, the proposal is that there are a number of countries with very low grant rates and that must therefore be where we triage, and put them into a category where the processing can be expedited. However, all the processing must be done on an individual, case-by-case basis, in line with our treaty obligations; we cannot have block definitions of any particular category of asylum seeker, which of course is one of the main issues concerning the legality of the Bill, and that includes access to legal aid. So I can absolutely reassure my right hon. Friend on that point. We have to get the balance right: we must focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of dealing with the backlog--which must be based on triaging, giving much more support and upgrading the staff in the Home Office--but that must be underpinned by the provisions to which my right hon. Friend refers. Of course, the return on investment for improving the quality of decision making would be rapid and substantial, because quicker processing means fewer asylum seekers in hotels. That brings me to our amendments on accommodation for asylum seekers. Bad decisions on the location of accommodation means that the process then slows down due to legal challenges and the whole system gets even more clogged up. It would be far better to consult local authorities early in the process, and our new clause 9 instructs the Government to do just that. I was rather disappointed by the fact that the Foreign Secretary and the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), among others, failed to join us in the Division  Lobby in Committee when we voted for the equivalent clause. I am aware that they have pushed back against ham-fisted Ministers trying to steamroll them on this matter, and I also note that they have sided with their local Conservative councils against their own Government, but they are certainly not the only Members on the Government Benches who have urged the Home Office to do better on this point. And, of course, all accommodation must be value for money, as our new clause 11 indicates: we cannot keep having private companies making these huge mark-ups at the expense of the taxpayer.
Date: 2023-04-26
Lia Nici: Does the hon. Lady recognise that it works both ways? I have a constituent who offered her home to a "17-year-old" asylum-seeking young man. He had all the benefits of being under 19, but then he revealed that on his next birthday he would be 24. We need to talk openly and fairly about the safeguarding issues, both for our own children and for children coming from other countries.
Date: 2023-04-26
John Hayes: The hon. Lady will know that I tabled an amendment in Committee which the Government have now refashioned and tabled on Report, precisely because there is a pedigree for such testing across European countries. Many European countries routinely use such testing to establish whether children are actually children and to avoid the eventualities that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) has just mentioned.
Date: 2023-04-26
Alison Thewliss: The British Dental Association, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and Unison's experts disagree with the right hon. Member. These are professionals. [Interruption.] The Minister is laughing on the Front Bench and denigrating a trade union. Given the Government's current position with respect to industrial disputes, I do not think that that is particularly wise of him. He might want to think about that. I acknowledge Government amendments 134 and 136, but I am afraid I have real problems trusting the Government, because detaining children is wrong: that is the fundamental point here. The Government want to make regulations specifying the circumstances in which unaccompanied children should be detained, and further regulations on time limits. They do not have the courage to put those proposals into the Bill, and they know that we cannot amend statutory instruments should they deign to introduce them at some point in the future. We do not trust them to do the right thing here, because children are children, and it would be extremely harmful for them to be detained. We tabled amendment 47 to try to humanise the Bill. Much has been said about hordes of people coming here and trying to claim asylum, but this, fundamentally, is about individual people, many of them fleeing circumstances that Conservative Members cannot even imagine. Accordingly, the amendment seeks to disapply the provision in clause 2 from people in a range of categories. The first, in subsection (a), covers "a person who was under the age of 18 when they arrived in the UK", such as Shireen, whom I mentioned earlier, and many others like him. Subsection (b) refers to a person from Afghanistan "where there is a real risk of persecution or serious harm...if returned to that country". In Committee, I tried to personalise my amendments by putting a name to each of them. I could call this "Sabir's amendment", after Sabir Zazai, the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council. He came here as a child in the back of a lorry, but he would be prevented from so doing, criminalised and removed to Rwanda if the Government had their way. He makes an outstanding contribution to Scotland. He has two letters which he said he would put on the wall in his house. One is from the Home Office, saying, "You are a person liable to be detained and removed." The second was sent on behalf of the royal family when he was awarded the OBE. Subsection (c) specifies " a person who is a refugee under the Refugee Convention or in need of humanitarian protection". That would cover many people who are currently fleeing from Sudan. Earlier, the Minister failed to identify a proper "safe and legal" route--
Date: 2023-04-26
Alison Thewliss: No, the Minister did not do that. What he has done is push this on to those at the UNHCR, who say that it is not their job. They have also said that the tiny minority, the 1%, who manage to gain access to its relocation scheme are not suitable, in that there is not enough in that very small scheme to replace a functional asylum system. My constituent Ilios is a British citizen whose wife and son are trapped in Sudan and are unable to obtain their documents because the British Embassy staff are out of the country, although they now have the right to travel. Will they be able to come to the UK safely through some other mechanism? Will it be possible for people who happen to be in Sudan with refugee travel documents, perhaps with family members visiting there, to be evacuated by the UK forces? The position remains unclear. Subsection (d) refers to " a person...where there is a real risk of persecution or serious harm on grounds of sexual orientation if" that person "were to be removed in accordance with this section". I recently had a call with LGBT rights activists in Uganda, which is introducing brutal laws to persecute LGBT people, up to the point of the death penalty. People are terrified over there. They are talking about mob justice, and of families being at risk as a result of even knowing that their loved ones are LGBT. If they were able to escape Uganda and come here, there would be no means under the Bill to prevent the Government from sending them back rather than protecting them, so we seek to put that protection into the Bill. Subsection (e) covers "a person who, there are reasonable grounds to suspect, is a victim of torture". In Committee I mentioned Kolbassia, who founded Survivors Speak OUT. I talk to people in my constituency surgeries who have been victims of torture. They deserve protection; they do not deserve this Bill. Subsection (f) refers to "a Ukraine citizen". There is no Ivan or Oksara who needs to come here in a boat, because there is a safe and legal route: they can come here perfectly legally, without having to resort to that. We should be making that route available to more people.
Date: 2023-04-26
Iain Duncan Smith: My right hon. Friend is making a good speech. The reality is that amendment 95 poses a threat. Straightaway, its assumption is that someone goes, rather than that they have to prove anything; they go first and then somebody has to prove that they have to be here. What are they going to do when they look at that? They are going to say, "We're off, so why would we give evidence?"
Date: 2023-04-26
Roger Gale: Order. I will now announce the result of the ballot held today for the election of the Chair of the new Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. A total of 384 votes were cast, none of which was invalid. There were two rounds of counting. There were 362 active votes in the final round, excluding those ballot papers whose preferences had been exhausted. The quota to be reached was therefore 182 votes. Angus Brendan MacNeil was elected Chair with 188 votes. He will take up his post immediately. I congratulate him on his election. The results of the  count under the alternative vote system will be made available as soon as possible in the Vote Office and published on the internet. I now call Dame Diana Johnson, after whom I shall have to impose a five-minute limit on speeches.
Date: 2023-04-26
Diana R. Johnson: It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I thank her for highlighting the evidence that we heard this morning at the Home Affairs Committee on the issue of trafficking and modern slavery, and I again pay tribute to the work that she did on that pioneering piece of legislation in 2015. I think the right hon. Lady is right that the Government do not fully understand the law in this area of modern slavery and trafficking. I support what she said about amendments 95 and 4. I noted that, at the start of proceedings, the Minister said that it is important that we get the Bill right, and it is absolutely important that we do so. As we enter this final stretch for the House to have the opportunity to debate and amend the Bill, I wish again to express my concerns about the lack of an impact assessment for the Bill. The impact assessment is now seven weeks late, and it is wholly unacceptable that the House is being forced to pass this very significant legislation with no firm analysis on whether it will work or what the cost will be. According to the Refugee Council, the Bill could cost as much as PS9 billion over the next three years. I again refer to the Home Affairs Committee report on small boat crossings, in which we were very clear about the need for evidence-based policy making. It is regrettable that this Bill is being forced through at breakneck speed with no time for pre-legislative scrutiny. I know the Minister has had to table a lot of Government amendments to deal with issues that perhaps should have been thought through before, and we have heard that he will reconsider issues around modern slavery and trafficking as well. As I move on to the amendments tabled in my name, I want to raise two particular issues. The Home Affairs Committee, in the report I just referred to, made it very clear that international co-operation, respect and trust are essential to building a joint framework with other countries to tackle the problem of irregular migration. I am disturbed that the Government are hardening their stance on the ECHR and I strongly oppose the latest amendment on interim relief, new clause 26, which I believe will breach international obligations. We have heard from two eminent lawyers in this Chamber, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), who are united in what they think the new clause will do--indeed the latter, the former Attorney General, said that it was setting out legislation to allow the deliberate disobeying of our obligations.
Date: 2023-04-26
Stella Creasy: The Minister has not explained why he has put forward that statutory instrument. People will still come because it is still better than the death that they face in the country they are fleeing from. We see that with the Sudanese. The Minister said earlier that he would listen to the UNHCR when it came to taking Sudanese refugees; in that case, he needs to tell us how many he will take because right now, there are people facing that very same situation. There are no queues in a war zone.