I know that immigration is a key concern for local residents and so I welcome the significant steps the Government is taking to disrupt the criminal gangs facilitating the small boats crossing the English Channel and bring an end to this cruel activity.
As part of this work, the Government has introduced the Illegal Migration Bill with the following objectives:
- remove the incentive to make dangerous small boat crossings;
- speed up the removal of those with no right to be here, which, in turn, will free up capacity so that the UK can better support those in need of asylum through safe and legal routes;
- crack down on the opportunities to abuse modern slavery protections; and
- ensure that the UK continues to support those in need by committing to resettling a specific number of the most vulnerable refugees in the UK every year.
Yesterday, the Second Reading of the Bill was held. Unfortunately, despite sitting in the Chamber for four and a half hours listening to the debate, a number of other MPs and myself were not called on to speak before time ran out. I thought, however, local residents would be interested to read the speech I had intended to make:
“The year on year rise in the number of people making the dangerous crossing from France in small boats, which reached 45,755 last year compared to 299 in 2018, is incredibly concerning and demonstrates that we are being taken advantage of by criminal gangs who are not interested in the people that they smuggle but rather in the money they can earn from them for transport. This is not an activity that this country should be proud of, nor should we allow it to continue.
Given the pace at which people are arriving in the UK in this way, there is no time to carry out the necessary investigations and assessments to understand the individual circumstances of those arriving here and, therefore, whether they are asylum seekers in the legal sense of the term. This is clearly understood by the traffickers who continue to keep up the pace to create an overwhelming and unmanageable environment which not only leaves people in limbo for months or even years at a time, but also makes it hard to carry out those assessments and gain evidence to prove status one way or another. This is unfair to those people who live in that state of limbo waiting and hoping that maybe a delayed decision will go their way, despite their lack of qualification for the status of asylum, and it is unfair to those who have come here in genuine fear of their lives and need to start again. It is also unfair to those who have come to this country through legal routes in the past and it places significant pressure on communities and the resources we have to support people. In short, it leads to failure on all sides.
We must not let the traffickers win, and I know that the Government has already taken significant steps to put a stop to this dangerous practice, engaging and supporting the French authorities to prevent the boats leaving their shores and break up the criminal gangs, as well as a new deal to process an indefinite amount of asylum claims in Rwanda, an agreement with Albania to remove the vast majority of Albanian claimants, and tougher immigration enforcement. All initiatives which, I must add, the Opposition have opposed at every opportunity.
It is clear, however, that more intervention is necessary and so we, as a country, need a combination of this Bill and faster processing of asylum applications. If we are able to speed up the decision-making process for those already here, then local authorities and other agencies would then be able to fulfil the obligations of the Bill and accurately assess how many people they could accept through agreed channels into the UK. It would also allow us to maintain our ability to respond to future emergency situations, as we have in recent years with Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, and continue to welcome an agreed number of refugees through safe and legal routes directly from places of danger. I would welcome reassurances from the Home Secretary that swift decisions will be taken on applications so that those waiting for a decision to enable them to decide on their own next steps and so that we can help them move out of hotels and either into the local community or back to their country of origin. This would bring to a close the use of hotels as asylum accommodation which is currently putting a tremendous strain on local education services, local economies and local health services.
This Bill is about breaking the cycle of human misery that criminal gangs are profiting from – profits which, inevitably, they use to fund further organised crime – and ensuring that the finite resources we have are used to support the most vulnerable people, both in the UK and overseas. The current situation is completely unsustainable and is detrimental to asylum seekers and those who have already settled in this country, local communities here in the UK and, of course, public finances. We must act now to save lives and control our borders.”
