UK Borders Bill

It is very shameful. A case recently came to my attention concerning a young lady from Poland who had been exploited in a shocking fashion, and that sort of thing is widespread. My hon. Friend makes an important point. A number of parts of the Bill are well worth supporting in themselves even though they will not change anything, but even those are not all that they are cracked up to be. I am sure that the provision relating to automatic deportation will play very well in the tabloids, and Ministers will be hoping that all sorts of left-wing pressure groups jump up and condemn them so that, paradoxically, the Government will look rather good in the pages of the Daily Mail, but as my Front-Bench colleagues have pointed out, the measure is not what it is cracked up to be. Why on earth should somebody have to be sentenced to 12 months in prison before they face the threat of automatic deportation? We all know that it is virtually impossible to get into a British prison these days. One has to do something very bad indeed as a first offence to be sentenced to more than 12 months in prison. I should be interested to know whether the 12 months relates to the sentence passed by the judge or the sentence that is actually served, which is of course usually a fraction of that passed by the judge. I put it to Labour Members that if somebody repeatedly breaks the law—by breaking into houses or cars, or shoplifting, for example—but does not get more than 12 months in prison, why on earth should they not face deportation? We heard earlier about the case of the Somali sex offender who had carried out one sex offence and been to prison, was released but not deported because somebody said that his human rights would be abused, and was then put back in prison having been convicted of another sexual offence. Presumably, the same people will be jumping up and down and bleating if there is any suggestion that he be sent back to Somalia, because of course it is a terribly dangerous place and he might come to some harm. Yet every single right-thinking person in this country is thinking to themselves that if it is a dangerous place and he will come to some harm there, that is the very reason he should be deported there as quickly as possible, instead of being left in the holiday camps that pass for prisons in this country these days. I ask the Minister again why, according to the Bill, somebody who assaults an immigration officer will face a maximum prison sentence of only 51 weeks. The message will go out to people involved in immigration cases that they can get away with assaulting immigration officers and, if they do so, they will not necessarily face the threat of deportation because they will not receive a prison sentence of more than one year. There is another issue that concerns me very much. It is not the fact that immigration officers are getting extra powers. Clearly that needs to happen, although it would be much better if they were being given these powers along with members of different police forces and we had a unified border security force, which at least two of the major political parties in the House are calling for. What worries me is the fact that this is likely to lead to yet another series of spurious claims against the IND, in addition to those currently being made, all funded by taxpayers’ money. A year ago I was told that millions of pounds are being paid out by the IND as a result of spurious claims, and I refrained from making that statement because I thought that it would be best to try to check the facts. I tabled a written question last May and was told that I could not have an answer. I tabled another one in June and was told that somebody would write to me. Back in September or October somebody wrote to me and said that they would write to me with some details soon. I then tried the House of Commons Library, asking it how much money is being paid out in compensation claims to asylum seekers. I was told that the member of staff in the Library had been told by the IND that under no circumstances was it prepared to give those figures. I then started making freedom of information requests, and I was told that it would cost too much money to tell me how much money had been paid out in claims. I then made a freedom of information request to find out whether the Home Office had talked to the IND about any of my queries, and it looked as though it had, but it was not prepared to tell me about that either, for security reasons. I put it to the Minister that the Government are already paying out probably tens of millions of pounds in entirely bogus claims to asylum seekers who are probably claiming that their human rights have been breached because they have had to wait a couple of extra days or weeks for a ruling from the IND. I challenge the Minister, if that is not true, to tell us how much money has been paid out in claims to asylum seekers. I put it to her that, after one year of trying very hard, a Member of Parliament ought to have access to fairly basic information such as that. I finish by saying to Members of the House that I get rather tired of being called a fascist, a racist, a xenophobe and all the rest of it for simply pointing out that unlimited, uncontrolled immigration into this country is not a good thing. I remember that when I was dealing with the IND in a personal capacity, I went up to Birmingham one day with my wife, as I had done on a number of occasions, taking all my forms and the money in a brown envelope—[Interruption.] I did not get into this place as a result of that. The case officer I was dealing with, who had no idea that I was a Member of the Welsh Assembly, looked at me in surprise and said, ““Do you know, I don’t meet many people like you.”” [Laughter.] I walked into that. The case officer said that he had never met anyone who had gone so far out of their way to obey the rules. He said, ““You are very definitely in a minority.”” My fear is that people such as me, my wife and other immigrants to this country who obey the rules will continue to be in a minority and this Bill will change absolutely nothing.