Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I welcome you to your role. I am grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate and to follow several hon. Members who have spoken so eloquently on this Bill—sadly, for the most part, on the Opposition Benches.
My colleagues and I will oppose this abhorrent legislation that rides roughshod over the refugee convention. As we approach the 30th anniversary of the convention, this Bill places some of the most vulnerable people in the world at risk of destitution, exploitation and family separation. The Government’s rhetoric and virtue signalling has failed to comprehend the valuable contributions that those people make to our society, regardless of how they got there. If the Bill is passed, it will, as we have heard, cast the UK adrift from international law, making it more insulated from other countries and staining what is still left of our international reputation on the world stage. It is insensitive, rushed and deeply problematic given its intention to effectively end the right to seek asylum in the UK. By doing so, it contravenes the refugee convention itself and also the European convention on human rights. The Bill proposes a two-tier system and a two-tier approach to asylum, despite there being no legal requirement in international law for an applicant to seek asylum in the first country they reach.
By bringing this Bill forward, the Home Secretary is ignoring both international and UK law with her approach, as well as being blind to the fact that how an applicant arrives in the UK is unrelated to the level of protection that they require. The Home Secretary encourages asylum seekers to use official schemes to make their application, fully aware that in many cases the abhorrent regimes that an asylum seeker is seeking refuge from will place them and their families at greater risk. The risk that
many asylum seekers face is not a choice they make freely; it is a choice they make simply because it is the only choice they have left—to turn to criminal gangs for help, leaving them open to exploitation.
The UK simply cannot depart from international law on an issue that requires co-operation with other countries and by doing so refuse to play its part in supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable citizens. The Bill is shoddy, it vandalises the UK’s international reputation and it undermines the devolution settlement itself.