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).
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In particular, Lords amendments 6 and 9 go entirely against the grain of the Bill, which, it should be remembered, delivers on a pledge made to the British people by their Government. From the darkening gloom, a silver light upsoars, and that silver light was the pledge to take back control. Many of those who elected this Government made the unsurprising assumption that taking back
control had at its heart, at its core, taking back control of our borders, for if a nation cannot control its borders, what can it control? How do we define a nation if it does not control who comes here and who stays here? Our asylum system is palpably, as acknowledged by all, no longer fit for purpose, and all acknowledge that, yet when the Government try to do something about this, falteringly and hesitatingly—I do not think that the Bill goes far enough, by the way—they face a barrage of criticism from those who are happy to allow the chaos to continue.
As I heard the shadow Minister speaking, I was reminded of Dan Quayle, the former American politician, who said:
“The future will be better tomorrow.”
Better tomorrow, but with no suggestion of what that future might be like, no hint of what Labour would do to improve the current system, indeed no detail of how the Opposition would amend or reform asylum, just a criticism of a Government trying to get this right.
It is preposterous that the Lords should attempt to amend this Bill against a backdrop of 28,000 men, women and children setting out to sea in dinghies to make the precarious trip to our shores, three times the number of crossings since 2020. If those numbers continue, we will see many repeats of that horrible day last November that claimed 27 lives.
This is straightforward— the people smugglers’ message is plain: “If we get you here and you pay the money to achieve that purpose, you will never leave.” The truth is that even once claims have been processed and around 40% have been found not to be valid, people rarely leave because of a combination of irresponsible activists, fat-cat lawyers and the Human Rights Act, which needs to be ditched as soon as possible. Let us reform the asylum system by backing this Bill and rejecting these amendments once and for all.