There are two dimensions to what the hon. Gentleman is questioning. The first is about the capacity and the capability here in the UK. There are of course examples of where families are not able to take care of children, but I do not believe that those are the majority, and where that is the case we need to ensure that local authorities are adequately resourced to be able to deal with the issue. The second is about the Government’s approach on this. The Minister argued that it is about taking a global approach, but we can clearly see that it is much more about the hostile environment and the basic mindset in the Home Office. We should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That is why the amendment in the name of Lord Dubs is absolutely the right way to go.
Fifthly, we support Lords amendment 25B, which seeks to undo the Government’s unlawful bid to, in effect, criminalise modern slavery victims who have been pushed into crime by human traffickers. We are clear that only criminals who have committed serious public order offences such as terrorism or other serious offences, as established via a Government consultation, should have their protection withdrawn.
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The Home Secretary is desperately trying to clean up the mess that she has been making since 2018, and is rolling the dice on an extortionately expensive, unworkable and deeply un-British proposal. Instead of dreaming up headline-grabbing announcements and pie-in-the-sky ideas, she should listen to the Opposition’s sensible and practical solutions. First, the Home Secretary needs to
invest to save, as the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), so correctly pointed out. She needs to hire more caseworkers and invest in the court system, so that we can process applications quickly and dramatically reduce the ludicrous £4.7 million a day that is being wasted on housing refugees in expensive hotels.
Secondly, on the small boat crossings, rather than dreaming up unworkable gimmicks, the Home Secretary should focus on engaging constructively with France and the European Union to negotiate a returns agreement and build effective security co-operation to combat the people smugglers. Rather than constantly seeking cheap headlines in The Daily Mail, as the Government like to do, Labour would use its stronger relationship with our European neighbours to reset the UK-France relationship, and would engage constructively to negotiate a robust migration and security agreement with the European Union. We would of course legislate to prevent people smugglers from using social media to advertise their services; that was the purpose of a Labour amendment that the Government shamefully rejected early in the passage of the Bill.
A lot has been said about the Rwanda announcement being timed to distract from partygate, but it is just as likely that the announcement was intended to distract from the litany of failures that has come to define the tenure of the Home Secretary. Over 200,000 people offered their homes to Ukrainians, and somehow the Home Secretary managed to turn this story of inspiring British generosity into a bureaucratic nightmare. Some 12,000 Afghans who so loyally and bravely served our country are languishing in hotels. We owe them a debt of gratitude, yet the Home Secretary has treated them with contempt. We have a Passport Office in meltdown, with delays ruining the well-earned Easter breaks of hard-working British families, who have been through so much over the last few years, and now we have the spectacle of this extortionate, unworkable and profoundly un-British Rwanda cash-for-offloading plan.
The Home Secretary certainly has a mountain to climb if she wishes to regain the trust of the British people, but if she were to instruct Conservative Members to join us in supporting the amendments this evening, it would at least be a start.