It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I receive help from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project for my work in this area. I also co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on migration, so I have spent a long time thinking about these issues. I have taken a long look at our history, and it is interesting to hear us talk about Winston Churchill. I doubt that Government Members know that he crossed the Floor
on the issue in 1904 to oppose the Aliens Act 1905 and lead a rebellion against it. He was quoted at the time talking about
“the old tolerant and generous practice of free entry…to which this country has so long adhered”.
Just to add some more spice to the discussion about the history of this place and our role within migration policy, it is important to recognise that.
I rise to speak specifically to my new clause 10, which I am pleased to say enjoys a wide range of cross-party support. I thank all Members who have engaged with me on this amendment. It is meant to be a serious contribution to the debate about the humanitarian crisis in the channel. However, I worry that that seriousness is not shared by everyone in this Chamber.
Since arriving in Parliament in 2019, I have tried not to become too jaded or too cynical, but I must admit that at times it has been difficult. Today, debating this Bill, is one of those times, because we have repeatedly been told that these proposals are about stopping the boats. The Prime Minister even had it printed on his lectern. To be clear, it is a moral outrage that people need to get in a blow-up boat, risking life and limb, to exercise their rights under the refugee convention to claim asylum here. We need a solution to this humanitarian crisis in the channel, but that is not what the Bill offers. Instead, it doubles down on the same failed hostile environment framework that has characterised the Government’s approach to asylum and migration. It is simply not working.
Since 2018, 56 people have tragically drowned in the channel—brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins to many families already in the UK—yet the number of dangerous crossings has risen, even after the Government’s Rwanda policy was announced, and that announcement in itself was deemed to be a deterrent. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 has become law and people continue to make these journeys.
I am proud that my city, Sheffield, calls itself a city of sanctuary. The people I meet who support refugee rights often quote the lines of a poem called “Home”, by the Somali-British writer Warsan Shire:
“no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land”,
and,
“no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.”
Those lines are important, because they explain why people attempt these crossings.
We have heard a lot of talk about families today. I regularly engage with and talk to asylum seekers and refugees in the system, whose family members are being persecuted because of them leaving the country. They have brothers who have been arrested by the police on spurious grounds, or their parents have sadly been murdered as a result of their identity. We really must shine a light on how the Government’s strategy is doomed to fail and, perhaps more importantly, why the success of that strategy would be a horror. The only way that the deterrence framework can work is if the hostile environment it creates is worse than what people are running from.
That is why I feel jaded. I do not think this is really about stopping the crossings and saving lives. These proposals are not about how people come here to claim asylum; they are about stopping people from claiming asylum at all. This is not about fairness. It is about populist electoral politics, throwing red meat to a section of hard-line, anti-refugee opinion. What better example is there than the cruelty of stripping away the modern slavery provisions of asylum seekers who have survived human trafficking? This legislation, as it stands, would persecute the persecuted and criminalise the victims of crime.
To be frank, I suspect there are some of the Conservative side of the House who think it is a good thing that the Bill violates the UN conventions on international human rights law. The Government’s credibility is so shredded that they believe the only route to future electoral success is to wage a culture war, gleefully reciting pre-rehearsed lines about lefty lawyers, while the situation of some of the most vulnerable people in the world gets worse and worse.
However, the Government could prove me wrong, and I give them that opportunity. A start would be supporting and looking into the proposals of new clause 10, which builds on the proposals of the PCS union and Care4Calais, two organisations working at the frontline of the crisis. It offers a practical solution to a humanitarian crisis in the channel by creating a safe passage visa. The visa would give entry clearance to those already in Europe who wish to come to the UK to make an asylum claim.
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I think that one of the disconnects and the paradoxes of the Government’s policy as it stands is that there is no way for the many thousands of people who have already started their journey to get on to a safe and legal route. That is a paradox. You cannot reduce the number of boats if the people who are going to try to make that journey are already on their journey and have no alternatives to come to the UK. That is why a safe passage visa is so important; those journeys are so dangerous.
The proposals also draw inspiration from the successful Ukrainian resettlement schemes. By no means are those asylum schemes perfect, and we can debate that, but equally, no Ukrainian refugees have needed to make the dangerous crossing in boats to get here. I think we have to ask the question: why is that the case? And I think we know the answer—because there was a safe route available to them. They did not need to make an application, or the application could be made online for safe passage beforehand. They got permission to travel here. The safe passage visa would work in a very similar way, with documents and any biometric information being uploaded on to an online portal, for example, as in the Ukraine scheme, or, where there need to be further checks, those being done in person.
To be clear, this is tightly focused on granting someone safe and legal access to the UK from Europe, because they would have a valid asylum claim, as set out in the current immigration rules, when they arrive. Once they have arrived in the UK, they would go on to an asylum processing centre and submit their applications as normal, meaning that most of the screening and processing would happen as normal in the UK. It would mean that
we would not have to look into costly measures of arrangements with other countries, and that we would take ownership of our responsibilities for these people, who are going to make these journeys anyway.
Alone, this will not fix the asylum system, but it does provide a humane response to the issue of small boats. It focuses on that group of people who have already made the journey and are already making their way across—one that will often get forgotten and one that will continue to contribute to the small boats, as they have no alternative. The vast majority of people who come here irregularly make asylum claims and overwhelmingly those applications are accepted—70%, 80%, 90%, depending on the country they come from. They make that dangerous crossing not because they are more likely to be refused, or they are more likely to not have a valid claim. They make that journey because there is no other way for them to enter the UK. By providing them with an alternative, we can remove the need to risk life and limb.
Ministers have a choice. They can go on demonising refugees and genuine asylum seekers, talking up this threat that billions of people are coming here when that is just an absolute falsehood, and daubing “Stop the boats” on Government lecterns. That might generate headlines for a short while, but it will not help anyone and it will not stop anyone making that crossing. There is another option: the Government can prove they are serious about ending the life-threatening crossings, drop the securitised fortress Britain rhetoric, uphold international law and embrace a humane approach that tackles the underlying causes of the dangerous boat journeys. In doing that, we can save lives; in doing that, we can meet the obligations we have; and in doing that, we can be a fairer country and one that I know my hundreds of constituents who have emailed me against this Bill truly believe we should remain and continue to be.