Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It has been a long day and a long debate. Perhaps the Government could legislate for a few extra hours for us all. That would not be out of place with this mind-bending Bill from a Government who continue to prioritise prejudice over objective reality.
The right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) purported to speak for my constituency of South Belfast, which does indeed have a relatively large proportion—I think it is the largest population per head—of the UK’s asylum seekers. Our schools, churches and community groups are trying valiantly to support people whom the Home Office has left in hotels for many months at a time.
Like me, those constituents have moral and practical objections to the Bill. Their moral objections are to the language used to frame and justify it and to the demonisation of those who seek international protection in the UK, who have little or no opportunity to secure that before they travel. Equally, they have practical objections to the Bill, because they know that it will not work. They know that there is no evidence that the deterrent works—a fact that was confirmed by the permanent secretary—and they know that it relies on a simplification by this Government that applies only if people have never met or spoken to an asylum seeker. The cost of this gimmick is running into the hundreds of millions of pounds—money that should have been used to end the chaos of processing in the Home Office or to go after the people traffickers instead of bettering their market by closing off safe routes.
No one is saying that the UK can or should take everyone who requires sanctuary for reasons of conflict, prejudice or climate. Everyone in the Chamber knows, no matter what they say in their tweets, that only a fraction of people try to get here. No one is saying that the UK should not take legal steps to deter erroneous claims. The Minister has spoken about fruitful engagement with Albania, and hon. Friends on the Opposition Benches have set out numerous constructive proposals, including swifter processing and justice and, crucially, modern and mature engagement with neighbouring countries.
It is impossible to view the Bill outside two core dynamics. The first is the UK’s recent disregard of international law—a rules-based order that it proudly shaped. The second is the overall irrational opposition to migration, including regular migration. People often say, “You can’t even talk about immigration.” We absolutely can, but we must be prepared to be honest about it and to trade in more than just Twitter memes. We must be prepared to talk about how the national health service and social care would collapse without it. We must be honest about the net positive impact on GDP, and about the poor political decisions about how we spend those gains that have left public services in the mess that they are. We must be honest about our higher education model and the higher fees that students from these areas
and countries would face if we did not have overseas students. We must be honest about how it is anti-family to tell UK citizens that they cannot fall in love with someone from another country and marry them unless they are among the top 25% of earners.
Of course we can talk about immigration. I am happy to talk about it, and I am happy to tell the House that Northern Ireland has an immigration problem. Young people are leaving our region to make their lives elsewhere because they feel stifled and limited by the politics of our region, by intolerance, by prejudice and by refusal to accept difference. Britain risks losing its vibrancy and talent if it goes further down this path—a path that I am glad to say the mainstream of British politics has honourably resisted, mostly, until now. Ireland, north or south, is not immune to these currents, as the street disorder in Dublin a few weeks ago showed, but we are a nation of people who have been the source of immigration for many centuries: you do not get to be Irish and racist. I am proud of the political leadership from across the spectrum against far-right agitation in Dublin in recent weeks.
I want briefly to address the applicability of the Bill in Northern Ireland. Human rights exist precisely to protect people from the type of politics that are behind the Bill. Human rights frameworks exist to stop politicians degrading shared values for their narrow political interest. The protection of rights for everyone from all communities in Northern Ireland, under article 2 of the Windsor framework, has been welcomed across civil society. Even the UK Government have called article 2 uncontroversial.
Not for the first time, I say thank goodness for the Good Friday agreement, which has been a lifeboat for our region given some of the terrible, damaging politics of recent years. That is a large part of why so many people—including in this Chamber—desperately tried to undermine the agreement through Brexit. Thanks to the agreement, which the international community prevented this Government from trashing under their previous two Prime Ministers, we continue to enjoy—in theory—rights and protections that this Government are so determined to burn for people in England, Scotland and Wales.
The existence of those rights has enraged the far right in Northern Ireland—a few voices who angrily prowl the internet, seeking to suffocate anything positive or humanitarian that happens in our region. They seem so desperate to strip legal rights away from everybody else; they would like to legally review themselves everything they cannot run away. They protest that this miserable Bill might not apply in Northern Ireland due to the Windsor framework. I regret to say that, in practice, immigration law has already been applied in Northern Ireland without differentiation, as will be heard in an upcoming challenge to the Illegal Migration Act.
We will oppose this Bill, and we will oppose other attempts to unite and balance the Conservative party on the backs of the most vulnerable. The Illegal Migration Act failed to do that, as did the Nationality and Borders Act. This is just red meat for a common-sense group with no common sense, a research group that does no research and a star chamber that has no stars. This Bill is for them and for no one else.