My Lords, I too fully support this necessary Bill. I thank the trade unions UNISON and the RMT for their briefing. I have noticed over the years that the Labour Party no longer seems to mention unions; it may be a bit embarrassed that it might win the next election and God knows what it would do with this Bill. This week it has backpedalled a bit on what it might do with legislation that our Government are passing.
It has struck me that so much of this debate has been about refugees and not much about the people who live in Britain. They are not racist or dislike people, but this is a matter of democracy; the people of Britain are fed up to the back teeth with a Government who appear unable to control the boats. It is as simple as that. They are not against legal migration or immigration, but they fail to understand how we can have a Government who cannot manage to stop a dinghy in the middle of a bit of sea. In many ways, this is a matter of democracy and fairness to many people. The people who have welcomed refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan have done so because they see them as legitimate refugees. These people are not.
We have heard a lot about international obligations. We had an international obligation to the European Union, but the people revolted against it. There are all sorts of international obligations—to NATO, the Council of Europe and the United Nations. While we are at it, I remind noble Lords that Churchill, who is always quoted as being for the Council of Europe, was basically pretty disinterested in it. All the work on it was done by Ernie Bevin, the Labour Foreign Secretary. Churchill showed virtually no interest in the Council of Europe, but he did admittedly read a couple of speeches which I doubt he understood. Let us get away from this idea that Churchill and Maxwell Fyfe were the great godfathers of international co-operation, which cannot be broken.
Time has moved on. The refugee system set up in the late 1940s was to deal with the forcible removal of citizens of German background from Poland and Czechoslovakia. It had nothing to do with migration from Africa or anywhere else like that. In my earlier years in this House, I sat on the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee, until the Whips decided to get rid of me. One of the things we looked at was Operation Sophia, the EU operation on migrants. The sub-committee titled its report Operation Sophia: A Failed Mission, because it found that we could not control the boats in the Mediterranean.
My main worry about this Bill is not that it is too stringent but that it will not work. The key to making it work is that the Government must somehow find a way of stopping the boats. It is as simple as that. If you cannot get across the channel, you will not try, but if you are told that you will wait for 10 years before being deported, of course you will come across, because you will think, “Oh, well, there’ll be a couple more government changes before then. They’ll probably get fed up and run out of money, and we’ll all be allowed to stay”. I say to the Minister that the key to this is working out a way of stopping the boats. Unlike Australia, we do not have a nearby island on which we can put people. We could try Ascension Island, but I do not think there is anything much closer. We have to make it clear that there is no future in landing in the UK.
On the two unions I mentioned, we must make it clear that the legislation will not give powers to anyone to ask social care workers, UNISON workers or railway workers to perform illegal acts. They cannot be subject to being asked to do things that are in any way dubious. I hope an indemnity will be written in for them if they are.
I am pleased to support this Bill. I hope it works, but the key is to stop the boats crossing the channel.
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