Angela Eagle MP: speeches

Speeches

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  No. [ Interruption. ]

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  Let me finish the sentence. Too often, the Opposition parties—some of the Opposition parties; not all of them—perpetuate a narrative that is increasingly dangerous. Let us not dehumanise fellow human beings.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  No. They can sit there after all this effort and all these gimmicks and pretend to the British people and Members of this House that the Rwanda scheme was ready to go and would have worked perfectly if only their Government had staggered on until 24 June, but nobody believes them, because it was a flawed scheme from the start. It was not a deterrent, it did not work, and it was massively expensive.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  The National Crime Agency has not said that about the Bill. In fact, if the right hon. Gentleman had listened to the evidence sessions at the beginning of our consideration of the Bill, he would have heard good evidence from the NCA supporting the parts of the Bill that provide counter-terrorism and prevention powers, and being enthusiastic about the increased opportunities that the Bill will give for successful enforcement.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  No; I am going to make some of these points. We should all remember that the shadow Home Secretary was once credited as being the economic guru behind Liz Truss’s premiership. This is the man who helped Liz Truss to write her catastrophic mini-Budget, drive the country off a cliff and scupper her own premiership.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I agree. Of course, the Conservative party also oppose all of the Bill, despite— [ Interruption. ] Well, Conservative Members say it is not true, but they voted against it. I do not know why the Opposition should have voted against a Bill that provides more powers to deal with organised immigration crime internationally.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  When we discuss migration policy, net migration and legal or illegal immigration, it is really important to remember that we are talking about human beings, that we should treat them as human beings and that all human beings have human rights. We should not perpetuate narratives that dehumanise people. Too often—

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to en and insert “notes that 127,896 people crossed the Channel while the previous Government was in office, as a criminal smuggling industry took hold on the French coast; further notes that 84,151 of those people arrived while the previous Government’s £700 million Rwanda scheme was in force, with only four volunteers travelling to Kigali during that time; welcomes the fact that the current Government deployed the 1,000 staff working on that scheme to process asylum decisions and deportations instead, resulting in 24,000 people with no right to be in the UK being removed in just nine months; further welcome the progress made since July 2024 in establishing the Border Security Command, cracking down on illegal working, and increasing the resources allocated to identifying, disrupting and dismantling smuggling gangs; and looks forward to the crucial agreements reached with France, Germany, Italy, and Iraq to increase enforcement cooperation taking full effect, and the counter-terror powers introduced in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill becoming law.” I note that the motion begins by regretting the fact that we are 20 weeks into this year and more than 12,000 people have crossed the channel by small boat. Let me start on a note of consensus: I agree with the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) that numbers are too high and I agree that they must come down. I will come on to the action we are taking to achieve that aim. But first, I must address what we on Merseyside would call the shadow Home Secretary’s brass neck. What he did not say in his speech was that in the last 20 weeks when he was immigration Minister, it was not 12,000 people who crossed the channel, but 13,000. It was not 230 small boats that made the crossing, as we have had so far this year; during his last 20 weeks in charge, it was almost 500. Where was his motion of regret then? Where were his expressions of outrage then? In fact, let me tell the House just how bad it was in his last 20 weeks in charge, from the end of April to the middle of September 2021. More people crossed the channel by small boats in those 20 weeks than in the previous 40 months put together, all the way back to the start of the crossings in 2018: 173 weeks-worth of crossings and he managed to get them to exceed that total in his last 20 weeks in charge. That was not the right hon. Gentleman’s only claim to fame during his period in office, because he was the Minister in charge when net migration started to run completely out of control. In the 19 months he was in charge, net migration rose from 170,000 to 470,000, a 300,000 increase in less than two years.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman now, because he stood up when I got to the end of a sentence.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  It is important that all of us acknowledge the humanity of people who come to our country to work, and the contribution that they make. But we also have to have rules: we have to decide who comes to our country and why, and we have to explain those rules to the electorate. That is what I shall go on to try and do. We inherited a system in total chaos. The Conservatives allowed criminal gangs to take hold across the channel, which saw the numbers arriving rocket from 300 in 2018 to more 30,000 in a few years. They crashed the asylum system, with a 70% drop in monthly decision making and an 80% drop in asylum interviews in the run-up to the election. There was a 34% drop in returns compared with the last Labour Government, and they spent £700 million sending four volunteers to Rwanda. Their handling of legal immigration was no better. Net migration quadrupled in the space of just four years to nearly a million—that is their record. Those numbers tell a wretched story of a system spiralling out of control; an entire criminal industry building up along our borders with terrible consequences; ruthless smugglers sending desperate people on dangerous, sometimes deadly, journeys and making a fortune in the process; basic rules not being enforced; and a collapse of trust and confidence in the state’s ability to perform one of its most fundamental functions: keeping our borders safe and secure. So bad was the Conservatives’ record that the public simply stopped believing anything they said—and who can blame them? For all the talk about stopping the boats and stopping this crisis, the crisis carried on. Unsurprisingly, strong words and grotesquely expensive gimmicks make little impact against sophisticated smuggling networks. The task of ending this chaos falls to this Government.

• 21 May 2025 · Immigration · Hansard source

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  Would the right hon. Member take a moment just to reflect on and remember the woman and small child who lost their lives today in an incident in French territorial waters?

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I need to get on, because we do not have a lot of time and I think I have been generous. The Government have tabled further amendments, to which I now wish to turn, to strengthen the Bill. First, new clause 5 extends right-to-work checks. Preventing illegal working forms a critical part of the Government’s plan to strengthen the immigration system and restore tough enforcement of the rules, undermining the proposition sold by unscrupulous criminal gangs that individuals can work in the UK. In reality, such work is illegal and puts individuals in a vulnerable position and at risk of exploitation. Legitimate businesses are undercut and the wages of lawful workers are negatively impacted, with links to other labour market abuse such as tax evasion, breach of the national minimum wage and exploitative working conditions. Those working illegally in the UK are exploiting a loophole in the existing right-to-work scheme, whereby only those organisations that engage individuals under a contract of employment are required to carry out right-to-work checks. Government new clause 5 means that those who engage individuals to work as casual or temporary workers under a worker’s contract, individual subcontractors, and online matching services that provide details of service providers to carry out work or services for potential clients or customers for remuneration, will be legally required to check a person’s right to work. Individuals who are self-employed in the traditional sense, and who contract directly with clients, will not be in scope of new clause 5, ensuring that a member of the public directly engaging a tradesperson or business will not have to carry out a right-to-work check. That is a long overdue extension of right-to-work checks to include sectors that were previously out of scope and to crack down on the unscrupulous exploitation of employment law loopholes. I note new clause 2 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) and new clause 21 in the name of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) on the Government’s policy on the right to work for asylum seekers, but it is important, as I said earlier, to distinguish between those who need protection and those seeking to come here to work. Although pull factors to the UK are complex, the perception of easy access to the labour market is among the reasons that people undertake dangerous journeys to the UK. I turn to Government new clauses 6 and 7. First, asylum appeals in the first-tier tribunal of the immigration and asylum chamber currently take an average of nearly 50 weeks, according to the latest published statistics. That is because of the huge backlogs we inherited when we came into government. Government new clauses 6 and 7 seek to set a 24-week statutory timeframe, requiring the first-tier tribunal of the immigration and asylum chamber to decide supported accommodation cases and non-detained foreign national offender cases within 24 weeks from the date the appeal is lodged, as far as is reasonably practicable. There are no easy or perfect choices here, but the Government have to take action, and we are focusing in the first instance on measures that will allow us to get people out of costly hotels and to facilitate the swift deportation of non-detained foreign national offenders, where that is in the public interest. While implementing the 24-week timeframe for supported asylum appeals and appeals from non-detained foreign national offenders, it is our expectation that the judiciary will continue to prioritise appeals lodged by detained foreign national offenders and the most vulnerable. We are working at pace in the Home Office and with the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to look at all possible improvements to the end-to-end immigration and appeals system and to the speed and efficiency of decision making and appeals, while continuing to guarantee access to justice. We will set out further reforms to the asylum system later this summer.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Gentleman for his creativity in asking that question when I am talking about this particular Government new clause. I think we had a debate in Committee on the amendment in the name of the Father of the House, and I certainly intend to come on to it later in our proceedings—hopefully, when he is here. As part of our efforts to halve violence against women and girls, it is important that the small number of asylum seekers and refugees who have been convicted of particularly serious crimes do not benefit from protection status. Not only have they failed to respect the laws of the UK by committing sexual crimes, but they have undermined public confidence in the system. New clause 8 changes the law to deny refugee status to those convicted of the abhorrent crimes listed in schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, treating them with the seriousness they deserve and supporting our wider mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Before I speak about the key Government amendments tabled on Report, I would like to recall why the Government have brought forward the Bill. We are working to take the necessary actions to secure our borders, bring order to the chaotic immigration and asylum system we inherited, and go after the dangerous criminal gangs that undermine our border security. This legislation is part of that plan for change. For six years, the organised gangs behind small boat crossings have been allowed to take hold, so we are strengthening international partnerships, enhancing enforcement operations nationally and internationally, and equipping ourselves with the tools we need to identify, disrupt and dismantle criminal gangs, while strengthening the security of our borders. The organised immigration crime summit hosted by the Government in London last month mobilised over 40 countries and organisations to launch an unprecedented global fight against the ruthless people-smuggling gangs. The new landmark measures in the Bill will provide law enforcement agencies working across the border security system with stronger powers to pursue, disrupt and deter organised immigration crime.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  We missed the right hon. Gentleman in the Committee. Given the sophistication of the organised immigration crime threat to the country, will he explain why he plans on voting against the Bill tonight when it provides counter-terrorism style powers that the National Crime Agency and our security services have told us they want to be able to bring to bear on this serious question?

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  None of the changes that I have talked about in the new clauses will impinge at all on the criteria currently used to determine whether somebody has a need for protection under the refugee convention. Clearly, in certain circumstances that includes the reality of religious persecution in the homeland. I hope that reassures the hon. Gentleman. Government new clause 8 redefines how the UK interprets the phrase “a particularly serious crime” for the purpose of excluding refugees from the protection against refoulement. Under existing arrangements, anyone convicted of any offence that attracts a custodial sentence of 12 months or more will have committed a particularly serious crime for these purposes. Those arrangements remain unchanged, but new clause 8 goes further and will mean that a particularly serious crime will now include individuals who have received a conviction for a sexual offence listed in schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Importantly for these cases, the fact that a particularly serious crime has been committed will be a presumption that can, obviously, be rebutted by the individual in question so that they get a fair hearing. Schedule 3 to the 2003 Act lists the offences that automatically make an offender subject to notification requirements, meaning that they have to notify the police of personal details annually, or whenever their details change. Failure to do so is a criminal offence and the system is sometimes known as the sex offenders register. The Government recognise the devastating impact of sexual violence on victims in our communities and are fully committed to tackling sexual offences and halving violence against women and girls in a decade. To achieve that, a broad set of the right powers must be available for authorities to tackle sexual crimes, bring perpetrators to justice and manage sex offenders.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Very quickly, because I have a lot of points and not much time.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  New clause 8 will deny refugee status to those who commit sexual offences. We also have the work being announced on narrowing article 8, which will allow Parliament to give more direction to judges about how the rules ought to be interpreted. The immigration rules reflect the requirements of the ECHR generally, including the qualified nature of article 8, setting requirements that properly balance the individual right to respect for family and private life with the public interest in safeguarding the economic wellbeing of the UK by controlling immigration.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise after what has been a very full debate, with people having to fit in quite complex points in short amounts of time. I congratulate everybody on the points they made. I will try, as much as possible, to deal with some of them in the time I have left. I thank all those on the Labour Benches who made contributions: my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Bassetlaw (Jo White), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt). Liberal Democrat Members concentrated on safe and legal routes, and the ability to work. I was worried that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) had had such a difficult time in Committee. I thought we were having quite a reasonable time, but he was extremely downbeat about it. I must try more on another occasion. I welcome the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), which we all listened to in traditional silence. I congratulate her on it, welcome her to the House and wonder if Reform is practising the principle of one in, one out—or perhaps one out, one in. It is a pleasure to welcome her to the House. The shadow Home Secretary produced a flurry of amendments and new clauses demanding that we do a whole range of things that not only did he not do when he had the chance as a Home Office Minister, but his party did not do when they had the chance over 14 years. I have to keep saying this, but we inherited a system in the most incredibly difficult mess, with huge backlogs. He says we have made it worse, but by beginning to process claims, that by definition creates a backlog of those who have been refused. By trying to get the system working again, we get a backlog of appeals, because people who are refused asylum generally appeal, and the backlog—as he knows from his time in the Home Office—therefore reappears in the appeals system. That is why we have the new clauses to attempt to get a timeline for dealing with those cases. I will concentrate on some of the things that I know there will be votes on tonight. First, I will deal with safe and legal routes and new clause 3. Our approach is to resettle refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who would benefit most from resettlement to the UK. Alongside that, we have bespoke routes to sanctuary for those from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong. It is important that safe and legal routes are sustainable, well managed and in line with the UK’s capacity to welcome, accommodate and integrate refugees. Part of the difficulty we have at the moment is the legacy we received from the Conservatives of a huge quadrupling of net migration and the issues with having to assimilate all those people in the huge, unplanned way in which they delivered that. New clause 37 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). We recognise her campaigning on this issue over the past five years. We also recognise that there has been an unfair burden for some families with rights to citizenship under the system as it is. I can confirm that the work referenced on page 76 of the White Paper—it is right at the end—will look at tackling the financial barriers that she highlighted in her speech. I urge her to work with us on how we move forward and to not press her new clause. The Opposition tabled new clause 14. Let me be clear that this Government are fully committed to the protection of human rights at home and abroad. As the Prime Minister has made clear, the United Kingdom is unequivocally committed to the European convention on human rights, and it is worth noting that many of the legal obligations provided for in the European convention are also found in other international agreements to which the UK is a party.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  As I have before, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the border security force in this country works very closely with the PSNI and the Garda Síochána to deal with all potential threats in the common travel area. I assure him that we keep a very close eye on what is going on there to ensure that the hon. Gentleman’s worries are properly addressed. The Bill strengthens the immigration and asylum system. We are repealing the costly and unworkable legislation introduced by the previous Government, and are introducing new provisions to address shortcomings, tackle harm, and build a more efficient and robust system. The Bill is about making changes to enable a properly functioning immigration and asylum system that ensures that those with a genuine right to be here are properly supported, while those who have no legal right to remain in the UK do not abuse the system and undermine the protections the UK has a history of providing for those in need.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  If we disapplied the Human Rights Act, people would just go to the ECHR anyway, and a lot of these cases would end up in Strasbourg, which would take even longer. Disapplying the Human Rights Act would also mean that other countries that we have to work and collaborate with to deal with cross-border people smuggling would not work with us. The Conservatives had many huge rows with people and went around the world making it look as though they did not believe in the rule of law. This Government do believe in the rule of law and we will carry on upholding the rule of law; we regard that as an important part of the value system we have in this country. On new clause 18 and the cap on non-visitor visas, as always the Conservatives talk a good talk now that they are safely in opposition, having not delivered when they were in government. They promised time after time to reduce net migration down to the tens of thousands—they did it in their manifestos and in the many different manifestations of Conservative Governments that we saw plough through the House, especially in the past four years—and what did they do? They quadrupled net migration. We do not need a cap; we need to get migration down, fundamentally lower than it is now, to make the system fair and effective. In order to do that, we have published a White Paper today and introduced further measures in this Bill. We will come back to this issue to ensure that we can deliver—unlike the Conservative party.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I certainly hope that that kind of comment might be a joke. I wonder whether that kind of arbitrary treatment of people who are in this country would become the norm for Reform, if we came out of the European convention on human rights, as the hon. Member wants. We are a law-abiding Government. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has a complete right to his opinions and a complete right to express them, from whichever side of the House he sits. I have personally worked with him and have a great deal of respect for him, so I am shocked that the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) thinks that an appropriate thing to say in this place.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  Yes in some circumstances, but no in others, because some people who come over are genuine asylum seekers. Even under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government—when he, too, was in the Home Office—such people were granted asylum. As always, there are many different circumstances and each case has to be looked at and judged on its merits.

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I wish to get on with discussing the amendments, but because I served with him on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I will give way to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) .

• 12 May 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister for Citizenship and Migration, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), has just made it clear to me from the Front Bench that she is very happy to consult and meet all those groups. We want people to contribute to the consultation so that we get this right. I hope that in the light of that, my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill will not press new clause 37. I want to deal with the right to work in the brief time I have left, because those on the Lib Dem Benches talked about that in particular. It is an issue of balance: we know at the moment that, if someone’s asylum claim is delayed for 12 months, they have the right to work in particular shortage areas. Our way of dealing with this is to get the system to work more quickly, so that we do not have people languishing for many years in limbo. That is what we are aiming to do. We are worried that if the right to work came in after three months, it would be too much of a pull factor and get around some of the issues with work visas. We have to have a system that people apply to properly, rather than one that they can get around by coming in by irregular routes. That is the issue. I appreciate what Lib Dem Members are trying to achieve; we have a slight difference of approach on that, but clearly we will carry on having these debates. Question put and agreed to. New clause 5 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.