Anna Turley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I pass on my thanks to everyone at the NCA for their excellent work. We know how important it is for disrupting the organised, industrial crime that is taking place across borders. It is critical that we intervene and prevent dangerous crossings as early as possible. I wanted to put my thanks on the record for everything that the agency does. You mentioned the importance of deterrence. That is critical, and it is one of the key things that we want to achieve in the Bill. Could you say a little more about how you think the measures in the Bill will help to deter people and make interventions earlier in the process of illegal immigration? Helen Rance: In terms of deterrence, we are obviously a law enforcement agency, and we would not make specific definitive judgments on the different effects that the measures will have on deterring crossings or immigration. We very much think that deterrence is about a combination of factors, and is, ultimately, a matter for Government policy. However, we believe that the measures contribute to a system that is seen as firm, fair and less susceptible to exploitation by organised crime groups. It is likely that that will help the overall deterrent effect. The changes to appeals, protection status, asylum arrangements and the removal process might contribute to making the UK a less attractive target for the criminal networks that facilitate illegal immigration.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you very much; I appreciate your responses. May I step back from just the article 8 measures and talk about the Bill in the round? What is your view on whether it strikes the right balance when it comes to honouring our obligations to refugees under the conventions? Are we balancing that with taking stronger action to deal with the challenges that we face internationally on illegal immigration? Is the Bill striking the right balance, or can we go further? Professor Ekins: In my view, the legislation does not strike the right balance, because it fails—as have successive Bills, I think—to take sufficiently robust measures in relation to the problem of illegal migration and people smuggling; I am thinking of the small boats crisis in particular. That is somewhat distinct from the broader problem of unlawful migration, which is clearly a problem—people overstaying, foreign criminals and so on—but the small boats crisis has particular features that warrant a particular response. To my mind, unfortunately, although the legislation tinkers with aspects of how the refugee convention should be understood in our law—perhaps we will come to that later—it seems, silently at least, to take for granted that persons who have contracted with people smugglers and made it across the channel are entitled to asylum and to remain in the UK. I think that that is a misunderstanding of the terms of the refugee convention, which do entitle us to expel persons from the UK, even when they are genuine refugees under the meaning of the refugee convention. That is a protection that all member states enjoy. It entitles us to expel them to other states, because they have entered in violation of our migration law. It would be different had they entered directly from a state where their lives were in danger, but no one coming from France is in that position. That makes that a structurally different position to other contexts, when people flee danger. The legislation simply does not address that feature of the problem. The measures it takes—which, as I say, I welcome as far as they go—simply tinker with the edges and do not address the central problem. Genuine refugees will cross the channel but, so long as contracting with people smugglers is a viable route to enter and thus to settle in the UK, that will persist. It is a logical and rational expenditure of funds, and it is a flourishing business so long as you do not care about the lives of people crossing a dangerous water. There is a failure to recognise the protections that we have as a country under the refugee convention. We may take action that would not place persons in danger—they can be removed to safe third states. As far as I can see, the Bill is focused on increasing administrative adjudicative capacity to process appeal claims more speedily. That is admirable, but it leaves untouched the central structural problem, which I and others writing for Policy Exchange have tried to draw attention to over the years. Dr Casey: I agree. I do not see anything in the Bill that would deter unlawful channel crossings. But, as has been mentioned, , depending on how the Bill is received in the courts, it might deter overstaying on visas and the breaching of conditions of your permission to reside. That could be valuable, as those are significant numbers, but I do not see anything that would deter unlawful channel crossings in any way. You could go further in the Bill and, for example, take advantage of provisions in the refugee convention that allow states to return those convicted of serious criminal offences or of threats to national security to their home countries, even if there was a risk of ill treatment. The refugee convention allows that, but it would not be possible within the confines of the ECHR. Article 3 puts a categorical prohibition on those kinds of returns even if the person being returned poses an enormous threat to the United Kingdom itself. So even if you did take full advantage of everything that the refugee convention permitted you to do to protect your own immigration system, the ECHR would pose even more stringent restrictions in many respects. Professor Ekins: I agree with everything that Dr Casey has said, but I would add that that is article 3 as—in my view—misinterpreted by the Strasbourg Court. Article 3 does provide a categorical prohibition on torture and subjecting people to inhumane treatment; as I say, that has been misinterpreted in recent decades to establish a much more far-reaching bar on taking action that exposes someone to a risk of such action from third parties. In 2021, we published a paper that addressed in close detail the misinterpretation of the ECHR and its far-reaching impact for immigration and asylum law. That Policy Exchange paper is backed by Lord Hoffmann, former judge of the House of Lords. It makes clear the problem in the Strasbourg Court’s reading of article 3—as well as its reading of article 8, I should add.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I am keen to come back to some of your comments on article 8. What is your analysis of how it has, slowly over time, come to protect those it was never originally intended to cover, and how can we safeguard against that in the future? Picking up on your point about the potential knock-on effect to article 3, Dr Casey, what mechanisms can we use to prevent article 3 being abused, essentially, on the back of our changes to article 8? Professor Ekins: On the article 8 point, my own view, which is substantiated in quite some detail in the 2021 Policy Exchange paper with the support of Lord Hoffman that I referred to is that, for a long time in the history of the ECHR, article 8 had nothing to do with immigration and asylum. It was not a provision that was understood to impose limits on the enforcement of migration law or on the deportation and removal of non-citizens, especially foreign criminals and so on. There was no connection there. A connection has been established in the case law by reading article 8 very expansively and then effectively requiring each particular decision to enforce the migration law of a member state to involve an individuated proportionality assessment about the impact on the particular person being removed—or, in relation to article 8, quite often on his or her family or maybe his or her extended family—and for that to pass judicial muster. As I say, I think that is an innovation in the case law of the Strasbourg court. I do not want to overstate its novelty—it is an innovation that has been going on for several decades—but it is not part of what the UK and other member states agreed when they agreed the terms of the convention, and I think it should be viewed as a misinterpretation of the convention. In a sense, the joint declaration of the member states earlier this year recognises that something has gone wrong in the case law of the Court; that it has read article 8—we will come to article 3—to establish a kind of Europe-wide migration and asylum law, beyond the terms agreed by the member states. That needs to be addressed and wound back. The thought that, in a sense, you are wronging a foreign criminal when you remove him or her from the UK so that he or she cannot maintain a connection with family is just fundamentally misconceived. In the same way, we are not wronging the offender by incarcerating him, which makes it very much more difficult to maintain a flourishing family life; the consequence is a side effect of the wrongful choice made by the offender. Something similar holds, I think, with the wrongful choice made by a person who violates our migration law. There are harsh consequences in many of these cases, of course, but they are not harsh consequences whereby the UK sets out to wrong someone’s family. That structure has to be more fully recognised. We should see that something has gone badly wrong in thinking that the right to respect for private and family life entails, at least in some cases, a de facto immunity to the application of migration law. Dr Casey: I agree with Professor Ekins entirely. The extension of article 8 into the domain of immigration law was a very conspicuous act of judicial lawmaking through the living instrument approach. As recently as 1985 in the Abdulaziz v . the United Kingdom case, you had the UK Government—Sir Peter Rawlinson, the Attorney General—arguing tooth and nail that article 8 did not apply to questions about entry into the UK or removal and that it was just outside the scope. They lost that case, and that has been the EHCR’s position for several decades since then, but it was not understood as part of the original compact when the convention was ratified. Professor Ekins: You asked us about article 3 as well, I think.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you all for coming to give evidence to us. More than a third of our charter returns that fail to go ahead have involved a modern slavery referral raised after the return arrangements have been made. Can you give us some indication of why you think that is and, building on your previous answer, what would help to challenge that? Eleanor Lyons: Thank you, Minister, for your engagement so far on the Bill. It is very much appreciated. Building on what I was saying, we really need a system that allows for early identification and support of victims of exploitation. That includes all victims of exploitation, UK nationals and non-UK nationals. When I first came into my role three years ago, the big conversation was about what mandatory training would look like for first responder organisations, so that they would know how to spot a potential victim of modern slavery. Many victims themselves do not even recognise that they are being exploited. To introduce early support into the system would make a huge change on that side of things. I am concerned about the Home Office data on already high-risk flights. Less than 2% of the total number in the national referral mechanism are on those flights. The Home Office has five days to make a “reasonable grounds” decision. It only protects a victim of modern slavery for five days if they are referred into the national referral mechanism. If the Government decide that, actually, they do not think that there are grounds for those people being a victim of modern slavery, after that point they do not get any extra enhancements for indefinite leave to remain, so I do not think that that provides extra protection for victims. All we try to do in that period is to provide them with the support and care they need in their recovery period, if they need it.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you both for coming to give evidence to us today. You both emphasise the importance of evidence and evaluation. Can you give us some idea of what metrics you think we should use to judge whether our reforms have been successful? Dr Sumption: Obviously, there are several different goals of the Bill, and the metric used would depend on that. For the deterrence stuff that we have just been discussing, small boat arrivals and asylum applications are the most relevant ones. Some things that cannot be tracked now—at least, not in the published data—could potentially be tracked in future. For example, we actually have remarkably few statistics on human rights grants, including how many people are granted and what happens to refusals over time, or how many refusals are overturned in court. All those things could be tracked, but the data does not currently exist. My understanding is that it does not exist internally either, because the impact assessment used a sample of around 3,000 cases, rather than just using full statistics for many of them. I think there is probably some statistical work that could be done to try to track the impacts of the human rights measures a bit more. Also, the data on returns could be linked to the data on what happens to people before that return. For example, one of the potentially very important outcomes that the impact assessment looks at is how many people are refused as a result of the changes, but never actually removed from the country. I think most people would qualify that as an undesirable outcome in the sense that you have people who are still in the UK. and there may be costs associated with them. If they are destitute, the local authority will have to support them, and it increases the unauthorised population. Using the current statistics, we would never know to what extent that is happening, but in theory it would be possible to track all that stuff using the data. The other major metric on the impact of the changes to the appeals system would be how the backlog changes over time. Of course, you can then look at the numbers of onward appeals to the extent that that becomes a problem, which I am sure other witnesses here will discuss. It is about having data on people’s journeys through the asylum system and appeals system. How long does it take? What are the metrics on the accuracy of the decisions? How many decisions are overturned? I think all those would be important metrics.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would like to focus on the measures in the Bill—you made some reference to the ones on modern slavery. Could you expand on how those provisions might make it harder for individuals who have fictitious claims to stop themselves being removed? Tony Smith: The Bill is really about the asylum process, rather than law enforcement. I think the Bill last year was more about the law enforcement; this is about the asylum process. There are some good things in here. As I say, I applaud the article 8 reforms, because article 8 is often used as a lever quite late in the process. After someone has been here for quite a while and has been through the process, you suddenly get an article 8 claim because they have developed a connection in the UK. So I think that that reform is right and will help to reduce the pull factor. I like the idea of the tighter protection arrangements—the 30 months at a time. My only counsel against that is that the Home Office, in my experience, tends to automatically grant and grant and grant, because it is a lot easier than refusing, and that might just become an automatic turnover of grants for however long you allow people to stay. I think you ought to look at who is going home. If people go back to their own country on holiday when they have a claim for refugee status, we can establish that. We have the passenger information and can cross-match that to their asylum records. If people go back to their own country once they have been given some kind of protection status here, they should not be allowed back in, because they are clearly not in fear of persecution. The faster appeals process is absolutely essential. The problem with the appeals process is that it went over to the Ministry of Justice years ago, when the Home Office and MOJ were split up. The MOJ does not seem to have been really bothered about it—it has other things on its plate. The backlog is over a year now, so you have to try and get a grip of that. I do not know how you get that in the Home Office and how you persuade them, but I think it is a good idea. You really have to get that end-to-end process going right. I like the idea of recouping public funds from people, a bit like in the student loan scheme. If people have come here and been a draw on public funds, and they then get into the workplace, why would you not claw back some of that money into the public purse? I think that all those things might reduce pull factors. They are really good reforms. I am not saying they are not good measures; what I am saying is that, in my opinion, they are not good enough to stop the boats.