Margaret Mullane MP: speeches

Speeches

• 6 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  It is an honour to serve on your Committee, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Members for Perth and Kinross-shire and for Stockton West for their contributions. There are a few points I want to make. Clause 18 already outlines provision within the lines that amendment 17 seeks to remove. Naming the act of supplying an unseaworthy vessel, while removing the broader terminology of an act from the Bill, sets a precedent where we would have to outline all possible acts within the Bill. That is wholly unnecessary and not in keeping with the structure of the Bill. Although providing an unseaworthy vessel is the initial act that causes risk to life, amendment 17 would serve to de-prioritise further acts of criminality that could endanger life in a sea crossing. The wording already in the Bill provides sufficient scope to address what the amendment seeks. Following on from this, I think everybody in this room agrees with the sentiment of amendment 5—that genuine asylum seekers are vulnerable—but it is also important to recognise that someone with the right to asylum could be involved in criminality. The Bill already establishes, through clauses 16 to 18, the provision of a reasonable excuse as a defence, creating a clearer distinction between humanitarian activity and genuine asylum seekers, journalistic or academic works, and those involved in immigration crime as well. I believe that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire has already conceded that point, having withdrawn amendments of a similar nature.

• 27 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Following on from what the Minister asked you about how we have to be mean or have open borders, I looked at your written evidence, in which you have put as your ninth point, “Make Britain unattractive again”, and then you refer to the Rwanda policy. You say that you do not really know, but we had the National Crime Agency in before you and they were quite optimistic about the deterrent aspects of the Bill. Are you saying that you are not at all? David Coleman: I am not, but at the moment it is to some extent a matter of opinion. The sorts of measures being proposed in the Bill are a development and accentuation of what has been done already. After all, the Government are not doing nothing to try to moderate asylum seeking; they have already, like the previous Government, been involved in discussions with our neighbours to try to come to an agreement on all sorts of aspects of migrant trafficking. The Bill is trying to ratchet that up, perfectly reasonably. So far those measures, although admittedly not as intense as this Bill wants to impose, have not been notably successful. I drew a parallel with the war against drugs, which has an effect. It reduces the volume of drugs in circulation and puts drug pushers in prison, but it also puts up the price of drugs. There is a rather depressing parallel there.