Matt Vickers MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

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

  More

  We have had many alternative means of accommodation, including hotels. Accommodation of asylum seekers in hotels is through the roof—it is up 29%, with 8,500 more people staying in them—but the situation I am describing applies more widely than any accommodation centre or hotel. The £4.7 billion tab for 2023-24 covered beds, meals and NHS visits while the backlog ballooned.

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

  More

  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. New clause 38 would require the Government to make changes to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. It would require the Secretary of State, within three months of the passing of this Act, to consult on reforms to arrangements for leave outside the immigration rules. The consultation must consider how best to ensure that leave outside the rules is granted only in the most exceptional circumstances, in which a reasonable person would consider it unacceptable to refuse entry to the United Kingdom. Within 18 months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must, by regulations, make changes to the immigration rules to implement the required reforms to leave outside the rules. We have tabled this new clause because we are concerned about the Government’s response to the recent decision in the upper tribunal to allow a family from Gaza to obtain permission to come to this country using the Ukraine family scheme. The appellants were Palestinians who, at the time of the decision under challenge, were residing in al-Mawasi, the humanitarian zone of Gaza. The first and second appellants were husband and wife, and had lived in Gaza since 1994. They were the parents of the remaining four appellants, who at the time of the decision were 18, 17, eight and seven years of age. The sponsor for the application was the first appellant’s brother, who had moved to the United Kingdom in 2007 and is now a British citizen. The first-tier tribunal declined the application and the decision was appealed. The main issues to be decided by the first-tier tribunal were whether there was family life under article 8(1) between the appellants and the sponsor in the UK, whether the respondent’s decision interfered with any family life and/or any private life enjoyed by the sponsor, and whether any such interference was disproportionate. The upper tribunal did not agree with the Home Office’s argument that the first-tier tribunal judge had erred in finding that there was family life between the appellants and sponsor. It found that there was family life and that the Home Office decision not to allow the family leave outside the rules was a disproportionate interference with the family life of the appellants and the sponsor. When the Leader of the Opposition challenged the Prime Minister about this particular case at Prime Minister’s questions, he responded that he did not agree with the decision of the upper tribunal, and said that the Government were “looking at the legal loophole that we need to close in this particular case.” —[ Official Report , 12 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 249.] The new clause makes a suggestion about what that “legal loophole” might be, but it is extremely important that the Minister is able to answer the following questions. Did the Home Office decide not to appeal the upper tribunal decision? If so, why? What is the legal loophole that the Prime Minister said the Home Secretary was closing? Can the Minister be extremely precise about that, please? Can she explain when the House will be updated on this issue? Finally, if there is a legal loophole to close, why is that not being done through this Bill?

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

  More

  I think if we allowed first-tier tribunals to go public, we would see a lot more. These things undermine public confidence in the legal framework and the institutions that uphold them, and I think they are terribly wrong. One of these cases is one too many. They are happening in ever-increasing numbers; that is why we have tabled this new clause, and the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to vote for it or otherwise. Our new clause represents a first step to restore some common sense to immigration appeals. New clause 33 steps up to wrest back control from a judiciary that has wandered far from the reservation, turning the Human Rights Act into a sprawling, open-ended blank cheque for immigration status, a carte blanche that has left us all scratching our heads at the sheer audacity of it.

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

  More

  We are talking about all sorts of circumstances, and I am sure that every one of these things would be pushed to the max, with lots of discussion and debate. The idea here is the principle that if someone cannot be in a country because it would be to their detriment and damage their wellbeing, then they should not be going back. If it is such a security threat that they need to come to the UK for asylum—

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

  More

  I am concerned about the consequences of the Human Rights Act for cases such as this and its role therein.

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

  More

  State support is not a right and, if a person is able later to contribute by paying some of it back, we believe it is right for them to do so. We wish to press the new clause to a Division. Question put , That the clause be read a Second time.

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

  More

  I hear what hon. Members are saying, but in the current system we allow people to pop back on holiday. Is that acceptable?

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

  More

  I aim to please with my tie. The hon. Gentleman can probably attach as much importance to the policy paper as he sees fit, as he does with anything else I might or might not say; it is for him, and for readers of the debate, to determine the value and weight they add to that. Another proposal we have put forward is on salary thresholds and what someone should be earning in order to remain in this country. I think that is a big deal; I will go on to outline why I think it is important, but yes—it is a big deal. As I was saying, The Economist said only last week in one of its leaders that “governments must also learn from the policy mistakes that lend it credibility. It was foolish to admit lots of newcomers without liberalising housing markets. Also, since migration flows to rich countries cannot be unlimited, it makes sense to favour highly skilled economic migrants over lower-skilled ones nearly all the time. Arguments for low-skilled migration built around supposed labour shortages are flawed.” Interestingly, in countries outside the UK, research has shown the importance of income in long-term migration. A report in the Netherlands, which used detailed microdata on fiscal contributions and benefits to the entire population to calculate the discounted lifetime net contribution of the immigrant population present in 2016, was published in December 2024 and concluded: “If the parents make a strongly negative net contribution, the second generation usually lags behind considerably as well. Therefore, the adage ‘it will all work out with the second generation’ does not hold true. High fiscal costs of immigrants are not that much caused by high absorption of government expenditures but rather by low contributions to taxes and social security premiums. We also find evidence for a strong relationship of average net contributions by country with cultural distance, even after controlling for average education and the cito-distribution-effect.” Although we should acknowledge that the Netherlands is a different country with its own unique systems and that its situation does not necessarily apply to the UK, the finding highlights the need to examine the impact of migration decisions in comparable nations. New clause 32 takes steps to do that, ensuring that migrants contribute to our economy.

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

  More

  I think the public will be stunned to hear that immigration enforcement officers have challenges in accessing asylum accommodation centres, as outlined by Tony Smith, the former director general of UK Border Force. We will therefore seek to press the new clause to a vote.

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

  More

  To the hon. Gentleman’s electors and mine, these things come at huge cost. As we have set out, that money could be used by the people who pay in to the system, and have done for a very long time. We have drawn an analogy with student tuition fees and I think it is very relevant. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s well-hidden admiration in recent times, but I think this is the right thing to do, and I am well on board with it. State support is not a right, and if a person is able to contribute later by paying some of that back, we believe it is right for them to do so.

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

  More

  I am concerned, in the context of this new clause, about what the Human Rights Act means for these immigration cases. That is why the new clause proposes to remove its impact and disapply it.

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

  More

  Well, hot air is required in this room this afternoon, and I intend to provide it. We fought back with the Nationality and Borders Act third-country removals, which helped the Government to deter crossings by 36% in 2023 from 45,000 to under 29,000—not by chance, but by design, sending a message to traffickers and migrants alike that Britain is no soft touch or guaranteed prize. Now, the Liberal Democrats barge in with new clause 27, desperate to repeal section 29 to shred that deterrent and plunge us back into chaos, flinging the channel wide open not just to the weary but to every chancer or criminal. That is not tweaking policy; it is torching a firewall, inviting all those to Dover’s cliffs and Deal’s shores and erasing every inch of progress that we have clawed from the crisis. The Lib Dems owe us hard answers. How many boats—50,000 or 60,000? The Albania deal delivered a masterstroke of border control. That pragmatic triumph has turned a torrent of illegal crossings into a trickle through sheer diplomatic grit. Back in 2022, Albanians dominated the small boats surge. A 12,000-strong, relentless wave of young men were lured by traffickers with promises of easy UK entry for £3,000, clogging Dover’s processing centres and fuelling tabloid headlines of chaos. Then came our 2023 pact with Tirana—a no-nonsense agreement that flipped the script with fast-track returns, joint police operations and a clear signal: Albania is safe and you are going back. By 2024, the results were staggering. Weekly flights were whisking deportees home, with each jet a nail in the coffin of the smuggling networks that once thrived on our porous borders. That was not luck or loud threats but cold, hard execution, bolstered by UK-funded cameras on the Albania-Kosovo frontier and Albanian officers embedded in Dover.

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

  More

  His writing seems to be going quite well at the moment. I do not know that I have the cash for him. What I have described is not asylum. We cannot pretend that the EU’s 27 nations and its vast tapestry of safe, stable and prosperous lands—we can take our pick of France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and so on, each a bastion of peace and plenty—somehow warrant the same desperate lifeline that we reserve for those fleeing real and genuine chaos. This is the same organisation that the Liberal Democrats supposedly want to build closer ties with. They also want the UK to grant asylum to people who come to this country having already been in a country where they have claimed and been granted asylum. Why are the Liberal Democrats encouraging people to cross the channel when they already have asylum or can claim asylum in a safe third country? Just like the Labour Government, the Liberal Democrats want to remove sections of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 that allow local and public authorities to conduct an age assessment on an age-disputed person. As we discussed before when the SNP did not wish those who claim to be a child to be treated as an adult, every European country apart from ours uses scientific age assessment techniques such as an X-ray of the wrist. As we have said, there are also other methods. More than 50% of those claiming to be children were found to be adults after an age assessment in the quarter before the election. Without a scientific age assessment method, it is very hard to determine age. Given the horror stories in this area, why do Liberal Democrats want to put the people of this country at risk, and blindly allow unverified people into the UK? Let us now talk about a nightmare unfolding right under our noses: one that the Liberal Democrats seem hellbent on making worse. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, 560 adults—grown men with stubble, receding hairlines and years behind them—had the gall to pose as kids, slipping through the cracks until scientific age checks, such as wrist X-rays and dental scans that every sensible European nation uses, caught them red handed and stopped them cold. The Lib Dems’ new clause 27 would axe those checks and rip out the one tool keeping us from dumping people who are 25 years old or even older into classrooms alongside children. That is not some abstract risk. It has happened and it is real; it means men in their 20s sitting at desks meant for teens, all because we have let sentiment trump science. That would not protect children, but endanger them—a reckless gamble that would turn schools into hunting grounds and parents into nervous wrecks, all so the Lib Dems can pat themselves on the back for being compassionate. If they get their way, every classroom will have a question mark. How many 25-year-olds will slip through before the damage is done? What do the Liberal Democrats believe should happen if the authorities believe a migrant who is claiming to be under 18 is actually an adult? Do they believe that such people should be placed in schools with schoolchildren? Again, it seems as though the Liberal Democrats want to strip the Government of any power to control who comes to the country. That would see net migration drastically increase. The issue cuts deeper than policy, however; it is about what people expect, and the Liberal Democrats’ new clause pulls hard against that grain. Voters have signalled what they want loud and clear, with 68%—nearly seven in 10—backing tougher border controls in surveys: a call echoing from Dover to Folkestone, where residents live with the reality of arrivals day by day. That is not a passing opinion; it is a steady demand—rooted in years of debate, from the 2016 Brexit vote to the 2019 landslide—for a system that prioritises their say.

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

  More

  We would want to return foreign national offenders; that is really positive. But the number of people choosing to cross because of that deterrent effect went down by not 10% or 20%, but by more than 90%. More than 90% fewer people arrived from Albania in small boats. That is huge progress. If we can replicate that elsewhere, I will be a very happy boy because we would see a huge impact on those crossings across the piece. New clause 27 is hellbent on repealing that backbone, oblivious to how crossings from Albanians were successfully slashed, while the Rwanda threat kept smugglers guessing. If the Liberal Democrats prevail, every bilateral deal will be on the chopping block. Imagine Albanian numbers roaring back to 12,000, with other current surges unchecked. That is not progress; it is sabotage—a reckless bid to unravel a system that is finally biting back at the chaos. Do the Liberal Democrats not want to be able to remove people from this country who have entered illegally? Do they believe that any national of a safe country should be able to seek asylum in the UK? Can Liberal Democrat Members explain why that would not create a massive pull factor and encourage people to cross the channel in small boats? The Liberal Democrats are also seeking to repeal sections 15 to 17 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which specify that the Secretary of State must declare an asylum claim made by a person who is a national of an EU member state inadmissible. Why would the Liberal Democrats believe that anyone from the EU needs to claim asylum here? Picture this scene, which is so utterly ridiculous that it strains the bounds of credulity: an EU citizen, perhaps some laid-back Amsterdamer, pedalling along the city’s picturesque canals one sunny afternoon, tulips nodding in the breeze, then suddenly deciding to chuck it all, hop on a ferry and pitch up on Dover’s pebbled shores, requesting asylum, as if the Netherlands’ orderly bike lanes and windmill-dotted horizons had morphed into a scene from—

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

  More

  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

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

  More

  We have had provision for accommodation centres. We have had accommodation centres.

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

  More

  I am talking about those circumstances. We have heard one extreme; at the other extreme, we have people claiming asylum at huge cost. That is not a cost to well-heeled people, in particular, but to British taxpayers, some of whom are struggling to get by, but are contributing to this country and this system, which pays out for various other things. We want to be generous. We want to support the people who need that help. It is the right thing to do and, I have just outlined, we have done that. But we cannot allow that generosity to be abused; we cannot allow people to pop off on holiday back to wherever they came from and then come back. That is the principle that is at stake here. People out there feel that it is very unfair that people pop back, and use asylum here as something hotel-like. That is the other extreme. That is the abuse that we are seeing, and that is what the new clause aims to end.

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

  More

  We feel strongly about the measures in the new clause, and we wish to press it to a Division. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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

  More

  What is effective? The deal reduced the number of people coming from Albania by more than 90%. If we could get a few more agreements like that, we would be on the way—that would be huge progress. The Albania deal represented huge progress; to suggest otherwise is wrong. It choked off routes before boats had even launched and had a real impact.

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

  More

  On that case and on the loophole, which Minister does not think is relevant to this legislation, what does she identify that loophole as, and why does she not feel that that broader issue is relevant in considering this Bill?

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

  More

  I know there are 8,500 more in hotels now, but this was a measure that was put in place to reduce that hotel dependency, to stop us increasing the number of people in those hotels by 29%.

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

  More

  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. New clause 33 aims to help the Government by providing a way to put securing our borders above spurious human rights claims to frustrate removal. It would disapply the entire Human Rights Act 1998, as well as any interim measures of the Strasbourg court that prevent the effective operation of legislation relating to immigration and deportation. The result would be that those seeking to appeal deportation or other immigration decisions would not be able to make human rights claims under the Human Rights Act in British courts. The new clause would apply that new power to all aspects of immigration control, including enforcement, deportation, the granting or removal of immigration and asylum status, and any other immigration entitlements. We would expect Parliament to legislate and the Home Office to decide immigration cases based on their reasonable interpretation of the European convention on human rights, but UK judges would be able to use only UK law passed by Parliament to decide appeals, and no longer make expansive and common-sense-defying interpretations of what they claim the ECHR means. The Human Rights Act would still apply to non-immigration matters, so UK judges could continue to apply the ECHR directly to them. We would still be under the ECHR, so applicants would still be able to go to the Strasbourg court, but the new clause would stop UK judges expanding the definitions. In that scenario, it would be possible to deport people pending a Strasbourg appeal, and it would repeat the measure in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 to give Ministers the power to ignore an ECHR rule 39 interim order. We are not saying that the new clause provides the full answer to controlling our borders. Wider questions such as ECHR membership and wider immigration system reforms are to be addressed in longer-term pieces of work, but the new clause would be a step in the right direction. The reason the new clause is necessary can be seen in recent decisions about immigration appeals. For example, an Iraqi drug dealer was saved from deportation from the UK after a judge ruled that he was too westernised to be returned to his home country. That man, who was jailed for more than five years after a conviction for dealing cocaine, had lived in Britain for 24 years and has a British-born daughter. Home Office officials attempted to have him deported, but a specialist judge in the asylum tribunal ruled that returning the man to Iraq would violate his human rights as he would be viewed with suspicion. The judge said that the man, who cannot be named, would face persecution in Iraq because he would be seen as westernised. As we have already mentioned, an Albanian criminal was allowed to stay in Britain partly because his son would not eat foreign chicken nuggets. An immigration tribunal ruled that it would be unduly harsh for the 10-year-old boy to be forced to move to Albania with his father, owing to his sensitivity around food. The sole example provided to the court was his distaste for the type of chicken nuggets available abroad.

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

  More

  We wish to press the new clause to a Division. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

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

  More

  People who claim asylum arrive here from some of the most terrible, awful circumstances—their life is threatened and they are at real risk. If someone is at that level of risk, on the balance of probabilities, they would not be going back. If someone fears persecution in the way that many of the people who get asylum in this country do, then they would not be returning.

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

  More

  I am sure that the Minister must disagree with some of the examples that we have seen, and agree that they undermine public trust in the judiciary, legal institutions and the frameworks we have. What is the solution? Must we grin and bear the appalling outcomes of those cases or is there a solution? How does she propose to stop such things happening?