Max Wilkinson MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Sept 2026 · Dover and Portsmouth: Protests · Hansard source

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  How is that far-right thugs in balaclavas were able to close Britain’s busiest port without the police receiving any prior intelligence? How is it that an apparently separate group with some commonalities was then able to blockade another site the next evening? Will the Minister tell the House whether she will review why the police were caught off guard? More shockingly still—or perhaps just as shockingly—no arrests have been reported. People have drawn comparisons this weekend with the hundreds of sign-holding protesters who have been arrested since July 2025 on other protests. Can the Minister understand why people are confused by the difference in approach? Can she also answer questions from Portsmouth Liberal Democrat council leader Steve Pitt about the lack of local consultation on identifying appropriate landing sites? That is a key question that needs answering, because it clearly caused problems in Portsmouth. Britain’s transport infrastructure cannot be left vulnerable to far-right mobs. It is a disgrace that this weekend, Reform MPs took to social media to fan the flames alongside people like Musk and Robinson. It is a disgrace that Members of this House support such vigilante action. It was the decision to leave the European Union, championed by those Reform Members and their allies in the Conservative party, that created the small boats crisis in the first place. We will only get a safe and controlled asylum system in line with British values if we join the EU migration and asylum pacts. That will also save taxpayers’ money. The Government are paying at least £500 million for a three-year agreement with France. More money will follow when the agreement is struck with Belgium. The UK’s contribution to join that pact, which would bring order and safety to the asylum system, would be significantly less than what we are currently pledging to pay in those agreements. Joining the pact must be top of the agenda when the Prime Minister meets EU leaders later this year.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Asylum Hotels · Hansard source

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  Last year the National Audit Office reported that the cost of asylum accommodation contracts had more than tripled, from under £5 billion to more than £15 billion. Clearly they are bad value for money, bad for communities and bad for the asylum seekers themselves. The right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has stated his ambition to activate the break clause in these contracts. Given that he is set to become Prime Minister next week, is the Home Secretary planning to rip up the agreements?

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  Unfortunately, this is policy heavy on rhetoric and light on substance, and it risks playing into the hands of Nigel Farage. I thank the right hon. Member for his heckle. He says, “Get it right!” I suggest he gets his knowledge of human rights right. Accommodation costs will remain sky high, small boats will keep coming, with all the danger that that causes to people being trafficked, and the British people will rightly feel that the system is neither fair nor functional. Until Ministers recognise, as asylum seekers seem to, that not having a proper agreement with the EU is at the heart of the small boats crisis, there will be no resolution. Labour MPs claim that the new Prime Minister will present a reset for the country, and we all hope it does, but if the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) sticks with these plans, it will be more of the same—bad value for money for the taxpayer, failures on integration and no comprehensive plan to stop dangerous small boat crossings. That is why the Liberal Democrats will not support this Bill.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  These things are actually defined in law. I saw a human rights barrister on the other side of the Chamber, the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), furrowing his brow at the same time. The shadow Home Secretary mentioned the report by Lord Wolfson, who is in fact a commercial barrister. When he goes into a hospital with a urology complaint, I assume, therefore, that he demands a cardiologist. Maybe he does not, but who knows? Does he seek experts from the right field? Perhaps he does not. According to the Oxford Migration Observatory, asylum seekers in Calais regularly tell researchers that they know the UK’s absence from agreements with the EU is a weakness in our asylum system. They even use the word “Dublin” in reference to the agreement that we left. If asylum seekers have worked it out, why have Ministers not done so? One commentator has even described how Brexit has turned the UK into the final court of appeal for any asylum seeker in the EU. It will come as no surprise that the Liberal Democrats will not be supporting this Bill. It is not because we deny the problems in the UK’s asylum system, which impact not only local people in our constituencies but asylum seekers themselves. It is quite the opposite: the backlog is too large, accommodation costs have spiralled and dangerous small boat crossings must be brought to an end for the good of everyone. However, this Bill does not solve those problems. It piles more bureaucracy on to the Home Office, it risks greater costs to the taxpayer, it undermines integration and it still fails to address the fundamental causes of irregular migration. The Government’s stated rationale for this Bill is: “Claiming asylum in Britain today is more attractive than elsewhere in Europe”. However, data from the Home Secretary’s own Department shows this not to be true. Britain was fifth in the number of asylum applications made to European countries in 2025, behind Germany, France, Spain and Italy. The truth is that many migrants who have had their asylum claims rejected in EU nations are trying their luck in Britain. This is the legacy of the Brexit given to us by Farage and the Conservatives, including the shadow Home Secretary. Our damaged relationship with Europe has created Brexit pull factors, yet nowhere does this Bill attempt to restore an orderly relationship on asylum with our European neighbours to end small boat crossings once and for all. It is an uncomfortable truth for the Conservatives, but it is a problem they created. There is the issue of the asylum backlog. Accommodation costs have risen sharply, with more and more people stuck in hotels at considerable cost. Poor Home Office decision making is a key cause of this backlog, with two thirds of the concluded appeals finding that the Home Office’s initial decision was flawed, yet the Bill does not address the quality of first instance decisions. Instead, it proposes the wholesale reform of the appeals process, creating the Independent Immigration Appeals Authority, which will not be operational until late next year. Even the Home Office has described the value of this measure as uncertain. If the Government want to solve the problem, they should focus their resources on clearing the backlog by expanding processing capacity and ensuring decisions are right first time. Those asylum seekers fortunate enough to be successful in their claims will apparently face a later penalty of £10,000. We Liberal Democrats are in favour of asylum seekers and all migrants contributing to our economy and paying taxes. That is the fair thing to do. It is just one way that we believe migration can make our country a stronger place, but only if integration is successful. However, this measure is punitive, and pushes refugees further towards destitution and state support. Refugees with a job after eight years of being here had a median income of just £23,000 per year. It has been suggested that repayments will start when refugees are earning far less than that, which seems unfair. If the Home Secretary was serious about getting refugees to pay their way, she would take the opportunity to allow asylum seekers to work. This would immediately relieve the burden on the taxpayer and bring down costs. Instead, these proposals create a bigger burden on the state, often falling on already overstretched local councils, which will be forced to look after those who would otherwise become destitute. That is un-British. Sadly, this measure, coupled with potential decades-long waits for leave to remain, will actively undermine the integration that everyone in this House should be aiming for. Costs to the taxpayer are likely to go up and not down. The reviews of refugee status alone are set to cost up to £725 million extra in the first 10 years. On the unintended yet entirely foreseeable consequences, there are serious concerns that this Bill could inadvertently criminalise victims of modern slavery. It is simply unrealistic to assume that people trafficked here by criminal gangs will be able or willing to raise a claim on arrival. The Home Office’s own statistics suggest that there is not widespread abuse of the current system, so it seems this particular measure is unnecessary and could work against the Government’s aims. On the point about the ECHR, the Government know that the interpretation of the law remains in the gift of the UK courts—the judges whom the shadow Home Secretary dislikes so much, but who perform such a valuable role in our justice system—and that will be the case regardless of what happens with this Bill. The reality is that this Bill is all show and no substance. When this House discussed the Home Secretary’s statement last November, something weird happened. An unholy alliance emerged between Labour and the Conservatives, and even the Reform party welcomed the Home Secretary’s approach. The thrust of our response to that statement last November was that there were issues to resolve in the asylum system, which had been devastated by the Conservative Government, but recognition was also needed that immigration has a role to play in our economy and in delivering public services. I also urged the Government to drop divisive rhetoric on this subject, but that suggestion did not quite find favour with the Home Secretary and others. Indeed, after my plea for moderate language, I was in receipt of some direct and forthright feedback from the Home Secretary, which the Minister for Border Security and Asylum will remember. Lord Gove used his “Quite right!” Spectator podcast to call me “oleaginous”, a word that I later learned means oily, the “king of smuggery” and an offensive term, but I will spare Members’ blushes by simply saying that it starts with d and rhymes with “mick”. That is from a Member of the House of Lords in this Parliament. I continue to wear that as a badge of honour. In a different recent podcast, the Home Secretary told an audience member who disagreed with her stance on migration and asylum to eff off, and later she joked that she would taser and deport four of her political opponents. I am clear it was a joke, but I am not absolutely certain that those are the actions a Government Minister should be taking. It is clear that the tone of this debate has not improved much since November. Unfortunately, policy heavy and rhetoric—

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  I am reluctant to interrupt the shadow Home Secretary when he is in full flow, but he listed countries to which we are successfully deporting people; does he think that our membership of the ECHR has any impact on our ability to deport people to those countries?

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make progress. [ Interruption. ] I will give way.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  I was quite taken aback by the passion that the shadow Home Secretary showed for wiping out many decades of hard-won human rights that we all enjoy. Human rights are not just for asylum seekers and people from other countries; in the first instance, human rights are for all of us. To put the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) slightly correct, some rights are absolute, and others are qualified and limited.

• 8 Jul 2026 · European Entry and Exit System · Hansard source

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  It is now 10 years on from the Brexit referendum, and in the words of the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), where are we? We are here, stuck in queues at the EU border for hours at a time, because he and his acolytes forced a damaging Brexit on this country. It is interesting to note that the Conservatives have come to the Chamber today complaining about the consequences of the Brexit deal that they negotiated. The Brexit plan of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), implemented by the Conservatives and unresolved by this Government, has left British holidaymakers in this position. Indeed, the Government are guilty not just of failing to plan, but of political and diplomatic failures that have let down holidaymakers. We are already seeing reports of queues of up to five hours—what a way to start our holidays. What immediate steps is the Minister taking to mitigate disruption? Will he seek an immediate meeting with the European Commission so that contingency measures can be put in place to protect passengers as a matter of urgency? Will the Government drop their red lines on Europe, and commit to joining the single market and customs union? Not only would that reverse the damage done by Brexit and get our economy back on track, but it would mean that we— [ Interruption. ]