Neil O'Brien MP: speeches 2024

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Speeches

20 Nov 2024 · Apprenticeships and T-Levels · Hansard source
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I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this super-important debate. All Westminster Hall debates are equal, but some are more equal than others, and when I saw the title of this debate and that it was being led by my right hon. Friend, I knew that it would be a good one. I have not been disappointed at all, nor have I been disappointed by the excellent speeches by the hon. Members for Dudley (Sonia Kumar), for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), and for Mansfield (Steve Yemm); by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) and by the hon. Members for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) and for Hartlepool (Mr Brash); by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) and by the hon. Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom). There was also a rare appearance in Westminster Hall by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), which I am sure we all savour. [Hon. Members: “More!”] More indeed. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire did a superb job in giving us the fruit of his many years of experience and his multiple periods of service in public life, including two stints in the Department for Education, regarding this issue. He talked about the alphabet soup of organisations and qualifying bodies, the traineeships, the apprenticeships, the modern apprenticeships, the City & Guilds, the GNVQs, the NVQs, the Skills for Life, the diplomas, the BTECs and now the T-levels. The question now is this: will T-levels just be another element added to this alphabet soup, or will we actually realise the vision of what we have called the Sainsbury routes and rationalise the system? My right hon. Friend asked big questions about where the Government are going with traineeships, the apprenticeship levy and Skills England, and it will not surprise him that I will pick up on those questions. I have several questions for the Minister. First, do the Government have a forecast for the number of apprenticeships that will start over the course of this Parliament? Such a forecast has certainly existed in the past; I saw one when I was in government. Do the Government have such a forecast? If so, will they publish it? What is the forecast number of apprenticeships that will start over the course of this Parliament? I ask that question because unless we know that baseline, we cannot ask sensible questions such as “What will be the impact of the growth and skills levy on the number of apprenticeships?” Without the baseline we cannot have a debate about the trade-off between one desirable thing, which is more flexibility for businesses, and another desirable thing, which is more apprenticeships. Is it still the Government’s policy to allow 50% of levy funds, rather than a specific number, to be spent on non-apprenticeships, or will it be perhaps another percentage now? What is the impact of the national insurance increase, first, on the number of apprenticeships —that is why we want to know the baseline number of apprenticeships—and, secondly, on the FE sector more generally? The national insurance increase is focused laser-like on lower-income workers, which particularly hits apprentices and people in the FE sector, so there is every reason to think that it will be particularly impactful for those two groups. Will the FE sector be fully compensated for the national insurance increase, or not? I echo some of the excellent questions that the hon. Member for Bournemouth East asked about college funding. As the Minister knows, colleges are now classified as part of the public sector, but unlike other parts of the public sector they are not exempt from paying VAT. Is it the Government’s intention to change that situation or not? The other day, Baroness Smith of Malvern said that college staff were “rightly” disappointed that they were not given the same pay increase as schoolteachers. She implied that the Government would seek to close that historic gap; it has existed for many decades. I am not asking for miracles from the Government; this is a very long-standing challenge that everyone says is a problem. It has become slightly worse in the first pay round under this Government; the gap has grown a bit more. Is it the Government’s long-term aspiration to close that gap between sixth-form college teachers and teachers in schools? I am interested in whether that is the direction of travel. Will the Minister also answer some structural questions? The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill is obviously going through the Lords at the moment. We have already raised the question about Skills England and—as the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire said—the powers are being taken not into a new independent body but directly into the Department. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said, it would be pretty extraordinary if the Ministers set their own standards for A-levels, so why do we think it would be okay in technical education? What is the Government’s game plan after the IfATE Bill? What is the plan to restore independent standards setting, rather than having it in what is only an agency of the Department? I also want to ask a really specific question. This is a genuine question because I do not understand the decision. Why did the Department refuse to share the terms of reference for the short review of 16 to 19 qualifications with the wider world? I know that FE Week certainly put in a freedom of information request to get it, which is a pretty extraordinary thing to have to do. Normally, when there is a review, the terms of reference are published. That review is not a secret. We know what the Government are looking at—a known question about BTECs and what will happen. Why did the Government not publish it and will they now? On one last structural question, my sympathies are entirely with the Minister and the Government as there is a big question here, and this is not a straightforward challenge. We have heard the case for BTECs from various Members—the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam made a passionate case in favour of them. I should declare an interest as I worked on T-levels before they were called T-levels, when they were still called the Sainsbury routes. Lord Sainsbury, Gordon Brown, Nick Boles and others did a huge amount of work to bring them to that point in trying to rationalise this alphabet soup. T-levels are our best hope: they are a more demanding qualification, they have a higher level of funding and they use a lot more time in industry. They are a better qualification that is bringing parity of esteem and higher quality to the FE sector, and they are our big chance to rationalise this issue that everyone agrees is a problem. How far will the Government go towards replacing some of the existing qualifications, and what is their overall strategy and vision for how this will pan out?
20 Nov 2024 · Apprenticeships and T-Levels · Hansard source
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Will the Government agree to publish the terms of reference of that review?
20 Nov 2024 · Apprenticeships and T-Levels · Hansard source
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Will the Minister give way?
20 Nov 2024 · Apprenticeships and T-Levels · Hansard source
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Is that a yes? Will the Minister—
12 Nov 2024 · Great British Energy · Hansard source
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Before the election, Labour said that Great British Energy would cut electricity bills by £300. After the election, the Labour Government voted against writing that into law and instead took away people’s winter fuel payments and made their bills more expensive. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has now said that their policies are fundamentally raising prices for consumers to the tune of £120 per household, and we know from the NESO report that this will get worse. Even if they triple the pace of wind roll-out, double the pace of grid connection and make other heroic assumptions, all of this is going to bump up costs further, is it not? We are doing this from the basis of having the high electricity prices in Europe. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact on British industry?
12 Nov 2024 · School Transport: Northumberland · Hansard source
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I am grateful for the Minister’s answer. I am keen to understand whether local authorities will be compensated, not just for the direct costs to their own staff of the increased national insurance payments, but for the costs of services that they buy in, such as home-to-school transport. Will that also be fully compensated?
12 Nov 2024 · School Transport: Northumberland · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) on securing this hugely important debate. This is an important subject to talk about, and there have been really good contributions from multiple Members. I declare an interest in Northumberland, as it is where I got married, in Wooler near Rothbury, which has already been mentioned. I have a great appreciation for Northumberland as a county. If I am not in the constituencies of the hon. Members for Hexham or for North Northumberland (David Smith) in the summer, I am normally in the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), so they are all places for which I have a lot of love. I will recap the story a little. Last year, we announced an extra £500 million of funding for local government for adult and children’s social care, particularly to reduce the pressure on other areas of children’s services, such as home-to-school transport. It was part of our wider strategy for children’s social care reform and allocated to things such as expanding family help, targeted early intervention and all those things. It was part of a wider settlement for local government last year, which was another above-inflation settlement. Local government absolutely was squeezed in the coalition years, when we were clearing up the large deficit after the financial crisis, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out, but funding per person in 2024-25 is set to be 10% higher in real terms per person than in 2019-20, with bigger increases for the most deprived councils. It is worth recognising that what happened over the last Parliament is not the same as what happened in the period 2010-2015, when there were real-terms increases per person for local government. I mention that because the local government financial settlement for next year is now looming; I guess that we should expect it some time in the next month. Perhaps the Minister will tell us when it is coming. I have a couple of specific questions that I hope she will be able to answer, as they are relevant to this debate. What will the total cost to local government be of the national insurance increase announced in the Budget? What will the cost of the national insurance increase be specifically to home school transport? Will local authorities be compensated for those costs? We know that one of the recurring issues with the national insurance increase is who will be compensated. Public services that are not part of the public sector are not included in the protection. For example, GPs are up in arms about the enormous bills that they all face, and there are similar issues for nurseries, which are extremely concerned. The university sector has already learned that the entirety of the increase paid for by the breaking of the tuition fees promise will pay for the breaking of the promise on national insurance, so one broken promise will pay for another. All the gains that it thought it was going to get from the tuition fees increase are being entirely wiped out and eaten up by the cost of the national insurance increase, so real-terms funding for universities will go down. Those issues very much apply to home-to-school transport, a public service provided by people outside the public sector. Will the Minister tell us whether they will be fully compensated for that? I hope she will be able to give us that assurance. We have touched on some of the wider issues in which this issue is situated. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has mentioned this, but I was really sad to see the end of the “get around for £2” scheme, which we introduced and extended to the end of 2024. I know from my own community that it has particularly benefited people in rural areas, so I am sad to see that it has gone and there is effectively a 50% increase in the cost of a lot of journeys on buses. That is a real shame, because I felt we were making progress on buses. I was involved in the Bus Services Act 2017, which gave mayoral combined authorities the power to introduce into other areas of the country the kind of franchising that London has enjoyed for a long time. It was sad to see the scrapping of the dualling of the A1 through Northumberland. Land and houses had been bought up to allow for the work, which makes it even worse. I was astonished to see that in the Budget, although there was lots of capital for other things, including the different things that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) wants to do on net zero, there was an overall reduction in capital transport spending. I was really surprised by that. I do not really understand what the logic was.
12 Nov 2024 · School Transport: Northumberland · Hansard source
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We had finally got there. We had bought the land and the houses, and the thing was about to happen. Somehow, the new Government snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, which is desperately sad. We will have to agree to disagree on that. We have talked a bit about SEND funding in the round. The high needs block spending grew 70% between 2018-19 and 2024-25, so we put a lot more money into it. Hon. Members might say that is still not enough, and I would totally understand where they are coming from, but the demand is exploding upwards. I know that the Minister will be thinking equally about the causes of that and what she can do about it—not just meeting the need, but trying to understand the root causes and reduce the need for these services. There was a very large increase in that high needs block SEND spending. A couple of hon. Members mentioned that one of the ways to solve the issue is not to look at the transport but to look at the schools. This is a long-term obsession of mine. I had a Westminster Hall debate not so long ago about this very issue. Since 1980, the number of small schools with fewer than 200 pupils had roughly halved, from 11,464 to 5,406, by 2018. That is a long-term trend. Since 2000, rural schools—those in villages and hamlets—have been twice as likely to shut. When they have shut, the typical walk time to the nearest school has been about 52 minutes. That long-term trend, which has occurred under Governments of all three of the main parties, has posed all sorts of challenges for rural areas. To try to arrest that trend, we brought in the lump sum within the national funding formula, which is about 60% of the total funding. It is a hugely important part of the funding and I look forward to hon. Members championing it. We must think about how we keep village and rural schools, which are such an important part of rural communities, going. That is not just because they make life simpler and the whole transport issue simpler, but because they are at the heart of rural communities. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale talked about a 36% increase in taxis. We need to think about how we can attack the underlying causes of the need. I am sure that the Minister will be thinking about this. I will end where I started by congratulating, in an honest way, the hon. Member for Hexham on securing this debate. It is hugely important. He made a super-important point about siblings being treated differently, which seems like absolute craziness. I am sure that we all agree that we ought to tackle that, but there are opportunities to address these issues, particularly through the local government funding formula. Government Ministers will stand up in a few weeks’ time and give us the numbers for how much local government is getting, but those in local government will want to know what is happening to their costs and for which of the services they provide, such as home-to-school transport, they will get compensation on the national insurance increase, because otherwise they will not know whether they are really ahead or behind.
4 Nov 2024 · Teaching Assistants and Support Staff · Hansard source
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On pay, what is the cost to schools and colleges of the national insurance increase? How much will be provided to them in compensation? Will the Secretary of State confirm clearly that they will be fully compensated for the increased prices that suppliers and indirectly employed members of staff, such as caterers and IT and premises staff, will charge as a result? Will those indirect costs be covered—yes or no?
4 Nov 2024 · Skills and Employment · Hansard source
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The sun always shines on Chorley, Mr Speaker. One thing that helps young people to gain skills is involvement in the cadets, but the Department recently confirmed a decision to cancel support payments to combined cadet forces in state schools. That payment was something that people involved in the cadets and teachers really valued. What assessment was made beforehand of the impact that this cut would have? Will the Secretary of State reconsider it?
4 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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rose—
28 Oct 2024 · Fiscal Rules · Hansard source
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Before the election, the Chancellor said that she would not change the measure of debt in order to borrow more, but now she is talking about doing exactly that. Before the election, she said that she would not increase national insurance, but now she is talking about doing exactly that. Before the election, Labour steered people away from the idea that the Government would cut the winter fuel payment, but they have already done exactly that. They said, before the election, that they would not increase taxes on working people, but now they are planning to do exactly that. Does the Minister understand why so many of my constituents feel that they were misled?
28 Oct 2024 · New Homes Accelerator Programme: Stretton Hall · Hansard source
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Documents from Harborough district council reveal that there are sites with a capacity of up to 16,000 homes around Stretton Hall. The Government’s press release in August said that there would be around 4,000 homes on the site that they are involved in. Will the Minister confirm which Minister visited the site before the announcement? Will he agree to publish the methodology that led to our community being selected, and the list of sites that were considered but not selected?
28 Oct 2024 · New Homes Accelerator Programme: Stretton Hall · Hansard source
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3. What plans her Department has to develop Stretton Hall through the new homes accelerator programme.
28 Oct 2024 · China: Human Rights and Sanctions · Hansard source
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Mr Speaker, as one of the parliamentarians who has been sanctioned by the Chinese regime, I thank you for your ongoing advocacy on our behalf. Let us never forget that the Chinese regime were literally spying on us as Members of this House. In Opposition, the Labour party said there was “clear and compelling evidence” of a genocide in Xinjiang. Now that the right hon. Gentleman is the Foreign Secretary, is he prepared to repeat that statement? Does he still believe there is “clear and compelling evidence” of a genocide in Xinjiang or has he changed his mind?
22 Oct 2024 · Gaza: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source
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The footage of children caught up in the fighting in Gaza is horrendous, and so is the footage of those who are still held hostage. First, what is the Minister doing to ensure the protection of aid workers in Gaza and Lebanon and, secondly, given that she has just told us that our efforts to get more aid in are not working, what are her next ideas? Where will we go from here, because clearly it is not working?
22 Oct 2024 · Gaza: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source
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19. What steps he is taking to help bring humanitarian relief to civilians in Gaza.
8 Oct 2024 · Zero Carbon Electricity System · Hansard source
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The previous Secretary of State commissioned the Department to produce a full economic costing for getting to a fully decarbonised renewables-based grid by 2030, as the Secretary of State wants. That is obviously the sort of information that should be placed before the House so that we can have an informed discussion. It may be a good thing to do, but we should obviously know what the cost is. When will the Secretary of State publish that information?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I beg to move, That this House has considered illegal immigration. I must start by saying that our numbers in this debate are more select than they might otherwise be, were it not for the fact that many Members are taking part in the vital debate on the Government’s decision to take the winter fuel payment away from 10 million needy pensioners. Since 1971, it has been a criminal offence for a person who is not a British citizen to knowingly enter this country without leave to do so. Yet since the start of 2021, more than 125,000 people have come to the UK illegally in small boats—about 94 people every day. In the period since Labour came to power alone, about 8,400 people have come—about 137 every day. Of course, people also come via other illegal routes, and, for obvious reasons, it is difficult to estimate the total number of people in the country illegally. However, the numbers are clearly significant. A 2020 report for the Pew Research Center estimated that at the end of 2017, 800,000 to 1.2 million people were already living in the UK without a valid residence permit, which is about 1.2% to 1.8% of the whole population. Illegal immigration is unfair on those who have played by the rules and come here legally. It undermines attempts to get the kind of high-skill, high-wage migration that all politicians say they want and it blows a hole in our attempts to keep dangerous people out of the country. It is a huge issue. Many of the people coming here in the small boats are, in reality, economic migrants—not all, but many. At present, the No. 1 country of origin is Vietnam, which is a friendly and peaceful country. However, as the University of Oxford Migration Observatory pointed out, it is also a country where there are lots of strong connections to organised crime for those crossing from Vietnam, or being trafficked from there. Most of the people in the small boats are young men—nine out of 10 are men, and about three quarters are aged 18 to 39. Few have any documentation, with only about 2% having passports, which makes it difficult to prove who they are or where they are from, and, coached by the people smugglers, most destroy any evidence —pocket litter, SIM cards and the like—that would tell us where they are from. The overwhelming majority of these people will claim asylum. They know that if they can make it to the UK, they will be able to stay by one means or another—most will be granted asylum, and, of those who are not, very few will be removed. Looking at the period 2019 to 2022, we see that only about a fifth of applications were refused, and only one in 20 people was actually made to leave the country through enforced or voluntary returns. Asylum grant rates have steadily climbed in recent decades, from less than a third in 2004 to around four fifths now, while the proportion of people who are ultimately removed has dropped sharply over the past 10 years. Previously, around a quarter of those who claimed asylum were returned; now, the figure is only around one in 20. Many of those who are not granted asylum simply disappear. In November 2023, the Home Office admitted that it does not know the whereabouts of around 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been discontinued. Those coming in the small boats know the bottom line: if they can get to the UK, they can stay. As long as that is the case, more and more people will come. The Government say they are trying to address the issue in a variety of ways, which I will work through. First, they are trying to process people faster, which, in practice, means granting more people asylum more quickly. That means that the costs of the asylum system disappear into the costs of the wider welfare system, but, of course, the costs in the real world do not go away. A number of local councils are concerned that people will shift from asylum accommodation to presenting as statutory homeless and in need of council housing. These trends are quite difficult to get a handle on in the UK, because, while lots of other Governments are publishing more and more data, we in the UK are publishing less and less. The Department for Work and Pensions has stopped publishing data on welfare claims by nationality, and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has stopped publishing tax paid and tax credits received by nationality. The Home Office will not answer questions on the immigration status of prisoners, such as whether a prisoner is here illegally—although it has the data, it does not publish it—and it does not collect data on the nationality or immigration status of those who are arrested. When asked basic questions such as how much it spends, on average, per night on hotel accommodation, the Home Office says such information is commercially confidential. When asked about spending programmes such as the refugee integration loan scheme, the Home Office says it does not know how much it has spent, it does not know how many loans it has made, and it does not know how many have been repaid. That is a pretty shocking way to handle taxpayers’ money and it all breeds huge mistrust, meaning that we cannot have a sensible debate about the costs and benefits of different migration policies. The first question that I hope the Minister will answer is this: will she publish the data, so that we can at least have a sensible discussion about the facts? The second thing that the Government say they are trying to do is to increase deportations of those who should not be here, which is obviously an idea I welcome. In some ways, however, this is surprising because when the Prime Minister was campaigning to be the leader of the Labour party, he signed a letter calling for the suspension of a flight to deport 50 offenders to Jamaica and the suspension of all such future charter flights. In total, 151 Labour MPs and peers signed that letter. Among those who escaped deportation that day were Ikiva Heaven, a heroin dealer who had already served four years in prison and who went on to be jailed again in May 2021 for dealing cocaine and heroin. If that was not bad enough, one of the other criminals who Labour Members so generously campaigned on behalf of, Ernesto Elliott, went on to commit murder. The Prime Minister has previously claimed that there is a “racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”. None the less, I take it on trust that a new leaf has been turned over and that the Government really do want to increase deportations. However, we need some clarity about exactly what the Government’s target and promise are. The Home Secretary has said that she will “reverse the collapse in removals that has taken place since 2010”. — [ Official Report , 22 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 386.] As the Minister will know, I was quite critical of the last Government on this issue so I would welcome an increase in deportations. However, my question to the Minister is this: what will the Government achieve, by when? Are we talking about enforced returns or all returns? By when will we reach what level of deportations? For background, the number of enforced returns was 21,425 in 2004; by 2009, that figure had declined to 13,938. It declined further to just 9,236 by 2018. It then ran at about 3,000 a year during the pandemic, when no one was flying—fair enough. However, it then went back up to 7,119 in the year ending June 2024. What is the Government’s ambition regarding enforced returns? Is it only to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels? If so, that would leave the figure substantially below 2010 levels and at about half the rate that we had in 2004. That would not be very ambitious. Will the Government figure also include voluntary returns? If that is the case, the Home Secretary’s recent announcement that she wanted to raise levels up to the “highest level since 2018” involves a very odd target, because returns have already increased to above that level. In 2018, they were 24,938; in the year ending June 2024, they were 29,551. She could go backwards and still hit her target, which is hardly a stretching ambition. The second question that I hope the Minister will answer when she responds to the debate is about what exactly the Government are promising, by when, and on what kind of deportations. We urgently need clarity. That brings me to my third question for the Minister. For some countries of origin, such as Albania, we have already secured returns agreements; that has been very effective. Given that the number of people coming from Vietnam is now very high, I am sure that the Government will quickly secure a returns agreement with that country. However, what do the Government plan when it comes to countries that will not take their nationals back or countries that the Government will not want to send nationals back to—such as Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, which account for a very large share of illegal immigration to the UK? I take it that the Government will not negotiate returns agreements with the Taliban, the ayatollahs of Iran or Assad in Syria. To solve the problem, Governments across Europe are negotiating deals with safe third countries. Last week, we got the news that a senior Minister in Germany was looking to take up the relationship with Rwanda that the Labour Government have rashly abandoned without putting any alternative in place. It is not just Germany that wants to do this; two camps will be built in Albania to house migrants rescued at sea by Italian boats while Italy processes their asylum claims. The EU has ruled that that is legal under European law. Denmark passed legislation allowing for the processing of asylum claims in third countries in 2021. The Chancellor of Austria praised the last Government’s agreement with Rwanda, saying that it was a “pioneer for us being able to put asylum proceedings in safe third countries”. In May, 15 EU member states wrote to the European Commission to back the creation of centres in third countries. The signatories included Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania. Lots of Governments are looking at this issue and responding. In a recent letter, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, noted that “Many Member States are looking at innovative strategies to prevent irregular migration by tackling asylum applications further from the EU external border”. She promised to look at the issue during the current European Parliament cycle. The use of safe third countries is not a new idea. Outside Europe, Australia has been intercepting boats at sea and putting people in safe third countries since 2001. Here, Tony Blair’s Government worked to get a deal with Tanzania to send failed asylum seekers there, and that Government also worked to get a deal with other EU member states that would have seen asylum processing in third countries—an idea that is clearly coming back again. Of course, there are differences between the schemes: between sending failed asylum seekers to other countries, processing asylum claims offshore or doing both the processing and accepting of asylum claims in other countries. They have different merits, but all stop failed asylum seekers from remaining here illegally. It seems certain to me that this Government must and will end up negotiating similar agreements with third countries of their own, which is why it was so rash of them to trash the Rwanda scheme with no alternative. My third question is: having rashly handed over all the work we did with Rwanda to Germany, will the Government now U-turn and start working on third-country deals of the kinds that many other countries now have or are setting up? I have already mentioned Australia’s policy of intercepting boats at sea, and my fourth question relates to that. What will the Government do to ensure that people intercepted at sea are towed back to France rather than the UK? That is an increasingly important point because the small boats crisis has entered a new and more dangerous phase. The average number of people in each boat has been increasing, and partly because of the success of the last Government in increasingly intercepting engines—the most difficult element of the people smugglers’ kit—we are seeing very large and increasingly overcrowded boats putting out to sea with really small engines. Those things are death traps by design; they are not even intended to get across the channel but purely to get a few miles out to sea and then rely on being rescued. Other innovations by the criminals, such as taking the hard floor out of the boats, have already had deadly and tragic consequences. The legal argument has always been made that, under the law of the sea, those things are by definition a risk to life at sea. It has got even stronger, which shifts the argument for us to turn more of them back to France. I know that the French have occasionally allowed those boats to be towed back to France when the circumstances have been acute enough, but the argument has got stronger. Will the Minister commit to doing just that? Everything we do at every stage to disrupt the people smugglers’ business model helps to make it unviable and to stop this evil trade. That brings me to my final question for the Minister: what will the Government do about the underlying reasons why people come from safe third countries to the UK? I said at the start that people know that, as long as they can make it to the UK, they will be able to stay. As long as they know that, they will continue to come. Successive Governments since 2018 have worked with France and other allies to improve enforcement. There have been some results from that, but on its own, it is not going to be enough. We need people to realise that crossings are futile so that they do not step into a deadly boat in the first place. Some people think that we can solve the problem by just granting more visas for people to come here legally—so-called safe and legal routes. They are saying, “Just make illegal immigration legal, and the problem is solved”. The problem is that, unless we are prepared to have completely open borders and to impose no limits at all, there will always be people who come illegally. For example, 2,233 people from India have come on small boats. India is the world’s largest democracy with a booming economy and an impressive space programme, but we have given—over the same period that the boats have been operating—1.3 million non-visitor visas to people from India. There are loads of opportunities to come here legally from India, and yet thousands of people have still come here illegally. That shows us that we can never solve this problem by having slightly more or slightly bigger safe and legal routes. It is true that we have created, quite rightly, a number of additional routes on top of the asylum system. Through those humanitarian routes, plus the asylum system, we have taken about half a million people over the last five years; some of them lived in my house—I had Ukrainian refugees living in my house. But sadly, we cannot have an unlimited scheme for every country in the world that is poorer or more oppressive than the UK, because that is a very large share of the world’s population. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, about 16% of all adults worldwide say that they would leave their own country permanently if they could—that would be about 900 million people. They are not wrong to want to move to a richer country, but we simply cannot take all those who would like to move here. Doing things that simply increase the acceptance rate in the asylum system to “clear the backlog” is likely only to increase the pull factor and encourage more people to take that dangerous journey across the channel. If we look at the countries of origin that account for most of those crossing the channel, we can see that the grant rates have been increasing dramatically over recent years. Even on initial, first-round decisions, acceptances from Vietnam have gone up from about 20% to 60% in recent years. From Eritrea and Sudan, the rates have gone up from 20% to about 100%, and from Afghanistan and Syria, they are about 100%. The figures on final decisions, and on the proportion of people who are actually removed, are even starker. The share of those coming from Vietnam who are returned has declined from about two thirds in the mid-noughties to just 1%. For Turkey, it has gone from 0.5% to 1%. From Iran, from one in five to just 1%. Even for friendly countries like India—booming economies, superpowers in the making—it has gone from half to just one in 10. There are multiple reasons why someone’s chances of remaining in the UK having come here illegally have increased so much over time. Case law has gradually broadened the definition of groups that are at “risk of persecution”, allowing more and more people to come to the UK if their own countries do not meet the very high standards of western liberal norms. The expansion by the courts of the concept of persecution has left immigration officers facing almost impossible questions of judgment: is someone really a member of this political party or this religion, do they practise their lifestyle or faith openly or quietly, or are they a prominent target? Often there is variation within countries and between time periods. In some cases, people are not being persecuted in their own country, but they argue they would be persecuted if they returned. For example, military men from Eritrea who have left without permission can be made to do military service, which is then used as an argument to stay in the UK. Should we have to accept any young man who comes here from Eritrea for that reason? I do not think that just because someone’s country is poorer or more oppressive than the UK that gives them a right to come to the UK, but that is the direction that judicial activism has taken. To create some accountability and transparency around this, I have pushed for the decisions of the first-tier immigration tribunal to be published rather than kept secret, as at present, but that still has not happened. Hand in glove with judicial activism, the Shaw review and the decline of immigration and detention have made the practicalities of deporting people much harder. Far and away the biggest legal change is the growth in case law associated with the European convention on human rights, signed in 1950. While the 1951 refugee convention had no court or enforcement mechanism at the start, the convention of course has its own court in Strasbourg. Unlike Germany, the UK has a dualist legal system, meaning that treaties do not directly apply, so historically it was able to ignore rulings of the European court. However, in 1998, the Blair Government incorporated the convention into domestic law, meaning people could use their ECHR rights in the domestic courts, directly. I think Tony Blair regretted that very quickly, because in 2006 the courts ruled on the case of nine Afghans who hijacked an airliner in Afghanistan and held its occupants at gunpoint for four days at Stansted airport in 2000. The court granted them leave to remain in this country in a claim heavily based on ECHR rights. Case law has shifted the meaning of some of the very vaguely defined rights in the convention in a way that would have stunned the original signatories. As an example, a Government consultation listed some cases showing how the balance has shifted. I will mention some of those in this debate. Take case X, a foreign national who had leave to remain in the UK, who committed a series of crimes including common assault, battery, destruction of property and grievous bodily harm. The immigration and asylum tribunal found it would be a disproportionate interference with the appellant’s rights to deport them, given their relationship with their child. If we take case AD, a Turkish national who was convicted of an offence of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to 54 months’ imprisonment, in September 2019, the first-tier tribunal allowed his appeal against deportation on human rights grounds. After protracted litigation relying on his period of lawful residence and marriage to a UK national, the upper-tier tribunal allowed the appeal on article 8 ECHR grounds. In the case of OO, a Nigerian national convicted of intent to supply crack cocaine and heroin and two offences of violence, in 2020, the first-tier tribunal allowed his appeal against deportation, again on article 8 ECHR grounds, and the upper-tier tribunal upheld these findings, relying on what it called OO’s “significant obstacles” to integrating back in Nigeria. I do not think that any of these decisions were what Winston Churchill intended when he set up the Council of Europe. Jonathan Sumption, one of our leading jurists, is right to say that these incredibly vaguely defined rights are “dangerous for democracy”. ECHR rights are being used to block us from doing many of the things that we need to do to prevent people who arrive here illegally from lying about their age. A recent freedom of information response released by the Home Office makes it clear that many people are lying about their age. We can now see that supposedly there are 50% more 16-year-olds arriving here than 18-year-olds, and there are also 50% more 20-year-olds than 18-year-olds, leaving a suspicious dip in the numbers around the age of 18. However, the medical examinations that would enable us to stop people lying about their ages are often barred by ECHR rights. We saw a tragic case of a dangerous person lying about their age with Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, who claimed to be 14 when he was 19, and went on to kill Tom Roberts, an aspiring Royal Marine. That awful and dangerous case showed in multiple ways how the system elevates the rights of dangerous people over the rights of people in this country who just want to stay safe. Enforcement is very important, and I hope the Minister will let us know when the head of the new border security command is going to be appointed, as several months have passed now. It is essentially a rebadging of existing measures, but it is still not good that the post has remained vacant for so long. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that someone has finally been appointed. There are, however, limits to what enforcement can do. Tony Smith, the former head of Border Force, has pointed out that just relying on enforcement alone is like playing whack-a-mole. One gang can be shut down, but another one will always pop up. That is why he calls the decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme “rash”. Those who come on the small boats know the bottom line. If they can get to the UK, they can stay. Until we change that, more and more people will force their way into this country illegally. That is not fair on British citizens and it is not fair to legal migrants to this country. It brings significant costs to the British taxpayer and lets dangerous people into our country. During the election I met many people who were in despair about the small boats. They felt it was profoundly unfair, and that the rights of people who forced their way into this country were considered more important than their rights. They are right to feel that way. I was critical of the previous Government, but I am not optimistic about the current Government fixing any of these things. Perhaps the Minister will prove me wrong when she responds to the debate. At the very least, I hope that the Minister will answer some questions directly. First, will the Government publish the data that the DWP and the Home Office keep secret? Secondly, will the Government set out a clear, measurable and specific target for removals with a date on it? Thirdly, will the Government U-turn and start talks to create third-country agreements of the kind that they have just abandoned? Fourthly, will they start to tow boats back to France, given the overwhelming risk to public safety and the clear legal arguments for doing that? Finally, and above all, will the Government start to address the deeper reasons why illegal immigrants and people-smugglers know that, if they force their way into the UK, they will be able to stay?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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Can I press the Minister on my specific question about what the Government’s target is? The hon. Lady talked about getting to the highest six-monthly rate by the end of this year. What is the Government’s longer-term target? If we were to believe what the Home Secretary said when she was the shadow Home Secretary, they are going to reverse and get back up to the level of deportations we had in 2010—that is the logical reading of what she said. Is that the Government’s target? Are they going to get deportations back to 2010 levels?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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The Minister is kind to give way in the middle of her peroration. I just wondered whether I could press her on the point about towing more of the boats back to France. The legal arguments are so strong: the chances of us saving lives at sea are so strong that the legal arguments are absolutely crystal clear. Is it the Government’s ambition that a greater share of these boats will be towed back to France rather than towed to the UK?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I thank the Minister for giving way again; it is kind of her. The question is not about return agreements but about third-country agreements, whereby those seeking asylum in this country are sent to a third country that is not their home country if their application fails or to have their processing done. That is the kind of agreement that Tony Blair argued for. The Italians, for example, already have one up and running, and many European countries are setting them up.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I want to press the Minister on the question I asked about third countries. Tony Blair has advocated third-country agreements, and many other European countries are signing them, although there are countries that we would not, for obvious reasons, want to return even failed asylum seekers to. Are the Government ruling out any such third-country agreements?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I thank all Members who have taken part in what I thought was a good-tempered and interesting debate, in which many made good and important contributions. I actually agree with many of the things that the Minister said, such as her point about the powerful link to wider criminality from the criminal gangs that operate the illegal trade across the channel. Her comments also give me the opportunity to thank our European partners with whom we have been working intensely, over the last couple of years, particularly in Bulgaria, to stop the flow of boats and engines to the criminal gangs. This is a shared European challenge and it can only grow over time, because of the growth of the population—particularly the young population —in the countries of origin. So there are things we do agree on. We got some interesting answers to the five questions that I asked. I am afraid we did not hear much on data. There are lots of interesting pieces of data that the Government really should be—but are not—publishing at the moment. I encourage the Minister to start publishing things that the public really deserve to know. On the deportations target, which has the ambition to get back to 2010 levels, I will support anything that will increase levels of deportations. It was interesting that the Minister did not rule out signing third-country agreements of the kind that other European countries have. I encourage her to get on with that, and to go as fast as she can towards doing that. On the question of towing boats back to France, the Minister said it was tricky and that she was thinking about it. I encourage her to really go for it, because that will help us profoundly to disrupt the people smugglers’ business model. However, what we did not really get into—I thought this was interesting in some of the comments made by Labour Members—was the point about the underlying causes, pull factors and reasons why so many people come, which is because they know they will be able to stay. There were some interesting and important contributions on enforcement, but I encourage the Members present to listen to three Tonys: one is a Labour politician, one is a Liberal and one is a civil servant. One is Tony Smith, the head of UK Border Force, who said that enforcement on its own will never be enough; he is right about that. He has said it is rash to scrap the Rwanda scheme. The second Tony we have to listen to is Tony Blair, who was trying to set up third-country agreements. I hope that will persuade Labour politicians that they need to be doing the same thing—even Tony Blair agrees that it is the right thing to do. The third is Tony Abbott, the former Australian Prime Minister, who pioneered interception at sea and ended Australia’s small boats crisis by towing the boats back to third countries, as we should be doing here between the UK and France. There are things we can agree on. But I think there are things the Government say about enforcement that imply that no one has thought of enforcement before, and that we have not worked with lots of European countries before—we have; we have been doing this for years. However, that on its own is not enough. At some point—perhaps it has already happened—the Minister will realise that is the case. I hope that when she does so, she will join us in thinking about how we can tackle the underlying reasons that so many people are getting into these deadly boats and putting money in the hands of dangerous criminals to risk their lives crossing to this country. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered illegal immigration.
10 Sept 2024 · Recent Disorder · Hansard source
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The Government have rightly found prison places for those involved in the recent disorder, but they have done that by continuing their early release policy. Will the Secretary of State confirm that those guilty of manslaughter are among those able to get early release, and will she explain to the House why people guilty of manslaughter should be released early?

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