Paul Foster MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  Q Could the Bill do more to legislate around cryptocurrency or should that be dealt with elsewhere? Helen Rance: I think that should be dealt with elsewhere.

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

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  Q Good morning, everyone. I have a direct question for Vicky, following on from the previous question. In your submission, you welcomed the Government’s objective of creating a fairer and more efficient asylum system, but you raised concerns about several specific provisions in the Bill. Can you explain to us which aspects of the Bill present the greatest risk to refugee protection? Vicky Tennant: Thank you very much, and thanks for referring to the observations we shared with the Home Secretary a few weeks ago. What we essentially said is that we are very supportive of the overall objective to improve the asylum system by making it fairer, more efficient and more sustainable, and we think there are elements of the Bill that move in that direction. The spirit of our observations was very much along the lines of highlighting where we felt it could be strengthened to better achieve those objectives. Of course, as the UN refugee agency we are very focused on what the Bill means for protections and solutions for asylum seekers and refugees. We also very much recognise the importance of public confidence in a well-functioning system—and that means not just a fair and efficient process for refugees, but the ability to return people who are found not to be in need of international protection. It means safe, regular routes for people, so that they are not forced into these dangerous journeys that we are all so conscious of. It is also about facilitating co-operation with international partners to address the challenges. We are very much coming from the perspective of recognising the challenges, and we want to work with the Government to address those. We have approached our engagement with the Bill very much with that in mind. The observations speak to a number of areas, three of which I would highlight in particular. First, there are the very extensive provisions that deal with the appeals system and the establishment of the new appeals body. From our perspective that is not, in itself, inherently problematic, but what is essential that the body will only be able to achieve the objectives of helping contribute to that fairer and more sustainable asylum system if it has the relevant expertise firmly embedded in both the profile of the adjudicators and the role that legal expertise will play in the adjudication process. It is clearly important that the body both is, and is seen to be, independent of the initial decision-making process, and is transparent in terms of being open to public scrutiny, including on the quality of the adjudication process. Then there are the procedural safeguards, such as access to legal advice and support, and the possibility for those with protection claims to have an oral hearing. Those are all key safeguards, and they are really essential. What you want is accurate, high-quality decisions so that appellants are not then in a position of lodging more appeals to the first-tier tribunal. We are very happy, by the way, that the possibility of further recourse to the first-tier tribunal is there, but we do not want to see it overused either; we want to see high-quality decisions at the appeal stage and, even better, at the first instance stage. That whole area of appeals is one where we feel that more information and more elements could be provided to facilitate the consideration of the Bill. The second area—I am going to mention three—is the provision that would allow recovery of the asylum support provided to asylum seekers while their claims are looked into. First, I would highlight that asylum seekers do not have the right to work, so in many cases they are forced to rely on that support. Secondly, they have no control over the length of the process, so they have no control over how long it will take to get a decision. A high proportion of asylum seekers are subsequently recognised as refugees, and essentially saddling them with the prospect of an obligation to repay what could be a really very large sum of money is not going to help to facilitate the integration process at the moment when they should be getting back on their feet. That is not in the interests of refugees, and it is also not in the interests of communities. We also believe that there is an issue of compatibility with the refugee convention. It is quite a technical issue, and we have set it out in detail in the observations. I can say more about that if you would like, but that is an area where we would urge another look. The third area is in relation to article 8 of the European convention on human rights. In the observations, we have not gone into detail on all the aspects of the changes to article 8—the interpretation of article 8 that is embedded in the Bill. We would just highlight how it could potentially impact refugee family reunion. We should bear in mind that, because of their displacement, refugees have often been separated from families in very chaotic and difficult circumstances. One element of the Bill speaks to the presumption that one would normally have expected cohabitation with the family member being sponsored, but that is difficult in the refugee context—it is a difficult threshold to make. Particularly in view of the suspension of refugee family reunion—that bespoke route—we feel that that could have quite a harmful impact. Those are the three areas. Clearly, the legislation is only one part of the overall answer, so it also has to be looked at in the context of the wider policy reforms that are being pursued. As UNHCR, we have been very pleased with the level of engagement we have had with the Home Office as these reforms are seen through.

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

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  Q I will be brief. We have discussed the gangs a lot and the NCA is obviously investigating. Is the NCA investigating a lot of the criminal activity around the gangs and immigration in the United Kingdom itself—not just gangs over in Europe and elsewhere? Also, are there indications that funding for that activity has come through cryptocurrency? Helen Rance: Yes, we would investigate the gangs facilitating illegal immigration within the United Kingdom as well as those outside. Cryptocurrency is one of many methods of funding, which is why we are doing a specific amount of work on the criminal finances used. I am not going to comment specifically on how much is cryptocurrency, but there are many methods, of which cryptocurrency is one.

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

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  Q Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. A question to both of you: given that you have mentioned the urgency of addressing the challenge the country faces, and remembering the strict international legal frameworks that constrain some of the legislation we can enter into, which single policy would you like to see in the Bill that is not there now, but that you would think would have the biggest impact on reducing illegal migration? I know it is a difficult question, it is the golden question, but I would be interested to know from two experts, given the urgency and the legal frameworks we are working within, what you think would have the biggest impact on preventing the illegal migration we are being challenged with. Dr Sumption: If your goal is to reduce unauthorised arrivals, I think most of the measures for which there is evidence that they are effective do not actually require legislation. There is evidence from other countries that physical enforcement—measures like intercepting boats, where it can be done safely—can have a large impact. There is also evidence that a lower grant rate, which the UK already has, will have an impact in reducing the number of people who apply, and that returns agreements—a much larger version of the one in, one out deal with France, for example—would have an impact. Those things are difficult for their own reasons, but none of them would require legislation. Alp Mehmet: Needless to say, I agree with all that. I start by saying that I believe that the biggest flaw in the Bill is the further opening up of the border, effectively, with the safe and legal routes, which will allow approved organisations, institutions and employers to act as sponsors. That, if it actually works, may attract some of those who would otherwise have crossed in boats or got into the backs of lorries or crossed by other means, but I do not think it will do that. I suspect that if the number of boats coming across slows down, it will not be because of the Bill; none the less, it might have the effect of making fewer people attempt the crossing. You could argue that in itself is a success because it means that fewer people are putting their lives at risk. Nevertheless, opening up in the way that is being proposed, so that universities, employers, non-governmental organisations, and communities can act as sponsors, potentially gives an opportunity to some 120 million people around the world. Some figures I saw from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees suggested that at the end of 2025 something like 118 million people were displaced globally. Potentially, any one of them can take advantage of this new route the Bill opens up—in effect, anyone who has a friend who can persuade an employer to take them on. Employers go out looking for these people, or universities; presumably somebody will pay for those who are going to be studying there. My fear is that this will put the Boriswave in the shade. The numbers the measure attracts may become a serious problem, in the same way that those who arrived over the preceding five years became a problem. It is probably too late to do anything about that, but I have a feeling that, three years down the road, we will be talking about legislation to end that process. That is unfortunate, to say the least.

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

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  Q Would you both concede, though, that there is an issue, because the claims are not being dealt with quickly enough and there are a number of appeals, and that it is only right and proper that the Government try to do something about it, and so they have introduced the Bill? Jacqui McKenzie: I do not know that the Bill does that. That is the point I am making. I think Professor Singer is making the same point, and others are also making it: the networks, the immigration organisations and associations, a lot of academics, immigration judges and a lot of people up and down the country in organisations representing children and representing refugees. There is no end of evidence of people saying it is not going to achieve that. I accept that there is an issue: even if the Home Office was to get every application right—and that will never be possible, because nobody gets everything right—there are still large numbers of people in a system that is not designed well. It needs to be better designed. The Home Office probably needs more resources. When I sat on the Windrush lessons learned review independent advisory group, one thing that came out—you are hearing evidence from Daniel Hobbs later—was that the Home Office is a large organisation that is very unwieldy. It deals with the nice things, such as granting visas and so on, but also with law and order and so forth. Maybe it needs breaking up. Maybe it needs more resources. Overall, my view, and you may not agree with me, is that the UK gets very few people coming here, and certainly very few people coming in small boats. It gets very few people coming as asylum seekers. One of the witnesses earlier talked about 118 million people being displaced, but we have the data—I do not need to keep repeating it, but we see that very poor countries have the burden of asylum seekers and refugees. There are 1 million Rohingyas in Bangladesh and 2 million Venezuelans in Colombia. A small Caribbean island next door to an island where my parents were from, which has a population of just over 1 million, has 200,000 refugees in it. We really do not get that many people coming here, either through legal routes or in small boats. Because those numbers are static—in fact, they are declining—we need to resource the Home Office properly with more skilled or highly skilled people. I am not having a go at the people who are there, but something is very wrong there. That is what is causing the major problems that we see at the higher levels, such as the appellate courts. Professor Singer: Even aside from questions surrounding the number of arrivals that we have, setting up an entirely new body would be a huge waste of public resources. The Home Office’s own impact assessment for the Bill states: “The set up of the IIAA will require the recruitment and/or redeployment of an executive board, adjudicators, and supporting staff. This represents a significant operational undertaking and is expected to incur substantial recruitment and onboarding costs.” It then states that the recruitment will be “challenging and may not be achievable, increasing the likelihood of operational pressure and higher than expected costs.” There is the additional factor of transitioning the first-tier tribunal judges over to the new board and/or the financial costs of the obligations that are owed to judges if they are retired. It is a huge waste of public resources to set up an entirely new board. Those resources would be much better spent on properly staffing and resourcing the Home Office and the first-tier tribunal system that we currently have. There is a lot that can be done within the structure of the existing system to make it better. That would be a much more effective use of public funds.

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

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  Q I am just asking for your view on some of the evidence the Committee heard this morning. This is not Paul Foster’s view; it is the view of our witnesses. Professor Singer: I have not come across that myself. Jacqui McKenzie: I do not think that is right.

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

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  Q You have both been heavily and quite vocally critical of the Home Office—more than any of the other witnesses today. One issue we have is that there is a lot of political pressure, and the country is not happy with the current system and with what is happening, particularly with legal migration—some would say that the lawyers are perhaps partly responsible for that, but that is a separate debate. You have also acknowledged that there is a huge backlog in the appeals process and that, a lot of the time, that is the Home Office’s fault. The Government are trying to propose an alternative process for that, which you are also criticising. We cannot continue with the status quo, so what would you both advise doing to speed up the process for both the United Kingdom Government and the individuals seeking asylum? Professor Singer: There are a lot of much more financially effective ways to address the backlog. As was already intimated, a lot of the current tribunal backlog is caused by the fact that initial decision making was paused for a significant amount of time when the Rwanda scheme was being pursued. Once that was opened, there was a huge investment in making a large number of initial decisions on a very quick basis. That was roundly criticised on a number of counts as leading to speed over quality. A number of very poor-quality decisions then went through to the appeal system, leading to the backlog at the initial tribunal system. That can be addressed by not having inconsistencies in the rate of initial decision making in the first place; improving the quality of initial decision making within the Home Office, hopefully leading to fewer appeals; making sure that there is legal aid provision for those who are entitled to it, so that they are not wasting time in the tribunal system; and ensuring that the Home Office uses its review mechanism appropriately. I am sure my colleague can speak to this at much more length than I can, but at the moment initial rejection decisions tend to include a large number of copy-and-paste grounds for refusal. When it gets to tribunal, the decision maker has to go through every single one of those grounds, which is incredibly lengthy. If a Home Office official reviewed that in advance and conceded the grounds that were not arguable, it would speed up the decision-making process within the tribunal system. As I have already intimated, if there really is concern that there are not enough sitting judges in the first-tier tribunal, there is provision to expand the eligibility criteria within the initial system. Surely that would be a much more effective and speedy way to address the backlog than creating a whole new body and system, with its own mechanisms and staffing requirements. Although the stated intention of creating this new body is to address the asylum backlog, in reality, as we can see from the terms of the Bill, the true intention is to give the Home Secretary much more control over the operation of the tribunal system than she currently has. Jacqui McKenzie: I will just add, in defence of lawyers, that we see stories every now and again of a dodgy practitioner here and there, but the vast majority of lawyers are helping. I have a small team of immigration and asylum lawyers. We do about 20 appeals a year, and 18 or 19 are won in the tribunal. None of them should have been anywhere near the tribunal. We work to a very high standard of putting in the evidence—the subjective evidence, the objective evidence, expert evidence, all that sort of thing. We do not take cases where we do not think there is a case. We are not bucking the system in any way. It is so frustrating to see those cases get refused by the Home Office, when they ought not to be. There is then the period of scrutiny called the review, and they get rejected there again. Then people spend another year or two in the asylum system before their appeals are ultimately allowed. Lawyers are actually helping. They are trying to work with the Home Office. There is the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association, which works with the Home Office. There are Windrush groups that work with the Home Office. I have been part of it. I worked with former Home Secretaries Sajid Javid and Priti Patel on trying to get things right. It is wrong to blame lawyers. We are doing our job, a job we train for many years to do, and we are trying to help the system. But it is a fact that poor decision making and structural problems around legal aid, which mean that we do not have enough practitioners, or enough high-quality practitioners, are causing a backlog.

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

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  It was mentioned in the Committee’s evidence session this morning. Professor Singer: You can look at the most recent decisions from the Court of Appeal; for example, the decision on IA and others v. Secretary of State for the Home Department a few months ago was a very restrictive interpretation of article 8 being applied to deny those appellants the right to family life. I do not see the courts taking a particularly liberal approach to article 8. As I mentioned, we already have a domestic framework in place.

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

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  Q Can I just be clear: I did not say that I blame lawyers. I said there is a view in the country at times, as you are explaining. Jacqui McKenzie: I understood—I was just defending lawyers.

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

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  Q On that point, this morning, the Committee heard evidence from a KC, whose name I cannot recall, who said that the Strasbourg court has indicated that it thinks that the UK is not applying article 8 correctly, and is applying it too liberally—that was not his language; that is just the language I am using. He said Strasbourg thinks that the UK courts have gone too far with their application of article 8. You can see how confusing the issue is. Do you agree that there is great confusion around the application of article 8, and recognise that Strasbourg has indicated that the UK courts might not be doing so correctly? Jacqui McKenzie: I have not heard the Strasbourg courts say that; I have no idea why they would be saying that. Professor Singer: I have not heard that either.

• 10 Sept 2026 · Ukraine and Russia · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State please outline what assessment the Government have made of recent statements from Moscow regarding the United Kingdom?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Falkland Islands: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  Like many, I have a close allegiance to the Falkland Islands and the islanders. As a 19-year-old young British soldier, I did my first operational tour of duty in the islands in 1990 and subsequently went back in 1992. Does the Minister agree that while the Falkland Islanders state that they wish to be a UK overseas territory, they will always remain that? To put this into perspective, in the latest referendum, 99.8% of Falkland Islanders voted to support that position, on a 92% turnout. To put it into perspective again, only three islanders voted against.

• 7 Sept 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  Back to Lancashire: the residents of Lancashire—in particular the residents of the two authorities that I represent, Chorley and South Ribble—are rightly really disappointed with this new Secretary of State. However, can she reiterate and commit that local government reorganisation in Lancashire is still a commitment of this Government—that this is a pause, that she will be reporting back, and that we will hopefully go to the four unitary model?

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rewiring the State · Hansard source

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  Lancashire has missed out on Government investment for decades, and my constituents in South Ribble have been treated to nothing but the scraps of investment left in the pot at the end of the year. We now have an opportunity like no other in generations. Lancashire needs devolution and an elected mayor. Will the First Secretary of State facilitate an urgent meeting for me and Lancashire colleagues with No. 10 North to unlock this desperately needed opportunity for real investment and prosperity in Lancashire?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, as you are fully aware, we have had over a decade-long campaign to see the full reinstatement of the A&E at Chorley and South Ribble hospital. The public support it, the staff support it, the local NHS trust supports it, and the neighbouring hospitals at Preston, Wigan and Blackburn support it, but NHS England is blocking full reinstatement and will not say why. Will Ministers please meet with local MPs and all key stakeholders to get the A&E at Chorley and South Ribble hospital fully reinstated?