Rupert Lowe MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Jul 2026 · Illegal Immigrants: Offshore Detention and Deportation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I am not going to go into detail; it is all in this policy document. I will give her one to take away. Specialist detention facilities would be constructed near airfields to hasten the process. Britain would negotiate far stronger bilateral return agreements while working with allies to create a deportation NATO—a coalition of like-minded countries applying co-ordinated diplomatic and economic pressure on Governments that refused to accept back their own citizens. That would include harmonised visa sanctions, co-ordinated suspension of visa issuance, foreign aid suspension, targeted trade measures and tariffs, remittance and dividend controls and taxation, and a rapid response returns taskforce. Pakistan would be the first country to feel the full force of those measures. Sanctions from a single country are easier to absorb, but a unified bloc of economies and travel markets creates systematic and severe pressure. Co-ordinated restrictions would also close loopholes whereby nationals bypass one state’s measures by moving to another jurisdiction. All that would be delivered alongside the credible and proven threat of action. Do it once, hard enough, and it would not be required again. We must also revoke all asylum grants awarded following illegal entry and retrospectively revoke protection so that those individuals are also removed. If someone arrived in Britain illegally on a small boat, they would be deported, regardless of what their current status may claim. People ask whether this is achievable. Restore Britain says yes, but only if the Government finally demonstrate the robust political will required. What about cost? Britain is already paying billions: billions every year on accommodation, billions on asylum, billions on public services for illegal migrants, billions supporting people who have no legal entitlement to remain here. In the short term, ending those long-term costs would offset the expenditure required to carry out removals, with estimated annual savings of more than £12 billion once the programme was complete. Put simply, mass deportation pays for itself. This policy is popular, cost-effective and possible. I have just one question for my fellow MPs: what are we all waiting for? This is a costed, comprehensive and legally sound plan that would, as those 720,772 British patriots demand, remove the illegal migrant population. We have outlined exactly what needs to happen, in excruciating detail. It can be done. It must be done. It will be done. I invite Members to help themselves to a “Mass Deportations” policy document on their way out. It makes glorious reading.