Tom Hayes MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  I thank the hon. Member for Weald of Kent for raising the absolutely horrific and awful circumstances involving Thomas Roberts, who would have been my constituent and whose mother, Dolores, is my constituent. She is racked by grief and unable to sleep at night. Her health has worsened because, as she said to the Minister and me last night in the Minister’s office, with her son being murdered, she feels that half of her whole life has completely disappeared. I do not want to name the murderer in this debate; I name Thomas Roberts, the victim. I want to talk briefly, with your permission, Dr Murrison, about Thomas Roberts, because it is important for the Committee to know who he was. It is important for Dolores, so racked with grief, to know that her MP and the Committee are focused on what happened. Thomas was 21 years of age when he died on 12 March 2022 in Bournemouth town centre, the victim of a stabbing by an asylum seeker. His mum has told me several times, and she told me again with the Minister last night, that Thomas was known by everyone and, when his mother wanted to go into town, to Littledown or to other parts of the constituency, he would say no, because he was so well known and he did not want to be seen by his friends out with his mum. Thomas was an aspiring Royal Marine and, in order to become one, he was in the Sea Scouts. He was physically fit—so fit, in fact, that he would actually bench press his mum and his brother. Dolores told me that the passing of his driving test on the first go was one of her proudest moments. It is one of the things that she remembers so fondly and so closely now, as she comes to terms with her grief. Thomas was also an aspiring drum and bass DJ, and by all accounts a very good one, who was up and coming on the south coast. If he had not made it as a Royal Marine—there was every certainty that he would—he could easily have taken up a drum and bass DJ career. He was a member of the Christchurch boxing club. He was active in his community, and deeply loving and caring about his family. Thomas lost his life—or rather, his life was taken from him—because an asylum seeker was in our country. That begs the question: why was that person in our country? Why were they able to wield the knife that cut short Thomas Roberts’s life, and that took away all the hopes and ambitions that his mother had for him? It is because we did not have access to the necessary database to track criminality and find out more about who the asylum seeker actually was. I am deeply sad that Thomas is not with his mum, in his community, or with his friends who loved him so much, because the last Government broke our asylum and immigration system, and created the conditions for that tragic killing and other tragic killings that have happened in our country. Scientific age assessment, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent said, is not a magic wand; it is imprecise, as we heard from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. We know what works, and that having a functioning asylum and immigration system will make all the difference. I just wish we had had that on 12 March 2022 when Thomas was denied his life opportunities because of the breakages in that system. I thank the Minister for meeting Dolores yesterday—I know that that provided her with much-needed comfort and clarity. I am absolutely confident that the Bill and its measures will make the difference that is so needed to protect our society. I also note the contribution of Councillor Joe Salmon of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council, who has been such a support to Dolores and her wider community, because she will be grieving for a very long time. It is incumbent on all of us in public service to speak the truth, look at the facts and bring forward the measures that will make the biggest difference. If I may, I will return to the question of scientific age assessments. I referred to the concerns of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and of experts, but I now refer to the House of Lords debate on 27 November 2023, which is worth a read if Opposition Members have not had a chance. It goes into significant detail and depth about the concerns that I had about that as a possible policy at that stage of its development. The Minister has been clear that scientific age assessments are not off the table; there just needs to be certainty that they are an effective tool. To avoid any further deaths and injustices, we need to have the right tools to protect the people of this country, secure and protect our borders, and make sure that we are truly able to restore confidence and trust in this system and in our ability to manage who comes into our country and who stays here.

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

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  With regard to migrants’ diet before they come to the UK, can the hon. Member tell us whether he expects them to have or to lack normal calcium?

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

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  This is my last intervention on this matter. I take the hon. Lady’s point entirely, but will she not acknowledge that the modelling has deep, fundamental flaws? Although it may be the only modelling and therefore the best, on the strength of what is in that report it is still not worth considering or using in parliamentary debate.

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

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  The hon. Member is making a very powerful point about the importance of restoring trust and, to be fair to him, he has been making that point for many years. On 20 July 2021, he said in debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill: “Our asylum and immigration system is not fit for purpose. It lines the pockets of criminal gangs and people smugglers, and it is not fair on genuinely vulnerable people who need protection. It is also not fair on the British public, who pick up the tab.” —[ Official Report , 20 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 902.] I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman about what happened in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and, in fact, the years before that. Does he agree with the 2021 hon. Member for Stockton South, as he then was, that in fact the cause of the mistrust in our asylum system is the management of it, not what he is trying to address here?

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making a powerful point about the importance of accessing coherent and organised records. However, does she agree that one of the reasons for those records being disorganised is the churn of social workers, and one of the causes of that churn is our care system’s extensive reliance on the excessive profiteering of external companies? This Bill provides for retention of care workers by ruling out excessive profiteering. Does she welcome that?

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

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  I was listening carefully and had a lightbulb moment. Perhaps the Conservatives figured out what a deterrent was—it was crashing the economy and putting our country into such difficulty that it obliterated the pull factor. That might be a cruel thing to say. Does the hon. Member agree that we heard in evidence that there are pull factors in the UK in terms of our language, our diaspora and quality of life, and other countries may not have those same factors? If we agree to the new clause and make it easier for people who cross the channel illegally to work here, people may be even more incentivised to come here compared with other countries.

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

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  I wonder whether the SNP and the Liberal Democrats are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, and I mean that in two senses. First, they query whether this Government are committed to international human rights, when they have shown time and again that they are, although I understand that concern, given what has gone before. With this situation—where they are trying to prescribe, in primary legislation, the foreign affairs of this Government and the regularity with which they meet international organisations—I wonder too whether they are experiencing some post-traumatic stress disorder, because they know that the previous Conservative Government resorted to sticking two fingers up at our international partners and international agencies. I hope they will withdraw the new clause because they should feel reassured that this Government have a respect for human rights, international law and working with our international partners and agencies.

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

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  Is it not the case that the Government do not think that primary legislation is the way to secure international negotiation about safe and legal routes? Actually, those conversations will be happening with the Government and partners. In fact, one of the highlights of having a new Government is a reset of our relationship with the European Union, which—in time, once it matures and restores—can help in negotiations for better routes for humanitarian assistance and support. Primary legislation is not needed for everything.

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

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  I refer the Committee back to the oral evidence that we heard at the very start of our work. Experts were asked whether they felt that the available immigration data, which could have been improved over 14 years, was robust enough for making strong assertions. Time and again, we heard from experts that it is very hard to make assessments about the net benefit or net cost of immigration flows into our country. Do the Government intend to work alongside the Migration Advisory Committee to improve the quality of immigration data so that we can make such assessments on a more robust footing?

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

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  I want to comment briefly on the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. I understand the importance of being sensitive to possible infringements and abuses of international law; indeed, in recent years, we have seen states around the world traducing it. However, I gently say to him—I hope it has not missed his attention—that the Prime Minister is a lawyer and, as a consequence of that background, he is deeply wedded to the law. In most of his speeches and statements, he refers consistently to the importance of the UK being a leader on the world stage by respecting international law. I say that because the Committee has just repealed the Safety of Rwanda Act, which was deemed unlawful by the courts. We have a Prime Minister who deeply respects international law; around the world, we have states and actors who traduce it. Having a Prime Minister and a country that are so committed to it at this point in history is really important. I gently say to the hon. Member that it is important that we are sensitive to possible infringements of international law, but we ought not to overplay the possibility of it happening here in our country, when all the evidence from the last eight months should give us confidence and hope.

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

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  Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there is not a binary choice between, on the one hand, safe and legal routes to the UK, and on the other, getting into a death machine boat to reach the UK? Actually, we could have refugees and asylum seekers who travelled through safe and legal routes to other countries.

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

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  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh was just saying, that we listen to the refugee voice and think more broadly about what asylum seekers and refugees actually want? In a previous life, I worked for an international development charity where I led UK campaigning on safe and legal routes. In so doing I took away a major learning, which is that the UK cannot be overwhelmingly the country that receives refugees and asylum seekers via safe and legal routes. That is in part because the UK alone cannot be asked to shoulder such a large responsibility, but also because many asylum seekers and refugees wish to return home and therefore want to be located in a safe country that is nearer to their home country. Is it not right that we think about this in a broader and international sense, rather than assuming that the UK has to always be the country that shoulders the responsibility, when there are other ways that we can support?

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

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  Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on the statistics that show that around 90% of people crossing the channel are men, and on the fact that men in Ukraine are typically committed to fighting the Russian invasion?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  In 2023, BH Live, a company based in my constituency, was named as not paying 130 workers—130 of the lowest-paid workers in my constituency—the national minimum wage. Ultimately, BH Live did make payments, but does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for anybody to be paid less than the national minimum wage, and that through the introduction of the new Fair Work Agency we are going to be able to right wrongs like that?

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

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  I want to reflect on where we have got up to. We have moved through the clauses at quite a pace, and that is very pleasing to see. The Bill responds to the requests of operationally and frontline-focused people in law enforcement and border security, and it is an attempt to give them the tools and powers that they need. I particularly wanted to mention that in the context of interim serious crime prevention orders, which we have spoken about in clauses 47 and 48. That cuts such a sharp contrast with what has happened over recent years. In 2022, one Home Secretary introduced the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. At the time, the Government said that that would deter people from crossing in small boats, but it did not. In 2023, another Home Secretary brought in the Illegal Migration Act 2023. At the time, the Government said that that would turn people away from crossing the channel in small boats, but it did not. In 2024, another Home Secretary brought in the Safety of Rwanda Act, which happily we have just repealed today. At the time, the Government talked about the prospect of sending people to Rwanda, and they said that alone would be sufficient to deter people from crossing the channel in small boats. It is no wonder that that failed, too. I wanted to set out how in 2022, 2023 and 2024 we had three separate Acts, which all aimed to do something and failed to do so. They have not delivered what operationally focused people have requested. We really need to look at how, just eight months into this new Government, we are turning the page on our asylum system and giving enforcement powers to the people who need them. We are also tidying up the statute book and ensuring greater co-ordination across the key agencies that can secure our border. I commend clause 48 to the Committee, as I do the series of clauses before it and the Bill overall.

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

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Dame Siobhain. I want to dwell briefly on clause 43 because it embodies a significant theme in the Bill: preparing our country for the challenges we face today and those we will face to a greater extent in the future. In that context, it is so important to talk about the risk posed to our country’s security by 3D-printed firearms. I commend the campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), who has done an enormous amount of work on this issue. 3D-printed firearms are a serious threat to our security, and present a new challenge to law enforcement because they can easily be made at home and are untraceable and undetectable. Indeed, files containing IKEA-like step-by-step guides to 3D print firearms at home can be downloaded from the web in as little as three clicks. That is terrifying. If we can tackle that through the Bill, that feels like a significant contribution.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree, as I do, that it is right that 1.3 million low earners who find themselves ill should receive statutory sick pay for the first time? Like her, I represent a coastal seat with a tourist sector, and as a consequence my constituency has a significant number of low earners. Does she agree that we need to be backing them?

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

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  I thank the hon. Member for his patience. Does he agree that he is moving the goalposts slightly to manufacture a political argument that, as he knows, would not be supported by the evidence available? Furthermore, will he look back into history at the record of the last Labour Government? I invite him to comment on their success—I know that he will want to jump at that. In 2004, 85% of people reaching our country were removed through enforced returns; in 2005, 73% were. Where there was a trend of enforced returns, it was actually under the last Labour Government.

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

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  I apologise, Mr Stuart.

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

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  May I start by saying that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Stuart? I am particularly enjoying the opportunity to have these debates in a free-flowing way—while sticking to parliamentary etiquette, obviously. I commend the hon. Member for Stockton West, with whom I have some sympathy. He has been sent here to defend the impossible. I half wondered, when he came in wearing that fetching yellow tie, which I slightly covet, whether he had come to hold his hands in the air, make an apology and perhaps stand on the side of classical liberalism, but no: he stood true to the 2024 manifesto on which he was elected. I hope that in addressing how he would define a deterrent, I will add something new. When I asked him for a definition, he said that a deterrent would prevent people from coming and that it would do so by detaining and removing them. I shall make a case that challenges his assumptions on that basis. A deterrent is a strategy aimed at preventing external actors, targets and adversaries in the military sense from taking unwanted actions. For the Rwanda asylum policy to be a deterrent, the Conservative Government would have needed to achieve certain things: to maintain the capabilities required to deter and be highly resolved to deploy them—as the hon. Member said, to be able to detain and remove—and to effectively communicate their resolve to act. In any communication, one needs to be understood to be highly resolved and capable of following through. For the Rwanda asylum policy to be a deterrent, the Government would have needed to persuade potential migrants of their capabilities and resolve to send them to Rwanda to process their claims after they had illegally entered the country, and to have stopped migrants from paying significant sums of money to smuggler gangs facilitating illegal migration. In short, from what the hon. Member said, it feels as though the principal target of deterrents was migrants. The Rwanda asylum policy was always doomed to fail on those key conditions, because it was not able to achieve detention or removal. On detention, Professor Brian Bell, the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, told us that the numbers given by the Government “are certainly not consistent with a story of a very significant deterrent effect from the Rwanda Act.” –– [ Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 56, Q84.] Dr Peter Walsh of the Migration Observatory cited concerns about “where people would be detained”, –– [ Official Report, Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Public Bill Committee, 27 February 2025; c. 14, Q13.] as the UK immigration detention system had capacity for only 2,200 people, with roughly 400 spaces free. Moreover, he said that Rwanda would struggle to process more than “a few hundred” asylum claims a year. That takes me to the question of removal.

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

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  I thought I would to and find a moment of humour in the dispiriting debate on this topic. The Conservatives may progress to blaming successful legal and judicial challenges to the policy. The Rwanda policy was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal said, unlawful and deemed to be so by the courts. If they do, His Majesty’s Opposition should confirm whether they respect the independence of our judiciary in adjudicating such challenges on the one hand, and respect the international human rights laws, under which challenges were made and were successful, on the other. That is important, because one of the hallmarks of the new Government is to be lawful and to respect our judiciary. We need to embrace that change. The Opposition could also reflect on the probability of further legal challenges being undertaken because of the human rights concerns about Rwanda, which my hon. Friend highlighted so effectively. Last, the Conservatives may want to blame political challenges for undermining the credibility of their Rwanda asylum policy. In a democracy, it is of course right that Members of Parliament raise concerns on behalf of their constituents—indeed, that is what we have been doing—but the Conservatives overcame those political constraints by passing the Safety of Rwanda Act to address judicial concerns, and they signed a legally binding agreement with Rwanda. So the idea that the deterrent was not able to function because of legal or political challenges is actually farcical, because the previous Government held the cards in their hands. I have heard it said that the Conservatives could have followed the Australian asylum policy, which has been described as a successful model—perhaps it even inspired the Rwanda asylum policy—but there is good reason to believe that UK could not have achieved the deterrent effects of the Australian offshore asylum processing model. Indeed, Professor Brian Bill, chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, said in oral evidence that it was inappropriate to draw comparisons between the Rwanda scheme and the Australian policies. Were we to be generous and accept the view of the hon. Member for Weald of Kent that the Australian policy stood out in the world as being successful, there would be challenges to assessing the efficacy of that policy. As the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, an expert and independent institution, has said, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that the Australian offshoring policy was the reason for a drop in numbers of people going to Australia. Put bluntly, if migrants were paying attention to the last Government’s policy, they had no reason to believe that they would be barred from staying in the UK. That takes me to my third and final definition of what would make an effective deterrent. Yes, the state must be understood to be highly resolved to deter, detain and remove, and capable of doing so, but it takes two to tango. Britain can only be understood if asylum seekers are able to understand, which in turn depends on several key factors. It means migrants being able to do at least three things: to pay close attention to the last Government’s actions—I struggled to do that, so I cannot see how asylum seekers would—to stay fully informed about the many twists and turns in the Safety of Rwanda Act asylum policy, which again I struggled to stay abreast of, and to behave as rational actors who weigh up the costs and benefits of action. We have heard in testimony and oral evidence that migrants are typically unaware of Government policy and actions, because they are too busy being asylum seekers and migrants. Moreover, it can be said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the chaotic and difficult circumstances that they are forced to inhabit prevent them from being the rational actors that they would otherwise be, calmly and objectively assessing the trade-offs between the perceived costs of illegal entry, the probability of those being incurred, and whether those are outweighed by the potential benefits of migration.

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

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  I ask the hon. Member to desist from referring to that report. In oral evidence, I asked two experts whether they thought it was possible to make such assessments on the basis of the available evidence, and they declined. In fact, the author of that report said that the available evidence was fairly lacking in robustness and integrity. When I asked him whether he had considered certain key counterfactuals, he admitted that he had not. Later, in response to my question about whether it was appropriate for MPs to brandish such research, Professor Brian Bell said that it would be “foolhardy” to do so because the report itself made “very brave” assumptions. Will the hon. Member now desist from using that report, given that we are in a democracy, we are striving for accountability and truth, and we should not be using fake information?

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

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  It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, who, in an outstanding speech, set out the major challenges with the Illegal Migration Act, part of which will be repealed. I want to knock on the head four things that were said by the hon. Member for Stockton West. The first was in reference to section 23 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023. That provision, which the Opposition have talked about, was never implemented by the last Government, so in effect he is opposing a repeal of something that his last Government never started. That feels to me like the worst kind of politics. Between the Royal Assent given to that legislation and the Dissolution of Parliament, 315 days passed, yet no effort was made to implement that provision. Secondly, sections 9 and 10 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 were, as we have heard, unworkable. They allow people to arrive, claim asylum in the UK, get support, and be put up in a hotel, which as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh described, will often be in the some of the most dire conditions that somebody can go through after fleeing some of the worst experiences that people can have, be it trauma, famine, disease or poverty—the list goes on. Applications were not processed, so people were not able to leave their hotel. The consequence of that is not just an expensive asylum backlog, but people living with serious psychological scarring for a significant amount of time. That brings me to my third point. I will talk more about this when we reach new clause 26, which relates to scientific age assessments, but I really do not know how the Conservative party can talk about the welfare and protection of children when we heard oral testimony from the Children’s Commissioner about children who were subject to, and vulnerable to, organ harvesting, rape, sexual assault and disappearance from hotels and into wider society, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh said, they are likely to continue to be abused, exploited and victimised. I will make those points when we reach that debate. Lastly, on the point about France, I wish the Conservative party would stop throwing stones at one of nearest neighbours and most important strategic allies, particularly when we are in such a volatile international climate. It is really important that we properly scrutinise legislation, but do not indulge in the petty politics that defined the last Conservative Government, disrupted so many of our international relations, and actually made us less secure.

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

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that important reminder that when the Labour Government took office after our historic win, we inherited an awful mess in our prison system, which was described by independent experts and organisations as near to collapse—so near that there were just a few hundred spaces left at a time when the country was rioting.

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

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  The Illegal Migration Act, which we are discussing under this clause, was put on the statute book by the previous Government, but they did not commence much of it at all. Can the hon. Member explain why that was?