I should start my speech with a personal apology for not having been here for the full course of this debate. I very much wanted to be here, but I had duties in Westminster Hall in two debates during the course of the afternoon which prevented me from taking a full role in this debate. I am grateful to you for nevertheless agreeing to call me in what is obviously a very important debate. I have heard sufficient of the back and forth of the debate to know that there has been criticism from the Opposition Benches that the Bill goes too far, and that there are even some words of advice and criticism on these Benches that it perhaps does not go far enough. Before I get down into the nitty-gritty of the amendments, it is worth going back to base principles and looking at the fundamentals of why the Bill is necessary in the first place.
It is without doubt that every Member of this House, irrespective of their party loyalties, must agree that the current position in relation to small boats crossing the channel is deeply wrong and has to be addressed. What is happening at the moment is just not fair. We have seen the small boats programme on our television screens for the last two or three years, ever since we plugged the last gap in our external borders by making it harder for illegal immigrants to get on to lorries or on to the Eurostar—that goes back almost a decade, in fact. The business model is such that where we restrict one point of illegal access, the model will seek out the next weakest point in the border of our country, and right now that is small boats crossing the channel.
However, these are not individuals buying dinghies and setting off across the channel. We all know that this is a massive commercial opportunity for organised criminal gangs making masses of money—tens of millions of pounds—from the misery of others. That money is going into organised crime, which then finds a vent in other crime, both in Europe and in our own country. Criminal gangs are imposing violence on the vulnerable people who are then exploited by them in their crossing of the channel. It must be right that any responsible Government would take steps to challenge a set of circumstances where vulnerable people are being exposed to risk and violence, not only the risk of death as they cross the channel—my hon. Friend Nick Fletcher said that there were five deaths just last week as a result of this dangerous process—but the violence of the criminal gangs imposing their will on these migrants.
I do not shy away from the point that the Rwanda scheme is expensive. If the cost were calculated as the amount spent per person flown to Rwanda, it would be a very high cost indeed, but that is not the point of the scheme. The idea of the scheme is not that every single person who illegally crosses our border will be shipped to Rwanda but that it will act as an effective deterrent. If we send a few people to Rwanda, the criminal gangs and, more importantly, the people who pay them large sums of money will get the message that paying the criminal gangs to be ferried across the channel is no longer an effective way to gain access to the United Kingdom. If that is successful, as I believe it will be, it will be very sound use of money because it will not only prevent additional cost to our society and public services but will protect the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world, while righting a gross unfairness in our asylum system.
The phrase “safe and legal routes” feels right, doesn’t it? It feels like we should be in favour of safe and legal routes and, speaking personally, I think they are part of a wider solution to immigration. My hon. Friend says there may be up to 100 million people currently seeking asylum. From memory, I think the figure from the United Nations report is actually 108 million.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for those excellent points. They highlight one reason why the merging of the Department for International Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to form the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has the potential to link those two areas of policy. The challenge with push factors is substantial and it is that they have only just started. He is right to refer to malign actors such as Russia in the short and medium terms, but there is a much bigger factor that this House needs to consider over the next 20 to 50 years: climate change. The likelihood is that there will be very significant mass migration from sub-Saharan Africa when large areas of countries, perhaps entire countries, may become functionally uninhabitable through water scarcity and heat. What we have seen currently in push factors will be nothing compared with what we see in the future, so it behoves us, as a responsible Government, to design and implement an immigration policy that is fit for purpose, not just for now, but for the future.
I am pretty settled with that last sentence. We have been a place of safety for about 80,000 from Ukraine; we have opened our arms to some 250,000 British nationals of Hong Kong descent; we have had the Syria programme, which I believe involved about 20,000; and we have had the Afghan resettlement programme, which involved about 18,000 to 20,000. All those have been safe and legal routes. The big difference is that the British Government, representing the British people, decided that those were the people we wanted to help. They were the most vulnerable, and we took the decision, not criminal gangs from abroad.
My hon. Friend makes another good point. We must not forget that our asylum policy depends on the support and acceptance of our people. If we have a policy that is rejected by people because they feel it is unfair and does not represent their views, then we run the risk of throwing the baby of asylum and welcoming people with vulnerabilities from around the world out with the bath water. The Bill helps to maintain a welcoming stance to asylum seekers who are decided on by the Government, while maintaining public support for the policy as a whole.
There is real anger on the doorsteps. I am lucky to represent the seat of Broadland and Fakenham in Norfolk, and I was knocking on doors just before Christmas. Of the 100 or so doors I knocked on, I had 20 decent conversations with constituents. This is rural Norfolk, but 19 of those 20 conversations raised illegal migration as a key issue—that is the reality of the views of the people I represent. We would be mad in this House if we did not accurately reflect those views.
My hon. Friend is exactly right. My constituents are generous minded and welcoming, but they do not like inherent unfairness. Typically, those who arrive are young men aged 20 to 40. Where are the women and children? Those young men are relatively rich because they have been able to pay £3,000 to £5,000 to the smugglers. Worse still, they may be indentured and end up in slave labour, trying to pay back a debt that will never be repaid. We have a terrible situation that needs to be addressed.
The Government have taken effective action that we can see in hard data from last year, not just because I say it. At a time when migration to the European Union is going up by about a third and to Mediterranean countries by fully 80% last year, the suite of interventions that the Government have already made have been so effective that they have reduced migration in this country by 36%, which is over a third. That is not because of Rwanda, but in addition to Rwanda. It is because we have increased French patrols on the coast by 40% and we have tracked down boat supplies in places like Romania, removing the ability of the gangs to physically get people across the channel.
We have increased raids on illegal workplaces, which were part of the pull factor for illegal migrants. More importantly, we have cut a deal with Albania, which has meant that, whereas the year before about 20,000 people who came from Albania claimed asylum, with the returns policy recognising that Albania is a safe country—just as Rwanda is, by the way—the number of potential migrants coming across the channel has decreased by more than 90%. If we want an example of why the Rwanda policy should work, we need only look at Albania and at the results that this Government have already achieved. I commend the Government for their hard work, the hard yards, and the incremental gains, which show that, although we are not all the way there, we are seeing 36% reductions already and counting. Our proposals in this Bill for the Rwanda relocation will make an enormous difference.
We have heard from Government lawyers that the current process is likely to reduce the number of appeals by 99.5%. Yes, there may be the odd one who continues to appeal, but that last-minute process of repeated appeals will be removed. That is why I do not feel the necessity to support the amendments and will be supporting the Government.
