Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“With the greatest respect, I have listened at length to the hon. Member for Stone and have yet to find any common ground on these issues. Frankly, it is about time that we stood up for the importance of the international rule of law and helping people when they are facing these situations. There are no queues in a war zone, there is no administration or bureaucracy: there is fear, terror and persecution, and those people who are in Sudan now will be asking those questions. If the Minister wants to answer them and give those people hope that, if they make it to the border or to one of the refugee camps—they may find one of those UNHCR people who does not think that the UNCHR has that relationship with the UK but thinks the Minister is prepared to do that—we will take a certain number of people, that might stop them fleeing.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about how important the Windsor agreement is. Does he therefore agree that one of the egregious things about Brexit is pushing things such as the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which, in and of itself, fundamentally undermines the Windsor agreement by removing all those alignments of laws around goods and indeed services on which the Windsor agreement is based? It just reflects how Brexit has blinded people to what is in the best interests of people, whether in Northern Ireland or the rest of the United Kingdom.”
“We can have a public inquiry—we can go down that alley—but, frankly, I would much rather solve the problems that Brexit has created. The people in this country—those of us who are real patriots—need and deserve nothing less.”
“The truth is that this country was struggling before Brexit, but Brexit is like going on holiday and setting fire to the hotel room because you realised on the first day that there is no pool in the complex. It is making things fundamentally worse. The honest truth—for those of us who care about the truth and who care about this country—is that we should not let the Government get away with spending hours talking about whether the last seven years have been any good. We have to be focused on what can happen in the next seven years. I will hold every Government to account for what they are doing to sort out access to those jobs and to that trade, and to help the small businesses that are looking at the pile of paperwork and thinking, “I just cannot cope with it any more.” It is too important not to.”
“We must work out how we deal with the paperwork. Whether as part of the pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention or a bespoke customs union, we have got to get on and start talking to the Europeans about it rather than questioning whether they are friends or foes. We must get on with getting the visa system sorted out, so that the creative and touring industries and our healthcare and hospitality sectors do not fall apart and so that young people do not lose opportunities. Those who work for businesses are being told, “Look, do you have a European passport? If you don’t, forget about it; we’ll go to someone else in the business.” I will now turn to the importance of the freedom to work to our economy. Brexit will already reduce long-run productivity by 4%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.”
“For me, politics has always been about priorities. I cannot ask the people in my community, who are struggling with the cost of living rises that have been fuelled by Brexit and can see opportunities slipping from their hands, to wait any longer to see the benefits of Brexit. I am a patriot. I love my country, and that is why I will fight for its future, for those jobs and for those industries. That means being ruthless about what we spend our time and effort on now, and it means absolutely holding this Government to account for their failure to recognise that Brexit cannot work; it is just a series of problems to be sorted. The sooner they are sorted, the sooner we will stand a chance of offering our kids a future. How do we do that? We must work out how to get direct access to the single market.”
“We also know that time is of the essence and that the damage being done grows every day. Jobs that were here are going overseas. Businesses are relocating. They are retraining people in Belgium, Germany and France so that they can continue trading. Why, then, am I frankly ambivalent about this petition and the idea of a public inquiry? First, there is no formal mechanism for following up on an inquiry. We have seen the track record of this Government when it comes to public inquiries and listening and learning, and it is not great. As of last November, there are 14 open statutory public inquires, covering everything from covid to Grenfell to the Edinburgh tram system. The inquiry into undercover policing has gone on for eight years and cost £60 million, and we still have no idea when it will make recommendations.”
“We cannot do competitive trade deals when we are a smaller nation—not part of a bigger conglomerate—negotiating with others. That is why the Americans are not going to put us first in the queue. Every single industry, whether insurance or manufacturing, is facing a choice between following UK regulations or European regulations if it wants to be able to trade with the bigger market. The damage is clear. People can see the disruption. They can see the disruption in Northern Ireland. That is why I am not surprised that fewer than one in 10 among the British public claim to see a personal benefit to Brexit. When asked what that benefit is, only a third felt they could actually name something. It is the same for the national interest. We know that this is not going well, and we cannot see how it will get any better.”
“They can see that other countries have experienced the impact of Vladimir Putin but are not facing the same challenges as we are. We have higher food costs because, oddly enough, there are longer queues at the border to get things here. There are problems with production lines, as the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) articulated so well. People can see that their kids are sitting in coaches at the border for hours on end and they know that that is not going to stop any time soon. The London School of Economics estimates that leaving the European Union added £210 to household food bills, costing UK consumers a total of £5.8 billion pounds, so we cannot be a world-beating international leader if we are only doing it in our own backyard.”
“Members have already talked about many of the impacts, including the shortages of people working in our hospitality industry and in health and social care; the blunt economic damage; the thousands of small businesses in constituencies across this country that have just given up trading—one of the truisms here is that people can fight many battles in life, but they cannot fight geography—because being able to trade just as easily with 500 million consumers on our doorstep does make a difference; the supply chains that have been severed by our leaving the European Union; the wealth of paperwork that so many people now face; and the impact that it has had on the cost of living. That is the second truth in this debate. The public know when they are being gaslighted.”
“Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will be pleased to hear that I absolutely agree with him about the reality of what will happen to the laws, but I’ll be damned if I will take lectures about who is more patriotic! Who is better at standing up for parliamentary sovereignty than those of us who are fighting a piece of legislation that will lead to 5,000 areas of law being transferred not back to this Parliament to make decisions on them, but to the Executive behind closed doors in No. 10? The truth is that we know what damage Brexit is doing to our country, and we have seen it for years.”
“As ever with the idea that the benefits of Brexit will appear, the benefit that he talked about with the matching adjustment is something that those in the financial sector have expressed caution about. Although it may benefit the shareholders of insurance companies and lead to higher fees, those policyholders and pensioners who are dependent on insurance policies may well face higher charges. That in itself embodies the difficulties that we face in this debate—the messy reality of what Brexit is doing. I have no desire to rerun 2016, when the damage in 2023 is so apparent. The hon. Member for Gravesham talked about parliamentary sovereignty and mentioned the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. My right hon.”
“It is a pleasure to have you join us to chair this afternoon’s debate, Mr Dowd. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) is no longer in his place, because in his contribution he embodied the challenge that we face in this debate. Indeed, it might be argued that in what he said, he reflected Oscar Wilde’s very famous statement that “patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”. In the absence of the hon. Member, let us correct the record on what he said about insurance and use that as an example of why we need better information in this debate. He said that leaving the European Union would somehow mean that we could deal with the level of risk that insurance companies have to account for. Actually, the European Commission is already looking at and reforming those rules, so we could have done that work with it.”
“The Minister talks very passionately about parliamentary sovereignty and raises the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Whatever the whys and wherefores of how we thought the European Union listened to the UK public through its democratic processes, can the Minister explain how transferring direct power over 5,000 areas of legislation not to this place but to Ministers through the use of statutory instruments—or Henry VIII powers, as we might call them—is taking back control? I see the opposition to those measures from those who supported Brexit in the other place or this place. It does not look to me like this did what it said on the side of the bus.”
“The hon. Lady is giving incredibly powerful testimony. Will she consider supporting new clause 18, which would require that we treat every child on UK soil with the same care and that we safeguard every child equally, whether they are refugees or not?”
“The fact that the Minister has just said on the record that it is okay to incarcerate minors—another word being “children”—because we think some of them may not be children reflects why we need to clarify the safeguarding and welfare responsibilities of all public agencies that deal with these children. Everybody is a child until the age of 18 in international law. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he supports new clause 18, to ensure parity in those responsibilities and put beyond doubt the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State and Ministers to look after every child equally well in this country?”
“In that gap, we have seen some horrific examples of what happens to these children not just with their access to education, but with sexual assault and other serious offences.”
“I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s long expertise on this issue, but does he recognise the challenge of what we have seen over the past year in the treatment of unaccompanied and accompanied children? It is impossible for local authorities to undertake that safeguarding role and the duties under the Children Act without the direct involvement of the Home Office, which is discharging its duties by commissioning providers, for example, that do not then have clear safeguarding responsibilities. The decision to do that lies with the Home Office, which wrote contracts that did not include safeguarding provision for these children. Unless we are clear that everybody involved in the care of these children from start to finish has a responsibility for their welfare, including the Secretary of State, as new clause 18 does, that gap will remain.”
“I will let the hon. Gentleman gather his breath. He made a strong case that he was concerned about the work of the European Court of Human Rights making judgments about overbearing Governments and trying to stand up for citizens. Does he, therefore, deplore the recent judgment by the European Court of Human rights—another rule 39 interim measure—in the cases of Pinner v. Russia and Ukraine and Aslin v. Russia and Ukraine? They concerned British nationals who were members of the armed forces in Ukraine, who had surrendered to Russian forces and been sentenced to death. The European Court of Human Rights got stuck in to stand up for British citizens. But by his logic, I assume that he would oppose that because he does not like such bodies standing up for citizens being oppressed by Governments.”
“If this Bill were actually about things that are illegal in our asylum system, it would tackle visa overstayers. The Bill says nothing about people traffickers, and it contains no further sanctions and makes no further efforts to catch organised crime gangs. I now realise why it does not, having heard how the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North objects to the European Court of Human Rights standing up for British citizens who face the death penalty—he could not even say that stopping people being sent to their death for standing up to Putin is a good thing.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), a knight of the realm, lecturing us all on being in touch with the people and on class warfare. What a dystopian vision he paints of this country. I will confine my remarks to the three amendments in my name, because he does not speak for the majority in this country with his callous disregard for people seeking sanctuary, and in his callous disregard for the evidence and facts. Amendment 293 reflects the challenge set by the right hon. Gentleman and by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who complains about people with visas. He must be disappointed that the Illegal Migration Bill does nothing about people who overstay their visa, which is clearly illegal.”
“I will happily give way to the hon. Gentleman, as long as he will clarify on the record that his comments about me were mistaken. I am sure that he would not wish to malign somebody’s good reputation, even if he disagreed with them.”
“We have provisions in law—on, for example, the use of bed and breakfasts—that have not been mirrored to date in our treatment of children who have come in through this system. I can hear why in the callous disregard of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, but I go back to this simple principle: whatever we think of the parents of these children, we should not be punishing children by agreeing in law that they have second-class citizenship. That is what this legislation will do to refugee children.”
“] He can keep shouting all he likes, but the vast majority of the British public are horrified by the idea that 200-plus children have gone missing from hotels that the Home Office was supposed to be overseeing. There is due to be a public inquiry into the Manston centre. The Government have accepted that because of possible article 3 breaches—basically, concerns about how we were treating pregnant women and young children going into Manston—but that investigation has not yet happened and cannot yet inform this legislation. Clause 11 extends detention for families and pregnant women, and clause 14 removes the duty to consult the independent family returns panel about the treatment of children. Children are under the age of 18; we accept that in law.”
“When the Immigration Minister was dismissing concerns about locking children up, suggesting that they probably were not children because of concerns about age verification, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael)—I am sorry that he is no longer in his place—used a gentle phrase that his mother might say: “Have a long look in the mirror.” Well, I suggest that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North gives his head a wobble for what he has just said about children who have gone missing; 16 and 17-year-olds are children— [ Interruption. ] He is chuntering from a sedentary position. If those children turn up, I hope to goodness that they all turn up safe and well, because if they do not, what the hon. Member has just said will come back to haunt him— [ Interruption.”
“The Minister is shaking his head, but there is a very simple answer, because all new clause 18 does is commit to parity. It says that we should treat every single child on UK soil with the same concerns. We could safeguard every single child.”
“What is a fantasy are the figures that the Home Secretary and the Minister just came up with on the safe and legal routes from Iran. Perhaps the Minister might want to reflect on that and on what the UK Statistics Authority said about the Home Office’s relationship with the truth when it comes to the numbers and to asylum. I wish to finish simply by urging the Government to stay on the record. If I am wrong, they should correct me. They could say that every single child in this country will be covered by safeguarding, and that the Home Office itself will take a direct safeguarding duty for these children. It would not be that difficult.”
“That is what this legislation is saying. All new clause 18 is looking for is parity. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North may disregard those children, but I wager that there are other Members in this Chamber who recognise that when it comes to children, we have responsibilities and obligations. I hope that, in his summing up, the Minister will say on the record that, yes, absolutely, the same standards of safeguarding will apply. The Home Office failed to put safeguarding in the contracts. I had to use a freedom of information request to get the contract from his Department to be able to check it. I did check it, because the Minister does not do his own homework, so somebody else has to. The contract very clearly does not mention it. [Interruption.] It is not a fantasy.”
“Nobody is encouraging the smugglers. Given the heat that has been generated in this Chamber, it is important to recognise that nobody across the House supports the smugglers. Equally, there are no safe and legal routes. The example of Iran proves that very clearly. The fact that the Minister does not seem to understand that is troubling. If a child does come here, what happens to them? New clause 18 would provide parity of treatment for all children resident in the United Kingdom—for example in the rules around bed and breakfasts and putting a child in with a single adult. If the hon. Gentleman were to find that happening in his constituency, he would probably, rightly, challenge his local authority about it. Why are we saying that, because a child has refugees as parents, it does not matter how they are treated?”
“I will not give way. The hon. Gentleman has made his feelings clear, even if he has taken the Shelley’s grandmother approach to communicating any sense about them. What matters now is that this Government speak up for every single child, because, if they do not, I promise that there are people in this House who will continue to do it no matter how much barracking we get, because every child matters.”
“The Government have accepted that they will be subject to an article 3 investigation to see whether there have been breaches of the Human Rights Act at Manston—basically the treatment of people in inhumane and degrading ways. The Government are resisting that being an independent inquiry. Why not wait until that inquiry happens? Why not learn the lessons of how they got into the mess at Manston before moving forward with this legislation, so that we do not risk again seeing pregnant women and unaccompanied children in the dinghies and in the devastation that the Minister just set out? Why press ahead without learning the lessons of his previous failures?”
“I very much support what the hon. Gentleman says. Indeed, I support the need for such amendments to this Bill, probing or otherwise, to clarify what a safe and legal route is and how such routes will operate, because that seems to be at the heart of whether this legislation can actually achieve anything that it claims to set out to do. Does he therefore agree with me that we need clarity, because this Bill does set out where it considers it is safe to be from and, by definition, everywhere not listed in proposed new section 80AA is unsafe? We therefore need clarity about what would be a safe and legal route from the locations not listed in that proposed new section, because otherwise we will end up with “safe” or “unsafe” being ill-defined in legislative terms, and that does not help anybody.”
“One of the reasons why Winston Churchill helped to set up the European Court of Human Rights was to protect citizens across Europe, including in the UK, from overbearing Governments who did not have respect for the role of courts in keeping them honest. With the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, let us see some honesty: is he saying that he, in contrast to the Prime Minister, wants us to leave the ECHR? If the amendment were passed, it would mean our having to, and we would be in the same position as Belarus. Will he be honest: does he want us to be Belarus?”
“Can he tell us about the evidence he has from actually working with these people and understanding the pressures they are under?”
“I fear the right hon. Gentleman may have misread the statistics, because it was Afghans who made up 33% of arrivals. Between October and December 2022, only 9% of small boat arrivals were Albanian. Perhaps, as a general principle, we should not try to process claims in the Chamber. We should look at the evidence. Many of us who deal with asylum seekers have had that conversation, about why papers are missing, and we have been told very clearly that the traffickers tell them to tear up and remove their papers because that makes it easier for the traffickers. When was the last time the right hon. Gentleman spoke to someone who came to the UK by an irregular route and who did not have their paperwork? What did they tell him?”
“Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) wishes for. That is why the refugee convention itself says that refugees should not be prosecuted for destroying their documents, for issues around immigration fraud or, indeed, for their mode of travel, recognising the reality that when the decision is life or death, life matters. I see no irony in suggesting that.”
“People fleeing persecution do not form orderly queues at the border when there is a war. When they are facing persecution for their political or religious beliefs, they cannot turn to the state to ask for their paperwork to be put in order and emailed to them so that they may cross the border with copies of it. I reflect on the fact that the former Member for Blackburn, who was responsible for incorporating the Human Rights Act into UK legislation used to say to me, “There was left and right in Parliament, and then there were those people who dealt with the UK Border Agency and those who did not.” When dealing with people who have fled persecution, we know at first hand that it is not a simple, straightforward linear experience that accommodates well the kind of bureaucracy and administrative process that the right hon.”
“There is clarity in that there is not a single Member among us who wants to help the smugglers; not a single Member among us thinks that small boats crossing the English channel is an acceptable or reasonable way to proceed. The difference is in how we address the issue; whether we pour oil on that fire or seek, in our amendments, to recognise the best of Britain—to be the actual patriots in this Chamber. So far, we have talked so much about the ways people travel, but not about who is travelling. Different statistics have been bandied around. We know that the vast majority of people in those boats are from seven countries, so let us recognise first and foremost why it matters that the legislation meets the test not of the mode of travel but of who is travelling.”
“If she were here now, she could bring much light to this debate as somebody who knows about the reality for people fleeing persecution. It is a genuine honour to follow the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris). We may be in different political parties, but I recognise how brave she has just been to make that speech and to speak up for the importance of human rights, which has increasingly become an extreme view in the Conservative movement. I recognise the power of her speech and its many points, and the expertise that she put on the record. The House benefits from light, not heat, in such debates.”
“I wish to reassure the Committee that I will speak only to the amendments that have been selected for this evening—I know that we have debates on other amendments scheduled tomorrow, and I have amendments in both selections. I beg your leave, Dame Eleanor, to reflect on the fact that, while this important debate has been taking place, Jess England, a member of my staff, has just won parliamentary staffer of the year. Jess has first-hand knowledge of the things that we are discussing because she has for years helped me work with people seeking asylum—refugees from around the world who have come to the UK and have a connection to Walthamstow. I put on the record my gratitude to Jess, whose award is long overdue.”
“I agree. Some of us are still dealing with people from Afghanistan—people who put their lives on the line to help British forces but have not been able to come here. They listen to the Minister talk about the idea that somehow we have taken 25,000 people under the schemes. We have not—their families are still stuck. If the Minister wants the casework, I have raised on the record before the case of a family who were split up on the way to the Baron hotel.”
“The idea that we can cut off their market does not recognise that we have seen these kinds of measures before. All that happens is the prices go up. People disappear; modern slavery increases.”
“The Minister knows that that is not how the scheme has worked; he knows that only 22 people have been resettled. He already has in his inbox the case I mentioned—it is long overdue his attention. Every single day, I think about that family. They were told that they should go to the Baron hotel. They could not get there because there was an explosion. They are now separated—the family are in hiding and the father is here, desperate and out of his mind about what to do. He was promised a safe and legal route by this Government, but of that promise there came no reality. That is why I cannot support this Bill in its current form. First and foremost, it does nothing to the smugglers themselves. We all agree that the smugglers are the people we want to stop. Why is there not a single measure in the Bill that directly affects them?”
“I say to some Conservative Members that one of the top countries from which the people in the boats come is Iran. I have sat in this Chamber and heard people call out the Iranian Government and speak of their concern about the persecution of people in Iran. Not half an hour later, those people talk about how awful anybody in the boats is, although Iranians are the third most common country represented in them. There is no safe route from Iran.”
“Absolutely, and that is why the failures we have seen for a number of years have not been to do with the refugees themselves but to do with the politicians and their failure to get to grips with this. That is why it matters that the Government are not using the correct figures from the statistics authority. They are not showing us the true scale of the problem, which legislation has consistently failed to deal with. That is why we need to do something different, such as clarifying what a safe and legal route is and how it fits into the refugee convention and our processing. In a war, there are not simple processes of admin and bureaucracy that we can push people towards, so it matters all the more that we respect and recognise that in how we treat people who still think that life is better than death and who still choose to run.”
“Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and the proposals put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) in new clause 10. We would all agree that all these new clauses need further work, but they all get towards a simple principle: to ask what is the role of a safe and legal route in this legislation. If the Bill is about illegal migration, what is the point of safe and legal routes? My amendment 138, which will be debated tomorrow, is about how that might then play a role in asylum processing itself. There is a simple message in all this work. I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash); that might surprise people, and I am sorry he is not in the Chamber to hear it. He said that the processing and assessing of claims matters.”
“Let us learn from Einstein—that most famous refugee, who this country turned away. He said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. My new clause 17 is a probing one, on that basis. If the Government talk about safe and legal routes, we should know what those are intended to do. It simply says that the Government should set out what a safe and legal route is and which countries are therefore unsafe and require a legal route. After all, the Bill sets out countries considered to be safe. Ergo, all the countries not listed must be unsafe. The Government should tell us in Parliament how people should be able to access those routes and therefore not make dangerous journeys. I also support new clause 13, tabled by the hon.”
“The Government have failed to provide a children’s rights assessment and equality impact assessment. It is so worrying that they are asking us to trust them when they cannot set out how they think people who are entitled to seek asylum because they are fleeing persecution should do so. When I look at this Bill, I see that it needs a drastic overhaul even to meet its own ambitions or the pledges in article 31 of the refugee convention that somebody destroying their documents should not be penalised by the suggestion that their claim must be malicious. We should look at the actual evidence as to why smugglers encourage them to do that. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings suggests that somehow the Bill will do what the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 failed to do and what this Government’s policies keep failing to do.”
“I look forward to having a debate with the right hon. Gentleman tomorrow about my amendment 293, which would remove the word “Illegal” from the title of the Bill. It is not illegal to seek asylum. What he is talking about is not what the Bill will do. I have tried to urge him before not to process people’s claims in the Chamber; this is about the evidence of what we see. I have multiple anecdotes about people who have been failed by our asylum system, the processing and the promises they were given of a safe and legal route. That is why this evening I wish to speak to the amendments about safe and legal routes. If the Government think this legislation is about illegal migration, by default there must be a legal process—so those safe and legal routes deserve much more scrutiny and attention.”
“Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) is not here, because I was hoping he might want a chance to clarify his earlier remark, in which he genuinely tried to suggest that Winston Churchill opposed us being part of the European Court of Human Rights. As somebody who served on the Council of Europe and repeatedly saw pictures of Winston Churchill—”