Stephen Kinnock
MP for Aberafan Maesteg · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank the shadow Secretary of State for her kind words and look forward to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box. I am ready to engage with her on getting the maximum benefits for the people of Wales.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady and look forward to working with her. My understanding is that there were challenges around the helicopter capability. Decisions were taken by Natural Resources Wales some time ago to change the way that the tendering for helicopter capability works. We certainly need to look at that.”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. Like him, I pay tribute to all those involved in the collective and heroic response to the wildfires.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her question. Many of the ideas coming forward for devolving power right across our United Kingdom, beyond Cardiff Bay and Holyrood, are very exciting, and I look forward to exploring them with her.”
“Just to be clear, this is not about staying out of the issue; it is about respecting the devolution settlement, but being prepared to work constructively where we can in partnership with the Welsh Government. The hon.”
“I know about and welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s strong connections to Wales. I recognise the connectivity benefits that WSMR’s proposal could deliver, particularly for passengers in Wales and the west midlands.”
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“The hon. Gentleman is right, we have had this conversation before, and he consistently refuses to listen to the fact that the Dublin regulation acted as a deterrent, so the numbers that he talks about were small. The number of small boat crossings was small when we were part of the Dublin regulation. We left the Dublin regulation, and now the number is large—it is not rocket science. There is a clear connection, a correlation, a causal link between the two.”
“The reality is that a very large number of people are coming to our country through irregular means, but it is also clear that that number was significantly smaller when we were part of the Dublin regulation. That is because it was a comprehensive deterrent, compared with the utterly insignificant power of the Rwanda programme as a deterrent.”
“I simply say to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that last year, we had 45,000 people coming on small boats and goodness knows how many on lorries—of course, those coming by clandestine means in the back of a lorry are far more difficult to detect than those coming on small boats, so the small boats crisis is, by definition, far more visible. It is true that that juxtaposition and the new arrangements have had a positive impact, but we still do not know how many are coming. I have been to camps in Calais and spoken to many who are planning to come on lorries rather than on small boats—not least because it is a far cheaper alternative.”
“He also knows that the Government are more than happy to break international law—just look at how they played fast and loose with the Northern Ireland protocol. If the Minister really thinks that we will simply take his deeply misleading words at face value and trust him and his colleagues to uphold our legal obligations, he has another think coming.”
“I will make a little bit of progress, and then I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene. I will turn first to Lords amendment 1B, intended to ensure that the Bill is consistent with international law, which Labour fully supports. Last week, the Minister deemed the same amendment unnecessary, because: “It goes without saying that the Government obey our international obligations, as we do with all pieces of legislation.” —[ Official Report , 11 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 198.] That comment was typical of the Minister’s approach. He is constantly trying to calm his colleagues’ nerves by fobbing them off with that sort of soothing statement, but we all know that he does not really believe a word of it. He knows that the very first page of the Bill states that the Government are unable to confirm that it complies with our legal obligations.”
“Many of those children will have had to see their loved ones suffer unspeakable acts of violence, yet despite the Government’s concession, the Bill will mean that when they arrive in the UK, they will be detained like criminals for up to eight days before they can apply for bail. We are clear that that is unacceptable, and are in no doubt that the Government’s amendment is yet another example of their liking for performative cruelty. We urge the Minister to accept the compromise of 72 hours contained in Lords amendments 36C and 36D.”
“Indeed, the mid-range estimate for the hotels bill alone is greater than the latest round of levelling-up funding, and three times higher than the entire budget for tackling homelessness in this country. The only people who benefit from the inadmissibility provisions in the Bill are the people smugglers and human traffickers, who are laughing all the way to the bank. As such, it is essential that this House votes in favour of Lord German’s amendment, which seeks to ensure that inadmissibility can be applied to an asylum seeker only for a period of six months if they have not been removed to another country. A major concern throughout the passage of the Bill has been its utter disregard for the mental wellbeing of unaccompanied children.”
“As always, Madam Deputy Speaker, you are very gracious. The late, great Denis Healey famously advised that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging. [Hon. Members: “Quite right!”] Hang on. He would certainly have approved of Lords amendment 9B, which goes right to the heart of the fundamental unworkability of this bigger backlog Bill and seeks to prevent it from becoming the indefinite limbo Bill. Let us be clear: the current state of affairs represents both a mental health crisis for asylum seekers and a financial crisis for British taxpayers, who are already shouldering an asylum bill that is seven times higher than it was in 2010, at £3.6 billion a year.”
“Given that a significant proportion of those 9,000 would have been younger still, I just wonder whether the Minister would like to take this opportunity to withdraw his comments about the age-appropriateness of those cartoons.”
“This is a fair and reasonable compromise, given that Lords amendment 33 initially set the limit at 72 hours. While we are on the subject of children, how utterly astonishing and deeply depressing it was to hear the Minister standing at the Dispatch Box last week and justifying the erasure of Disney cartoons on the basis of their not being age-appropriate. Quite apart from the fact that his nasty, bullying, performative cruelty will have absolutely no effect whatsoever in stopping the boats, it has since emerged that more than 9,000 of the children who passed through that building in the year to March 2023 were under the age of 14.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the only people who benefit from the small boat crossings are the people smugglers and human traffickers—that has to be brought to an end. Where we fundamentally disagree is about the means. Labour believes that the deterrence of the Rwanda scheme simply will not work, for the reasons I have already set out, and that the solution lies far more in pragmatism and quiet diplomacy, working with international partners to get the returns deal that I talked about, than in all the performative cruelty that is at the heart of this Bill. Likewise, the Government should show some humility and support Lords amendment 33B, which states that accompanied children should be liable for detention only for up to 96 hours.”
“This was a profoundly embarrassing moment for the Minister, but I do hope he will now swallow his pride, listen to the wise counsel he is receiving from those on the Benches behind him and accept Lords amendment 56B in the name of Lord Randall.”
“I have already described this Bill as a traffickers charter—a gift to the slave drivers and the pimps—because it makes it harder for victims to come forward and therefore more difficult for the police to prosecute criminals. The Immigration Minister last week repeated the false claim that the UK Statistics Authority recently rebuked him for. It was his second rebuke this year by our national statistics watchdog for inaccurate claims made to this House. Thankfully, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who is not in her place today, called him out on it. She correctly pointed out that the proportion of small boats migrants claiming to be victims of modern slavery stands at just 7%.”
“No. Well, there we have it. This whole sorry episode really was a new low for this Minister and for the shameful, callous Government he represents. We also support Lords amendment 23B, a compromise in lieu of Lords amendment 23, which seeks to protect LGBT asylum seekers from being removed to a country that persecutes them for their sexuality or gender. The Minister last week claimed that that was unnecessary because there is an appeals process, but why on earth would he put asylum seekers and the British taxpayer through an expensive and time-consuming appeals process when he could just rule out this scenario from the outset? Nothing illustrates more clearly the indifference of this Government towards the most vulnerable people in society than their treatment of women being trafficked into our country for prostitution.”
“886.] We strongly agree with her concerns and wholeheartedly support Lords amendment 56B, which I remind the Minister goes no further than to maintain the status quo of the basic protections and support currently available to all victims of trafficking and exportation. I will now turn to the amendments that are underpinned by Labour’s five-point plan: end the dangerous small-boat crossings, defeat the criminal gangs, clear the backlog, end extortionate hotel use, and fix the asylum system that the Conservatives have spent 13 years destroying.”
“Lords amendment 56B states that victims of trafficking who have been unlawfully exploited in the UK should be protected from the automatic duty to remove and should continue to be able to access the support currently available to them, but only for the duration of the statutory recovery period, which was set by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 at 30 days. On Second Reading, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead argued that the Bill as drafted would “drive a coach and horses through the Modern Slavery Act, denying support to those who have been exploited and enslaved and, in doing so, making it much harder to catch and stop the traffickers and slave drivers.” —[ Official Report , 28 March 2023; Vol. 730, c.”
“Sir Robert Chote of the UK Statistics Authority said clearly that the figure is only 20%, not 70%. I do not know whether we want to invite Sir Robert to clarify those points himself, but the rebuke the Minister received from the UK Statistics Authority was pretty clear. It is vitally important that the Minister’s position on this is not used as the basis for a policy that could cause profound harm to vulnerable women while feeding criminality in the United Kingdom. I therefore urge him to reflect on what he is trying to achieve, the proportionality of his actions and the unintended consequences he may be facilitating.”
“Conservative Members refuse to make that connection, but we know it is in the interests of the EU and France to strike a returns deal with the UK, and dissuade the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who are flowing through Europe and ending up on the beaches of Calais. The EU and its member states will never do a deal with the UK unless it is based on a give-and-take arrangement, whereby every country involved does its bit and shares responsibility.”
“Too much focus by this Government has been on slashing tents and puncturing dinghies along the French coastline, whereas Labour has set out its plan for an elite unit in the NCA to work directly with Europol and Interpol. The latest amendment from Lord Coaker, Lords amendment 103B, attempts to strengthen the NCA’s authority, and we support it without reservation. We are also clear that there is a direct link between gaining the returns agreement that we desperately need with the EU, and creating controlled and managed pathways to asylum, which would allow genuine refugees to reach the UK safely, particularly if they have family here.”
“I will come to that in my comments, but as the right hon. Gentleman will know, any negotiation requires give and take, quid pro quo. As I said in response to one of his hon. Friends, to get that deal with the European Union we of course have to do our bit and take our fair share, and that will be the negotiation that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) will be leading on when he becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, following the next general election. We are determined that the National Crime Agency will be strengthened so that it can tackle the criminal gangs upstream.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman. As he rightly points out, the key point is that these people are already fleeing desperate situations and have risked life and limb to get as far as they have. The idea that a 0.3% chance of being sent to Rwanda acts as a deterrent is clearly for the birds. In addition, he makes important points about the need for international co-operation, and finding solutions to these problems alongside our partners across the channel.”
“I note that the Minister loves to trot out his lines about the Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghan resettlement schemes, but he neglects to mention that there are now thousands of homeless Ukrainian families, and we have the travesty of thousands of loyal-to-Britain Afghans who are set to be thrown on the streets at the end of August. More than 2,000 Afghans are stuck in Pakistan with the right to come here, but they are not being allowed to do so. He simply must fix those resettlement schemes.”
“Let us not forget that this Government sent Britain tumbling out of the Dublin regulations during their botched Brexit negotiations, and it is no surprise that small boat crossings have skyrocketed since then. This Government must prioritise getting that returns deal. We therefore support Lords amendment 102B, which demands that the Government get on with setting out what these safe and legal routes might look like, not only to provide controlled and capped pathways to sanctuary for genuine refugees, but to break that deadlock in the negotiations with the EU over returns.”
“I suppose the answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, and the Rwanda plan is so clearly and utterly misconceived, misconstrued and counter-productive. Labour Members like to vote for things that are actually going to work, which is why we simply cannot support that hare-brained scheme. With the Minister last week reiterating a deadline of December 2024—18 months from now—to lay out what safe and legal routes might look like, and by stating that those routes will not deal with the challenges facing Europe directly, he appears to be reducing the chances of getting the returns deal with the EU that we so urgently need.”
“It beggars belief that the Immigration Minister says that, when he speaks for a party that has allowed our backlog to get to 180,000, costing £7 million a day in hotels. He should just get the processing system sorted out. The Conservatives downgraded the seniority of caseworkers and decision makers in 2013 and 2014. Surprise, surprise, productivity fell off a cliff, as did the quality of decisions. That is the fundamental problem, but we have to recognise that these Afghans have stood shoulder to shoulder with our defence, diplomacy and development effort in Afghanistan, and we owe them a debt of honour and gratitude.”
“The Minister is talking absolute nonsense. I am proud of the fact we have many Syrians in our constituency. We have Ukrainians in our welcome centre. Discussions are ongoing between the Home Office and the Welsh Government. The incompetence of his Government means that they are not managing to house them. Wales is ready to have that dialogue with the Home Office.”
“It should get out of the way so that we can get to work.”
“They have introduced a combination of swift consequences for those who cross the border illegally; orderly paths and controls on which migrants can apply for asylum and where they do so; sensible, legal pathways for high grant-rate nations; and strong co-operation with Mexico. The result is that they are bringing numbers down significantly and quickly. The challenge is not over yet, and we would not see President Biden being foolish enough to go boasting at the border, but that shows that progress can be made. The Labour party is not interested in performative cruelty, chasing headlines or government by gimmick. We have a plan that will stop the boats, fix our broken asylum system and deliver for the British people. In contrast, the Conservative party has run out of ideas and run out of road.”
“With that, we have a commitment to go further in fast-tracking applications from low grant-rate countries so that we can return those with no right to be here, and fast-tracking applications from high grant-rate countries so that genuine refugees can get on with their lives and start contributing to our economy, enriching our society and culture. A third, key principle is the need for international co-operation, as I have set out. This is not rocket science; it is just sensible, pragmatic, serious governance. It is working in the United States, where the Biden Administration are winning the battle.”
“They are wasting their own time and the time of the House, and they really are trying the patience of the British people. It really is desperate stuff, and it has to stop. In stark contrast to the hopeless, aimless and utterly self-defeating thrashing around that has come to define the Government’s approach to the asylum crisis, Labour recognises that there is a way through: a route based on hard graft, common sense and quiet diplomacy. It comes in the form of the Labour party’s comprehensive plan, based on core principles, with a commitment to returning asylum processing to the well managed, efficient, smooth-running system we had prior to the catastrophic changes brought in by Conservative Ministers in 2013, which downgraded decision makers and caseworkers, leading to poorer results.”
“The final point of our plan is to tackle migration flows close to the conflict zones where they arise through targeting our aid spending. That is a longer-term mission, but it is no less important than any of the other steps we need to take to meet these migration challenges. I therefore see no reason for the Government not to support Lords amendment 107B in the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury, which would instruct the Government to develop a 10-year plan to manage migration. I have lost count of the number of times we have come to the Chamber to debate the Government’s latest madcap Bill or hare-brained scheme. Not one of those Bills has helped to stop a single boat, and the Government have sent more Home Secretaries to Rwanda than they have asylum seekers.”
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There are real concerns about the safety and security of those Afghans now in Pakistan. It is possible that they will be sent back. It is up to the Home Office to facilitate their transfer to the United Kingdom under ARAP and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, but like so many things with this Home Office, it is just a catastrophic failure of management. In trotting out the lines about the schemes that I mentioned, the Minister conveniently ignores the fact that none of those schemes help those coming from other high grant-rate countries in the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa. Neither he nor the Home Secretary have been able to answer questions from their own Back Benchers on that precise point.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to raise my father and what he might or might not have said when he is not in the Chamber to defend himself?”
“Again, any light that the Minister can shed on what otherwise looks to me like some fairly muddled thinking between different Departments would be much appreciated. I thank the Minister and look forward to his comments.”
“The Government’s impact assessment for the student visa fee increase acknowledges that this potential change is likely to have significant knock-on effects on the number of visas granted to international students and, as a result, the revenue from tuition fees, on which so many of our leading universities remain reliant. On the face of it, that appears to be in direct contradiction to the strategy of the Minister’s colleagues at the Department for Education, which—the last time I checked—was to increase the overall number of international students. Whether this is more an example of poor Government co-ordination or whether increasing application fees is part of a new, deliberate strategy overall to reduce the number of student visas is unclear to me.”
“Alongside the measures pertaining to ETAs, this order makes changes to the maximum fee levels applicable to a range of UK visa routes. For the most part, the proposed increases are relatively modest. The notable exception is for student visas. At present, applicants cannot be charged more than £490, but the order would increase the maximum fee to £600. That equates to a more than 20% increase on the current level, with significant potential implications for international student numbers. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in the other place has noted, the scale of the increase is particularly striking when measured against the actual cost to the Home Office of processing those visas, which is less than half of what the applicants have to pay.”
“However, the impact assessment fails to capture the different effects that the ETA may have across the UK’s different nations and regions. That is a significant oversight and one that I hope Ministers intend to address. Will the Minister therefore set out what steps the Home Office plans to take to mitigate any adverse effects on the tourist trade that these changes may have across the UK—including but not limited to the effects in Northern Ireland? Given that we are dealing with an order that addresses fees, can the Minister tell us what consideration the Government have given to the potential merits of ringfencing some of the income generated from applicants’ fees as a means of providing financial support to any businesses that may find themselves struggling with the transition?”
“If we look beyond the administration of the new system, there are serious questions about its potential impacts, especially on the tourism sector and the wider economy, including how travel across the border with Ireland might be affected. As things stand, I have yet to be convinced that Ministers are taking adequate steps to address the concerns raised by stakeholders and to mitigate any unintended consequences. With regard to tourism, the impact assessment published alongside this order recognises that it is reasonable to expect a fall in tourist numbers once the ETA has been implemented, and revenues can be expected to decrease as a result. Concerns about the implications for cross-border travel between Northern Ireland and the Republic are especially acute in this sector.”
“In this case, the ETA system will require applications to be made, and eventually biometric information to be submitted, online or via a new app, which has yet to see the light of day. The Government say that even the decision-making process may be automated. That will take highly sophisticated technologies, and robust testing will be essential before the new system comes online. Can the Minister therefore provide an update on what progress has been made with the development of those technologies to date, and whether he believes that the Home Office is currently on track to meet the deadlines that it has set for the roll-out of those changes?”
“Nevertheless, while we are here, I would like to put a few questions to the Minister on issues where further detail about the Government’s plans would be of great assistance to Members, to ensure that the process is being adequately managed and scrutinised. The new ETA system is a major undertaking, and its effects will be wide ranging. Significant numbers of UK-bound travellers who do not need a visa will be required to obtain formal clearance to enter the UK for the first time. Whether or not the system will function as it should depends, to a substantial degree, on the effectiveness of new technologies that are still in development. That is an important point, not least because the history of Departments and major IT projects is not a particularly happy one.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and I thank the Minister for his opening remarks. Following the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and related changes to the immigration rules in March this year, this order is the next stage of a lengthy process to implement the Government’s planned electronic travel authorisation system. Ministers have set themselves the ambitious target to begin issuing ETAs to people from Qatar and other Gulf states this autumn and for the scheme to be fully operational by the end of next year. With respect to the new ETA system, the scope of this order is limited to fees to be charged and requirements for applicants to submit biometric information. A number of the most important issues about how the scheme will work and what impact it will have are left for another day.”
“I thank the Minister, and I am reassured to hear that a great deal of thought has been given. I have also met with members of the Northern Ireland tourist board, and they have expressed extreme concern about this issue. They feel that their marketing strategy is very much based on an all-of-Ireland approach, and the communication of that to potential customers is, they feel, significantly undermined just by this additional measure. It is almost the symbolic nature of it that impacts on their overall marketing strategy. I want to underline that point and urge the Minister to continue that dialogue with the key stakeholders.”
“The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted that the actual cost to the Home Office of processing the visas is less than half of what applicants have to pay. So that we can have some transparency on how the increased costs were calculated, does the Minister agree with that analysis”
“I am not sure what the Home Secretary plans to do with the other 99.7% of asylum seekers or, indeed, why she thinks a 0.3% chance of removal to Rwanda is likely to put off a single asylum seeker considering paying money to a people smuggler. For a deterrent to be effective, it must be credible, and a 0.3% risk of deportation to Rwanda is not going to deter.”
“Call me old-fashioned, but an asylum strategy that is based on the weather is probably not a sustainable strategy. Then we have the Home Secretary. She jetted off to Rwanda on a taxpayer-funded vanity photoshoot to champion the new housing being built for the asylum seekers she dreams of one day flying over there. But again, all was not as it seemed: the housing estate she was showcasing is largely due to be used to house Rwandan nationals. Last week, the Court of Appeal reminded her that, even if her plan does go ahead, the Rwandan authorities can process only around 100 asylum claims per year—less than 0.3% of last year’s small boat crossers.”
“Here we go again: another day, another Bill designed to chase headlines and manufacture controversy, rather than tackle the asylum crisis that has been caused by the incompetence and indifference of the last 13 years. That said, a casual observer of the Prime Minister’s recent trip to Dover could be forgiven for thinking that it was all sorted—job done. There he was sporting his super-sized new boots and boasting about the slight decrease in crossings, while apparently failing to realise that strong winds in the channel were the actual cause of his somewhat premature celebrations. Since he danced his victory jig in Dover, we have seen channel crossings skyrocket, with the busiest June yet for the criminal people smuggling trade, with 3,824 asylum seekers making the dangerous journey last month.”
“By the way, we are still waiting for the Immigration Minister and the Prime Minister to correct the record on this point after the UK Statistics Authority comprehensively demolished their claims. As the Home Secretary and her officials have confirmed, numbers are going up, not down. Yesterday, the permanent secretary to the Home Office confirmed to the Public Accounts Committee that the Prime Minister is failing in his pledge to reduce asylum seeker hotel use. To make matters worse, the National Audit Office has declared that the Government will also fail to achieve their aim of clearing the so-called legacy backlog of 92,000 cases by the end of this year.”
“This whole sorry tale is a shambolic farce, and the cost to the taxpayer of the Rwanda policy, this legislation and the asylum backlog has become utterly extortionate. The cost of the asylum system is estimated by the National Audit Office to be seven times as large as it was under the last Labour Government—at an astonishing £3.6 billion. Almost 50,000 people are stuck in hotels, at £7 million a day, with 172,000 in the backlog. For the avoidance of doubt, that is the real backlog, not the imaginary “legacy cases” invented by the Prime Minister as a way of spinning the numbers. In fact, the backlog is nine times higher than it was when Labour left office in 2010.”
“The sheer pettiness and petulance are also quite astonishing, because painting over Disney characters in immigration centres will not stop the boats—I cannot believe I even need to say those words. Those three short stories about the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister make it clear that we are not exactly dealing with a well-oiled machine here. Last week, we finally received the Home Office’s impact assessment for this legislation, which revealed that it will cost the Government £169,000 per asylum seeker sent to Rwanda—five times the figure being briefed out when the partnership was announced last year. That is on top of the £140 million that has already been handed over to the Rwandan Government for what must surely be the most expensive press release in history.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think he misunderstands the basic psychology here. We are talking about people who have already risked life and limb and taken a very dangerous journey to get as far as the channel. The idea that a 0.3% chance of being removed to Rwanda is going to deter people who have already taken such massive risks is simply for the birds, and that is why the Rwanda scheme is fundamentally flawed. Last but not least, we have the Immigration Minister, whose latest foray into playing the tough guy was to order that Mickey Mouse cartoons in immigration centres be painted over because they were just too cheery for his liking. Many of those children are running away from unimaginable horrors, so I really do hope that the Minister will take some time to reflect on the morality of his actions.”