Like many people, I was shocked, though not surprised, by the Government’s Illegal Migration Bill, which returns, on its accelerated timetable, to the Commons today. The Bill appears to me to be both illegal and immoral. So, as a good democrat, I decided to write to my MP, Jerome Mayhew, the Conservative MP for Broadland in Norfolk, to ask for his views. I was pleasantly surprised to have a lengthy response back in a couple of days.
However, the response looked suspiciously like a standard briefing from the Home Office (or perhaps Conservative Central Office) rather than extensive thought by Mr Mayhew. Furthermore, it seemed to me to contain some “inaccuracies”.
So, I decided to respond, point by point (in the order of his letter). He responded promptly but without answering my points, so I wrote again, twice. Again, the responses were fast but not answers.
Here is the story.
Round 1: Eight dodgy claims
In his first reply Mr Mayhew made the following eight claims. In each case I have emboldened his claim, followed by my response.
1. We are now spending over £6m a day on housing asylum applicants. This is because of the failure of the Home Office to recruit, train and motivate staff to carry out assessments. The rate of decision-making has fallen precipitately, with the backlog rising much faster than the number of new applications. If these people were allowed to work, they could pay for their own accommodation, and this would hasten their integration, which is the likely eventual outcome for most of them.
2. The Illegal Migration Bill will remove the incentive for people to make the sea crossing. There is no research evidence that people are deterred by such measures, even if they are aware of them. Those who are stopped merely try again, and the new regime makes it more likely that they will enter the black economy when they eventually succeed.
3. We can better support those in genuine need of asylum. Good idea. But 75% of those arriving in small boats are judged to be “genuine” in that category. The Bill proposes to prevent them from obtaining that support.
4. We will introduce an annual cap (on asylum approvals]. Nothing in international law permits a state to limit the numbers of people granted asylum. Quite the reverse, and we currently admit less than 1% of the world’s refugees, a much smaller proportion than many other countries.
5. Children will be exempt from the duty to remove people who arrive “illegally ” until they become adults. Is it not cruel and unreasonable to deport, on his/her 18th birthday, someone who may have spent their entire childhood and adolescence in the country, to a country where they have never lived, probably do not speak the language and have no family ties? This was the essence of the Windrush scandal. We appear to be repeating past mistakes.
6. You cite Article 31 of the Refugee Convention., to justify removing people who have arrived via a safe country. But Article 31 makes no reference to removing such people. People have a legal right to seek asylum in any country, and no law obliges them to do so in the first one they arrive in.
7. The Home Secretary is confident that the legislation is fully compliant with our obligations. So why did she preface the Bill with a declaration “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill”?
8. If someone is found to be a genuine victim of modern slavery we will ensure they are returned or sent to another safe country. You quote the rising number of such applicants, but do not give any evidence that those claims are illegitimate.
Two more issues
In my response, I added two more issues to the tally:
9. There are currently no formally agreed routes for asylum seekers to arrive from the five countries where the need is greatest, and we only consider applicants who are here. So, most applicants are, in terms of government rhetoric, “illegal”, though in international law they are merely exercising their legal rights. If we had places in Europe where people could make an application and have it assessed, we could eliminate the 25% who are not legitimate, and the rest could enter legally, at little expense, on ferries and trains.
10. There is nowhere to send the rejected applicants to. The Bill proposes to deport large numbers of arrivals to third countries, but since the UK withdrew from the Dublin Convention when we left the EU, we have no agreements with such countries. So, nobody can be deported apart from the tiny numbers covered by the Rwanda agreement (less than 3% of the current annual applicants). So this Bill binds us to housing large numbers of people indefinitely, with no legal status, at huge and growing expense.
Round 2: Five more dodgy claims
The next email prompted another speedy reply from Mr Mayhew. The fact that he answered so quickly, and with no attempt to respond to my points, suggests that it was, once again, a pre-prepared generic response, designed to deflect attention. So I responded to the five new points which he made.
10. We should not encourage people to cross the Channel in small boats. Of course – and, as I proposed, if we created proper facilities for people to claim asylum from outside the UK, nobody would need to cross in small boats. Five countries generate the largest numbers of refugees (22,000 last year). Since there are currently no safe legal routes for applicants from any of these, they have no other means to claim their legal rights.
11. 10 million people are “on the move”. Maybe, but it’s preposterous to imply that they might all want to come here. A tiny proportion have any ambition to come to the UK. Worldwide, 83% of displaced persons move to low and middle income countries, and 72% to neighbouring countries. Nor are we doing our “fair share”. Seventeen European countries admit more refugees as a proportion of the resident population, than the UK.
12. Other countries reject almost all Albanian asylum claims. Yes, and if we had an efficient system for handling applications we might do the same. We do not need a new law to do that, merely a competent Home Office.
13. Once the flow of boats across the Channel has been reduced we will be able to help those who genuinely need our help. Why not do that now, as I proposed?
14. Constituents are anxious about this issue. Of course: I too am very anxious about it, and like most of them, I want a policy which will work, be fair and legal. But there is, as I said, no evidence that this Bill will “break the business case for the smugglers”. I want a solution, not mere gesture politics.
Round three
Once again the response was prompt, but failed to answer my points. He claimed that there are already safe and legal routes. Five of these routes are country-specific, targeting applicants from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine. The other four are open to refugees globally. These are the UK Resettlement Scheme; the Community Sponsorship Scheme; Refugee Family Reunion; and the Mandate Resettlement Scheme.
15. As far as I can determine from Home Office and Migration Observatory figures, these four schemes accounted for around 6,000 people last year (1.7% of the total admitted). Meanwhile over 20,000 had legitimate claims accepted from four conflict zones for which there are no regular routes (Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Syria). Presumably most/all of these came “illegally”, but when we considered their cases we deemed them to be legitimately entitled to asylum.
Conclusion?
The Home Secretary has refused to certify that this Bill is compatible with international law. I have raised with my MP 15 specific objections to the policy and not had a good answer to any of them.
There is a better alternative – to create safe and legal routes by setting up centres in mainland Europe where asylum claims can be made. Those granted asylum could then enter safely, at reasonable cost. They could then settle and integrate rapidly, and start contributing to the economy, rather than spending months and years stranded, at our expense, in hotels, army bases or ships. This is not an unmanageable task: in the last four years 436 people have been granted asylum in the East of England. We can cope with that.
Whether you believe, with the Labour Party, that this Bill cannot work, or with some others, that it is fundamentally immoral and illegal, it deserves to be defeated.
In general, I tend to think the best of our elected politicians. Most of them are trying to do a decent job as they see it, even if I disagree with them. But it is difficult not to believe that this Bill is deliberately playing games with the lives of thousands of miserable people simply in order to score party political points. These are people fleeing disaster, seeking refuge, and the chance to contribute to our society, I thought my country was better than this.
