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Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

It is always a great pleasure to address a full House, and tonight is no exception. [Laughter.] We have had a good debate, with some excellent contributions from both sides of the House and from all political parties. Perhaps we have more in common in terms of our approach to certain issues than might be thought outside. It is good to have a debate conducted in a good-tempered, constructive way, which contrasts with the inflammatory approaches sometimes presented in the newspapers. Briefly, I want to thank some of my hon. Friends for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) spoke for the whole House when he said how important it was that the asylum and immigration system should carry the confidence of the people. He was right to express his opposition, reflected throughout the House, to the British National party and everything that it stands for. I enjoyed the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who spoke movingly of his experience of the treatment of refugees on the Kenyan-Somalian border. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) said rightly that dealing with applications quickly was important, as it would demonstrate our respect for those who make an application. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) was absolutely right to allude to the need for more efficiency and less legislation, to which I shall refer shortly. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said that he wondered whether he would be accused of being—I hope that I have his words right—a ““cranky libertarian”” or a ““dangerous racist””. The truth of the matter is that he stands accused of being neither. His was a powerful speech from a colleague who knows the subject deeply, always speaks in measured tones, and from whom we have come to learn a great deal in recent months on this topic. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made a moving and powerful speech, which held the attention of all in the House. His track record over the years of commitment to his constituency and issues involving the Yarl’s Wood centre is well established, well known and much admired, and his observations about the Zimbabwe detainees moved the whole House. We were extremely pleased that he was able to make such an excellent contribution to the debate, and I thank him for it. A number of Labour Members spoke—not always, I must say, in support of the Government. I was particularly pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher), who always speaks in a decent, humane and knowledgeable fashion. The expertise of the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in these matters is extremely well known and is matched only by his commitment to his constituents, which he has demonstrated for many years. He and many other speakers raised constituency issues. That shows that all Members—the hon. Gentleman is a shining example—take asylum and immigration issues raised by their constituents very seriously, and do their best to deal with them. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) is extremely knowledgeable about such issues. He made me smile, because he said more or less what I was going to say: serving on a Standing Committee considering an asylum Bill is very ageing. The hon. Gentleman has been doing it for a long time, and I feel that I have—and I have aged visibly each year when we have had to deal with yet another asylum Bill. His help in Committee, however, will be as invaluable as ever. There were extremely interesting contributions from other Members as well. I think that, in one way or another, I have been involved in all three of the most recent major asylum Bills over the past few years. I believe that in Committee I have spoken on some 400 clauses, most of which seem to have been introduced as Government amendments on the last day of the Committee stage. That makes my point for me. Most of us regret the Government’s insistence on more and more legislation, accompanied by less and less efficiency and proper enforcement of existing law. I directly accuse the Home Office of having been inefficient in many ways over the past seven or eight years, and I shall illustrate that shortly. I exempt from any criticism, however, not just the individual Ministers with whom I have dealt—the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality is no exception: he always shows great courtesy—but the private office, which is consistently helpful to Members who contact it. The tendency to legislate is becoming almost a disease in the Home Office. Why can it not focus much more on enforcing properly, and administering properly, the existing law that has been built up over a number of years? That tendency to over- legislate is illustrated by yet another Home Office Bill—the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which appeared a week or two ago and which deals with crimes associated with alcohol and knives. The truth is that all these issues are amply covered by existing legislation, and more legislation is not needed. My general proposition is this. The Government should talk less but do more. They should not legislate so much. A smart headline is no real substitute for efficient action. Let me give an example of talk as opposed to action. The hon. Member for Walthamstow and others will recall the flagship asylum policy of 2002—the establishment of a number of accommodation centres in rural areas to house young asylum seekers. That was going to cure the problem. It was a major part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. A huge amount of time was devoted to debate on the issue, and millions of pounds were spent on it. Perhaps the Minister will tell us just how many millions were spent. The Government thought that accommodation centres were the answer to all the problems, despite opposition to them. Can the Minister tell me how many of those centres are up and running today? The answer is: none. That great flagship policy has been quietly ditched. How much money has been spent on it? I simply do not know. I would like to find out, but I doubt whether the Minister will tell us. What about another issue—the removal of failed asylum seekers? Three or four years ago, the Government set out their target. They said, ““We have a target and we are confident that we will meet it. We will be able to remove 30,000 failed asylum seekers a year from 2003 onward.”” What happened? They could not do it and that policy was abandoned. It collapsed.