Meeting of the Parliament 10 January 2024
We gather in a new year but, in many ways, not much has changed on the issues that we are debating or the approaches that are being taken to asylum policy and legislation. Prior to Christmas, we had no fewer than five debates on asylum, which covered issues ranging from the Illegal Migration Bill—now the Illegal Migration Act 2023—and the provision of free bus travel for asylum seekers to the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee’s important inquiry into the experience of asylum seekers and refugees and the Scottish Government’s latest independence paper on migration. Those debates have been most beneficial when we have found consensus on our approach and discussed how we can use the Parliament’s powers to make a real difference to the lives of refugees and asylum seekers in Scotland and continue to support them. I point to the important recommendations in the committee’s report in that regard.
On each of those occasions, and in many other debates last year, Labour members condemned the shambolic and uncaring asylum system that the UK Conservative Government operates. On each of those occasions, we reiterated the need for a more humane approach to asylum processing and migration and that migrants, refugees and asylum seekers should feel safe and welcome when fleeing persecution, war and violence. Each time that we have come to the chamber to debate those issues, Labour members have asked the Scottish Government what more it can do to support asylum seekers, address the issues that are outlined in the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee’s report and respond to the challenges that are posed by the Illegal Migration Act 2023.
It may be a new year, as I said, but we have not seen a new approach from the UK Government, which continues to press ahead with the Rwanda scheme despite it being ruled illegal. Next week, it will again be rushed through the House of Commons in its new form. Suella Braverman may have gone as Home Secretary, but the pernicious approach persists, with Tory MPs now battling it out to see how the plan can be made even more deplorable. We have a Prime Minister who now privately thinks that it does not work but clearly sees culture wars as his last throw of the dice this year. I quote Yvette Cooper in the House of Commons yesterday:
“In the end, the only deterrence that the Prime Minister believes in is deterring his Back Benchers from getting rid of him. It is weak … and the taxpayer is paying the price.
It is a totally farcical situation: a Prime Minister who does not think it is a deterrent, a Home Secretary who thinks it is ‘batshit’, a former Home Secretary who says it will not work, a former Immigration Minister who says it does not do the job and everyone”
else who thinks that it is a complete
“sham”.—[Official Report, House of Commons, 9 January 2024; Vol 743, c 228.]
Labour has been clear that we would scrap the Rwanda scheme. It is unethical, unworkable and extortionate. We need real policy changes to deal with the challenges that we face, not the gimmicks that the Conservatives continue to pursue. That is why Labour has set out a five-point plan to fix the asylum system—to form cross-border policing units to crack down on the smuggler gangs that are trafficking people and putting people into unthinkable situations; to clear the backlogs, which we have heard about, to end the long waits and the expensive use of hotels; to reform legal routes for refugees coming to this country; to negotiate new returns and a family reunion agreement with France and other European countries; and to tackle humanitarian crises at source and better support refugees in their own regions. It is simply disingenuous—