I do recognise that there are Members on the Government Benches who are deeply troubled by many of the measures in this Bill. I recognise that, and I think that reflects quite how far the Conservative party has fallen, and I am sorry that that has happened. This is an area where we should be able to build consensus, not division. In past eras, there has been consensus, for example on support for Syrian refugees. If we go back generations, there was consensus on support for the Kindertransport. There has been that support in place. We have also had past consensus about practical, sensible measures around border security, too.
It should be possible to build that consensus, and we would work with the Government to do that, but that is not what we are getting from the Conservative party, the Conservative Government, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. Instead, we have a Home Secretary who is happy to ramp up the rhetoric, rather than ever to build a calm consensus around a practical plan that sorts things out. How desperate have things become if what they are doing is ramping up hostility and hatred towards the victims of trafficking and slavery? That is not leadership. Britain is better than this.
Labour will vote for action to stop the gangs and to prevent these dangerous boat crossings. We will vote for a new cross-border police unit, for fast-track decisions and returns to clear the backlog and end hotel use, and for new agreements with France and other countries on returns, on family reunions and on reforming resettlement. We will vote for action that rebuilds border security and restores a properly functioning, credible asylum and refugee system that is properly controlled. We will not vote, however, for more chaos. We will not vote for a traffickers’ charter that lets criminal gangs off the hook, that fails to tackle dangerous boat crossings and that locks up children and leaves some of the most vulnerable people undermined. We will not vote for this Bill tonight.