It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), with whom I agree about the source of human rights. Sometimes we need to have an arbiter, a human one, who will prevent us from being our worst selves, and I fear that the Government are being their worst self in this instance. I fear that the Bill, with its flagship title—no pun intended—will not stop the boats. I want to stop the boats, because every person who gets into a rickety boat on the French side of the channel and takes the risk of crossing it is a potential tragedy. We should all want those boat crossings to stop. However, I am convinced that the Bill will do nothing of the sort.
This Bill is dozy and it is dangerous. It is dozy because it will not work and will be counterproductive; it is dangerous for genuine refugees—we will not know who they are unless we seek to assess them in the first place—and it is dangerous for Britain’s reputation and therefore to our power overseas, soft or otherwise, thus undermining our sovereignty. It fails the moral test, not just because of the impact on those who seek sanctuary on our shores, but because it is based on a hysterical and bogus pretext. The context is important here, and so is the language. The fact that the Home Secretary and other refer to the UK’s being “swamped” by refugees is an outrage as much as it is totally and utterly inaccurate. In a league table of European countries, the United Kingdom ranks 20th among those taking refugees, per capita. It takes a third of the number taken by France, and a quarter of the number taken by Germany.
The bogus premise on which the Bill is based is set out clearly and obviously. Intelligent Conservative Members—and I am sure they are all intelligent—understand that, yet they continue to promulgate this nonsense. Nevertheless, language has consequences. Do Conservative Members not realise that when far-right protesters stood on the pavement screaming abuse at some terrified person fleeing persecution and simply awaiting an assessment, that was caused in no small part by the incendiary language used by politicians and people in the media? It is outrageous.