Several calumnies have found form in the contributions of Opposition Members in the course of our consideration of the Bill so far. Principal among them is that there is no factual basis that has provoked this legislation. That is simply not so.
Since 2018, some 85,000 people have entered Britain illegally, 45,000 of them in 2022 alone. Roughly 75%—in fact, I think it is 74%—are men under 40. Nearly nine in 10 of those arriving are male; 18% are Albanian—and, by the way, Albanians make up 10% of the foreign prisoner population, with some 2,000 of them—and 100% have travelled through safe countries in which they could have claimed asylum in order to get here. Accommodating these people is costing the British taxpayer £3 billion a year. That is why we need urgent action to deal with the channel crossings but also, more fundamentally still, to reform our asylum system to make it fit for purpose and to cut immigration—and, I say to the Minister, not just illegal immigration, because we will need to turn to legal immigration too during the course of this Parliament.