My Lords, we had a long debate on this subject in Committee, so I shall be brief. We ought to remember throughout what the Bill was originally about. It is fundamentally about stopping, or curbing, the channel migrants. Obviously, we hope to do it in a sensible way. If we could have an agreement with the French, the Belgians or the Dutch to deal with this in a bipartisan way, that would be ideal, but none of us is very optimistic, particularly before a general election in France and so on.
We need other options: a plan B, or maybe a plan C. I agree that some of them stretch the credibility of what any Government would want to do, because the problem of the cross-channel migrants is indeed very difficult to deal with. You have to deal with them separately because, however sympathetic one may be with people in the hands of traffickers coming across the channel for whatever reason, it is a difficult way to come across. It is unsafe, they are clearly behaving illegally—it is against the law to enter this country in that way—and they are doing so in a very public way. Every night on television, you can see people coming across the channel and on to the beaches in Kent and so forth. They add to the number of people the Government have agreed to accept by proper routes—the Chinese from Hong Kong, the Afghans and, now, Ukrainians. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I hope we will have a generous scheme to allow Ukrainians who wish to come here to do so, just as I hope that Europe will have a generous scheme. I suspect and hope that they will come here only temporarily.
Coming across the channel is an open-ended and uncontrolled method and, if successful, encourages even more to come. Last year, 29,000 came; the prediction is that 60,000 will come this year. That is more money for the traffickers. The traffickers now make more money out of human beings than they do out of drugs, which will increasingly be the case. If we allow
that to carry on uncontrolled, it makes it more difficult for local authorities, which have to deal with these people—housing them, making welfare arrangements, schooling their children and dealing with their families.
They add to the problems in the most disadvantaged parts of the country. It is not the leafy areas of Hampstead where these people end up; it is in places such as Blackpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Middlesbrough and Doncaster. I was talking to a red wall MP from the north-west. Blackpool has five of the eight poorest wards in the country; it has real problems. There is fury on the streets of Blackpool at the way they are being dumped on with people such as the migrants who come across the channel. They do not understand why they have to receive them.
The levelling-up agenda, which is central to this Government, is set at nought when that situation is arising in the areas of this country which need to be levelled up. It makes a proper, organised, rational immigration policy more difficult. As my noble friend Lord Hodgson said in a previous debate, informed consent—the consent of the people—is essential for a rational, substantiated and long-term immigration policy. If we do not have a policy that people are comfortable with, in the long run, we will not sustain it.
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It also makes it more difficult for the immigrants because, if they are dumped in a place such as Blackpool or some other city because there is nowhere else to go, it causes resentment among other people who find that they are pushed further down the council waiting list for a home. That is a problem.
As my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke mentioned in a debate we had in Committee, if you do not deal with this problem, you run the risk of having real right-wing parties, as fortunately we have avoided in this country; we do not have a Le Pen or a Zemmour or the German equivalent of Alternative für Deutschland and all the rest of them. We do not have such a party in this country. We have managed to keep it within the bounds of the usual national parties. If there is no attempt to deal with this problem, that is a risk you run.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, also said that it goes outside the refugee convention and that there is no example anywhere in the world of this happening. But in Australia, of course, they are doing precisely this. We are trying to take that as a model. In Australia, 10 years ago, exactly this kind of legislation was passed. Since then, it has had the campaign to stop the boats, and it has been highly successful. Where there were 50,000 people a year going by boat into Darwin and so forth in the north of Australia, now there is none, and there has been none for many years. Both the major parties—the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia—support this policy because it is successful. That is, I imagine—I do not know as I am not privy to government thoughts on this matter—a possibly alternative if negotiations with the French is our main purpose and this is enacted.
There are examples in the world of highly successful policies which are presumably inside the refugee convention—I am not aware of Australia being sanctioned
or penalised by the UNHCR. The facts are that this is an alternative which the Government are looking at. It is a difficult alternative—I agree that it is well beyond what Governments would normally look at—but, in these circumstances, the Government here are laying the legal framework for the possibility of enacting this. To take it out of the Bill would be hugely destructive and deeply irresponsible.