Illegal Immigrants: Offshore Detention and Deportation
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 13 Jul 2026 · 36 speeches · Official Report
I beg to move, That this House has considered e-petition 737105 relating to offshore detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg, and to open this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I will speak today in my role as a member of the Committee; in doing so, I am obliged to give not only my own views on the issue, but those of the petitioners and the campaigners who have sought this debate. I will set out what the petition seeks, its merits and some points worth considering further. Of course, I have my own views, which I will share throughout the debate. I congratulate the petitioner on setting up the petition. Unusually, he is one of our colleagues: the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe). The petition calls on the Government to “establish offshore detention facilities for individuals who enter the UK illegally, to process them and arrange their deportation.” It closed in March with over 720,000 signatures from every part of the United Kingdom, including from a great many of my constituents in Galashiels, Hawick, Kelso, Jedburgh and across the Scottish Borders. The number of signatures that the petition attracted reflects the strength of feeling on immigration. Let me set out the scale of the problem that has prompted the petition. Each year, tens of thousands of people are entering the United Kingdom illegally, mainly travelling by small boat across the English channel. There is a process for those...
Does my hon. Friend agree that this issue is ultimately about fairness for our constituents, who are paying their taxes and are seeing someone who has come here illegally benefiting from services more than they may be able to, as residents who pay tax? Does he agree that we must absolutely consider offshore detention and consider offshore processing? We must say, “If you come here illegally, you will be deported.”
Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions must be short.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is about a sense of fairness. The system is not working in the best interests of our constituents, and I am sure that his 1,138 constituents who signed the petition feel that unfairness. With the incentive of guaranteed mainland accommodation removed, the numbers requiring processing at any one time would fall to the low thousands, rather than the tens of thousands currently housed. The petitioner has based his argument on evidence such as that gathered by the Public Accounts Committee, which reported last month that the asylum system in the UK is “under severe pressure, with high costs and persistent backlogs.” The same inquiry found that repeated attempts at reform had failed to fix long-standing problems, and that short-term fixes had tended to push pressure from one part of the system to another rather than resolve it. More strikingly, the Committee recorded that the Home Office could only say that it knew where “the vast majority” of failed asylum seekers were. The Committee called that “shocking and unacceptable”. The vast majority of British people agree. The Committee’s conclusion was that the current accommodation model is “poor value for money”. The Government response to the petition says that offshore detention would be “costly and impractical”. On that point, the Government seem to be grasping at straws and to be woefully underprepared. Two words that undoubtedly apply to the current system are “costly” and “impractical”....
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, and I am grateful to the 1,744 people in Hartlepool who signed the petition. That is a significant number of my constituents, and their concerns deserve to be heard and taken seriously. Let me begin by saying something very clearly. The people of Hartlepool are entitled to be angry about immigration. They are entitled to expect secure borders. They are entitled to expect that those with no right to be in this country are removed. They are entitled to expect fairness in the asylum system and fairness for the communities that feel they have carried more than their fair share, and I share in those expectations. I have supported the Home Secretary’s measures to reduce illegal immigration, strengthen border security and increase returns, and I will continue to support this Home Secretary, including on the measures that will be laid before the House later today, which I hope this House will pass in full. The truth is that progress is being made. Net migration has fallen dramatically from the peak under the previous Government’s Boris wave: it is down 82%, delivering the reduction that was promised for years but never achieved. Indeed, the figures are now entering the tens of thousands that Conservative Administrations promised for so long. Small boat crossings are down 41% this year, while deportations of those arriving by small boat are up 16%. In...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. For three decades, successive Governments have promised to get tough on illegal immigration, yet according to Home Office figures, in the last seven years alone around half a million people have claimed asylum in the UK; of those, 200,000 came in on small boats and most of the others were visa overstayers. In that time, around 60% of all asylum claimants have been granted refugee status, including those granted after appeal, and it is estimated that 66% of adults with refugee status are now claiming universal credit. That means that since 2019 up to 300,000 people who illegally entered or remained in the United Kingdom have been granted refugee status, and most could now be claiming benefits, including housing benefit. By 2030, that number could be over 400,000-a city the size of Coventry, composed almost entirely of people who should have never been allowed to stay in the United Kingdom. What is frightening about these numbers, going back decades, is that we have no real idea of just how many illegal immigrants and visa overstayers are in this country, living under the radar in our communities. Poor record keeping by the Home Office means that the population of people with no right to remain in the United Kingdom is highly likely to be over 1 million. Thousands go missing every year, and the Government still fail to monitor properly whether migrants leave the UK after their visas expire. Labour says it is tackling...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. First, I will acknowledge that although I disagree with the premise of this petition, I recognise the strength of feeling among the hundreds of thousands of people who signed it. However, I cannot support calls for offshore detention or processing centres, and nor will I support calls to immediately deport those who enter this country through irregular routes, because seeking refuge and safety is not illegal, and many safe and legal routes do not actually exist. I strongly believe that Members who support what this petition calls for are not being honest with the wider public about what it would cost, how it is a risk and what the true problems are. Of the people who enter the UK via an irregular route, 95% submit an asylum application. That means that we, as a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, have a legal duty to assess their claim and place them under the care of the state while that process is ongoing. If their application is rejected, the state’s duty to them persists until the appeals process is exhausted. If that takes too long, it is inefficient, which is on us. Human Rights Watch and a number of other organisations have confirmed what most of us believe to be true, namely that holding asylum seekers in offshore detention is in contravention of our obligations under international human rights and refugee law. Regardless of whether a person’s application is deemed to be legitimate, they cannot be...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for moving the motion and to the vast number of people-720,000, including 1,093 from my constituency of Tatton-who signed this important petition and prompted this debate calling for offshore detention and deportation of illegal immigrants. According to Home Office data, just under 77,000 illegal immigrants have arrived by small boat since Labour took charge in July 2024. The average number of daily arrivals under Labour has been about 104, some 94% higher than under the previous Conservative Government -an extraordinary increase. On Friday just gone, 10 July, another shameful record was set: the highest number of illegal immigrants on a single dinghy, 128, arrived in the UK. A total of 225 arrived in three dinghies on that day. That has happened under a Government who pledged to reduce illegal migration, promising to “smash the gangs”-but those promises turned out to be smoke and mirrors. I say it was just to secure a general election victory, because reducing immigration is just not in Labour’s DNA. A fleeting search online is enough to reveal images of Cabinet members clutching “Refugees Welcome” signs. Without doubt, one of the biggest mistakes that the Prime Minister made, in a strong field, was to cancel the Rwanda scheme-an offshore processing centre and permanent resettlement programme. We know that deterrence is...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. First, I want to thank the 720,772 British men and women who signed our petition demanding the mass deportation of illegal migrants-a policy position that has moved from the so-called mad fringe to the acceptable mainstream in less than two years. The question is no longer whether Britain has a problem. We know the problem; it has been well documented. Now we need solutions. Restore Britain is the first and only political party to publish a comprehensive plan not just to stop future illegal immigration but to remove those who have no legal right to remain in this country. All of them-every man, woman and child-must be deported. A Restore Britain Government will do exactly that. I am not going to stand here and outline the problem; we all know what is wrong. I will tell this Parliament exactly how we can remove millions of illegal migrants. As we have seen time and again, deportation is routinely frustrated by a carefully designed maze of legislation, international treaties and legal challenges. A Restore Britain Government would repeal or amend the domestic legislation that prevents swift deportation; repeal the Human Rights Act; withdraw from the European convention on human rights; and remove the refugee convention from domestic immigration law. We would also introduce what we call the great clarification Act, reaffirming that we in these buildings have the final say on immigration policy and allowing Parliament...
I would like to understand the point about detention centres. How many places would be required, and over what period? How does the hon. Gentleman think that this is even feasible, given that the previous Government managed to build only one new prison in 14 years?
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I am not going to go into detail; it is all in this policy document. I will give her one to take away. Specialist detention facilities would be constructed near airfields to hasten the process. Britain would negotiate far stronger bilateral return agreements while working with allies to create a deportation NATO-a coalition of like-minded countries applying co-ordinated diplomatic and economic pressure on Governments that refused to accept back their own citizens. That would include harmonised visa sanctions, co-ordinated suspension of visa issuance, foreign aid suspension, targeted trade measures and tariffs, remittance and dividend controls and taxation, and a rapid response returns taskforce. Pakistan would be the first country to feel the full force of those measures. Sanctions from a single country are easier to absorb, but a unified bloc of economies and travel markets creates systematic and severe pressure. Co-ordinated restrictions would also close loopholes whereby nationals bypass one state’s measures by moving to another jurisdiction. All that would be delivered alongside the credible and proven threat of action. Do it once, hard enough, and it would not be required again. We must also revoke all asylum grants awarded following illegal entry and retrospectively revoke protection so that those individuals are also removed. If someone arrived in Britain illegally on a small boat, they would be deported, regardless of...
It is a pleasure and an honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the 1,673 South Basildon and East Thurrock constituents who took the time to sign the petition. When discussing illegal migration, we must begin with a simple truth: a nation that cannot control its borders cannot fully control its future. Offshore detention and processing centres are not a perfect solution, but they can be an effective one. Their primary benefit is that they function as a deterrent. If individuals know that arriving illegally will not guarantee entry into the country, the incentive to make dangerous journeys is significantly reduced. That matters not only for border security, but for saving lives. Every year, criminal gangs profit from putting vulnerable people into overcrowded boats and sending them across some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. We should be focusing on that. I thank the hon. Members who have leaned into the importance of being considerate to all people. On top of the need for gentle language, I might advise them that we should really be protecting those people and keeping them safe by enforcing laws properly so that they do not risk their lives at sea. Offshore processing could also restore confidence in the immigration system. Most people are compassionate and willing to support those with genuine claims for asylum. However, public confidence is undermined when the distinction between legal and illegal routes becomes blurred. A system that is firm,...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. The Liberal Democrats believe in a fair and controlled approach to immigration and asylum and a system that treats people with fairness and compassion. My constituency of Woking has a proud and long history of supporting those fleeing persecution. It was home to the Ockenden Venture, a trailblazing charity founded in the 1950s that helped to resettle refugees from post-war Europe, Vietnam and beyond. Humfrey Malins, the former Conservative MP for Woking, even set up a national immigration service. More recently, Woking has seen how life-changing a functioning immigration system can be. Since 2015, my town has welcomed hundreds of refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine. Those people arrived fleeing conflict and persecution. They have been welcomed by my town and added to our economy and cultural vitality. I am pleased that we have helped them to rebuild their lives in Surrey. In 2026, it is right that we uphold Britain’s humanitarian traditions while having control of our borders. That starts by bringing an end to asylum hotels, stopping unsafe channel crossings and ensuring that criminal gangs cannot profit and that they face justice. We need safe and legal routes for asylum seekers and refugees. Ukrainians did not cross the channel in dangerous small boats, because this Government provided a safe and legal route for them. We know that safe and legal routes work. We need more of them, not fewer, yet safe and...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank Members for their contributions and the more than 700,000 people who signed the petition, including more than 1,000 in my constituency of Bexhill and Battle. This is a very real issue in my part of East Sussex. The Government forced on us the Crowborough asylum camp, just over the border in the constituency of Madam Deputy Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Sussex Weald (Ms Ghani), but very close to my own. We met the Minister just last week, alongside local residents and councillors, and heard at first hand about groups of young men gathering in this small rural town to drink on the streets, smuggling alcohol back into the detention centre and working illegally, and all the distress that that is causing. I am not surprised that the Government targeted Wealden for a camp, considering that it is run by Lib Dems and Greens, with their refugee asylum safe haven policy. At the heart of this debate is a question of control: whether the state and the people on whose behalf it operates have control of our borders or not. For the nation state to have meaning, a country must be able to remove people from within its borders who have no right to be there-whether to send them to offshore processing or detention, or to deport them entirely-and at scale. I welcome the opportunity to set out the overwhelming rational and moral argument for ending small boat crossings and the illegal people-smuggling trade, which is at...
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for clearly and comprehensively articulating the key facets of the petition that has resulted in us all being here on this sunny afternoon. I am grateful to him, to the petitioners and to all other Members who have spoken. We have heard a wide range of views. I have listened with interest to the arguments advanced and the various points raised, and I will seek to respond to as many as possible in the time available. Before I get into the detail, I must do two things. First, I assert again this Government’s unshakeable commitment to tackling illegal immigration. I am sorry to have to remind Members of the situation we inherited, but it was so dire that, two years on, the legacy of past failures remains. When we took office, smuggling gangs saw this country’s borders as a soft target. The enforcement of basic rules had ground to a halt. The system was in disarray. We have worked hard since July 2024 to turn things around, and our efforts are having an impact. Over 44,000 channel crossings have been stopped in partnership with the French. Under our landmark returns agreement with France, those arriving can face immediate detention and removal. Removals and deportations of illegal migrants and foreign criminals have gone up, as have illegal working visits. We have more officers tackling organised immigration crime, and disruption of OIC is at record...
Let us say that in a year from now, all this stuff has not worked and the Home Secretary has committed to doing whatever it takes. Does “whatever it takes” include withdrawing from the ECHR?
We must remember that the ECHR, which I will say more about later in my speech, underpins many of the exact returns agreements that we rely upon to deport and remove people.
Does the Minister really think that Canada or Australia do not get to deport people? Those countries are not in the ECHR, but they have deportation agreements with third countries, so in no way is it a necessity to be in the ECHR to have deportation agreements.
It is an absolute fact that many of our returns agreements are underpinned by our membership of the ECHR. I will now make some progress. That is why we are embarking on the most significant set of asylum reforms in a generation. Under our plans, the UK will continue to play its part in helping the world’s most vulnerable people. However, to meet the challenges of today, we must address the fact that this country is more attractive to asylum seekers than other countries in Europe, so we are acting, including through the introduction of new legislation, to build a new fair but firm asylum model, based on contribution, integration and respect for UK laws. Of course, the reason I mention all that is that it goes to the heart of the problem that this petition seeks to answer, which is the arrival of illegal migrants and their continued presence in this country. We understand why people are frustrated after years of chaos and crisis. That is why we are taking concerted and decisive action to restore order and control. I will now move on to my second point, which is to address the specific thrust of this petition, namely that the Government should seek to establish offshore detention facilities for individuals who enter the UK illegally. We have been clear that we will continue to work with international partners to tackle the global challenge of irregular migration. However, interventions must work in practice, they must offer value for money and they must comply with the UK’s...
But we do not deport all rapists and paedophiles, because some of them make successful ECHR claims and get to stay in the country. Again, unless the Government are willing to tackle that, they will not get to do the things that the Minister has so much rhetoric about.
The hon. Member’s party had 14 years to make changes, but they absolutely failed. We inherited their open borders and their broken system, but we are working hard behind the scenes, as we speak, to make the ECHR more fit for purpose. Let me move on to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who made very good points about the cost of some of these proposals. Everything that we do in the Home Office must be costed and must be affordable to the British taxpayer, and of course we have a duty to protect those who are fleeing war and persecution, which is one of the things that makes Britain so great. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) made a good point about the single dinghy having more individuals on it over the weekend. The reason is that we are attacking the supply chains and taking boats out of the supply chain, which means that more people are being forced on to these boats. We acknowledge that that is dangerous, which is why we are working hard with our international partners to stop these boat crossings. Disruptions of boat crossings are now at around 44,000.
The average daily arrivals of illegal immigrants under this Labour Government are 94% higher than under the previous Government, so can the Minister tell me exactly which policies are working?
I thank the right hon. Member for her passionate intervention. We took on her Government’s open borders. Over the last year, we have seen a reduction of around 41% in small boat crossings. It is not something that we celebrate, because we know that we are only seven months into the year, but we are working hard with our international partners. I have already given the stats on the number of disruptions. I will move on to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who I know has been a voice behind this petition in the media and on social media. I have never referred to anybody who cares about this topic as on the mad fringe or as a racist. It is about people’s own perceptions; it is for them to decide whether they are racist or mad-fringe. Having these concerns is absolutely valid, in general, but I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool that we must mind our rhetoric, because the public do listen to what we say in this place. I have not eaten much today, and the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth talked about some fine-sounding snacks being delivered by Deliveroo. He is absolutely right that we must crack down on that issue, and we are making efforts to do that. Arrests are up about 81% on illegal working, but that is by no means finished, and we will continue to work hard on it. I have talked about the ECHR already. The hon. Gentleman has produced a large book; he did say that he would not go into detail, but maybe there is some in there. I...
I think the British public have had enough of Labour blaming the Tories and the Tories blaming Labour. Meanwhile, this national emergency continues to get worse. Does the Minister accept the fact that just playing “he said, she said” is not good enough? We need to change that attitude.
I respect the intervention. I did say that I apologised for having to raise this again, but it is a fact that we inherited a completely broken system. It does take time to fix a broken system, and we are working hard to do so.
How much time, exactly? The Government have had two years in office and have already changed Prime Minister.
I am absolutely fed up of being lectured by the Opposition, who gave us this problem. It is like being lectured by the arsonist on putting out the fire. I will go absolutely no further with that. I turn to the speech of the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock). It is absolutely right that we must remove the pull factors. We have to ensure that there are deterrents for people looking to come over. When we came into the Home Office, the fact is that there was asylum shopping going on across Europe, because the offer that we gave to those seeking asylum was better than many others, so we have brought ourselves in line with the rest of Europe. That will make it less attractive to come here. We are also moving individuals out of hotels and into larger sites, removing one of the pull factors. I have already mentioned that immigration enforcement, when it comes to illegal working, is up 81%, which is removing another pull factor. But of course compassion is essential; that is what makes us great. Looking at safe and legal routes to be introduced in due course is another part of the solution. The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) made a good point about our duty to help those who are fleeing persecution and war. Capped safe and legal routes will ensure that we do our bit to help people. He talked about decision making; the speed of our initial decision making is up 71%, and there is still further to go. We have reallocated and employed more...
The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) made a point about the Dublin agreement and its impact on increased arrivals. I think that he was right to make that point, but wrong to associate it with the EU, as countries such as Norway and Iceland are signatories. Has any consideration been given to joining multinational returns agreements to speed up decision making in the UK?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We saw the start of the boat crossings crisis only after we left the EU; of course, the Dublin agreement provided some sort of deterrent. However, reopening the Brexit wound is not something I want to do, which is why we are looking at introducing more returns agreements, so that we can deport and remove more people.
I do not know whether hon. Members know this, but just for the record, we took more people than we sent back under the Dublin agreement. It did not act as any deterrent, because a person was more likely to get to the UK on the basis of the Dublin agreement than they were to be sent away.
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which is now on the record. I would be keen to discuss why he thinks the numbers went up, and why we saw about 180,000 people cross after 2018. [Interruption.] Perhaps that is something to discuss outside this room. I will now move on to some broader points. I have tried to get around everybody who spoke; my apologies if I have missed anybody.
I thank the Minister for being generous with his time. Can he clarify a point? The Secretary of State was trying to stop some of the pull factors, and I welcomed the extension from five to 10 years in the qualification period for indefinite leave to remain, but it seems that the incoming Prime Minister will now water those new policies down. Is that the case?
The Home Secretary made it clear at Home Office oral questions that the announcement on the five to 10 years absolutely stands. We opened a large consultation and had 200,000 responses that are still being worked through. Announcements on transition arrangements and so on will be made in due course-around the autumn, we expect. Let me move on to small boat arrivals more broadly. They are unacceptable, and we have made a commitment to restore order and control by making it less attractive to come here and easier to remove people. We have also been working with international partners, and we have seen small boat crossings go down 41% in the last year. In March, we extended the duty to deport foreign national offenders who have been given suspended sentences of 12 months or more. FNOs who have a prison sentence, a suspended sentence or a community order are referred for deportation. Foreign national offender removals are now up by 36%, and we will continue to remove those who should not be here. Progress is being made to end the use of hotels, which is something that we will achieve by the end of this Parliament. Hotel use is down from 213 in July 2024 to fewer than 170 today. Asylum support costs are down 15%. I have already covered illegal working a number of times in response to interventions. Small boat crossings are down, decisions are up, hotel use is down, deportations and removals are up, and net migration is down by 82%. This is not an overnight fix and there is no...
I call John Lamont to wind up.
I am not used to having 90 minutes to speak, but I promise not to detain colleagues long. I thank all Members who took part, particularly the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), who was the petitioner, and the hon. Members for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) and for South Basildon and East Thurrock (James McMurdock), my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and the various party spokesmen. I have been on the Petitions Committee since the last election, and it is quite telling that this petition has had, I think, the second or third highest number of signatures. I am surprised that more MPs are not participating. Is this an example of where Parliament is disconnected from what our constituents are telling us? I know that 2,500 constituents of my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) signed the petition, the second highest number in the UK. I have been at other petition debates here and there has not been enough space for all the MPs who wanted to participate. That is telling. Part of the problem, with the greatest respect to the Minister, is that although we hear all the achievements that he thinks the Government have achieved, the reality is that people out there in society do not see or feel those achievements. They feel the pressures in their society because of the broken immigration system. In the 12 months between 1 April 2025 and 31 March...
Sitting adjourned.