Chris Philp

I beg to move, That this House regrets that there have been a record-breaking number of small boat crossings, amounting to over 12,000 this year alone and a lack of action from the Government to tackle this; further regrets that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill scraps the Government’s ability to remove illegal immigrants to a safe third country, designed as an effective deterrent; and calls on the Government to support the Immigration and Visas Bill introduced by the Shadow Home Secretary, which will prevent foreign nationals, including rape gang perpetrators, from exploiting the courts with spurious human rights claims to avoid deportation, double the residency requirement for Indefinite Leave to Remain and ensure that those who have become a burden can be removed, introduce tighter visa rules for civil partners, allow deportation of all foreign national offenders, and introduce a binding cap on migration, to be set by a vote in Parliament. For decades, the British people have demanded and politicians have promised dramatically lower immigration. For decades, successive Governments, including the last one, have failed to deliver that. That failure over decades has undermined faith and trust in democracy itself, and it is now time to end that failure and deliver what the public want. That is why we have tabled the Immigration and Visas Bill, which presents a serious, credible plan to fix immigration issues. According to Ipsos last week, 67% of the British public think that immigration is too high. The British public are right. There are around 11 million foreign-born people in the UK, and for too long immigration numbers have been far too high. Immigration at that level has serious consequences. Some 48% of social housing in London has a head of household who was not born in the UK. In the last 10 years, migration has absorbed around 50% of new housing supply, and some nationalities are exceptionally dependent on social housing—for example, 72% of Somalis live in social housing compared with only 16% of the population more generally.