Dame Angela Eagle

Dame Angela Eagle

Labour — Wallasey

Speaking in the House of Commons on 12 May 2025

Debate

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Contribution

If we disapplied the Human Rights Act, people would just go to the ECHR anyway, and a lot of these cases would end up in Strasbourg, which would take even longer. Disapplying the Human Rights Act would also mean that other countries that we have to work and collaborate with to deal with cross-border people smuggling would not work with us. The Conservatives had many huge rows with people and went around the world making it look as though they did not believe in the rule of law. This Government do believe in the rule of law and we will carry on upholding the rule of law; we regard that as an important part of the value system we have in this country. On new clause 18 and the cap on non-visitor visas, as always the Conservatives talk a good talk now that they are safely in opposition, having not delivered when they were in government. They promised time after time to reduce net migration down to the tens of thousands—they did it in their manifestos and in the many different manifestations of Conservative Governments that we saw plough through the House, especially in the past four years—and what did they do? They quadrupled net migration. We do not need a cap; we need to get migration down, fundamentally lower than it is now, to make the system fair and effective. In order to do that, we have published a White Paper today and introduced further measures in this Bill. We will come back to this issue to ensure that we can deliver—unlike the Conservative party.

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