John Slinger

The Conservative party has a record of failure, and now it is failing to back our measures to put things right. On Rwanda, so much money was wasted to deport so few people, and with so little remorse. Imagine the howls that we would have heard if a civil servant or trade union had wasted just 1% of that sum. On the asylum backlog, the graph is like the NHS waiting list under the Conservatives: up and up it went to 166,261 by 2022—an elevenfold increase on the number that they inherited. That is what happens when those who do not believe in government are the Government. While this Bill focuses more on asylum, the net migration figures also illustrate that the previous Government let things get out of control, with a 220% increase in net migration from 244,000 in 2010—then a record—to 782,000 in 2023. As with policing and defence, so it is with asylum and immigration: the previous Government failed, yet Conservative Members rail against us as we tackle the crisis that they bequeathed us. I do not want to rehearse the excellent policies set out by Ministers and by my Labour colleagues, so I will just gently ask right hon. and hon. Members on the Conservative Benches to put their hand on their heart and tell us that they are proud of their record. Do they think it is dignified for a great country such as ours to offshore our responsibilities to Rwanda, a country that they needed—with an Orwellian flourish—to define as safe? Hand on heart, do right hon. and hon. Conservative Members think that it is in the national interest to vote against the robust, practical and principled approach in this Bill? It is a shame that the Conservative party continues to resort to false promises and populist language. We have heard that tonight, such as “surrender”, or the words of the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), who spoke about the £49.18 per week that asylum seekers receive to pay for clothes and toiletries. These are human beings. I am sure that the hon. Member was not suggesting that a country such as ours should not be offering people the ability to clothe themselves.