PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Migrants: Safe and Legal Routes - 5 January 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Alongside restoring order and control of our borders, we will open new safe and legal routes for refugees and displaced people who are fleeing danger. We are currently developing routes for refugee students and workers alongside a community sponsorship route. A cap will be set each year in Parliament, and further details on the design of these routes will be set out in due course.

I am proud of our country’s history of offering refuge to those fleeing persecution and want this to continue, as do many of my constituents in East Worthing and Shoreham. Can the Home Secretary set out how she will establish safe and legal routes for people while taking action to secure our borders from the criminal gangs profiting from dangerous small boat crossings?

The first point to acknowledge is that this country will always offer sanctuary to those fleeing danger, but the public rightly expect a system that is fair and that restores control. That is why we are reducing the incentives that draw people here illegally, making it easier to remove those who have no right to be here and toughening controls at our borders, alongside developing safe and legal routes, which will provide the proper option for those fleeing danger to seek sanctuary in our country.

Meur ras, ha blethen noweth da—happy new year, Mr Speaker—and may I take this moment to thank the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), for, in his previous role, getting the Cornish language through part III status from that excellent organisation, the Council of Europe?

Before Christmas, I met care workers from my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency who came to the UK through legal routes. They shared with me their anxieties about the changes to immigration policies affecting the care sector and other key worker sectors. Specifically for migrants who are already part-way through the five-year leave to remain qualification process, working and paying their taxes in the UK now, can the Secretary of State confirm when the new fast-track leave to remain process will be established following the end of the 12 February consultation?

Safe and legal routes relate to those who we would accept as refugees before they enter this country, in order to drive down the number of people who seek to enter the country illegally. My hon. Friend refers to routes for people who come to this country to work. It is right that we acknowledge, as we have done in our planned reforms to settlement, that settlement in this country is a privilege that has to be earned, not a right. It is perfectly proper for this country to be able to set the rules for how settlement is earned. Previous considerations about how many people might arrive through particular routes in order to work have shown that more people have arrived than anticipated, and therefore it is right that we change our approach; the discussion about care workers is particularly pertinent to that point. We are consulting on how those changes are delivered—as he rightly points out, that consultation ends on 12 February—and we will then set out our proposals for delivering our reforms.

I call the Father of the House.

Of course we are all proud of our historic record in welcoming genuine political refugees who apply in the proper way, but I am sure that the Home Secretary would agree that this humane policy is being entirely negated by illegal boat crossings, which are driving people mad and putting people at risk. Will she do the humane thing and seek an urgent derogation from the refugee convention and the convention on human rights so that we can arrest, detain and deport these people? By the way, if she announced that now, Labour would shoot up five points in the polls and the Prime Minister’s position would be safe. Does she support all that?

It is important that the changes that are made are about genuinely securing our borders and not about the political fortune of individual parties. Certainly under my watch, this Government and the Home Office will always put the securing of our borders first, regardless of what that might mean for individuals and polling positions. I believe that package of reforms that we set out in the asylum policy statement in November —I know that the right hon. Gentleman took part in that discussion—are the right reforms. I think we can make reforms to our legal system, as well as policy changes, that will secure our borders without requiring a derogation from international law.

Hundreds of individuals involved in organised crime groups have already been pursued through law enforcement. There have been 4,000 disruptions of organised crime group operations and 22,000 illegal crossings have been prevented.