PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Illegal Migrants: Pull Factors - 9 February 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

With asylum claims falling in Europe and rising here, we must reduce the incentives that pull people here. The permanence of refugee status in this country is clearly a pull factor, and we are therefore making it temporary. The ability to melt into our illegal economy lures people here, so we have raised immigration raids to record levels. Effective removals send a clear message, and returns are now up by about a quarter under this Government.

Illegal immigration, illegal working and illegal trading frequently go hand in hand, and all too often manifest themselves in the proliferation of dodgy shops on our high streets. While I welcome the shop raids in my constituency last summer, without action to tackle illegality at source the police and trading standards face a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Can the Minister please assure my constituents that this Government will redouble their efforts to clamp down on both illegal immigration and illegal working?

I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. Illegal working undermines honest employers, undercuts local wages and fuels organised immigration crime, and this Government will not stand for it. Since we came to power, enforcement action has increased nationwide, with an 83% rise in the number of illegal-working arrests, and we will be stepping up that action even further in the year ahead.

I call the Father of the House.

One of the main reasons behind the false narrative that Britain is broken is people’s sense of despair that neither this Government nor the previous one could deal with illegal migrants. It is simply driving our people mad. Let me give this advice to the Government, if the Home Secretary will forgive me: they are not going to solve this problem by getting rid of the Prime Minister or anything like that; what they need to do is finally deal with the pull factor. The only thing that will work is to arrest, detain and deport anybody who arrives illegally in this country, and to have a temporary derogation from any convention that prevents us from doing so. If they do that, the nation will be so much more confident, the Prime Minister will be more popular and people will not drown any more.

I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am always willing to listen to advice, wherever it may come from, but I point out that in 14 years under his party in government, we did not see any such action. It is very easy to say from the sidelines, “Just deport everybody.” If it was so easy to derogate from international obligations, I am pretty sure the previous Administration would have done so. The fact that they are only now saying that from the sidelines says a lot about them and their attitude to government.

There is no one silver bullet in dealing with the problems of illegal migration, and that is why I am taking action across every potential forum. We are changing our human rights laws, passing legislation later this year on the application of article 8, dealing with our appeals processes, talking about reform of the European convention on human rights, and getting the number of illegal working raids up. Those are all important steps to try to get the system under control. I am determined that we will deal with the problem of illegal migration, but there is no one silver bullet. That is why I am taking action across all fronts.

I call the shadow Minister.

Last week, The Times reported that companies and company directors who have previously abused the work visa system have been allowed to continue sponsoring visas, despite the Government’s promise of a clampdown. One social care business has been able to sponsor 116 visas, despite being caught hiring illegally. As the Home Secretary just said herself, being able to work here illegally is one of the greatest pull factors, so what message does she think this sends to companies that break the rules?

What the shadow Minister should have done first is apologise for being part of an Administration who opened the social care route, which was open to such horrifying levels of abuse. That route was closed by this Government, which was the right action to take. Since we have been in government, 1,000 sponsor licences have been revoked, and we will continue to take action. We are already following up on the newspaper investigation that the hon. Lady refers to, and we will keep revoking licences, so that only legitimate businesses with proper jobs are able to sponsor workers to come to our country.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

British people have watched in horror over the past weeks as President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement squads have murdered, kidnapped and oppressed people. Even infants and children have not escaped this rough treatment. The Conservatives have suggested that they would like to introduce a removals force styled on ICE, and we can only guess what the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) would do if he was in charge, even if he concedes that ICE has “gone too far” on occasion. Will the Home Secretary condemn Trump’s ICE squads, and will she reassure us that we will not see ICE squads on the streets of Britain?

Unlike most of Westminster, I am not plagued with “America brain”, and I do not spend any of my time worrying about what is happening over in the States. As the Home Secretary, I focus on my day job, which is protecting people in our country. The hon. Gentleman will know full well that we do not have anything like the sorts of arrangements that we have seen over in America, but we already have record removals without having armed immigration enforcement—just under 60,000 since we have been in government. We will go further, but we will do so in line with the arrangements that we already have in place and our British values.