The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a statement on net migration, asylum and border security, and on the collapse in controls that took place over the last five years, the damage done as a result, and the action we are now taking to turn that around.
Last Thursday’s official statistics show how over the last five years controls in the immigration and asylum systems crumbled, legal and illegal migration both substantially increased, the backlog in the asylum system soared, and enforcement of basic rules fell apart. Net migration more than quadrupled in just four years to a record high of nearly 1 million people, and it is still more than three times higher than in 2019. Dangerous small boat crossings rose from 300 people in 2018 to an average of over 36,000 a year in the last three years—a hundred-and-twentyfold increase. In just a few short years, an entire criminal smuggler industry built around boat crossings has been allowed to take hold along the UK border.
The cost of the asylum system also quadrupled to £4 billion last year. In 2019, there were no asylum hotels; five years on, there are more than 200. Returns of those with no right to be here are 30% lower than in 2010, and asylum-related returns are down by 20% compared with 14 years ago. That is the legacy we inherited from the previous Government, one that former Ministers have themselves admitted was shameful.
We should be clear that this country has always supported people coming here from abroad to work, to study or to be protected from persecution. That has made us the country we are—from the Windrush generation to the Kindertransport; from international medics working in our NHS to the families we have supported from Ukraine. But that is exactly why the immigration and asylum systems have to be properly controlled and managed, so that they support our economy and promote community cohesion, with rules properly respected and enforced, and so that our borders are kept strong and secure. None of those things have been happening for the last five years. The scale of the failure and the loss of control have badly undermined trust in the entire system, and it will take time to turn things around.
Let me turn to the changes that are needed in three areas. First, on legal migration, recent years have seen what the Office for National Statistics calls
“large increases in both work-related and study-related immigration following the end of travel restrictions and the introduction of the new immigration system after the UK left the EU.”
Conservative Government reforms in 2021 made it much easier to recruit from abroad, including a 20% wage discount for overseas workers. At the same time, training here in the UK was cut, with 55,000 fewer apprenticeship starts than five years ago, and the number of UK residents not working or studying hit a record high of over 8 million. This was an experiment gone badly wrong, built on a careless free market approach that literally incentivised employers to recruit from abroad rather than to train or to tackle workforce problems here at home.
This Government are clear that net migration must come down. We are continuing with the visa controls belatedly introduced by the previous Government, including the higher salary threshold, the 20% discount and the restrictions on dependant visas for students and care workers, but we must go further to restore order and credibility to the system.
Since the election, we have set out new plans to ban rogue employers who breach employment laws from sponsoring overseas workers; we have reversed the previous Conservative Government’s decision to remove visa requirements for a number of countries from which large numbers of people arriving as visitors were entering the UK asylum system instead; and we are reviewing visas further to prevent misuse.
However, we also need to overhaul the dysfunctional UK labour market that we inherited, including by bringing together the work of the Migration Advisory Committee, Skills England, the Department for Work and Pensions and the new Industrial Strategy Council to identify areas where the economy has become over-reliant on overseas recruitment, and where new action will be needed to boost training and support. That work will be at the heart of our new White Paper, showing how net migration must and will come down, as we set out new ways to link the points-based system with new requirements for training here in Britain.
Let me turn to the asylum system. Last week’s figures showed how the previous Government crashed the asylum system in the run-up to the election. In their last six months in office, asylum decisions dropped by 75% and asylum interviews dropped by over 80%, so only a few hundred decisions were being taken every week instead of thousands. Caseworkers were deployed elsewhere and the backlog shot up. We have had to spend the summer repairing that damage, getting caseworkers back in place, restoring interviews and decisions, and substantially boosting returns. It will take time to deal with the added backlog and pressure on asylum accommodation that that collapse in decision making caused, but the swift action we took over the summer has prevented thousands more people from being placed in asylum hotels, saving hundreds of millions of pounds.
Today I am also publishing the full spending breakdown of the previous Government’s failed Rwanda partnership. In the two years that the partnership was in place, just four volunteers were sent to Rwanda, at a cost of £700 million. That included £290 million paid to the Government in Kigali, and almost £300 million for staff, IT and legal costs. The result of that massive commitment of time and money was that 84,000 people crossed the channel from the day the deal was signed to the day it was scrapped. That so-called deterrent did not result in a single deportation or stop a single boat from crossing the channel. For the British taxpayer, it was a grotesque waste of money.
Since the election, we have swiftly redeployed many of the people who were working on fantasy planning for the Rwanda scheme to working instead on actual flights to return those who have no right to stay in the UK. That has helped to deliver nearly 10,000 returns since the election. Enforced returns are up by 19%, voluntary returns are up by 14%, illegal working visits are up by approximately 34%, and arrests from those visits are up by approximately 25%. I can tell the House that this new programme to tackle exploitation and ensure that the rules are enforced will continue and accelerate next year.
Let me turn to border security. Six years ago, fewer than 300 people arrived on dangerous small boats. Since then, an entire criminal industry has taken hold and grown, with routes stretching through France, Germany and beyond, from the Kurdistan region of Iraq to the money markets of Kabul. The criminals profit from undermining border security and putting lives at risk, and it is a disgrace that they have got away with it for so long.
Since the election, we have established the new Border Security Command, announced £150 million over the next 18 months for new technology, intelligence, and hundreds of specialist investigators working; struck new anti-smuggling action plan agreements with the G7, and bilateral agreements with Italy, Germany, Serbia and Balkan states; and increased UK operations with Europol and the Calais group. In recent weeks, international collaboration has led to high-profile arrests and shown the smuggling gangs that we will not sanction any hiding place from law enforcement.
I can tell the House today that we have gone further, with a major new international collaboration. The Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan Regional Government share our concerns about the people traffickers operating through their country who have helped to transport thousands of people across Europe and across the channel, but joint action to tackle those problems has previously been far too weak. That is why last week I visited Baghdad and Erbil to sign new co-operation agreements on border security, migration and organised crime. As part of those agreements, we will invest half a million pounds in helping the Kurdistan region to enhance its capabilities on biometrics and security, and in training Iraqi border staff to tackle organised immigration crime. We have also made new commitments on joint operations, information sharing, pursuing prosecutions and disruptions, and with further work on returns. Those landmark agreements are the first in the world for an Iraqi Government focused on playing their part in the world.
Most people in Britain want to see strong border security and a properly controlled and managed migration and asylum system where the rules are respected and enforced; one where we do our bit alongside other countries to help those who have fled persecution, but where those with no right to be here are swiftly returned; and where it is Governments, not gangs, who decide who can enter our country. For five years, none of those things has happened, and people have understandably lost faith in the entire system. We now have the chance to turn that around: to fix the chaos, bring net migration down, tackle the criminal gangs and prevent dangerous boat crossings; to restore order, control, and fair rules that are properly enforced—not through gimmicks, but through hard graft and serious international partnerships. I commend this statement to the House.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank Mr Speaker and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for ensuring that we had the proper time to consider the statement.
The Home Secretary seems to have a great deal to say about the last Government and rather less to say about her own record since the election, but fortuitously there was a large release of data last week that gives us an insight into her first five months in office. Having looked at that data, I can see why she is so silent on her own record. Let me start with small boats. Yesterday marked 150 days since 4 July, and in that time a staggering 20,110 people have made the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossing—over 20,000 since this Government were elected. That is an 18% increase on the same 150 days last year, and a staggering 64% increase on the 150 days immediately prior to the election.
Why have those numbers gone up so much? Let us turn to what the National Crime Agency said last year. It said that no amount of funding or action against people smugglers would end crossings on its own, and went on to say—and I quote—that “you need an effective removals deterrence.” After the Labour Government were elected, they cancelled that deterrent—the Rwanda deterrent—before it had even started. The first flight was due to take off on 24 July this year, but they cancelled it. Had that flight taken off as planned, we would not have seen the 64% increase in crossings that we have seen since the election, exactly as the National Crime Agency foresaw. It is not just me and the National Crime Agency; even Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, has called for European member states to implement an offshore processing scheme, a proposal that 18 member states are said to support. As such, my first question is whether the Home Secretary will agree with the National Crime Agency and do what Ursula von der Leyen has urged, and re-establish that scheme.
As a consequence of the Home Secretary’s failure to reduce small boat numbers, the use of asylum hotels—which Labour promised to end—has gone up by 6,066 in the three months following the election. The asylum backlog, which the Home Secretary had a great deal to say about, has gone up by 11,000 in the three months following the general election, something that she did not find time to mention. She did talk a bit about her deal in Iraq, which spends £500,000 with the Iraqi Government. That is not a great deal of money—it is what would probably be spent on a road surfacing scheme in any of our constituencies. I am afraid that the idea that spending £500,000 is going to stop people smuggling from Iraq is naive and fanciful. What might have helped smash the gangs is life sentences for people smuggling, so perhaps the Home Secretary could explain why in the last Parliament she voted against a Bill that contained life sentences for the people-smuggling gangs she says she wants to smash.
On the question of legal migration, I agree with the Home Secretary that the numbers have been far too high for many decades under successive Governments. It is welcome that the numbers for the most recent year have come down by 20%, but that is not far enough—we need to go further. I welcome the fact that the Government are going to maintain most of the measures introduced by the last Government that led to that 20% reduction. We have also seen the number of visas go down, which of course are a leading indicator of net migration. Work visas are down by 28% year on year, student dependant visas are down by 84%, student visas are down by 19% and care visas are down by 84%, all thanks to measures introduced by the last Government.
However, I would like to know why this Government have decided to suspend the planned increase in the dependant visa salary threshold up to £38,700 which was due to take effect next April. If they are serious about reducing net migration, as the Home Secretary says, why have they suspended the measure announced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) last December? If they are really serious about reducing net migration, as we are, what we really need is a hard cap on the numbers, as proposed by the Leader of the Opposition and me last week. Will the Government follow our suggestion and introduce that hard cap?
Behind all the bluster and all the chat about previous Governments, we see the Home Secretary’s record and her Government’s record: a 64% increase in small boat crossings since the same period before the election, 6,000 extra people in hotels and the asylum backlog up by 11,000—all since 4 July. We see the Rwanda deterrent, which the National Crime Agency and even Ursula von der Leyen say is necessary, cancelled by this Government before it even started. I call on the Home Secretary to think again on those issues, to introduce in April the measures that the previous Government announced and to introduce a hard cap. If she is serious about combating illegal migration and getting the net legal migration figures down, she will adopt those measures.
Yvette Cooper
If anyone had believed that flights were going to go off to Rwanda this summer, the Conservatives would not have called the general election when they did. They would have hung on hoping that it might happen. However, we saw just the same thing time and again: they kept promising and kept saying it was going to happen, and everybody can now see that it was a total failure. The policy ran for over two years, and they kept promising that the flights were going to go off, but they never did. They just spent £700 million instead. So much do they know that this was a total failure that their newly elected leader will not even promise to reinstate it, because she knows the whole thing was a con.
Let me remind the shadow Home Secretary that in the first half of this year—the last six months of his Government—crossings hit a record high for that season. If that trend of a record high had carried on and the increase for the first half of the year had carried on through the summer, we would have been dealing with thousands more crossings. Instead, because we had an increase in the number of people arriving from Vietnam, this Government introduced a major charter flight—a return flight—to Vietnam, and we have been working with the Vietnamese Government to make sure that the number from Vietnam comes down. We also had to deal with the total collapse in asylum decision making that the Conservatives left us with, which meant that we have had to get caseworkers who they had deployed elsewhere back in place. The Conservatives also let the backlog soar.
The shadow Home Secretary wriggles a little around the net migration figures, which have gone up to a record high of 900,000 because of the rules that the Conservatives —his Government—introduced in 2021. Who was the Immigration Minister who brought in those rules? It was the shadow Home Secretary.
Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)
At a time of hugely stretched resources across the Government, thanks to the mess left in the public finances by the Conservative party, I welcome the additional money announced for investment in the Border Security Command, and in strengthening our wider intelligence and enforcement capabilities against the smuggling gangs. Does the Home Secretary agree that that is a far better use of taxpayers’ money than paying people to go to Rwanda?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. If we go back just six years, there were barely any boat crossings. This criminal infrastructure was not in place along our borders, but we have seen it take hold, and be allowed to take hold, for several years and to build and grow. Those gangs are getting away with undermining our border security and putting lives at risk, and we should not be allowing them to get away with it. That is why the co-operation in place, led by the Border Security Command, going after the gangs and pursuing prosecutions and disruption, is so vital to saving lives and strengthening our borders.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Conservatives trashed our immigration system, and now it is time to pick up the pieces—[Interruption.] A period of quiet reflection on some Benches might be appropriate for the next couple of minutes. Their chaotic approach of making and breaking targets shattered public trust and left the system in a right shambles. The words “Rwanda,” “small boats,” and “asylum hotels” took on new shameful meanings under the previous Conservative Government. Net migration figures hit record highs on their watch, skyrocketing, particularly after they took the UK out of the EU. Yet still the Conservatives’ arbitrary rules make it nearly impossible for some sectors, such as hospitality, to recruit the workers they need.
Change is desperately needed. We need to rebuild an immigration system that works for our country and our economy—a fair, effective system that welcomes the workers we need. I am thinking about the senior surgeon who undertook the kidney transplant that my dad had and that kept him alive. That surgeon came here as an immigrant. We also need a system that clearly and properly enforces the rules, and that sees our university sector as a jewel in the crown, welcoming students from overseas, and as a way of using the UK’s soft power for good. It is right that the Government are taking steps to make it easier to recruit British workers to fill vacancies, and a thorough workforce strategy is sorely needed. Will the Government consider implementing Liberal Democrat calls for a carer’s minimum wage to help address the well documented needs of the social care sector?
I am pleased that the Home Secretary talked about how we will have to work closely with our international partners to stop the dangerous channel crossings—something the previous Conservative Government made it harder for us to do time and again. International co-operation is crucial, but our response to the criminal gangs, who are profiting from some of the most vulnerable people, must go further. We must crack down on modern slavery here in the UK, as that is how those gangs make a big chunk of their money. I hope the Government will cut off the power of the gangs at its source, by providing safe and legal routes for genuine refugees. The Government have a mammoth task ahead, rebuilding not only an immigration system that works, but importantly rebuilding the public’s trust in the process.
Yvette Cooper
I welcome many of the points that the hon. Member has made. She is right to point to the lack of trust and confidence in the system as a result of the chaos of the last few years, as well as to the loss of controls and practical measures in place. She raised migration for work, which quadrupled in the space of four or five years, at the same time as we had drops in the number of adults in training and apprenticeship starts. That is a system that is broken. I agree that we should support fair pay agreements in social care and a proper workforce strategy around that, to ensure that we can better recruit and support care workers who are UK resident. I have also asked the Migration Advisory Committee to look particularly at the engineering and IT sectors. We have had persistently high levels of recruitment from abroad in those sectors, and frankly we should have had far better and longer standing training here in the UK.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
Does the Home Secretary agree that the public are right to be angry about the state of public services, and that the blame lies squarely with 14 years of cuts and mismanagement by Conservative Governments, not with migrants who contribute to their new home? Will she stand up to attempts by Conservative Members to distract from their own failures and divide the country by scapegoating people who just want a better life for themselves and their families, as we all do?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right to say that in 14 years the previous Government did deep damage not just to our public services but to our economy, and they have to take responsibility for that. We have a history going back through generations of people who have come to the UK to work, study, and get protection from persecution, but it is because those systems are an important part of who we are that they also need to be controlled and managed. That is why alongside the damage that the previous Government did to our economy and public services, we have also seen damage to the relationship between the migration system and the labour market, which has ended up with a loss of control.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
The estimated spend on the agreement with Iraq is around £800,000, which compares with, I think, the £476 million being spent on our agreement with France. Has the Home Secretary made an estimate of how much she expects that money will contribute to reducing the numbers crossing the channel?
Yvette Cooper
What we have found in our discussions with both the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan regional authority is that they want to tackle organised immigration crime in their country. They are concerned about not just people trafficking and people smuggling, but drug trafficking, to which the same gangs are sometimes linked, and money laundering. We found a strong willingness to work with us; the most important thing will be to get the co-ordination, co-operation, information sharing, standards and intelligence in place. That will be the start. This is the beginning of a partnership, and the funding that we have set out will be for the first step in that partnership, to get better biometrics, better training capabilities and better border security in place. We see it as an important partnership that needs to grow.
Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)
As an international liaison prosecutor, my job was to facilitate international co-operation, working with the NCA and overseas authorities. Does the Home Secretary agree that that is the key to smashing the criminal people smuggling gangs, not gimmicks such as the Rwanda scheme?
Yvette Cooper
I completely agree. Spending £700 million just to send back four volunteers was the most astonishing, shocking waste of money. My hon. Friend is right. The criminal gangs operate across borders, but law enforcement across borders is far too weak. It has been far too much a case of each country looking inwards rather than getting co-operation in place, so the gangs are able to run rings around law enforcement in far too many places across the world. We have to strengthen the co-operation across borders in order to tackle the gangs.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I agree with the Home Secretary that the failure of the last Government to control immigration was unconscionable, and our new leader has rightly apologised for our failure. Some of us on the Back Benches warned the Government at the time, but there we are—that is the past. Looking to the future, I agree that we all want to return illegal migrants to where they came from, but will the Home Secretary list the countries that human rights lawyers say are so unsafe that people cannot be returned to them? What is the deterrent for people from those countries if we do not have an offshoring policy?
Yvette Cooper
Obviously, each individual case needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. It has been agreed through the courts that, for example, some people could be safely returned to Iraq, but the process, or the bureaucracy, is extremely slow. Many people are currently in the immigration enforcement system. The previous system was just not following up and taking action, which is why we have been able to increase the returns substantially in a short period. Of course, each case has to be looked at on its merits, but we can do substantially more to ensure that the rules are properly respected and enforced.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, and I ask my question in the context of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I also thank her for talking about the UK’s strong history of welcoming people who are trying to escape persecution. We should not forget that at the heart of the organised people smuggling into this country are people being exploited and dying. The last Government were reduced in their final days to sloganising about people coming on boats, and about the Rwanda scheme, which brought shame on our country. I was appalled to hear the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) try to defend the scheme, and shocked to hear him describe the drop in the number of students coming to the UK as something to be celebrated.
Yvette Cooper
Clearly the Rwanda scheme failed, and the Leader of the Opposition knows that it failed. That is why she does not want to reinstate it, contrary to the views of the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who seems to want to spend another £700 million over another two years to send another four volunteers to Rwanda. The criminals who organise the boats are incredibly dangerous. We have seen children crushed to death and people drown as a result of these flimsy and dangerous boats, and the gangs are making profits of hundreds of millions of pounds. We should not be letting them get away with it. That is why we need to work across borders to go after them.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Migration plays a significant part in our economy. In the Lake district, 66% of hospitality and tourism businesses report that they are failing to meet demand because of a lack of workforce capacity. Migration is part of the answer. Will the Home Secretary listen to leaders of the Cumbria hospitality and tourism economy and meet them to discuss options such as a youth mobility visa scheme? It would enable us to shore up our workforce, which is brilliant, but far too small.
Yvette Cooper
All I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that there are some deep and fundamental problems in the UK labour market that we have inherited. He is talking about workforce shortages when net migration has quadrupled and when overseas recruitment for work has quadrupled. I think that shows that there is a much bigger challenge in the workforce, where we have a huge drop in training and where we do not have proper strategic approaches to the workforce. That is what we should be putting in place instead. We have to look at the issues around training, pay and conditions and at the key sectors to make sure they get support, rather than continually looking to increase migration instead.
Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
The former Conservative Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), has said that the country is “right to be furious” about his party’s record on immigration, and that the Conservatives need to own their failures and change. What is there, in the Conservatives’ obsession with their failed and costly Rwanda programme, to show that they have heeded his warning and changed their approach?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. The former Immigration Minister and now shadow Justice Secretary also said that the net migration figures were
“a day of shame for the Conservative Party.”
They might need a little bit more shame on the Opposition Front Benches.
Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)
Can the Home Secretary set out how many hotels have been moved into housing asylum seekers since 4 July? Will she commit to updating the House regularly as to which hotels have been repurposed for that use?
Yvette Cooper
I know that the Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), has already answered some of the questions that the right hon. Gentleman has raised. He is right to express concern about asylum hotels. There are now 220 asylum hotels in use. He will know that his Government opened 400 asylum hotels. We have had to deal with the collapse in asylum decision making. In the last few months before the general election, the Conservatives went down to just a few hundred decisions being taken a week, rather than thousands of decisions each week. That was deeply damaging, and we have had to deal with it, so that we can turn things around by clearing the asylum backlog and ending hotel use.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
It is clear that my right hon. Friend inherited a chaotic immigration situation from the last Government, and I commend her on the work she is doing. She rightly focused on international co-operation, but principally on removals. Does she accept that, in a world as interconnected as ours, migration can no longer adequately be managed by treaties that are now more than 70 years out of date? We need to co-operate with our international partners, to create a new structure and a new settlement for managing global migration.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes important points, because countries do need to work together and to look far more at some of the causes of migration. That is why we set out at the European Political Community summit an additional £80 million fund to look at earlier prevention work and how we address some of the causes of migration in the first place, as well as the law enforcement response that we need to go after the criminal gangs.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
The absurd and chaotic Brexit—fully supported by those on the Government Front Bench—was supposed to finally satisfy this obsession, but ending free movement has only increased the numbers of people coming here. What is the point of their Brexit, and why has it so spectacularly failed to manage to get a hold on immigration to the UK?
Yvette Cooper
The previous Conservative Government made a decision in 2021 to launch what was in effect a free market approach to immigration. They made it much easier to recruit from abroad and they incentivised employers to recruit from abroad by introducing a 20% wage discount at the same time that they were cutting training and support. The consequence is that, since 2021, we have indeed seen a massive increase in overseas recruitment. As the same time, we have seen a drop in people getting training and support to work in the UK.
Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the frankness that the Government have brought to their assessment of the situation and the setting out of clear measures. As we have heard, criminal gangs are causing untold misery to people all around the world. Will the Home Secretary expand on the measures that we are taking with European neighbours in particular to crack down on these criminal gangs once and for all?
Yvette Cooper
We have been working with other European countries. We have a new agreement in place with Italy to go after the illicit finance that underpins many of the criminal gangs. The work that Prime Minister Meloni has done already has helped to significantly reduce Mediterranean crossings. We are working with Italy, and we think that work is important.
We are also working with Germany on supply chains and with Bulgaria on supply chains, including on how boats and engines are being moved across Europe. We are of course working with France on tackling the organised gangs, including some of the Iraqi-Kurdish gangs operating in northern France, so that we can pursue those gang networks to prevent dangerous crossings.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
The asylum hotel in Cheshunt in my constituency is already putting pressure on strained public services, including local GP surgeries. The Government’s manifesto committed to closing asylum hotels. Can I ask the Secretary of State when she will honour that promise, or will the list of broken promises to the British people get longer?
Yvette Cooper
We are determined to clear the backlog so that we can end asylum hotels. In 2019, there were no asylum hotels, so it was the previous Government who increased and opened about 400 of them. There are still around 220 asylum hotels in place.
We have had to deal with the shocking crashing of the asylum system. Just before the election, the previous Government effectively stopped a whole load of caseworkers from making decisions on asylum cases and pushed the backlog up—we also had to clear that over the summer. That means that we can make progress on bringing the backlog down, so that we can start to clear hotels and ensure that we save money for the taxpayer. We have already saved the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds this year.
Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)
Was the Home Secretary as surprised as me to hear that, as part of the £700 million spent by the previous Government on the failed Rwanda scheme, the package of support that the four volunteers who went to Kigali received included five years of free housing, free food, free private healthcare, free university education and free vocational training, all at a cost of £150,000 per person? Does she agree that Rwanda was in no way a deterrent but a colossal waste of money?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. It was a total, shocking waste of money to send just four volunteers—and the Government had 1,000 people working on the Rwanda scheme. That was 1,000 people who could have been working on enforcement, returns or clearing the backlog, or taking action to pursue the criminal gangs. Instead, they were working on a scheme that ran for two years and sent just four volunteers.
Nigel Farage (Clacton) (Reform)
I agree with the Home Secretary, who was right to highlight that 2023 was a year of shame for a Government who had repeatedly promised net migration of tens of thousands a year, not nearly a million; perhaps they will never be forgiven for it. But I also see that in 2023 asylum claims were made by 84,000 people. Everyone talks about the small boats and yet 69% of those 84,000 did not come across the English channel in boats. Will she tell me, please: where did they come from? Were they overstayers? Were they on student visas? Who were the 69%?
Yvette Cooper
We are clear that net migration needs to come down after the huge increase. We also need to restore order to the asylum system. Part of that is going after the criminal gangs who are undermining border security and putting lives at risk, and tackling the small boat crossings. There is also an issue about the increase of in-country asylum applications. We have instigated a review into that, to get to the bottom of what is happening and why. We found that the previous Government’s decision to remove visa requirements for visitors led to a significant increase in asylum applications from people coming as visitors. We have reversed those changes made by the previous Conservative Government and reintroduced visitor visa requirements for those countries.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s recent visit and the agreements that flowed from that. Does she agree that support from the UK and allies for the Kurdistan region in Iraq across all spheres, plus the efforts of our own Government and allies to strengthen relationships between Baghdad and Erbil, fosters greater prosperity and stability, helps to reduce corruption and thereby helps to alleviate some of the push factors that cause migration to this country in the first place?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I thank the Kurdish Regional Government for their hospitality and welcome, and the Iraqi Government for their welcome and support for my visit last week. We had important and serious discussions with both the regional authorities and the Iraqi Government on a range of issues such as tackling organised immigration crime, but also the positive work that both the Iraqi Government and the Kurdish Regional Government want to do to support economic prosperity. They repeatedly made the point that security is the foundation of economic growth. That is why they are so keen to tackle organised immigration crime and other forms of organised crime that can end up undermining their security and economic opportunities.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Given the promises made at the general election, the opening of more asylum hotels is deeply regrettable. As the Home Secretary seeks alternative accommodation to be able to close down those hotels, will she assure the House that she will not overdo her requests of other Government Departments, in particular the Ministry of Defence, which historically has been very helpful in finding surplus accommodation to house migrants? I hope that she agrees that enough is enough, and that she will not disadvantage service families in their accommodation needs.
Yvette Cooper
I agree about the importance of supporting our armed forces, including housing for armed forces families. That will always be important. The number of asylum decisions had dropped by 70% in the space of just six months—a massive drop. That crashing of asylum decisions increased the backlog over the summer. We have now managed to get asylum decisions back up to where they were, and the asylum caseworkers back in place and taking those decisions rapidly. That puts us in a position to be able to get the backlog down so that we can take action on asylum hotels, and we are already saving hundreds of millions of pounds this year compared with the previous Government.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
In the run-up to the summer general election, my constituents were hugely concerned about the number of small boats crossing the channel; and little wonder, because the Conservative party left office in the middle of the worst year ever for small boat arrivals—18% higher than in 2023, 5% higher than in 2022 and more than double the level in 2021. The Labour Government came into office just under five months ago, and the number of arrivals is now lower than in 2021, more than a third lower than in 2022, and only 15% higher than 2023, rather than the 19% that we inherited. Does the Home Secretary agree that that all sounds like pretty decent progress?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. The first six months of the year saw a record high for that season; of course, we know that crossings are seasonal, but it was a record high for the first half of the year. If we had carried on at that record high level—higher than 2023, 2022 and 2021—we would have thousands more people in the asylum system right now, and we would have had to deal with thousands more dangerous boat crossings. When we took office in the middle of the year, some independent projections said that there could have been as many as 50,000 crossings this year, and that has not happened. That is no real consolation, though, because so many lives are still being lost, and so many gangs are still making huge profits, which is why we have to take action on the gangs. We have to strengthen border security and prevent so many lives being put at risk.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
Effective technology is at the centre of an excellent asylum and immigration system. I was at the Minister’s drop-in on e-visas, which I am sure many of us welcome, where there were assurances that those who are transitioning from a paper visa but have not yet had their e-visa would not be disadvantaged. However, we have seen reports today suggesting otherwise, which is of particular concern to the Afghan community, and particularly to those who have come to the UK since the rise of the Taliban. Can the Secretary of State give the assurance that people will not be disadvantaged if their e-visas are not processed by the end of January?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Lady will know that the Minister with responsibility for e-visas is working immensely hard to ensure that any concerns are dealt with. We are clear that no one should be disadvantaged by the transfer to the new electronic system, which will strengthen security and the information that people rightly have. We need to ensure that the transfer happens as smoothly as possible. I urge the hon. Lady to continue to keep in touch with the Minister so that we can ensure that every issue within the system and with the transfer to e-visas is properly addressed.
Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)
When the truly shocking net migration figures were published last week, the shadow Justice Secretary and former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), said on Twitter—now known as X—that it was a
“day of shame for the Conservative Party”
because it had
“let the country down badly”
and caused immense, lasting harm with immigration policies that have left Britain poorer. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is better to train our own people in this country than to repeat the failed Tory policies that left us all poorer?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. We need a complete overhaul of the way that training and support for work takes place to get UK residents back into work and give them the training they need, and to ensure that we do not have this chaos in the net migration system. I think the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), also said that the Conservatives will only rebuild trust once they own up to their failures—perhaps a little more owning up is what we need to hear today.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
In the previous Parliament, Labour consistently voted down stricter border laws and signed bleeding-heart letters trying to prevent the deportation of criminals from this country. In government, they have cancelled restrictions on family routes and removed the offshore processing options. I therefore confess that I am deeply sceptical that Labour will be successful in controlling immigration. The Iraq deal sounds promising as a headline but, truly, what difference will £500,000 to the Iraqi Government make to the volume of channel crossings?
Yvette Cooper
I say to the hon. Lady that we are establishing new co-operation and networks not just across Europe, but beyond. We know that significant Iraqi-Kurdish gang networks operate in northern France, which the Kurdistan regional authorities and Iraqi Government are particularly concerned about. They are concerned about the routes back into northern Iraq, and about both the impact such activity is having on their country and the impact that we are concerned about—that it is happening in the channel. That is why getting law enforcement working in partnership together is at the heart of this agreement, and that is what we can now build on. This agreement is the first that Iraq has made with any country to tackle organised immigration, crime and border security. I welcome Iraq’s support for this agreement, and its determination and commitment to it. We need to work in partnership with Iraq on it.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
Residents in Portsmouth North are concerned about the rising cost of housing asylum seekers. Although it is not what we would have wanted as a Government, it is good that we have been open and apologetic about having to house, on a temporary basis, these people because of the inactivity of the previous Government. Does the Home Secretary agree that this is in stark contrast to the previous Government, who never explained and never apologised, even when there were more than 400 hotels, costing £9 million a day? Can she say when we expect the cost of housing asylum seekers to reduce?
Yvette Cooper
We are already saving hundreds of millions of pounds this year from the asylum accommodation budget as a result of the decisions we have taken to restart asylum decision making and get the system working again so that we can start clearing the backlog. Had we not done so, and had we carried on with the previous Government’s policies, those costs would have soared further. That is unfair on the British taxpayer, as well as being the sign of a broken asylum system. We will continue to do that work. We expect to make hundreds of millions of pounds more in savings next year. In total, the assessment is that over the next few years, we will save £4 billion from the previous Government’s failed schemes.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
What deterrent will the Home Secretary implement for those asylum claimants who have destroyed their papers and purport to come from regimes to which they cannot possibly be returned?
Yvette Cooper
One of the reasons we are talking to the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan regional authorities about biometrics and supporting biometric roll-outs is that they make it easier to prevent people delaying either asylum claims being resolved or returns being agreed by not having papers. Where there are biometrics in place, it makes things much faster. That is why we should be working to extend them and why we are working to establish stronger returns arrangements with other countries. That is what we have been doing throughout the summer and why we have seen such a substantial increase in returns this summer, as a result of our putting in the additional resources that were failing to achieve anything when they were put into the Rwanda scheme. We are now putting them into doing practical things as part of returns and enforcement.
Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
In his response, the shadow Home Secretary said that £500,000 was not a lot of money. That is probably because he thought that for £100,000 more you could give free education, housing, university education and vocational training to just four volunteers going to Rwanda. What an absolute waste of money! Does the Home Secretary agree that it is a far better deterrent to actually process people and send them abroad, or should we continue with the fallacy that as a nation we should be bribing people to send them over to Rwanda?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is certainly right that the £700 million for four people is absolutely not good value for money at all. We will always make sure that we are looking for good value for money, as well as getting results.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The previous Administration cannot, Pontius Pilate-like, wash their hands of this immigration mess that has placed intolerable burdens on mostly disadvantaged working-class communities, but the Government now have responsibility for this matter. They cannot pass it back again: they have responsibility. What I would like to hear from the Home Secretary today—despite what has happened since July, with 20,000 more immigrants coming into the United Kingdom, hotel places up and foreign criminals still waltzing through the courts claiming human rights to stop themselves being removed—is what she intends to do to remove the pull factor that encourages people to see Britain as an easy touch.
Yvette Cooper
One of the things we are doing is cracking down on illegal working and the exploitation by employers of people coming to the UK who are often not here lawfully and as a result are being exploited by employers. That has been too easy for employers to do for far too long. That is why we saw an increase of more than 30% in illegal working visits over the summer, a significant increase in the number of arrests as a result of those visits, and a consequent significant increase in penalties for employers. We will continue to take much stronger action, such as removing the ability to sponsor workers from any employer who is breaching important employment laws. We need to ensure that every bit of the system is being tackled and addressed, so that we can have a system that is fair and has public support.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
The Home Secretary ended her statement by saying that she wanted “serious international partnerships”, but when pressed on that by the shadow Home Secretary, she seemed reluctant to say whether she would explore removal or processing agreements with third countries, as advocated by the President of the European Commission. Who is actually serious on this question: this Government or Ursula von der Leyen?
Yvette Cooper
We have been very clear about the importance of working with other countries, both on tackling gangs and on addressing some of the wider issues that we face. We have always said that we will look at anything that works, and we will look at practical measures. We have recognised that different approaches are being taken by different countries. The Italy-Albania agreement, for example, provides for a fast-track returns arrangement, enabling those from predominantly safe countries to be moved to Albania. We think it is possible to introduce similar fast-track arrangements that have not been properly in place in this country for a long time, and we should be considering those as well.
Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)
More than 210,000 Ukrainians have been hosted in the UK since Russia’s full-scale invasion, which is a testament to the generosity of British hosts, but the millions of Ukrainians who have left Ukraine for Europe are just a fraction of the number who might flee across Europe if Russia were successful in breaking through and occupying all of Ukraine. Does the Secretary of State consider it to be in the UK’s own national interest that we confiscate all Russia’s frozen assets, offer the proceeds to the defence of Ukraine and prevent further displacement?
Yvette Cooper
As the hon. Member will know, we strongly support Ukraine, given what it has had to endure and go through. We continue to condemn the Putin Government for the things that they have done and the impact that they are having on Ukraine, and we will continue to support Ukraine in every way possible.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
A constituent wrote to me recently asking if I could get a hurry-up on his application under the EU settlement scheme. It turns out that he is subject to a deportation order, and that we actually did deport him in 2018, but he managed to get back into the country somehow and to make his application under the EUSS. The Home Office told me last week that it could not deport him until his EUSS application had been played out, including all the appeals. He made the application in 2020, and it is now nearly the end of 2024. In a spirit of bipartisanship, may I suggest that the Home Secretary should change the rules with a stroke of her pen, and that anyone who is subject to a deportation order should simply be deported? In a similar spirit, may I suggest that if she can get it done by Friday, I will gladly drive him to the airport myself?
Yvette Cooper
The last Government had 14 years—or at least four years, since the EU settlement scheme was introduced—to deal with some of these issues. We take very seriously the need to speed up and improve enforcement of returns for those who have no right to be here. The immigration system and the asylum system can only work and command public confidence if the rules are respected and enforced. That means that if someone does not have a right to be here, there should be proper enforcement. We are working to speed up enforcement, which is why there was a significant increase in returns over the summer, but we will continue to do so, and we will continue to consider what further amendments can be made to improve matters.
Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)
The Home Secretary has quite rightly lambasted the absolute failures of the last Government on mass immigration, but could she comment on whether people in the Home Office will be held accountable for allowing systems and controls to crumble in the last five years, and on whether people in the Office for National Statistics will be held accountable for getting their numbers wrong by almost a quarter of a million people in just one year?
Yvette Cooper
Conservative Ministers made policy decisions that they asked Home Office officials to implement. Fundamentally, the Conservative Government need to take responsibility for policy decisions that they made in 2021, which led to a big increase in migration for work, for example, and a big increase in the net migration numbers, at the same time as training was being cut in the UK. That has had damaging consequences for confidence and trust, but also for the functioning of the UK economy and labour market, because we should be doing far more to train people in everything from engineering to construction. There are a whole series of different areas where we should increase training here in the UK.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
Will the Home Secretary confirm how many country deals are being worked on to ensure that people can be returned to their country of origin, and when does she expect them to have a material impact on the level of migration to the UK?
Yvette Cooper
Some of the work that we are doing with different countries is about speeding up existing returns arrangements, which sometimes do not work effectively enough. Sometimes it is about relatively practical improvements to existing arrangements that take far too long or have too many hurdles. We are already doing that, which is why we had a significant increase in returns over the summer. It is why we organised a series of charter flights, including the three largest charter return flights in UK history, which have all been organised since the general election as part of the practical work that we are doing, step by step, to increase enforcement and returns.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
While we are reassured by the previous answers that the Home Secretary is committed to increasing the processing of asylum claims to clear the backlog, the Liberal Democrats would push her to go further and faster. Will she consider our calls to end the ban on asylum seekers working, and reduce the time limit to three months so that they are able to contribute to their cost of living, integrate into society and start to pay a fair share within the communities that they wish to join?
Yvette Cooper
No, I do not think that is the right thing to do. We need to clear the backlog, speed up decision making and ensure that those who do not have the right to be here are swiftly returned. Where we have had people arrive from Ukraine or Hong Kong, we want to see them working, being part of the economy and being able to support themselves and their families, but where somebody does not have the right to be here, the important thing is to make the system work and make sure that they can swiftly return.
Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)
Villages such as Datchet in my constituency are bearing the brunt of the fact that 6,000 more illegal economic migrants are staying in asylum hotels since this Government came into office. These single adult males represent something like 2% of the village’s population, so what assessment has the Home Secretary made of the extra pressures on vital local services, particularly GPs and dentists? What assurances can she give my constituents that they will not miss out on vital appointments as a result of the sudden demographic change?
Yvette Cooper
We think that using asylum hotels is the wrong way to respond to the system that we have, which is why the increase in the backlog as a result of the previous Conservative Government’s collapse in decision making has been so damaging. That is why we now have additional caseworkers in place and asylum decisions back at the levels that they were previously, so that we can clear the backlog and make sure that we do not need to use asylum hotels. The previous Government opened 400 asylum hotels and quadrupled the cost of the asylum accommodation system. That has a shocking impact on the taxpayer, and we are already saving money by bringing the costs down.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
We need a firm but fair and compassionate approach on immigration, as I think everyone in the House would agree. Human rights non-governmental organisations have warned that people being returned to Iraq could be at risk of human rights abuses, so can the Home Secretary tell us what reassurances she has had on that point? Will human rights always be a red line when she is striking migration deals in future?
Yvette Cooper
The agreement that we reached and signed with the Iraqi Government explicitly commits to support for international law, international humanitarian law and human rights, and this was one of the issues that we discussed as part of the meetings. The hon. Gentleman will also know that every decision in the asylum system is made on its individual merits to ensure that, where somebody is being rejected from the asylum system and is being returned, it is safe and appropriate to do so. But we do believe that there are many people currently in the immigration enforcement system who should be safely returned to their homes, and that is why we have increased the process around enforcement and returns this summer.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker—I am sure that this is a thrill for everybody. I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. The failures of the previous Government may undoubtedly be a reason for this uncontrollable migration number, but my constituents in Northern Ireland—who have had their winter fuel allowance removed and who are seeing an increase in the cost of living that is pushing many working families towards the poverty line at warp speed—are interested not in a blame game but in getting immigration sorted and the boats stopped.
What will the Government do to achieve a reasonable immigration policy? How they will deal with those who have not come here legally and who do not deserve to be here ahead of the families from Afghanistan, who were instrumental in the war effort there and who are still waiting in the correct procedural queue rather than jumping off boats?
Yvette Cooper
Enforced returns for those with no right to be here were up 19% this summer, and voluntary returns are up 14%. We think that those should increase. On the overall immigration system, we will be setting out in a White Paper new proposals to better link the Migration Advisory Committee, the skills bodies across the UK and other organisations to identify stronger controls that are also linked to stronger training requirements, so that as well as having the visa controls in place, we also have clear requirements to train here in the UK to ensure that we can tackle the big increase in net migration for work that we saw over the last five years.
I think the hon. Member would probably agree that most people across the country want to see strong border security and a properly controlled and managed immigration and asylum system. We have not had that for too long, but those are the proper controls and fair systems that we need to get back in place so that we can fix the foundations and everybody can have confidence in the system for the future.
Madam Deputy Speaker
That is the end of that statement. I will give the Front Benchers a few moments to shuffle over quickly and quietly.