Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

4. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

21. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

We are making good progress, and the latest Home Office statistics show that asylum decisions are up, with a 35% increase since last year in the number made. Productivity has increased, and we are on track to have 2,500 decision makers by September, which represents a quadrupling of the number of case workers.

[Robert Jenrick]

As I just said, we are making good progress on reducing the asylum backlog. Important though the reducing the backlog is, however, it cannot be the totality of a plan. This is the point that the Labour party does not seem to understand: we have to stop the boats coming in the first place. That is the only sustainable way to tackle the issue. Even if we grant our way out of this problem, as the shadow Home Secretary seems to propose, the pressures on the state still remain; they are simply transferred to local authorities and the benefits system, and the British taxpayer continues to pick up the bill.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Minister has an interesting definition of being “on track”; did the number of decision makers not fall between January and May this year, from 1,333 to 1,280?

A constituent recently passed on to me a letter from a firm of local solicitors that said:

“All possible avenues have been considered to avoid this situation but regrettably, the Home Office’s long term failure to progress asylum claims, and current Government immigration policy, has made it financially unsustainable for”

these solicitors

“to continue Legally Aided work.”

How does it help us as MPs on both sides of the House in our constituency offices, and how does it help with the backlog that the Home Office says it wants to reduce, to make sure that people do not have the legal representation they need to unblock the system and allow progress in asylum cases?

[Robert Jenrick]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the problem with our asylum system is not a lack of lawyers; there are plenty of legal representatives around. We have had strong overall progress on the backlog, and I am pleased to say that the early data that I have received suggests that last week saw the best performance in four years.

Equipment Theft (Prevention) Bill

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st February 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful for his support for the Bill.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I support his Bill, and I am pleased to be able to attend the Committee. I represent a city constituency, and there was a fatality in my constituency last year involving a quad bike not 50 yards from my home. I will not comment on the details, because not all the forensics have been done, but although only one person died, it could so easily have been much worse in a crowded urban environment, because it is a spot where families and others regularly pass by. Does he agree that it is important to emphasise that as well as helping to prevent theft and make theft less profitable, this legislation will also prevent antisocial behaviour and its very serious consequences?

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support of the Bill, and I am very sorry to hear about the fatality in his constituency. He is right that although a significant number of quad bike thefts are for resale and monetisation, some are for antisocial purposes. The thieves do not necessarily know how to ride them correctly, and these are not easy pieces of equipment to drive. It is very easy to have accidents, and therefore the antisocial and inexperienced use of them can lead to serious injury or, as in the tragic case in his constituency, the loss of life. I hope that the Bill will go some way to saving lives and preventing very preventable accidents from occurring.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

It is a pleasure once again to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. Let me start by expressing my very warm congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham on the work that he has done in developing and bringing forward this Bill with a great deal of conscientiousness, perseverance and, most important of all, charm. That is a quality not universally present, I have to say—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] But it is certainly well represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham. He has done a very good job of talking the Committee through the operative provisions of the Bill, so I do not propose to repeat what he has already said so eloquently, other than to make it clear that the Government very strongly support these measures, for the reasons that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have eloquently and powerfully set out. Clearly, agricultural communities the length and breadth of the United Kingdom are affected by ATV theft, and the provisions in the Bill will help us to combat that.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham said, the operative provisions of the Bill will be enacted via secondary legislation, so the principal thing that I would like to say is that work on preparing those regulations is happening at the moment. It is happening in parallel with the preparation of the Bill, so, as quickly as possible after commencement of the Bill, we will be able to bring forward the relevant statutory instruments to enact the provisions that we have been debating. That work is happening.

What I would mostly like to say, however, is that I have certainly heard the powerful opinions expressed on Second Reading, and again this morning in Committee, about a strong desire on both sides of the House to consider expanding the scope of the statutory instruments beyond just all-terrain vehicles to look at other agricultural equipment and also tradespeople’s tools. We have all had reports of often quite valuable tools being stolen from tradespeople’s vans. As hon. Members have said, that is not just a financial loss; it prevents tradespeople from working, sometimes for a number of days, which disrupts building projects and causes loss of earnings at a time when people obviously are struggling to make ends meet, so I am very powerfully seized of the need to look at that. I have asked Home Office officials to work on developing the statutory instruments to address it as well as doing the work on ATVs. That work is ongoing; they are doing the technical work to look at it at the moment, so I cannot make an absolute commitment that it will be done at the same time, but my starting position is that if we are going to bring forward statutory instruments under the Bill to deal with ATVs, why not do the other tools at the same time?

There may be some technical reason that I am not aware of why that is very difficult, but my starting position is that we should do both of them, or all of them, at the same time, later on this calendar year, so I will do whatever I can, as Minister, to try to make sure we do all of that. As I said, I am due to get some further advice on it, so there may be some technical elements that I am not aware of or some other arguments that get brought forward, but that is my intention, and it sounds like it has support on both sides of the House.

[Kevin Brennan]

It is extremely helpful that the Minister has put that on the record. However, will he confirm that if it proves that there are any technical obstacles to his being able to include that other equipment in the regulations, he will nevertheless stick to the timetable he just set and bring forward regulations on quad bikes and so on before Christmas?

[Chris Philp]

Yes. The intention is to do it as a minimum for ATVs. As I said, given how strong feelings are on both sides of the House, as expressed on Second Reading and in Committee this morning, I would like us to try to find a way to make it work. I know that Home Office officials are working on that at the moment. When my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and I spoke to the police superintendent responsible for fighting crime in this area, he was also supportive of going further.

Draft Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code H) Order 2023

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 General Committees

[The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code H) Order 2023.

It is a pleasure to work under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

Following the horrific terrorist attack at Fishmongers’ Hall in November 2019, the then Home Secretary commissioned the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, to review the multi-agency public protection arrangements—commonly referred to as MAPPA—used to supervise terrorist and terrorist-risk offenders on licence in the community. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which I will subsequently refer to as the 2022 Act, established three new powers for counter-terrorism policing: a personal search power, a premises search power, and a power of urgent arrest. Those powers were established in response to recommendations made by Mr Hall KC following his review of MAPPA.

The order relates to the new power of urgent arrest, which has been inserted into the Terrorism Act 2000 - new section 43B of that Act - by the 2022 Act. The new arrest power came into force on 28 June last year. The Government have also taken this opportunity to make a small number of updates to the code to reflect changes previously made by primary legislation, including ensuring relevant terminology within the code is up to date.

As was set out by the Government during the passage of the 2022 Act, the new power of urgent arrest applies across the UK. The power enables the police to arrest without warrant a terrorist or terrorism-connected offender who has been released on licence and is suspected to have breached their licence conditions when it is considered necessary, for purposes connected with protecting members of the public from a terrorism risk, to detain the offender until a recall decision is made.

Section 66 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act1984—normally referred to as PACE—requires the Secretary of State to issue codes of practice in connection with the exercise by police officers of statutory powers to arrest a person and the detention, treatment, questioning and identification of persons by police officers. We have prepared a revised PACE code H, which relates to the detention and treatment of people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and applies across England and Wales. The order seeks Parliament’s approval to bring the revised code of practice into force. The primary update to PACE code H is the incorporation of the new urgent arrest power provided for by section 43B of the Terrorism Act 2000.

A terrorist offender who is detained under new section 43B must, unless recalled to prison or otherwise detained under any other power, be released if a decision is made not to revoke their licence and accordingly the offender is not recalled to prison. A terrorist offender must also be released from police detention if a recall decision has not been made by the end of the relevant period, which in relation to terrorist offenders who have been released on licence under the law of England and Wales is six hours beginning with the time of the arrest.

The Government have updated PACE code H to reflect that new arrest power, including ensuring that there is clarity for the police on the length of time for which the terrorist offender on licence can be detained and their rights upon first being detained, including to have one named person informed of their whereabouts and their right to consult and communicate privately with a solicitor. The revised PACE code H also reflects that there is no requirement to caution a terrorist offender on licence who is arrested under section 43B as they will not have been arrested on suspicion of committing a criminal offence and so will not be questioned or interviewed by the police under caution while being detained under this power.

The Government plan to collect data from police forces on the use of that targeted power, as we routinely do for other police arrest powers, and to make this data publicly available through future statistical publications. The Government have also updated PACE code H to reflect other changes already made to primary legislation by the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019—I will subsequently refer to it as the 2019 Act. That Act amended provisions in schedule 8 to the Terrorism Act 2000 to specify on the face of the legislation that on first being detained a detainee must be informed of their rights to inform a named person of their detention and consult a solicitor. The 2019 Act replaced provisions in schedule 8 that would enable a senior officer, in certain exceptional circumstances, to direct that the detainee has to consult their solicitor in the sight and hearing of another officer with one whereby a senior officer can, in those exceptional circumstances, require the detainee to consult a different solicitor of the detainee’s choosing.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. We are considering a very interesting provision of the Act. Can he explain to the Committee what are those certain exceptional circumstances that would mean that a senior officer could, rather than say that a detainee had to consult in sight and hearing of another officer, direct that the detainee had to consult a different solicitor. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but it really is unacceptable for officials to pass notes to the Minister directly. That is out of order. Sorry, Mr Brennan, do continue.

[Kevin Brennan]

Thank you very much, Mr Bone. I appreciate your ensuring that we conduct our proceedings in good order. Could the Minister explain what are those exceptional circumstances in which the provision under which a senior officer would require a detainee to consult a different solicitor might be invoked?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet my right hon. Friend. As I said in answer to her initial question, the data suggests that the vast majority of customers are receiving their BRPs within seven days and the system is working in an acceptable fashion. But if cases are falling through the cracks, it is of course right that we aim to fix that, and I would be pleased to meet her.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Biometrics are obviously important, but going back to spousal visas, which have also been mentioned, the wife of my constituent is an Afghan citizen who is stuck in Iran. As we know, Afghan refugees are not being treated well in Iran, but the Home Office, in reply to me, says that it will not particularly expedite this case. Will the Minister afford me the same courtesy that he did to the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and look into the case that I have mentioned if I write to him after this session?

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be very happy to do so.

Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I have spent many happy hours in Stocksbridge and I want to see the Government investing even more in her community. She is right to say that it is an unconscionable waste of taxpayers’ money to be spending over £2 billion per year on hotel accommodation. That money could be put to better use, whether helping her constituents or fulfilling our broader mission as a country to support those in distress who truly need it at home or abroad. The approach that the Home Secretary and I are going to take is to speed up decision making so that we can get people out of hotels because their application has been decided, to disperse people more fairly and evenly across the country, to see whether better value sites are available to us, and of course to do everything we can to dissuade people from making the journey in the first place.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I was not quite clear what the Minister meant in his response earlier to the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). Is it his position that the Government acted legally in detaining migrants at Manston for more than 24 hours?

[Robert Jenrick]

The Government’s objective is to ensure that nobody stays at Manston for more than 24 hours, but we have to balance up competing legal duties. We also have to be cognisant of the fact that not everything is within our control when we deal with this situation. It was clearly not within the control of the Home Office that thousands of individuals chose to get into small boats and cross the channel in a very short series of days, and it was certainly not within our control that an individual chose to attack the Western Jet Foil on Saturday, ensuring that 700 to 800 people were brought swiftly to the Manston site as a result. These are the difficult choices that we have to balance. There are no simple choices or solutions in the Home Office, but we have to act in the public interest.

Leaving the EU: UK Language Schools

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huq]

I completely concur with the hon. Member. We have all heard about the backlog—perhaps the Minister will talk about it—of people waiting to get passports at this time of year when they want to go on holiday. The laborious, ponderous hoops that people have to jump through seem a bit too much, compared with what used to be a relatively simple thing when we had freedom of movement.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I would point out that the groups do not just come to England; they also come to Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom, including to Peartree Languages in my constituency. During the Brexit debate, I do not remember a slogan on the side of a bus saying, “Vote Brexit to stop all these schoolchildren absconding when they come to visit our language schools, castles, museums and other tourist attractions.”

My fear and that of other members of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, including my hon. Friend, is that this has become an ideological issue about Brexit and immigration, when it has absolutely nothing to do with that. There is no problem with under-18s absconding when they come, so the Government and the Minister, who is a reasonable person, should look again at this and let schoolchildren come as they always have done—in a group, using their ID cards, with a responsible adult or adults with their passports. That would not undermine the stance on freedom of movement or our immigration system, but it might help our tourism sector and language school sector, which are begging for action from the Government, because the woods are burning out there and they are doing nothing about it.

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is so right. He is from a capital city; I mentioned cities at the beginning. I understand that the number of language schools in Cardiff has boomed from a small number a decade ago, but they are in jeopardy now. We are meant to be going for global Britain, so, as he said, shrivelling up and putting the barriers up seems completely wrong. We should enable students to study these languages on our shores, not the complete opposite, which is what seems to be happening. That may be an unintended consequence, but I know the Minister is a reasonable man. When I come to my list of demands, I hope that he will see sense.

The fact that we had a global pandemic that nobody foresaw means that it is difficult to disentangle what was Brexit and what was covid, but a bit of Brexit-proofing would not go amiss. Surveys done by English UK show that the ID card issue is a major factor. We should of course be proud of the English language; it is our greatest export, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says, there is a danger of killing off the market for these schools, even though as recently as 2019, we had twice as many as any other English-speaking competitor country. The business operates on pretty tight margins. One school owner I spoke to said, “I’m paid the highest of everyone here, but I like doing this. I want to spread the English language. Money doesn’t matter to me.” However, we are in danger of losing this lucrative category of student to Ireland and Malta, even though they are both pretty tiny, have capacity issues, and actually cannot cope.

To be fair, I must admit that the sector suffered multiple hits long before Brexit. Ben Anderson, of the Edwards Language School, said:

“There were a tiny minority of visa shops in the 1990s created by the old Tier 4 visas. Gordon Brown ramped up regulation.”

So the problem did not start with Brexit—it started long ago—but all this stuff has been put on steroids with the end of freedom of movement. Further tightening occurred under the coalition: until about 2014, this long-time form of soft power became conflated with immigration targets to get net migration down to the tens of thousands, which were never achieved,.

Asif Musa of West London English School said:

“There was a problem and so a crackdown was needed, rightly private schools lost their licences but then UKVI went OTT”.

In 2012, London Metropolitan University temporarily lost its right to recruit international students from outside the EU because of, in the Government’s words, “serious, systematic failure” of its monitoring of its international student body. New checks were added on monitoring. The problem is conflating language students, who are temporary and have more in common with tourists, and cutting down on bogus net migration. The legacy of that whole period, which persists to today and has been added to by Brexit, is that there is now a presumption of guilt. As one of the school owners said, “Basically, it is as if they are looking to shut you down; they are looking to suspend your licence.”

There is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. English is indisputably the lingua franca of the world, so why are we creating unnecessary obstacles when a hungry young public are eager to take courses in English on our shores? VisitBritain, in 2020, found that language school students stay three times as long as the standard tourist and spend twice as much—crucially, in local communities, on accommodation, local transport, cafes and attractions. In “Everyday Is Like Sunday”, Morrissey sang about the seaside towns they forgot to close down. They used to have a bit of a “God’s waiting room” reputation, but many have been revitalised by this vibrant business, and rejuvenated by the youngsters coming in. I feel that we cannot just do nothing while the sector is hitting the rocks.

Ealing, in losing three out of five colleges, is not alone; The Guardian says that there are just seven out 20 left in Hastings. The Minister, I am sure, shares my concern that both LAL Torbay and the Devon School of English have closed their doors. They are no more; their websites say they are permanently closed. While some post-covid recovery is under way, English UK reckons that by the end of this year, we will be at 40% to 60% of pre-pandemic volumes, but that is after an average 88% decline in student numbers over the past two years. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West and I are on the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and we know that that is far worse an outcome than for any other type of tourism, with £590 million of lost revenue on 2021.

I talked about one school that looked like it was booming yesterday, but a lot of that is courses left over from 2020 that could not be taken and are now being realised. West London English School calls it pent-up demand because they honoured all courses, whereas I think other schools gave vouchers, which turned out to be pretty meaningless. As I said, these schools operate on tight margins—one of them said they were “almost non-existent”. Of those that have not gone under, many are crippled by debt. That is a shame when the power of English throughout the world is an inestimable good and a key component of soft power. Those attending UK language schools, often as children or adolescents, are much more likely to go to a UK university. I know from working in universities that we were always encouraged to get overseas students with their lucrative fees. Language schools are a linchpin of an important pipeline, which is coming under strain. At one end are school exchange visits that might see oversees students go into one of these schools; at the other end, they return for higher education. It should be noted that 57 of our current world leaders have studied at UK universities, and there is often a language component there.

The pipeline of host families is also under pressure. The cost of living makes the £200 to £250 a week per student, which used to be good money, go less far. I am told that in Ealing there used to be established residents who could be relied on, but now that houses change hands for £2 million, the new generation of homeowners is a bit befuddled at why anyone would want kids in their face. There are also things like Airbnb which are less intrusive.

What has Brexit got to do with it? I have a list of three main recommendations that I would like the Minister to take away. Enabling ID card travel is not happening, as we have heard. Ninety per cent. of under-18s in mainland Europe travel using only their ID. What about the idea mentioned by the hon. Member for Bath—the group travel option, with a group leader in charge of the rest? There is no risk that these people would abscond; they did not with the previous EU list of travellers option. We could try youth mobility schemes. The Government already have bilateral deals with New Zealand, Australia, the USA, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and others; they could sign deals with EU countries—the big ones, such as France, Germany and Italy. It can be done; I can supply the Minister with the paperwork.

I do not know if the Minister has seen in today’s Standard that our hospitality sector has loads of vacancies. Traditionally, part of the experience for oversees students was for the adult, non-minor students to spend about 10 hours a week pulling pints, as part of their immersion. These are valuable work and life skills. Limited work rights should be loosened up. People used to be able to do this as university students. Seventy-five per cent. of all English language teaching business in the UK is conducted in the summer bulge months of June to August. That is when these seasonal vacancies need to be filled. It has been done for fruit picking; it is something that the Minister could do here too.

Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On Monday, I asked the Home Secretary about Lord Harrington’s remarks that it was “in train” that there would be a Ukrainian language drop-down arrow available on the application form. When I asked the Home Secretary whether it was the Government’s policy not to have the form translated into Ukrainian, she said,

“I am very happy to pick the matter up directly with the hon. Gentleman.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2022; Vol. 712, c. 457.]

Can I make it clear that I do not want Ministers to pick up directly with me? I want them to answer straightforward factual questions here on the Floor of the House on the record, as required by the ministerial code. Can the Minister tell me whether it is the Government’s policy not to provide Ukrainian translation of the form?

[Kevin Foster]

We have already done step-by-step guidance for the form in both Ukrainian and Russian, which makes it much simpler to follow. One of the issues with translating the form into other languages is that it means we would need to have decision makers who can speak the particular language. We are clear that sponsors and others can assist with filling in the form to make for a better experience for those needing to apply. As already shown, we have now granted nearly 90,000 visas, which speaks for itself and the performance that is being achieved.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although Opposition Members yell about the lack of support, I will come back to a number of points. First, doing nothing is not an option. We have to do everything that we possibly can to break up these evil people smugglers, who are unhinged and will stop at nothing to exploit individuals. Secondly, through the new plan for immigration and our wider work through the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is coming back to the House tomorrow, we want to bring our plan together and deliver for the British people.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On 31 March, Lord Harrington had to apologise for inadvertently misleading the other place when he said that a drop-down arrow was available on the form for Ukrainian refugees in the Ukrainian language. When he apologised, he said that that was “in train”. Will the Home Secretary ‘fess up and confirm that it is Home Office policy not to have a translated version of the form, or if it is, where is Lord Harrington’s severely delayed train?

[Priti Patel]

For Home Office officials who work on the scheme, there is guidance about dealing with different languages in the applications, but I am very happy to pick the matter up directly with the hon. Gentleman.

Refugees from Ukraine

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The answer is yes.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

My constituents, who I am not naming publicly at their request, found out in December that they were expecting a baby through surrogacy in Ukraine. I visited the hub yesterday, and they have been told that the surrogate mother does not qualify under the family visa scheme. I have been told by the Home Secretary’s officials that nothing can be done about it. After yesterday’s scenes of the bombing of the maternity hospital in Ukraine, the Home Secretary can only imagine how my constituents are feeling about their baby, who is expected in a few months’ time and who is a British citizen upon birth. Will she look again at this policy personally, with a view to making a small tweak to it for the small number of families who fall into this category?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue of surrogacy cases—a number of those cases have been raised with me. We are absolutely looking to make changes to this: there are various requirements we need to make in the UK with those particular families who will be expecting a child through a surrogate, and we are looking at how that can all be brought together and families united. I am aware of these cases.

Ukraine

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To emphasise his point, this is a crisis that does not sleep and does not rest: this is 24/7. We are standing up an operation tomorrow in Portcullis House, and we will obviously be working with all colleagues. I again urge them to bring any representation and cases to us directly. We will resource it accordingly, because we do expect the numbers to go up. We will be very frank and honest about that. In the same way, we will operationalise in region where we can, which will also mean bringing more people into the region. We are already working through our contingency planning, and we already have the FCDO teams out there through the rapid taskforce team. If that means we have to bring in more Border Force staff to go in and other people from UK Visas and Immigration, we stand ready and we are absolutely ready to do that.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Colleagues on both sides of the House were a little perturbed yesterday when the Home Secretary said:

“I urge colleagues not to attempt casework themselves”.—[Official Report, 28 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 701.]

I am glad she has rowed back on that today in her statement. This session has shown the vital role that Members can play in bringing cases to the attention of Ministers where they need action. I welcome what she has said about that. I have listened carefully to her, and she said that she wanted to do things in a united and international way. I do not think she ruled out taking the approach of a temporary protection mechanism to allow access to public services. At the end of the day, do we really want to be a country that until recently was granting passports and privileges to Putin’s friends but that will not waive visas for Putin’s Ukrainian victims in their hour of need?

[Priti Patel]

If I may, I will clarify a couple of things to the hon. Gentleman. First, in terms of what I said about casework yesterday, Members raise casework on the Floor of the House, and that is absolutely fine—I have not said, “Don’t do that”—but it is also the case that Members should bring cases directly in fast time. In fact, colleagues have emailed me since the weekend. I have been picking them up myself. Obviously it is much more efficient just to come to me directly. We are all 24/7; that is the nature of all our work. I have always said we will happily pick those cases up, rather than having Members waiting to bring them to the Floor of the House. That is the point I make.

I rule nothing out, but the point about visas is that having documentation of individuals is important, particularly when they come here to access public services, to gain employment and all those kinds of things, and the biometric checks are also important, and that is the point I have been making. We need to do those checks and to keep them in place. We will work with all colleagues. I am in touch with the commissioner in the EU. We have to learn from each other, because this is a real-time crisis, and things will probably get a lot worse, so we have to have the agility and flexibility to respond.