Small Boat Crossings

Lord Murray of Blidworth Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister for Border Security and Asylum in the other place failed to say whether the Labour Party would honour its manifesto commitment and not open any more asylum hotels. This weekend in Altrincham, we saw a new hotel repurposed, with many local people angry with this decision. Does the Minister share their concern? Does he agree that this breaches the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment?

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the question. No, it does not breach the Labour Party’s manifesto commitment. As the noble Lord will know, we do not comment routinely—as did his Government—on the location or content of particular asylum hostels. But he will know that this Government are resolutely committed to restarting the asylum process and to saving an estimated £7 billion for the taxpayer in doing so. We are going to deliver a major uplift in returns, and we have already returned people. We will scrap the Rwanda scheme, which the noble Lord was an architect of. We will save several million pounds in doing that and we will put that towards speeding up asylum claims and ensure that we put this matter back on track. We will revisit the Labour manifesto in due course, but I give him a firm “no” in answer to his question today.