Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Home Office accommodation provider Mears has made significant profits providing substandard facilities for asylum seekers. Community InfoSource in Glasgow has found that Mears’ practices are retraumatising and causing unnecessary stress and suffering. Mears is now back to using hotels such as the Muthu in Erskine, which the Park Inn incident in Glasgow proved to be entirely unsuitable for vulnerable people. Why are the UK Government encouraging rapacious companies to profit from misery, rather than investing in community-based alternatives and more effective decision making?

[Robert Jenrick]

If the hon. Lady has specific allegations, will she please bring them to me and I will be happy to investigate them?

The answer to this issue, in Scotland as across the country, is for local authorities to step up and make more accommodation available. As I have said many times at the Dispatch Box, including to the hon. Lady, the Scottish Government are taking fewer asylum seekers and refugees than any other comparable part of the United Kingdom. The SNP’s record on this issue is frankly shameful. It was, after all, the Scottish Government whose failed Ukrainian scheme meant that they had to house Ukrainian refugees in cruise ships.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Delays even when decisions have been made are all too common. To give an example, a constituent had his appeal allowed but is still waiting for the tribunal’s decision to be implemented nine months later. He cannot get on with his life. In a written answer to me, the Minister for Immigration was unable to provide my constituent with a timescale, or to establish the longest time that people have been waiting, or even how many appeals are still in Home Office limbo. Can he tell me what is the longest time that people like my constituent will have to wait, or is Home Office bureaucracy now completely out of his control?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady does not want us to tackle this issue because she believes in open borders. We want to take action to ensure that this country is not somewhere where economic migrants and asylum shoppers seek to come. That means suffusing deterrents throughout the system. She should support plans such as Rwanda and our efforts to bear down on illegal migrants. We will bear down on the backlog of cases. As I said in answer to an earlier question, we will clear it over the course of this year. We are ensuing that productivity rises every week.