Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He and his constituents see every day the harm that doing nothing could cause, with the loss of more than one valued hotel in his constituency. We want to stop this once and for all, and the dividing line is between those who want to deal with the symptoms of the problem by tweaking the system and managing failure and those of us who want to transform the system, stop the boats, secure our borders and ensure that we have a sustainable system for an age of mass migration.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We can tell that we are in the dying days of the Government ahead of a general election, because they always resort to dog-whistle rhetoric. Nobody on either side of the House wants open borders. We want a secure border around the United Kingdom, but what we do not want is more unworkable propositions from the Government. They have brought forward Bill after Bill after Bill, and none of it has worked. The impact assessment shows that this Bill will not work either. There is no attempt to estimate the total costs or benefits of the proposals. It uses the word “uncertain” 24 times in 40 pages and does not cover the costs that we need to know. Will the Minister tell us how much this will cost and where the money will come from?

[Robert Jenrick]

The difference here is that if we do nothing, we will see the British taxpayer spend billions of pounds. [Interruption.] That is not on us; that is on the Labour party. We are not doing nothing; we are taking forward the Rwanda partnership, which is one of the most innovative and novel approaches to tackling this issue of any country in the world.

Knowsley Incident

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Robert Jenrick

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, and I apologise if there has been any delay. He raises a broader point of concern to us, which is the leafleting by far-right groups of the communities surrounding hotels. There have been examples of leaflets with faces of Members of Parliament and local councillors on them. Whenever I have seen those, I have raised them with local police and the Home Office’s dedicated counter-terrorism support. That kind of intimidatory leaflet is completely unacceptable on the streets of our country.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity when he rightly condemns right-wing extremism—indeed, all extremism—but it is now three years since the former commissioner for counter-extremism warned that the Government’s counter-extremism strategy was out of date because it did not have key measures to tackle online radicalisation. When can we expect to see those measures before the House?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s question away and ask the Security Minister to write to him with a fuller reply. I have always taken extremism seriously. For example, I worked with Sara Khan in her work on tackling the victims of extremism. Extremism, whether from the far right or Islamism, is pernicious and needs to be tackled. We will do everything we can to address it.

Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, and of course I will do that. The evidence from the ICIBI’s report of October 2022 is that the young people it spoke to said that their needs were being catered for and that they felt they were happy, safe and treated with respect. Of course, I will do everything I can to satisfy myself that the arrangements are appropriate.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

In his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), the Minister basically said that local authorities have corporate parental responsibility for these children in hotels. If that is the case, I am afraid that the Home Office package for local government is woefully inadequate, as he will know from his days as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is his current Department’s duty to protect these children as refugees, so will he tell the House today how many National Crime Agency officers are working on the serious issues of child trafficking and disappearance from hotels?

[Robert Jenrick]

To clarify, I did not say that we expect the local authorities that host these hotels to provide such services. I said that while individuals are in bridging hotels, there may be a technical and legal position, but the Home Office appreciates the pressure on those local authorities due to having a hotel, which we do not want to be a permanent fixture. That is why we are putting in place all this support to meet the needs of individuals and the local authority’s associated costs.

I met the NCA only last week. This is now one of its most significant priorities, and a very large number of its personnel are engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, including people trafficking and modern slavery.

Towns Fund

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I should say, just to clarify my answer to the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), because he seemed confused by it, that the point I was making was that absolutely, his bid will be treated with all fairness and I hope it is successful.

With respect to my hon. Friend’s question, Newcastle-under-Lyme is a town that I know very well and I can see the great proposals coming forward there. He makes the same very important point that a number of colleagues have made today—namely, that covid will accelerate market forces in our towns and city centres. It will make investment of this kind more important than ever and even more prescient than when these funds were created. I hope that they will be a shot in the arm—a boost of confidence—for communities as they begin to recover from the covid pandemic, and that they will help them to adapt and evolve, turning empty shops into homes, and beautiful buildings back to the uses that they were made for.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]]

I support boosting towns. The Secretary of State talks about a robust procedure and fine balance. There are plenty of communities in Stockport that would be worthy recipients of towns fund money, including Reddish, so what instead attracted him to Cheadle? Was it its unemployment rate, at 3% below the north-west average? Was it its deprivation ranking, decile seven, making it one of the north’s least deprived areas? Was it its low shop vacancy rate? Was it his Department’s assessment ranking it the 535th priority out of 541 towns? Or was it the Tory majority of just 2,366? [Interruption.]