Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Rosindell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about Paris and the importance of the whole House coming together. Perhaps the House would like a brief update: as I said yesterday, one British national, Nick Alexander, was killed at the Bataclan theatre; three other British nationals have now been released from hospital and returned to the UK; and the Foreign Office and Red Cross are providing support for trauma to at least another 15 British nationals. We will make sure we provide support to those injured and traumatised by the events that have happened. There has been progress this morning in France with the arrest of terrorists, but perhaps I can say more about that later.

On policing, we rightly protected counter-terrorism policing in the last Parliament, and we will protect it again in this Parliament. Otherwise on policing, we have seen an increase of 3,800 in the number of neighbourhood officers over the Parliament and a 31% cut in crime. I commend the police—not just counter-terrorism police, but all police—for the work they do, and we will announce our proposals on police spending next week.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

Q2. As our hearts go out to the people of France, will the Prime Minister agree that the first duty of Her Majesty’s Government must be to protect British citizens from harm? So will he take immediate action to secure our UK borders against those who threaten our nation and, on security grounds alone, restore complete sovereignty over our British borders from the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important question. In answering, I want to explain an important point: because the UK is not in the Schengen area, we already retain full control over who enters our country and can check all entrants at the border, including EU and European economic area nationals. The House might be interested to know that, since 2010, we have refused entry to almost 6,000 EU nationals, more than 3,800 of whom were stopped at our juxtaposed border controls in Calais. Since 2010, we have denied entry to nearly 95,000 people. Of course, one of the principal reasons for not letting people in, be they EU or non-EU nationals, is national security concerns. We are in that situation already because we are not in Schengen.