Borders and Asylum
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Yvette Cooper(5 days, 6 hours ago)
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Yvette Cooper
Obviously, we do not want asylum accommodation in inappropriate places. We must reduce the overall size of the asylum system, while ensuring that we can move people, when possible, from hotels to alternative and better sites. Any arrangement that is aimed simply at expanding the asylum system, as happens if there is a freeze on asylum decisions—and some of the policies that Reform is unfortunately pursuing risk increasing the number of people stuck in the asylum system, because Reform has no plans for practical returns—will make the problem worse. We need practical changes to bring the numbers down.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
It has come to my attention that in government, the job of Home Secretary does not always attract the greatest thanks, so I want to thank my right hon. Friend for the response that she and her Department have given to the letter from 100 colleagues about the Gaza students, and for what she said this afternoon about considering a permanent scheme. Will she confirm, however, that the visas, when they are issued, will be the same as any international student visa, in that the scholars will be able to bring their families and dependants with them?
Yvette Cooper
As my hon. Friend will know, many student visas do not allow students to bring dependants to the United Kingdom. There will be exceptional circumstances, such as those involving Gaza, but the overall approach—for example, to student visas relating to masters courses—is not to include dependants. We do, however, want to ensure that the refugee route for students is available, recognising that some people will be able to come and be educated at UK universities to develop their incredible talents, but will want to return to their home countries in future to rebuild them. There may be others who are not able to return, because that is the nature of the crisis we face.
Migration and Border Security
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Yvette Cooper(9 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I know that the Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), has already answered some of the questions that the right hon. Gentleman has raised. He is right to express concern about asylum hotels. There are now 220 asylum hotels in use. He will know that his Government opened 400 asylum hotels. We have had to deal with the collapse in asylum decision making. In the last few months before the general election, the Conservatives went down to just a few hundred decisions being taken a week, rather than thousands of decisions each week. That was deeply damaging, and we have had to deal with it, so that we can turn things around by clearing the asylum backlog and ending hotel use.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
It is clear that my right hon. Friend inherited a chaotic immigration situation from the last Government, and I commend her on the work she is doing. She rightly focused on international co-operation, but principally on removals. Does she accept that, in a world as interconnected as ours, migration can no longer adequately be managed by treaties that are now more than 70 years out of date? We need to co-operate with our international partners, to create a new structure and a new settlement for managing global migration.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes important points, because countries do need to work together and to look far more at some of the causes of migration. That is why we set out at the European Political Community summit an additional £80 million fund to look at earlier prevention work and how we address some of the causes of migration in the first place, as well as the law enforcement response that we need to go after the criminal gangs.