Arrests and Prison Capacity

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I have every sympathy for victims such as the hon. Lady’s constituent, and the truly tragic case that she outlines. If she would like me to look into particular policing aspects of that case, I would be happy to help. If it is a prisons, probation or sentencing-related issue, my right hon. Friends from the Ministry of Justice stand ready to help her and her constituent.

In relation to automatic release on to licence, under the last Labour Government all offenders ended up getting automatically released at the halfway point. This Government have substantially reduced that, including for offences such as rape. I recall in a Bill Committee a couple of years ago that Labour MPs voted against a measure to keep rapists in prison for longer.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Over the weekend I was almost in tears reading a letter from a local primary school of an account of one of their young mums who felt so intimidated by antisocial behaviour on her estate that she was unable to walk her young son to school in the morning. The school tried to provide a social worker to escort her, but they also felt intimidated. What message does it send to the school, the mum and her child about the safety of our streets when chief constables feel it necessary to deprioritise arrests on the Minister’s watch?

[Chris Philp]

Cases of the kind that the hon. Lady describes would not have been in the scope of the contingency outlined in the letter of a week ago. The antisocial behaviour that she described is completely unacceptable. I am sure that many Members are parents and would want their own children to go to and from school safely. The Government have launched an antisocial action plan, one of the elements of which is a funded scheme for antisocial behaviour hotspot patrols. That started just a few weeks ago, so I would urge the hon. Lady to speak to her local police and crime commissioner—I think a newly elected one in Northumbria, if memory serves me correctly—and to ask that one of the funded hotspot patrols be set up in the vicinity of that school to try to tackle the issue that she described, because no parent should have to face that.

Angiolini Inquiry Report

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I respect the hon. Lady’s experience on this issue. She will have heard the response that I gave to the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith). There cannot be universality in this; responses have to be based on the facts of individual cases. Successful challenges would be highly likely if suspension decisions were not based on the individual circumstances of each case. However, we have made it clear that the threshold has historically been far too high. We have reviewed that threshold and made it quicker and easier for officers to be suspended. That goes hand in hand with the changes we are making, through the Criminal Justice Bill, to ensure that the disciplinary procedure operates more quickly so that officers who are found to have behaved appropriately are returned to duty quickly, and those who are found to have behaved inappropriately are sanctioned quickly. That is incredibly important.

The policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard was awful —it was awful. It took what was already an incredibly painful set of circumstances and made them worse. I have spoken to police officers who recognise that. I will continue to speak about leadership, because that is not a process point; it is a leadership point. It is about driving attitudinal change and a willingness to accept criticism from people who have felt victimised for far too long and are demanding a change in the attitude of police around the country. The response to those incredibly legitimate concerns, at a point of incredible sadness and tragedy, amplified what were already tragic circumstances. I will do everything I can to ensure that situations like that are never—never—repeated.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I, too, pay tribute to the family of Sarah Everard. In Newcastle and across the country, her vile murder led to an outpouring of grief and horror, but it did not, as the Home Secretary said, start a conversation about violence against women—[Interruption.] That is what he said. Rather, it showed that the voices, the pain and the fears of women were being ignored. He says that he takes violence against women seriously; his language and his actions need to reflect that. Will he speak specifically about recommendation 11 on information sharing between forces so that predators like Couzens cannot move from force to force? This is not an issue for the Met alone.

[James Cleverly]

As I said in response to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), my point about starting a national conversation is that there are people who should have been thinking about this matter but were not. The terrible circumstances of the murder of Sarah Everard triggered a conversation within the Home Office and in policing. My own experience long predated those terrible events.

We must recognise, as a number of Members from across the House have said, that something changed when Sarah was murdered. We must absolutely ensure that those terrible circumstances, which the inquiry demands that we see, are utilised to drive fundamental change. I commit to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) that I will continue to drive that change and prioritise violence against women and girls. It is a key priority, as I have communicated over and over again since the day I was appointed Home Secretary.

Illegal Immigration

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I shall quote a very wise woman, Giorgia Meloni—who was herself quoting an even wiser woman, Margaret Thatcher—by saying: this is a constant battle. In that battle, both domestically and internationally, one of our real strengths, as I saw as Foreign Secretary on the international stage, is that when we speak and demand that other countries abide by the rule of law, we are taken seriously because of our posture on this issue. We will continue to ensure that we abide by the rule of law while simultaneously—we have proven that we can do both—delivering on the commitments that we have made to driving down illegal migration and stopping the boats.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary to his new position. One fifth of my constituency casework relates to his Department, and it is a catalogue of human misery. In just one example from the hundreds that I could give, the claimant’s asylum application was made in December 2020, their interview was in November 2022, and they are still waiting for a decision. The claimant has two young children and has twice attempted suicide. That all comes at huge cost to them, the NHS and the police. Will the Home Secretary get a grip, stop the “magical thinking” and just fix his Department and the asylum process?

[James Cleverly]

I completely sympathise with the frustration that the hon. Lady’s constituent must feel, which is reflected in the frustration that I detect in the question. I remind her and the House that we never claimed that the Rwanda deal was the totality of our response to this issue. We made a commitment to increase the speed of decision making and to drive down the backlog, and we have demonstrably done that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The shadow Minister will know that in the police funding settlement for this year, 2023-24, there is around about £500 million extra—in fact, it is slightly over £500 million—for police forces up and down the country. That has enabled us to deliver a record number of officers ever. There are 149,572 officers—about 3,500 more than there were under the last Labour Government. In West Yorkshire, which the shadow Minister asked about, neighbourhood crime is down by 30% since 2019 and overall crime—excluding fraud and computer misuse, which came into the figures only recently—is down by 52% since 2010. I am still waiting for the shadow Home Secretary to apologise for being a member of a Government who presided over crime levels that are double those we have today.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

4. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

21. What recent progress her Department has made on reducing the backlog of asylum applications.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

We are making good progress, and the latest Home Office statistics show that asylum decisions are up, with a 35% increase since last year in the number made. Productivity has increased, and we are on track to have 2,500 decision makers by September, which represents a quadrupling of the number of case workers.

[Chi Onwurah]

Like many Members from all parties, I am constantly contacted by refugees who are desperate to know what is happening to their asylum claim after years of waiting, so I asked the Home Office how many refugees in Newcastle had been waiting for one, two, three, four and five years. The answer came back that the Home Office does not know—it does not even record the data. Instead of indulging in unworkable, unethical, illegal and unaffordable flights of Rwandan fantasy, why does the Home Secretary not focus on her day job and fix the asylum backlog?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I just said, we are making good progress on reducing the asylum backlog. Important though the reducing the backlog is, however, it cannot be the totality of a plan. This is the point that the Labour party does not seem to understand: we have to stop the boats coming in the first place. That is the only sustainable way to tackle the issue. Even if we grant our way out of this problem, as the shadow Home Secretary seems to propose, the pressures on the state still remain; they are simply transferred to local authorities and the benefits system, and the British taxpayer continues to pick up the bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. We are disappointed by the judgment of the Court of Appeal, but we are determined to follow through. He is right to say that we have to add deterrence to the system, as it is only by breaking the business model of the people smugglers that we will stop the boats.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

T7. My constituents want community policing. Kim McGuinness, the police and crime commissioner for Northumbria, has put in place a redeployment programme to get an extra 134 officers into neighbourhoods, but that will not make up for the 1,100 officers and the £148 million that we have lost due to budget cuts. And before the Minister mentions “plans”, that will still leave us 400 officers short. Why have the Tories failed so badly to get police officers on to the beat?

[Chris Philp]

As I mentioned in earlier answers, across England and Wales we now have record police numbers of 149,572. The previous peak was 146,030 in 2010, so we have 3,500 more officers than we have ever had before across England and Wales. In Northumbria, the number has gone up by 512 since 2015. Of course, many of the powers sit with the PCC, including powers over the precept. It is entirely open to police and crime commissioners to use those powers.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Again, I put on record my thanks to my right hon. Friend and his community for their support on RAF Scampton. I know that they have very serious concerns, and we are working intensively with him and the local authorities to enable the site to be rolled out and the appropriate support to be put on for those who will be occupying it. On the legal frameworks, he makes a very powerful point. Last year, we saw the Strasbourg court operate in a way that was opaque, irregular and unfair when it comes to the will of the British people. That is why we have included measures in our legislation that is making its way through Parliament to avoid that scenario repeating itself.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Having crashed the economy, impoverished so many of my constituents with the Tory mortgage premium and utterly failed to deliver the economic prosperity that they need, the Government’s one policy that was supposed to distract from all this chaos is now shown to be, as we have always said, unworkable, as well as being immoral and eye-wateringly expensive. Why does the Home Secretary not just fix the asylum system, instead of trying to outsource it?

[Suella Braverman]

It is pretty rich of the hon. Lady to complain about our plans, given that her party has put forward a series of botched policies, flip-flops, U-turns and changes on the economy and energy prices. Moreover, when it comes to stopping the boats and illegal migration, Labour Members have no plan. They do not speak for the British people; they speak for their vested interests. They would rather campaign to stop the deportation of foreign criminals and vote against every measure we have put forward to reform our asylum system than be on the side of the British people and stop the boats.

Strip Searching of Children

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Miss Dines]

With the greatest of respect, I do not accept that I have downplayed the seriousness of this issue; it is very serious. The Government received the report on Monday. Today is Tuesday. Proper consideration is the basis of good government; there is no need for knee-jerk reactions. The Government are working very hard and will continue to do so. It would be damaging to jump in on the Child Q situation before the IOPC report, as due processes need to be adhered to, but there are concerning warning signs and the Government take the matter very seriously.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

What is the Minister doing to address adultification bias in our police and justice system, by which black children are systematically treated as adults and thus denied the basic protections to which they have a right, as we see in the report? Or will she dismiss it as more woke nonsense in order to hide her Government’s fundamental failure of leadership on this question?

[Miss Dines]

With respect, I have not used the word “wokeification”—[Interruption.] I will be corrected if I have. The adultification of any child, regardless of colour or sex, is not acceptable. That is why we have code C of PACE to protect and safeguard children. It is not right or acceptable that any person—child or adult—is strip searched because of their ethnicity, and adultification is not appropriate. The police should not be making children feel like they are adults. There are rules: there should be an appropriate adult present, and the process should be done in an appropriate way. The police must be called out when they are not doing this properly, but they also need to be able to get on with their job when they are acting lawfully.

Cross-Channel Migrants: Manston Facility

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that and I will be speaking to her friend and neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale). I know that the Home Secretary is meeting him later today to speak to him as well. I completely understand my hon. Friend’s concern and that of Members of Parliament throughout Kent; this intolerable situation is placing great strain on members of the public and on the emergency services and local authorities within the area. I know that only too well from my previous experience as Local Government Secretary. The Department is determined to support those local authorities as best as we can. Yesterday, I met the leadership of Border Force to discuss the resources we have in the area and I will be visiting Dover next week.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Between 2015 and 2020, the proportion of asylum seekers whose applications were decided by the Home Office within the six-month target plummeted from 80% to 17%, and the consequence is misery and mental health issues for asylum seekers, and pressure on local accommodation and local communities. All I can say to them is, “The Home Office is broken”. When will it work?

[Robert Jenrick]

There is a range of reasons why the processing of asylum claims is taking longer than we would like, but it is a priority of mine, as the new Minister in the Department. I have already met the relevant officials, and we will be looking at ways in which we can improve their productivity as swiftly as possible. As I said in response to an earlier question, we do now have the right number of staff processing the claims. A thousand people are working on this. That is a good number of individuals tackling the issue so I hope that we can make swift progress.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend. We have been discussing this issue for some time and working together on it, and it is incredibly important, particularly for his constituents. He has raised with great candour some of the challenges that he feels his constituents will face, and I have committed to working with him on that. There is no doubt that reception centres are the right way forward, so much so that, as the House will be interested to know, the European Commission has been paying up to €500 million, or even more, for EU member states to build reception centres. We must also have the right provisions and facilities within those reception centres, and that is exactly what we are working to achieve.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Last week I finally received a response to an immigration query that my office sent last August. I have an asylum seeker who has waited 18 months just for an interview, which he still has not had, and many constituents are desperately looking for passports that have failed to arrive. The Home Secretary is spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a policy that is as unworkable as it is inhumane. Why does she not put the work in and fix the issues in her Department of process and resource, instead of hiding her incompetence behind desperate refugees?

Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend, like me, believes in work, and that is effectively what we are doing in this Government—we are cracking on with the job, basically, in delivering on the British people’s priorities.

It is important to reflect on this point: the dangerous nature of these protests should not be lost on anyone in this House. We saw in particular the recent Just Stop Oil protest, and there are other sites and oil refineries where these protesters impose themselves. It really is a miracle that somebody has not been killed or injured through the tactics that are being used. To give one example, in the county of Essex, £3.5 million was spent just on policing overtime to deal with those protesters, draining the resources of Essex police so that it could not protect citizens across the county, and at the same time it had to call for mutual aid from Scotland, Wales, and Devon and Cornwall.

Despite Labour and the Lib Dems ganging up to prevent those measures from being included in the PCSC Act, we will act to support ordinary working people because we are on their side. The public order Bill will prevent our major transport projects and infrastructure from being targeted by protesters and introduce a new criminal offence of locking on and going equipped to lock on, criminalising the act of attaching oneself to other people, objects or buildings to cause serious disruption and harm. The Bill also extends stop-and-search powers for the police to search for and seize articles related to protest-related offences and introduces serious disruption prevention orders—a new preventive court order targeting protesters who are determined to repeatedly inflict disruption on the public. The breach of those orders will be a criminal offence.

Modern slavery is something that rightly exercises this House. It is a damning indictment of humanity that this ancient evil has not gone away. This Government will follow previous Conservative Governments in doing everything that we can to identify it and stamp it out. The new modern slavery Bill will strengthen the protection and support for victims of human trafficking and modern slavery. It will place greater demands on companies and other organisations to keep modern slavery out of their supply chains. The Bill will enshrine in domestic law the Government’s international obligations to victims of modern slavery, especially regarding their rights to assistance and support, and it will provide greater legal certainty for victims accessing needs-based support. Law enforcement agencies will have stronger tools to prevent modern slavery, protect victims, and bring those engaged in this obscene trade to justice.

In response to Putin’s appalling and barbaric war on Ukraine, this House passed an economic crime Bill within a day so that we could sanction those with ties to Putin. The UK is an outstanding country to do business in, in no small part because dirty money is not welcome here. An additional economic crime and corporate transparency Bill will mean that we can crack down even harder on the kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists who abuse our open economy. There will be greater protections for customers, consumers and businesses from economic crime such as fraud and money laundering. Companies House will be supported in delivering a better service for over 4 million UK companies, with improved collection of data to inform business transactions and lending decisions throughout our economy.

The Online Safety Bill will tackle fraud and scams by requiring large social media platforms and search engines to prevent the publication of fraudulent paid-for advertising. It will address the most serious illegal content, including child sexual exploitation and abuse, much of which beggars belief and is utterly sickening. Public trust will be restored by making companies responsible for their users’ safety online. Communication offences will reflect the modern world, with updated laws on threatening communication online, as well as criminalising cyber-flashing.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has expressed her outrage and disgust at the crime and abuse that is to be found online. Why has her party done nothing about it for the past 12 years?

[Priti Patel]

First, the hon. Lady and her party spend a great deal of time voting against the measures that we do bring forward on this. Secondly, the passage of the Online Safety Bill will give her and her party every opportunity to support us in keeping the public safe through some of the new offences that will be brought in.

This Government were elected with a manifesto commitment to update the Human Rights Act 1998 so that we enjoy the right balance between the rights of individuals, national security, and effective government. The UK is a global leader with ancient and proud traditions of freedom and human rights. Our Bill of Rights will reinforce freedom of speech and recognise trial by jury. It will strengthen our common-law traditions and reduce our reliance on Strasbourg case law. Crucially, the Bill of Rights will restore public confidence and curb the abuse of the human rights framework by criminals. This is a welcome and much-needed update, 20 years after the Human Rights Act came into force, and it will apply to the whole of the United Kingdom. Human rights are not something that should only be extended to criminals. In what has to be the most twisted logic I have seen as Home Secretary, I have lost count of the number of representations I have received from immigration lawyers and Labour Members begging me not to deport dangerous foreign criminals. The Conservative party stands firmly with the law-abiding majority.

The most vulnerable among us are not murderers, sex offenders and violent thugs, but their victims. Our victims Bill will mean that victims are at the heart of the criminal justice system, that they will get the right support at the right time, and that when they report a crime, the system will deliver a fair and speedy outcome. The victims code will be placed into law, giving a clear signal of what they have a right to expect. There will be more transparent and better oversight of how criminal justice agencies support victims so that we can identify problems, drive up standards, and give the public confidence. We are increasing the funding for victim support services to £185 million by 2024-25. That will mean more independent sexual and domestic violence advisers and new key services such as a crisis helpline.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and his passionate calls for action. I have become accustomed to feeling disappointment, dismay, despair and, at times, disgust in response to Government pronouncements, but this Queen’s Speech is a new low. The people of my constituency deserve better than this low-growth, high-tax and, increasingly, high-inflation Government. Under Labour we had growth on average of 2% each year, but under the Tories it is averaging 1.5% and is forecast to go negative. The cost of living crisis brought about by this Government has my constituents flocking to food banks. The choice between eating and heating is real in my constituency. Child poverty rates in the north-east rose by more than a third, to 37%, between 2015 and 2019. Some 61% of children in Elswick in my constituency are growing up in poverty—this is in 2022!

What is the Government’s response? This Queen’s speech is remarkable for what is not in it, not what is: there is no emergency budget, with a windfall tax to get money off people’s bills, as Labour has called for; and it contains no employment Bill, although the Government promised one. We needed a real plan for growth to get our economy firing on all cylinders, with a climate investment pledge, and a commitment to buy, make and sell more in Britain. Instead, the Government hike national insurance; cut universal credit; have real-terms pay cuts for public sector workers; freeze the rate of local housing allowance; and freeze the cap on childcare costs that UC claimants are entitled to. Each of those decisions make it even harder for my constituents to deal with rising costs.

The problem is that this Government do not believe that government can make a positive difference to people’s lives. That leaves my constituents with stagnating wages; the north-east regional economy without the investment it needs; hard-working Geordies facing massive technological and economic change without the skills they need; and the Tyne bridge peeling and our buses infrequent and overpriced. It does not have to be this way, because government can be a force for good. Governments can look ahead and plan—although not this Government, obviously.

I want to show how it can be different by looking at one Bill that was actually mentioned in the Queen’s Speech and that really highlights the point, and by looking at where the Government are creating growth: in online crime. Online, the Conservatives are the party of no law and total disorder. The Home Secretary did not even bother to defend her Government’s record when I challenged her earlier. I am an engineer and a passionate advocate for technology and innovation. It has truly distressed me to see technology go from being boring but useful to exciting but exploitative. Our constituents fear that tech is managing them, tracking, monitoring and analysing their every move, and then serving them up to be trolled, exploited, scammed, groomed or just bombarded with advertising and misinformation.

Online harms are not some future threat but an established current reality about which successive Conservative and Liberal Democrat Governments have done absolutely nothing, because they have believed in and, indeed, promoted the silicon valley libertarian lie that Governments could do nothing about the internet. They have thereby allowed monopolistic platforms to acquire more money and power than many Governments have. That power is used to deny workers’ rights in silicon valley and to delay and minimise regulation here.

Successive Conservative and Liberal Democrat Governments chose to leave it to the market, blinded by their belief that the state was too slow or too stupid to regulate to keep people safe and secure online. They did that while actively cutting the parts of the state—such as the police and trading standards—the job of which it is to protect people. We now see the same dogmatic approach in the Government’s attitude to the cost of living. They refuse to take action, such as by introducing a windfall tax, and instead cut programmes, such as the green homes scheme—axed just six months after it was announced—that could help.

Nevertheless, it is possible for Governments to take action. The Labour Government at the time saw the fast-evolving communications landscape of the late ’90s, consulted widely and put in place forward-looking regulation in the form of the Communications Act 2003, which set out a regulatory landscape fit for the next decade. Come 2013, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government chose to ignore the many calls, from me and many others, to do something similar. It is no surprise that the former Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister is now Facebook’s president of global affairs, justifying the online harms that deliver billions of pounds of revenue to that company.

The Online Safety Bill in the Queen’s Speech will not be in place before 2023, so Conservatives have left my constituents unprotected and insecure online for more than a decade. The much-delayed Bill still fails in so many ways. It fails to strengthen child protection across the entire internet; to properly address the harmful impact that social media can have on young people’s mental health; and to ensure a voice to victims of abuse and harm online. The Bill needs to tackle disinformation online, and to close the loophole that means people are not properly protected from online fraud by ensuring that all platforms take a proactive approach to preventing scams.

The data reform Bill, also in the Queen’s Speech, seems to be more about taking away protections than about giving new digital rights, and the digital markets Bill has no proper enforcer. This Government are constructing a piecemeal, ad hoc and, at times, kneejerk online legislative framework when what we need is a comprehensive, cross-departmental, evidence-based, forward-looking review of digital rights and responsibilities so that we can have a regulatory framework that is fit for the future. This is the security and the respect that the British public deserve in the digital age. It is also mind-numbingly depressing that the Government are repeating their mistakes of a decade ago, ignoring emerging harms, algorithms, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, bossware and data dominance.

There is nothing in the Bill that addresses the decentralisation inherent in web 3.0 reflected in the use of blockchain as part of the future architecture of the web. Although distributed ledger technology has many strengths, there is also a libertarian dogmatic view that the blockchain can replace regulation in Government. That is a lie, and the Government need to show that they understand that—but, clearly, they do not.

We also need more emphasis on people’s rights, on access to algorithms and their regulation. The metaverse poses significant risk to children, with virtual reality chatrooms allowing children to mix freely with adults. Labour has long campaigned for stronger online protections for children and the public in order to keep them safe, to protect their prosperity from scams and online fraud, to secure our democracy, and to ensure that everyone is treated with decency and respect. Governments can act. This one refuses to do so. To be competitive in the global age, we need to empower everyone to be confident digital citizens. That is an economic imperative. An investment now will bear fruit for decades to come.

The Government have failed to rise to the challenge of the digital age, just as they failed to rise to the cost of living crisis, and failed to rise to the challenges of covid, of climate change, and of child poverty. They look at our northern cities and see problems to hide from, not opportunities for investment. Whether we are talking about short-term or long-term planning, this Government are failing. Britain deserves better and I look forward to a Labour Government who are on the people’s side.

Homes for Ukraine: Visa Application Centres

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the Polish Government and Polish people are doing amazing work in supporting those who have crossed the border from Ukraine. We have provided £30 million to Poland to help with providing temporary shelter, education and other basic services. We have also provided things like blankets and hydro kits to Moldova, which, as he will know, is similarly seeing significant pressures in terms of those who have crossed the border. As part of a wider package, we have had on the ground UK teams from the Home Office who have been supporting people at our visa application centres. A range of support is being given. I recently met the Visegrád Group ambassadors to talk about what they were seeing in terms of giving support and what lessons had been learned about how we can provide more. That support will need to continue. Of course we all hope that in the near future Putin’s forces will be defeated and that the next thing we can do is to support people to return home.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

In 2019 the all-party parliamentary group on Africa, which I chair, published a detailed and damning report on the visa application centres. Many of the points we made on outsourcing, TLScontact, digitalisation, scanning, data reconciliation, training and resourcing have clearly not been addressed, and now Ukrainians fleeing war and my constituents who want to help them—I have many such constituents—are paying the price. Exactly how will the Minister ensure that visa processing is immediately speeded up? Given that he will not reduce the requirements of the process, as Labour has been calling for, can he confirm that that means that visa applicants from other places in the world will see further delays?

[Kevin Foster]

In terms of the future of visa application centres and the report published three years ago, the hon. Member is welcome to read some of the documentation we have put out about the changes as part of the future border and immigration system to significantly reduce the number of people who have to use a visa application centre, with many more either using biometrics or being able to make their applications fully online rather than having to go to a centre. We have already significantly speeded up the granting of visas under the two schemes relating to Ukraine, with just under 90,000 having been issued and more being issued every day. In the long term, our vision is to move away from visa application centres being the main place where people make their application, as already shown by what has happened with the biometric bypass route—the vast majority of applications are now being made via that rather than at an application centre.