Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings Debate
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Chris Murray
Main Page: Chris Murray (Labour - Edinburgh East and Musselburgh)Department Debates - View all Chris Murray's debates with the Home Office
Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings
Chris Murray Excerpts(1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Dame Angela Eagle
I will not take any lessons from the shadow Minister. In his last three months as Immigration Minister, nearly 10,000 people crossed the channel in small boats, but he is complaining about half that level of crossings happening in the past three months. Neither will I take any lessons from someone who served in a Government who presided over a situation where, at its height, there were 56,000 people in more than 400 hotels. We are getting a grip on the problem by starting up asylum processing once more, but we inherited a huge backlog. There was a 70% fall in asylum processing in the run-up to the general election, with more than 100,000 people stuck without being processed in the asylum system. We are getting a grip of that, but by definition, the backlog and chaos that the Conservatives left us is taking time.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my astonishment at the shadow Home Secretary’s argument given that the Conservatives wasted tens of millions of pounds on accommodation that could not be used and billions on hotels? The state of the asylum system that we inherited is unbelievable. Will the Minister commit to reforming that seriously dysfunctional system, including scrutinising asylum contracts with the providers when the break clause comes up next year?
Dame Angela Eagle
We inherited a system in chaos and a series of asylum contracts worth billions of pounds that were 10 years long, with a break clause in 2026, so we are looking seriously at what we can do to get better value for public money in those contracts. The action on Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd is one example of the work we are doing to drive better value in the contracts that we inherited. We will not tolerate the behaviour of subcontractors or contractors who do not provide good value for money, which is why we have insisted that Clearsprings Ready Homes removes Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd from its supply chain.