Oral Answers to Questions

Damian Green Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and the Baroness to discuss her report. We take safety at immigration removal centres extremely seriously. If I may, I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the immigration enforcement officers and others who responded to the recent disturbance at Harmondsworth in London. Their hard work in difficult circumstances was much appreciated by all of us.

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

T5. I welcome the agreement that the Home Secretary has signed with the French Government. It is a contribution to dealing with the asylum crisis and therefore allowing hundreds of hotels, including some in my constituency, to go back to doing their proper job. Does she recognise that we also need an asylum system that can process applications quickly? If the figures remain at 1.5 decisions per week per decision maker, as they are now, or at four a week, as in the Government’s latest pilot, we will never see an end to the backlogs and delays, so may I urge the Government to be more ambitious?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his question and his advice on this matter. We want to increase the productivity of our Home Office staff so that cases are not being decided to the tune of one per person per week, but at four, five or six per person per week, as they were a few years ago. We have had a positive pilot in our Leeds office, and we now intend to roll that out at pace across the country.