Immigration Update

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am exceptionally proud of the work that this country, supported by the Home Office and its teams, has done as part of the enormous resettlement efforts we have taken forward in recent years. Only last week, I had the real privilege to spend some time with a team who had been supporting new Afghan arrivals through the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. I was incredibly moved by that work. Those individuals had come through a safe and legal route, and we will continue to see those commitments through. The UK has played its part and it will continue to do so. But what is not right, in any sense, is to give the impression that anybody ought to be getting in a small boat, having paid an evil criminal gang to do so, and coming across the channel and risking their life. We saw a young girl lose her life only last week. Nobody needs to leave those French shores in order to find safety. We do have safe and legal routes, and it is right that people come through those.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Fifteen months after the Government announced that they were taking over the whole of RAF Scampton and putting 2,000 migrants there, not a single one has arrived. We have fought the Home Office to a complete standstill and everything we have said has been proved correct; the costs are rising exponentially from £5 million to £27 million, and the buildings are decaying, as is the runway. The Labour party has now joined me in my early-day motion against this proposal. We have involved the Levelling Up Secretary, who is now imposing all sorts of conditions on the Home Office. Will the excellent, first-class Minister before us today now ensure that his attention is laser-focused on working with us and doing what we have argued for from the beginning: releasing the entire site to Scampton Holdings so that we can get the biggest and best levelling up we have ever had on a former RAF base?