Rwanda Plan Cost and Asylum System

Florence Eshalomi Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Legal Migration and the Border (Tom Pursglove)]

The Opposition may not believe this, but I am grateful to them for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue that undoubtedly matters to people across the country. I am grateful because this debate provides me with the opportunity to highlight the fact that this Government have a credible plan to tackle illegal migration.

Some things never change. When I moved to the Department for Work and Pensions in October 2022, the Labour party had no credible plan on illegal migration. And when I returned to the Home Office 14 months later, guess what? There is still no credible plan. Some things never change, and it is the same old Labour ignoring the British people’s priorities and trying to glide to power under the radar without saying anything credible about these issues. By contrast, we have a credible plan, we are working through that plan and it is delivering results.

We should not see one aspect—one plank—of that plan in isolation; it needs to be seen in a joined-up way. Small boat arrivals to the UK were down by a third last year. Opposition Members may not want to hear that, but it reflects the fact that the plan and the earlier steps that were taken are working. It also bucked the trend across Europe, where illegal migration had risen. Our European partners are following our lead, with Italy, Germany, Austria and others all exploring models similar to ours.

The Government met their target of eliminating the legacy asylum backlog and there is improved efficiency across the system. We will take forward that learning as we set about dealing with the outstanding cases. The use of hotels to accommodate asylum seekers is costing the taxpayer more than £8 million each day and one thing is for sure: if we were to take the do-nothing approach about the flow of cases into the system, which is precisely what the shadow Home Secretary’s policy would result in, all we would see is ballooning costs. That would be unfair and unsustainable, which is why we have taken concrete steps to return hotels to their rightful uses, with 50 due to be handed back to the community this month.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

I hope the Minister has had an opportunity to visit some of these hotels. This is about not just the costs, which are increasing, but the situation and dire conditions for people waiting for their claims to be assessed. We are talking about families living in rooms with no access to food and no space for their children to learn—it is not a nice environment for people who just want their claims to be assessed. Will the Minister please get to grips with that?

[Tom Pursglove]

It is absolutely right that the Government prioritise closing hotels. That is a policy we have set and are delivering against. [Interruption.] Labour Members keep saying it is going up, but what we are seeing is hotels being closed. That is happening week on week, and we will continue to sustain that process.