MOD Bicester and Illegal Migrants

Debate between Fred Thomas and Chris Murray

Wednesday 14th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

It is good that we are having this debate in the House of Commons today, because this is an issue the public care about profoundly and they want to see substantive action to address their concerns. To understand how to do that, we have to understand how we got here.

I do not propose to relitigate the disastrous asylum system that this Government inherited, under which huge numbers of asylum seekers were housed in hotels across the country. That was terrible for local communities, where hotels were opened in town centres with no support and often without even telling the police or local authorities. It was terrible for genuine asylum seekers and it was terrible for the taxpayer. The only ones it worked for were the private companies, which extracted massive profits. The Prime Minister has talked about the scandal of outsourcing and privatisation in modern Britain. The most glaring example of that is the asylum accommodation sector. The public are right: we cannot tolerate that and we must fix it, so it is good to see the Government putting in the hard yards to achieve that.

There are three components that we have to tackle as a country. First, we have to drive down the number of asylum seekers coming into the system. That is why it is good to see small boat crossings down by 40% and the French preventing 48,000 crossings. Obviously, more must be done. We need to prevent people from coming in, but secondly, we also have to increase the number coming out of the system. There has been a big increase in decisions and an increase in removals of more than 80,000. Again, there is more to be done, but it is good to see the hard yards starting to be put in.

[Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend speaks about how it is important to deter people from coming to this country illegally. Does he share my concern at the Reform party’s notion, put forward by its chairman, that Royal Marines commandos could be encouraged to use “lethal force” against unarmed civilians? As a Royal Marines commander, I can say that that is completely unacceptable across the military. There are real concerns about that in Plymouth and across the wider military. Does my hon. Friend share those concerns?

[Chris Murray]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. Whenever I have spoken to law enforcement or the military, that is exactly the issue they raise. Moreover, making gestures that we know are never realistic is what the traffickers want us to do, because it encourages them to encourage people to come here.

The third component of what we must tackle is that of dealing with people while they are in the asylum system. That means we have to drive down the costs, deliver the economies of scale required, mitigate the impacts that infuriate communities and increase safeguarding for communities. We need to do that if we want to close the hotels, and we cannot close the hotels without dealing with people in the system.

Let me make a defence of large sites in the asylum system. In 15 years working on immigration and during two years on the Home Affairs Committee, I must have visited more asylum accommodation than anyone else in the House of Commons. Large sites have an important role to play, particularly in alleviating the issues that local communities find challenging. First, on cost, they are much cheaper than hotels. On efficiency—