Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum

Debate between Giles Watling and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Robert Jenrick]

I will come on in a moment to answer the hon. Lady’s questions about age verification, but I disagree that sending individuals to Rwanda, which has now been declared a safe country by the courts, is a policy that is uncompassionate or cruel. Quite the opposite is true.

We live in an age of mass migration. Millions of people wish to come to the United Kingdom. If we do nothing to deter people from coming to the UK, which I think is the position that the hon. Lady and her party suggest taking, we will find not 45,000 people crossing the channel, but hundreds of thousands of people doing so in the years and decades ahead. We have to respond to this issue as a country, as many other countries around the world are doing.

From the conversations that the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and I have had with our European and international partners, it is clear that every developed country in the world is thinking carefully about how they can put in place procedures and policies that will prevent mass migration and deter individuals from making dangerous crossings or damaging their national sovereignty. Other European countries are looking to the work we are doing on Rwanda. We may see other European countries copy that policy and make agreements with third parties in the years ahead.

[Giles Watling]

The Minister almost answered my point in his last sentence. In 2020, I believe there were some 90 million displaced people across the globe on the move. That figure will have increased. Other countries will be facing the same problems that we face, and they will all have different models. Are we looking at different models?

[Robert Jenrick]

We are looking at all models; I hope that hon. Members can see from the plans set out by the Prime Minister that this will be a campaign on several fronts. We are looking at every viable route in order to deter people from coming to the UK, to process applications as swiftly as possible, and to find better forms of accommodation when they are here. I know that my hon. Friend’s constituency has been on the sharp end of the situation regarding accommodation. Of course, we are talking to our international partners around the world, who are all grappling with the same challenge.

We are not an international outlier. The policies that we are enacting are those that are being enacted or considered by most other developed countries. The Prime Minister, through his recent conversations with President Macron, and the Home Secretary, through the Calais Group of northern European states, are working intensively and constructively with our partners to find common ways forward. The treaties that we are bound by, such as the refugee convention, were created for a different era, in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, prior to this period in which tens if not hundreds of millions of individuals are looking to travel around the world. It is in that context that we need to sharpen the deterrent we have as a country to make sure that we are not providing an easier route than our European neighbours, and are not a more compelling destination than our nearest neighbours, for those shopping for asylum or, particularly, for economic migrants.

I will answer the questions the hon. Lady has brought to my attention. The first point is about how we house individuals. It is important to say—I mean no disrespect to the hon. Lady, but this point needs to be made—that Scotland is bearing a lighter burden than other parts of the United Kingdom when it comes to refugees generally, and to those who are crossing the channel in small boats in particular. The same appears to be true with respect to children.

Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Debate between Giles Watling and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on consultation with local authorities as to the selection of hotels for contingency asylum accommodation.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

On my appointment by the Prime Minister three weeks ago, I was appraised of the critical situation at the Manston processing centre. Within days, the situation escalated further with a terrorist attack at Western Jet Foil that forced the transfer of hundreds of additional migrants to Manston. I urgently visited Western Jet Foil and Manston within days of my appointment to assess the situation for myself and to speak with frontline staff, during which time it became clear to me that very urgent action was required.

Since then, the numbers at Manston have fallen from more than 4,000 to zero today. That would not have been possible without the work of dedicated officials across the Home Office—from the officials in cutters saving lives at sea, to the medical staff at Manston—and I put on record my sincere gratitude to them for the intense effort required to achieve that result.

To bring Manston to a sustainable footing and meet our legal and statutory duties to asylum seekers who would otherwise have been left destitute, we have had to procure additional contingency accommodation at extreme pace. In some instances, however, that has led to the Home Office and our providers failing to properly engage with local authorities and Members of Parliament. I have been clear that that is completely unacceptable and that it must change.

On Monday, a “Dear colleague” letter in my name was sent to outline a new set of minimum requirements for that engagement, backed by additional resources. This includes an email notification to local authorities and Members of Parliament no less than 24 hours prior to arrivals; a fulsome briefing on the relevant cohort, required support and dedicated point of contact; and an offer of a meeting with the local authority as soon as possible prior to arrival.

I have since met chief executives and leaders of local authorities across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, among many other meetings, to improve our engagement. We discussed their concerns and outlined the changes that we intend to make together. I have also met our providers to convey my concerns and those conveyed to me by hon. Members on both sides of the House in recent weeks, and to agree new standards of engagement and conduct from them.

These new standards will lead to a modest improvement, but I am clear that much more needs to be done, so this performance standard will be reviewed weekly with a view to improving service levels progressively as quickly as we can. In the medium term, we are committed to moving to a full dispersal accommodation model, which would be fairer and cheaper. We continue to pursue larger accommodation sites that are decent but not luxurious, because we want to make sure that those in our care are supported appropriately but that the UK is a less attractive destination for asylum shoppers and economic migrants. That is exactly what the Home Secretary and I intend to achieve.

[Giles Watling]

I thank the Minister for his answer. Last Sunday afternoon, the Home Office contacted my local authority by email to give it 24 hours’ notice that it had selected a hotel to act as contingency asylum accommodation. That gave the excellent people at Tendring District Council no time to respond properly to the issue of services. It is an inadequate timeframe and shows how poor the comms from the Home Office have been; I have not been contacted personally about the issue at all. I am glad that the Minister finds it unacceptable, but will he agree to meet me and the local authority to discuss the plans for Clacton?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those important issues. I will, of course, be happy to meet him, as I have met hon. Members on both sides of the House in almost every case where someone has requested to do so.

In respect of the hotel in Tendring, as I understand it, having spoken to officials this morning, a proposition was put to Tendring District Council to use a former care home in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which would have accommodated a small number of asylum seekers. Short notice was given because it was to be a backstop accommodation option in the light of the extreme situation that we were contending with at Manston. On further inquiries, and prior to his inquiry to the Department and the calling of the urgent question, the proposition was dropped by the Home Office and there is no intention of proceeding with it.

For information, had that proposition been taken forward, it would have been for a very small number of individuals. At the moment, there are 39 asylum seekers accommodated in my hon. Friend’s constituency, 14 of whom are in hotels and 25 in dispersed accommodation. That accounts for 0.02% of the population of Tendring’s local authority. I do not say that to diminish the legitimate concerns that he raises, but merely to provide context. If we are dealing with 40,000 individuals crossing the channel illegally, there will be a need for all local authorities in the country to work with the Home Office and to play their part. It is absolutely incumbent on the Home Office in return, however, to provide good standards of engagement so that we can ensure that the right accommodation is chosen in the right places. That is exactly what I intend to achieve.

Migration

Debate between Giles Watling and Robert Jenrick

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

That does sound like a very concerning incident. My hon. Friend has my assurance that I will raise it with the Home Office and, indeed, the police, and will report back to him.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

On 23 September, when I was crossing the channel—quite legally—I spotted the French warship Athos behaving very strangely. I have here a screenshot of the warship, which I took on a navigational device. It was circling a small open boat full of people.

[Giles Watling]

The warship made no attempt to pick those people up, as it should have. As a yachtsman, I can tell the House that they were in danger and should have been taken off the boat, but the warship was, as my hon. Friend says, escorting that boat to our shores.

I am pleased with the deal that the Home Secretary made, and it is, as my right hon. Friend said, a good first step, but in my view it does not go far enough. Should we not push to get British boots on the ground and on the beaches alongside their French counterparts, in joint operations, to keep people on the shores of France, or on the shores of the continent?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. Of course we would like to have an effective returns agreement with France, and we would like to have British officers supporting their French counterparts in northern France. Those issues remain for discussion with France, but it is an important first step that we now have our officers working with their French counterparts in the control centre so that the very sophisticated intelligence that we are now gathering is being shared in real time and acted upon by the French.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Giles Watling and Robert Jenrick

Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I enjoyed visiting Stocksbridge just over a year ago with my hon. Friend and was delighted to see its £24.1 million town deal announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the Budget. I very much look forward to seeing its exciting proposals come to life, including a new visitor centre for a gateway to the Peak district. I recognise the point she makes. She represents many other towns, such as Penistone and Chapeltown. We want to ensure that they, too, can benefit from much needed regeneration funding. That is why bidding is now open for our levelling-up fund, worth £4.8 billion, which will deliver genuine local priorities by putting local support, including that of a Member of Parliament, at the heart of its mission. When I visited Stocksbridge, the birthplace of the modern umbrella, my hon. Friend kindly gave me an umbrella. With the new local town deal and an excellent MP, I am hopeful that the sun will keep shining on her constituency for many years to come.

[Giles Watling [V]]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his earlier answer. Back in 2017, a £200 million funding gap was identified for infrastructure projects in Tendring. As the Secretary of State knows, there is ongoing work to address areas of greatest need, such as roads, hospitals and a personal campaign of mine to upgrade rail services to Clacton and Walton, but our most significant funding gap, as we look to deliver new housing, remains the reported £100 million hole in our adult social care budget. What is my right hon. Friend’s Department doing to address that?

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. This year, local councils will have access to an additional £1 billion for social care, on top of continuing all existing social care funding. He is right to raise the point that new housing requires new social infrastructure as much as it does hard infrastructure, in terms of roads and railways. That is why we are bringing forward the infrastructure levy, which will capture more of the land value uplift and ensure that developers pay a fair share. It is also why we are working with local authorities, including Essex County Council, to ensure that they can access the housing infrastructure fund and our new house building fund to get billions of pounds of investment into their communities.