Home Office Removal Targets

Debate between Hywel Williams and Amber Rudd

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend is right of course that exit checks are an important part of securing our borders and knowing who comes and goes, and I am very pleased that this Government reintroduced them in 2015.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I have always been puzzled about why my constituent Shiromini Satkunarajah, a Londoner and student at Bangor University, was wrongly detained at Yarl’s Wood last year. The answer now seems to be clear. She was a Tamil who escaped from Sri Lanka as a child and was reporting to the police station, as she was required to do under law—she was doing her duty under the law. She was, to use that horrible, dehumanising phrase, “low-hanging fruit”. What is the Home Secretary now doing to identify and provide redress to those not of the Windrush generation but whose lives have wrongly been disrupted by Home Office target chasing?

[Amber Rudd]

I want to make it clear that I would never use that phrase, and it is not an approach I would want anybody working in the Home Office to take. I have said that, as a result of the Windrush changes, I will make sure that the Home Office has a more human face. I am setting up a new contact centre and making sure there are more senior caseworkers so that the more junior caseworkers have the confidence to make their decisions by engaging with somebody really experienced. I accept that we need to make the Home Office more personal, and I will be doing that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Hywel Williams and Amber Rudd

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The French dispersal centre, which took unaccompanied children from Calais, is set to close on 10 February. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the cases of all children who might have a right of entry to the UK are considered before then?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I spoke to my new French counterpart just this morning about the actions that we are taking together to ensure that the correct assessment of the children who would like to come to the UK continues. A substantial number of centres are still open, and we still have a number of staff out there. We will be reducing our work there, as the Calais camp has largely dispersed, but we will continue to have an interest and ensure that we work closely with the French to stop a new camp coming up.

Cavity Wall Insulation

Debate between Hywel Williams and Amber Rudd

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams]

I will ask the Minister a direct question put to me by one of my constituents. I said in my speech that my area is a category 4 area, and the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) said that his was category 3. Should cavity wall insulation be installed in category 4 areas at all?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that we have debated that specific subject in this Chamber previously. My recollection is that mostly it should not have been. We went through the maps to which he referred in his comments, and the concerns that it had been inappropriately installed.

To return to the context of this debate, when the issue was put before the Government, we began conversations with the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency, which as we heard earlier is the largest cavity wall guarantee provider. We discussed the level and nature of existing complaints in order to understand the issue in further detail. The total number of complaints received by CIGA since 2010 is 6,890 and there have been 1.5 million cavity wall insulation installations since 2010, which implies a claim rate of 0.5% since 2010. The total number of outstanding unresolved cases on which CIGA tells me it is working is 171.