Border Checks Summer 2011

Debate between James Clappison and Matt Hancock

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clappison]

I am sorry to tell the hon. Lady this, but at the time of the Balkans conflict, net migration was negative. The policy decisions to increase the number of work permits to workers from outside the European Union are crucial; there is a close correlation. Those are the facts.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s speech. Does he agree that nobody will believe a single word from Labour Members until they apologise for the mess they made?

[Mr Clappison]

Yes.

Coming back to this motion, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this debate. I am afraid that she and her party have failed to produce a single fact or any evidence in support of the motion. They have not even bothered to wait for the evidence of the Home Affairs Committee or for any of the three inquiries that the Home Secretary has rightly put in place, including the one by John Vine, who is the chief inspector and an appointee of the previous Government.

In trying to throw the kitchen sink into the motion, the right hon. Lady even mentioned the 100,000 legacy figure. She asked who was responsible for how the 100,000 people under the legacy exercise have been dealt with. She need not have looked much further than the person sitting next to her—the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)—because the former Immigration Minister was partly responsible for the legacy exercise. The question she really needs to ask is how she thinks the 500,000 cases arose before 2006, which had to be dealt with in the legacy exercise. Asylum cases had not been properly dealt with. Some of the people involved had waited for many years and some had been refused permission to remain in the country. Now, however, the right hon. Lady is trying to blame the Government for that. She made some comment about 2006 being a starting point, but who had been in power before 2006? She need look no further this time than the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who has been in his place for this debate. He was the Home Secretary who put the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 in place. Against that background, how did we reach a position whereby 500,000 people’s cases were lingering, mouldering, waiting to be dealt with and had to be the subject of a legacy exercise in 2006?