Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings

James Cleverly Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

My hon. Friend is correct that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which has been through Committee and is awaiting its Report stage, will create counter-terror-style powers that will help us prevent some of these crossings and disrupt the sophisticated criminal smuggling gangs that were allowed to take hold across the channel, unabated by the Conservative party. It will enable us to tackle this problem at source by working across borders with colleagues in other countries, tackling the people-smuggling routes as well as the gangs.

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

When in opposition, the Labour party talked tough about what it would do when it entered government. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has said, though, small boat arrivals and hotel use are both up, and asylum seekers are being waved through the system just to make the Minister’s numbers look good. This all reeks of arrogance and complacency, and we are now seeing the real-world impacts; for example, Wethersfield in my constituency has seen the number of asylum seeker users go up. While Labour talked tough before the election, it took things off the statute books before it replaced them with anything else, so when will the Minister actually come to the House with serious proposals to reduce the number of small boat arrivals, which have gone up by over 30% on her Government’s watch?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman says that Wethersfield is now getting more people, but it is still not holding the numbers that his Government planned for it to hold when it was opened, so that is rather an odd argument for him to make. If he was serious about reducing the problems at our borders, I would have thought that he would want to support the counter-terrorism-style powers in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, but it seems that he is not.