Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation

Jo White Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s informing the House that return figures are now at nearly 10,000, which is up 1,000 from last week. May I ask on behalf of my constituents how we can make returns even faster?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

For the integrity of any asylum system, it is important that a person who is not granted asylum recognises that they do not have the right to stay in the country. Hopefully they will leave voluntarily; if not, they will be removed. Immigration enforcement, which operates out of the Home Office, is focused on increasing total returns. As I said, they are up 19% on the same period last year, and we intend to double down and carry on.

Small Boat Crossings

Jo White Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am not going to get into a competition with the hon. Gentleman about compassion. We have a duty to ensure that asylum seekers who come to our shores are properly processed and dealt with, and integrated in our society if asylum is granted. [Interruption.] Despite the hon. Gentleman chuntering away, I am not going to stand here and say that we will let people smugglers, who exploit people for money, decide who comes to our country. We have to stop this trade; that is not at odds with treating those who arrive here with compassion.

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

When I stood for election on 4 July this year, my commitment to my voters was that we would smash the criminal gangs and stop the small boats. At that point, the number of small boat crossings was 6% higher than in the worst ever year, 2022. Does the Minister welcome the data that shows that the number is now 9,000 lower than in 2022?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes, but the House has to have patience. There are no magic wands to wave in this policy area, and there are no fantasy policies now that we have got rid of the Rwanda scheme. There is hard, day-to-day operational work to try to get the system that we inherited—which is in complete chaos, with huge backlogs—back into some kind of order, so that we can run it properly, fairly and efficiently. That is what we are focusing on.

Violent Disorder

Jo White Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Can I encourage Members to ask short questions and the Home Secretary to make answers shorter, as I would like to get everyone in?

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for her statement. I agree with her point that it is perfectly possible to have a debate in our country about immigration and many other issues without resorting to looting shops, attacking minority groups and throwing bricks at police. In my constituency, I regularly have conversations with local people who feel that net migration is too high, and who worry about the cost of asylum hotels and the number of people entering our country illegally. In electing me, they have elected an MP who is prepared to raise those issues in Parliament and work with the Government to address them. Does the Home Secretary agree that that is how a democratic country like ours should operate, rather than a bunch of hooligans using those subjects as an excuse to smash up shops, burn cars and attack the police?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We can all have an important debate in this place—the kind of debate that people have in communities across the country—about the issues that she raises around net migration and border control. Most of us across the country talk about all those issues and work out what actions and policies are needed. There is no excuse for taking the kind of violent action that we have seen, and attacking police officers, whose very job is to keep us safe.

Immigration and Home Affairs

Jo White Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jo White (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I begin by thanking the people of Bassetlaw for putting me here. My commitment is to serve all residents to the best of my ability. I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for his contribution, and I look forward to debating with him in this place. Today’s debate has a direct link to the ongoing discussions on poverty. Having seen the last Government shut all three Bassetlaw police stations and both courthouses, I will have much to say on the issue in this Parliament. Crime and poverty have a clear connection.

I need no lessons on how a lack of money impacts on children growing up—I lived it—but that experience taught me something far more valuable in understanding the impact of poverty and inequality, because what my family lacked in money, we more than made up for in love and in hopes and dreams. I was brought up to believe in me and what I could achieve. My mother got herself out of poverty because of the Open University, and my father made a choice all too familiar today. He gave up his engineering job to be a Sainsbury’s warehouseman to guarantee cheaper food, and of course he served as a shop steward for USDAW. I remain proud of both my parents for what they did for me. I was a free school meal kid—separate queue, of course—and a free school uniform kid, with clothes from the jumble sale and no new, smart, bright white socks for me, but I had no poverty of aspiration, no holding back, no shutting down of my dreams. That is good parenting, backed by their hard work. I commuted six hours every day to complete my own studies, taking my newborn baby in a carrycot with me. That is what learning to aspire results in.

I get the little mes so common in Bassetlaw and elsewhere: they are my people, my responsibility. Money is often a problem, but poverty of aspiration is much a bigger one to overcome. You are told that you cannot do that, that this door is not for you, that you stink, that you are thick, that your hopes are only ever dreams and can never be realised; well, this kid never stopped dreaming. Today’s little mes—the ones who do without the flashy trainers, who play outside but never go inside the big sports stadiums or the posh restaurants and the cafés, who do not fly on aeroplanes or get taken to museums or theatres, who have never seen the King or his palace or Big Ben—in my area, in my constituency of Bassetlaw, are too often expected by this place to celebrate a rapidly changing world by getting to the back of the queue and behaving themselves. I am not having that. I drove trucks across the channel—the only woman in the drivers section on the ferries. Small boats—new problem? The flight cases I drove were huge, with ventilation and a false bottom. The border sniffer dogs were an infrequent luxury. I regularly ran the gauntlet of organised crime and desperate people.

My predecessor had the biggest swing in 2019. I broke the record again but then quickly lost it to even more historic big swings to Labour. I know he likes his beer and I applaud his regular support for our local pubs, where he can drown his sorrows every time his beloved Notts County football club fails to deliver. I do not know whether he is planning on taking up golf, but Bassetlaw is the centre of British golf with seven serious golf courses, Ryder cup hosts and star players, and a magnificent municipal golf course. We regularly provide more of the Ryder cup team than entire golfing countries and Joe Dean of College Pines golf club showed the potential to reach these heights at the Open this weekend. From Danny Willett to Matt Fitzpatrick, we continue to grow international golfers—Lee Westwood, our freedom of the borough champion, continues to inspire our young boys and girls. He learned his trade on the council-run golf course, which is open and affordable to all.

Nobody stopped me dreaming big and that is the Bassetlaw I intend to deliver. My style of being an MP will be outcomes-based. If I can do it, then so can you. Look not only at where you are, but at where you are going. This kid made it here and I put you all on warning: I will be knocking on the doors that kids in my area do not go through, and they will be coming with me, and I can assure you that I will channel my inner Michael Caine for those of you who choose to ignore my knock. The biggest single crime would be to get here, where people like me are not supposed to be, and merely sit here and make up the numbers. This kid has only just begun and there is no time to waste.