John Cooper
Main Page: John Cooper (Conservative - Dumfries and Galloway)Department Debates - View all John Cooper's debates with the Home Office
(1 month ago)
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Alex Norris
The hon. and learned Gentleman makes an important point. I cannot wholly agree with what he says, but this is important. As we win the battle in the channel, the common travel area—which is obviously an arrangement of very long standing indeed—will be a point of challenge. I am working closely with, and have spoken to, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister on this point. The work is ongoing to keep the common travel area as protected as possible, and we of course work with the Government of Ireland as well. That collective work is how we make sure that the CTA is not exploited.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The Mercure hotel in Dumfries is home to around 100 men of uncertain origin and, thanks to the good offices of the Home Office, I have been able to visit. However, I have not been able to get any clarity on the criteria for closure and certainly not on any kind of timescale for closure. Can the Minister, without recourse to saying, “We will close it in due course”—which is beginning to sound a bit like the old jibe about the first world war: “It will be over by Christmas; we just cannot tell you which Christmas”—offer us a bit more clarity on when these hotels will be closed?
Alex Norris
I think that is slightly unfair. The hon. Gentleman knows that they will all close by 2029, but within that, none of them will be open for a day longer than they need to be. In terms of criteria, a range of factors including size, condition and location goes into the decision making. I appreciate that in a process of reducing the number from a couple of hundred hotels to nil, everybody will want to be the first one, but all of them will close.