Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s Home Secretary says the asylum system is broken. Who broke it?

[The Prime Minister]

We can look at the record on migration policy. Let us look at it. What did we on the Conservative side of the House do? We gave the British people a referendum on Brexit. We delivered Brexit. We ended the free movement of people. That is our record on migration policy. It is not something the right hon. and learned Gentleman supported. He opposed it at every turn and that is not what the British people want.

[Keir Starmer]

No one on the Labour side of the House wants open borders. It is the Government who have lost control of our borders. Four Prime Ministers in five years and it is the same old, same old. The Prime Minister stands there and tries to pass the blame. If the asylum system is broken and his lot have been in power for 12 years, how can it be anyone’s fault but theirs?

[The Prime Minister]

People rightly want to see us getting a grip of migration and our borders, but let us look at the record. The right hon. and learned Gentleman voted against the Nationality and Borders Bill. He said he would scrap the Rwanda partnership. He opposed the ending of the free movement of people. Border control is a serious, complex issue, but not only does the Labour party not have a plan; it has opposed every single measure that we have taken to solve the problem. You cannot attack a plan if you do not have a plan.

[Keir Starmer]

We voted against it because we said it would not work, and it has not worked. The Prime Minister says that he is getting a grip and he has a plan, so let us have a look at that plan: the Rwanda deal was launched in April; it has cost the taxpayer £140 million and rising; the number of people deported to Rwanda is zero. Since then, 30,000 people have crossed the channel in small boats. It is not working, is it? He has not got a grip.

[The Prime Minister]

We on the Government side of the House are clear that we want to defend our borders. When the shadow Home Secretary was asked this weekend, she could not answer a simple question about whether the Labour party was in favour of higher or lower migration. It is that simple. The Home Secretary and I, when it comes to tackling and reducing migration, are on the same page. The Labour party’s policy is a blank page.

[Keir Starmer]

Blame others, deflect, attack on something else—so much for the new age of accountability. Of all the people who arrived in small boats last year, how many asylum claims have been processed?

[The Prime Minister]

We do need—[Interruption.] Not enough is the answer, very straightforwardly, and that is what we are going to fix.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman raises the question of what we are doing. We have increased the number of processing officials by 80%, and we are putting in an extra 500 by next March. If he really was serious about fixing this problem, he would acknowledge that we need to tackle the issue of people putting in spurious claims—spurious, repeated, last-minute claims—to frustrate the process. That is how we will tackle the system, so why, then, did he vote against the Nationality and Borders Act, which deals with it?

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister says, “Not enough”. He can say that again. It is 4%—4% of people arriving in small boats last year had their asylum claim processed. According to the bookies, the Home Secretary has a better chance of becoming the next Tory leader than she has of processing an asylum claim in a year. The Prime Minister talks about numbers. They are taking only half the number of asylum decisions that they used to. That is why the system is broken. There are 4,000 people at the Manston air force base, which is massively overcrowded and all sorts of diseases are breaking out, so did the Home Secretary receive legal advice that she should move people out—yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is very fond of reminding us that he used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions, so he knows the Government’s policy on commenting on legal advice. But what I can say is the significant action that the Home Secretary has taken to fix the issue, providing, since September, 30 more hotels with 4,500 new beds, appointing a senior general to control the situation at Manston and, indeed, increasing the number of staff there by almost a half. These are significant steps to demonstrate that we are getting a grip of this system. This is a serious and escalating problem. We will make sure that we control our borders and we will always do it fairly and compassionately, because that is the right thing.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister talks about my time as Director of Public Prosecutions. I prosecuted people smugglers; he cannot even get an asylum claim processed. I think the answer to the question of whether the Home Secretary received legal advice to move people out of Manston is yes. He just has not got the guts to say it—weak. He did a grubby deal with her, putting her in charge of Britain’s security just so that he could dodge an election. She has broken the ministerial code, lost control of a refugee centre and put our security at risk.

The Home Secretary did get one thing right: she finally admitted that the Tories have broken the asylum system, with criminal gangs running amok, thousands crossing the channel in small boats every week and hardly any claims processed. So why does he not get a proper Home Secretary, scrap the Rwanda gimmick, crack down on smuggling gangs, end the small boat crossings, speed up asylum claims and agree an international deal on refugees? Start governing for once and get a grip.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman—[Interruption.]