Migration: Settlement Pathway

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Results are all that matters. It is incumbent on me to think about the way that we have to reform the system, to make a public argument for it, to win that argument, to persuade people and then to get this done. What I care about now is ensuring that we can deliver these proposals, and we will do so. Then I need to ensure that the Home Office is in a position to run a system properly, administratively and fairly in the future. That is what matters. This is a low-trust environment for the public—all of us involved in politics know that. In the end, the public have heard a lot of rhetoric from a lot of people, but this Government intend to get on and deliver and to win the trust of the British people.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, particularly what she said about the more than 75,000 nurses working in our NHS who have arrived in this country since 2021. Those nurses and other healthcare professionals were actively encouraged to come here to fill the gaps left by the previous Government’s failure to do NHS workforce planning. Since they arrived, they have served our communities and cared for our citizens with distinction. I welcome what she said about maintaining a five-year route for those who are engaged in public service. Could she confirm that that will apply to NHS staff, such as those I have mentioned, and could she explain how she will continue discussions with DHSC colleagues to ensure that there will be no unexpected reduction in NHS workforce staffing in the months ahead?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right about the contribution that those nurses and other staff in the national health service are making. He will know that we are consulting specifically on the element of the proposals that relates to public service and to its getting people a five-year discount on the qualifying period. No doubt he will make his own responses to that consultation, and we have heard them, too. Of course, in the normal run of things, public service would include those who work in our critical public services.

Asylum Policy

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

On Rwanda, no. Turning to the substance of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, I do not think he can be right, because claims are down in Europe but up here. I hope that he will approach the debate that we are having with an open mind, ditch the failed policies of his party, and maybe consider more workable solutions proposed by this Government.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

We want to continue the UK’s proud history of offering sanctuary, while simultaneously reducing illegal channel crossings. Refugees fleeing persecution should seek safe and legal routes that are subject to full security checks and controls, not pay people-smuggling gangs to cross the channel in an uncontrolled and unsafe way. I therefore welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that such routes will be created. How quickly does she envisage them being implemented?

[Shabana Mahmood]

It is absolutely through safe and legal routes that we should seek to bring people into our country, not through the people-smuggling route that originates in the north of France and crosses the channel. I have made an explicit policy choice to disincentivise people from coming through that route; they are paying thousands of pounds to organised immigration criminals to do so. We will privilege those who come through our safe and legal routes. As we get order and control into the system we have inherited, those routes will become more generous over time. They will start modestly—the numbers will be in the low hundreds—but they will grow. We want them to grow, because we want people seeking sanctuary to be able to find safe harbour in this country. We are proud of that position as a Government, so those routes will grow over time. I hope that Members from across the House will support that, but we have to get order and control into our system first.

Police Reform

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I am not sure whether or not the shadow Home Secretary is in favour of this announcement—it is not entirely clear. Perhaps he can come back when he has made up his mind.

The right hon. Gentleman asked several questions that I am happy to reply to. He asked when the White Paper on police reform will come out. It will be this year, I can assure him. We have been working with local police chiefs, police and crime commissioners and the staff associations on what the reform will look like, and we are making the final changes to our reform agenda. As a former Home Office Minister, he will know that we need to make many improvements in respect of performance, accountability, technology, and the structure wherein we have 86 decision makers across the country who, basically, ensure that there are huge inefficiencies in the system while performance and productivity do not rise as fast as they should. Again, I assure him that there will be a significant White Paper that we bring out before the end of the year.

We made the announcement about police and crime commissioners today so that we can continue to work in good faith with the commissioners as we finalise our reform programme. It was right to tell them as soon as we could. I spoke to them at some length this morning, and will speak to them again, not least at their conference next week.

The shadow Home Secretary talks about crime rates. I do not have to remind the House of his and the former Government’s record in office. They cut 20,000 police and recruited 20,000 police, so we now have a police workforce that is very new, large numbers of whom have been in post for only a couple of years. Despite the recruitment done at the end of the Conservatives’ period in government, prosecution rates did not improve. The system is so unproductive, so inefficient and so badly managed that we need to make huge reforms. We have been making progress since we came to power—for example, just a couple of weeks ago, we announced an 18% fall in knife murders, 60,000 knives have been taken off the street, and knife crime has fallen by 5%. We are surging neighbourhood policing capacity, which was decimated under the previous Government, and we will have 3,000 extra police in our neighbourhoods by next April.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the evidence of mayoral success. I encourage him to talk to the mayors and deputy mayors responsible for police and crime. The ability of a mayoral system, with all the public services beneath it working together more collaboratively and more effectively, is clear to see, so I suggest he has a look for himself.

The right hon. Gentleman asked whether powers will be transferred to the new models. They were. The new model will not be a faceless committee of local bureaucrats. Its members will be the leaders of the councils and a senior police and crime lead, who will drive the day-to-day work. Accountability will remain, as will the statutory responsibilities. This is an opportunity for us to work across local government and with other partners to make sure that we drive the best possible system.

A saving of £100 million is, I think, quite substantial, not “tinkering around the edges” as the shadow Home Secretary suggests. If he waits a few more weeks, he will see the reform agenda that the Home Secretary is designing in its totality. It will put policing on a much better footing than he left it.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

What the people of Sunderland want is visible and responsive policing. There is no doubt about the decline in recent years. Northumbria lost 1,100 officers under the previous Government. How will the Minister ensure that the savings resulting from these changes are reinvested in the frontline, to improve neighbourhood policing in places like Sunderland?

[Sarah Jones]

That is of course the aim of this Government: we want to put policing in our communities, where people expect it to be, and make sure that the police are not, as they currently are, spending hours and hours of their day on bureaucratic, very outdated, very unproductive tasks. Indeed, in many cases police officers are actually doing the job of police staff, which is ludicrous. We need to work with our police chiefs to change that, ensuring that our police officers are doing the roles that we need officers to be doing, while the very important crime fighters of our police staff are doing what they need to be doing. That is not currently the case, but we are working hard to make sure that it will be.

Borders and Asylum

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have been clear that we will end the use of the asylum hotels that were opened by the previous Government; we will close those asylum hotels. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support our reforms to the appeals system, so that we can speed them through Parliament and clear the backlog. I hope that he supports the increase in decision making that we had to introduce after his party froze decision making, creating a soaring backlog that would have increased the number of people in hotels. I also hope that he will support the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is passing through the other place and will bring in stronger counter-terrorism powers, enabling us to go after the criminal gangs who are organising the small boats; sadly, his party is still opposing the Bill.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

We must stop criminal gangs launching illegal crossings from the French coast. Will the Home Secretary update us on her conversations with the French authorities to ensure that their tactics include intervening in shallow waters, so that they stop as many of these boats as possible at source?

[Yvette Cooper]

The French Government have been undertaking a maritime review, and the Interior Minister has been strongly pursuing the issue to ensure that there can be intervention in French waters. Criminal gangs operate taxi-boat tactics to load people on to the boats in shallow waters, resulting in some of the disgraceful scenes that we have seen, so the maritime review is looking at ways to intervene in shallow waters to prevent the boat crossings in the first place. Alongside that, there is the extension of the Compagnie de Marche and the additional patrols along French beaches that have been agreed, as well as the new judicial prosecution unit in Dunkirk, which is now working closely with the Border Security Command. These are part of the important foundations for strengthening law enforcement.

Police Reform

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson]

Can I take this opportunity to welcome the new Chair of the Home Affairs Committee? Chairing it is one of the very best jobs in Parliament. On neighbourhood policing, I recognise that there is good practice around the country, with certain police forces doing it very well indeed, but she is absolutely right to say that we want to equip our neighbourhood police officers with the best training, to enable them to do a really good job for their communities. That is why we have already announced money for the College of Policing to engage with neighbourhood police officers and give them the training that they deserve, particularly in problem solving, because that is a really important part of the role that they will play in neighbourhoods.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

To deliver effective policing, we need reform, but police officers also need to feel that they have our support. Does the Minister agree that agreeing the recommendations of the pay review body is a key part of delivering that support? What view does she have about those, including Conservative Members, who would prefer not to agree those recommendations, and on the impact that would have on police morale?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to support our police officers in the work that they do to keep us all safe, day in, day out. He will know that this year we accepted the recommendations of the pay review body, and that additional funding was provided to police forces to pay for an increase in salaries. It is important that we continue to ensure that our police are properly remunerated for the difficult job that they do. The Home Secretary has made that clear in her support for police officers.

Violent Disorder

Lewis Atkinson Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and speaks powerfully for his constituency. I am so sorry that his constituent was affected by the violence in that way. He is right to talk about the true spirit of South Yorkshire and the communities that come together. Right across our coalfield communities, there is a spirit of solidarity—of really strong communities pulling together and not standing for such violence and thuggery.

[Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

My constituents were appalled by the criminal disorder that we saw on our streets at the start of August, which was in no way representative of our city. The contrast between thugs who preferred destruction and the decent law-abiding majority was clear in our community’s response—be it Northumbria police officers standing up and protecting our communities in the face of attacks; the hundreds of residents of every race and religion turning up the day after to sweep away not just the shards of glass, but the shards of hatred that had been sown the night before; or the Sunderland citizens advice bureau refusing to let the arson attack prevent it from providing services. Will the Home Secretary join me in praising the response of the people of Sunderland and of similar communities across the country, and does she agree that we should build upon their example as we look to strengthen community cohesion in the future?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. He speaks strongly for the people of Sunderland, who came together. Volunteers ensured that the citizens advice bureau could keep working to support local people who are vulnerable and need advice and help. They have worked with the police and local communities, and they speak not just for Sunderland but for the whole of Britain.