Oral Answers to Questions

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

My right hon. Friend speaks a lot of sense, as usual. He is absolutely right and he has a huge amount of which to be proud when it comes to increasing the numbers of police officers on the frontline fighting crime and standing up for victims, which Labour has opposed at every opportunity. If I may make a humble request of him, will he give up some of his precious time to advise the current Mayor of London who is wholly failing on fighting crime, having seen a 9% increase in crime in London? The Mayor really could take some advice from his predecessor.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Sarah Jones.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

New statistics published today reveal that the mini-Budget cost even more than we first thought—a staggering £30 billion. That comes on top of 12 years of austerity, which has seen a real-terms pay cut for police and staff, thousands of jobs lost and prosecutions plummet. The Home Secretary was in the Cabinet and the Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire was No. 2 in the Treasury at the time of the mini-Budget. Will they both now apologise to our police for the damage they have done?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. I certainly join her in calling on victims to report these very serious and damaging offences as quickly as possible. The Government are committed to producing a report on the prevalence and nature of spiking and the action needed to tackle it by April next year.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Neighbourhood policing and PCSOs should be at the heart of communities, providing proactive policing to keep communities safe, yet after cutting thousands of neighbourhood police officers from our streets, the Tories have cut 8,000 PCSOs. Labour has made a commitment to hire thousands more PCSOs as part of a fully funded neighbourhood policing programme. Will the Minister match that commitment, or will further cuts be coming after Thursday’s Budget?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

In Hounslow there are more than 3,500 asylum seekers waiting for a determination on their applications in, at the last count, 12 interim or contingency hotels. They have been waiting not weeks, not months, but even years. They are existing in accommodation and eating food unfit for animals, and Clearspring Ready Homes and a network of unaccountable subcontractors are skimming off vast profits and ripping off the accommodation providers, the vulnerable asylum seekers and, of course, the taxpayer. As the Home Secretary admits, the Home Office has a challenge here, so why will she not contract with local authorities that have expertise in procuring accommodation and that will ensure the basic standards that the hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) is concerned about, and ensure safeguarding as well—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. That is an important point but I have to get other Members in as well. We cannot have speeches; we must have short questions. I think the Home Secretary has got the drift of this one.

[Suella Braverman]

There are many plans afoot to try to improve the processing of asylum claims, and one of those relates to procuring alternative accommodation for those seeking asylum. We need to reduce our reliance on hotels, improve our productivity within the asylum processing system and ensure that people stop making the journey in the first place. There are huge levels of work ongoing, and I would encourage the hon. Lady to support those plans and our work.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Stephen Kinnock.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 establishes a new category of asylum seekers that the Government claim are not permitted to claim asylum in Britain and should therefore be removed, but because the Government have failed to secure a returns agreement with France, and because their Rwanda policy is completely unworkable, 16,000 people in this category have been stuck in limbo waiting an additional six months for a decision, at huge cost to the British taxpayer. Of those 16,000 waiting in limbo, only 21 have been returned since the Act came into force. Do Ministers therefore accept that their own legislation is adding further delays, cost, chaos and confusion to an already broken system while doing next and nothing to remove failed asylum seekers who have no right to be here?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has been following this exceptional case assiduously. I can say that the application is in its final stages of consideration, and the applicant will be notified of the outcome as soon as a decision has been made. I am of course happy to meet him if that would be helpful.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Holly Lynch.

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

In contrast to family, spouse and visitor visas, golden visas were available until February 2022 to all who could afford them, including the world’s super-rich, with next to no background checks. Spotlight on Corruption has found that, of all the golden visas issued, around half—that is more than 6,000—have been reviewed for possible national security risks. When he was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Minister for Security called for the 2018 review of golden visas to be published. Can the Government confirm when we will finally see that review?

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

As my hon. Friend says, on its own, this agreement will not fix the problem—it is important that everyone is clear about that. However, I am very proud of the co-operation that the UK and France have led in recent years. This deal represents a step change and a big step forward in our joint challenge. For the first time under this new integrated approach, UK officers will join law enforcement colleagues in France as embedded observers to share real-time information relating to small boats. The deal will include significant investment in intelligence capability and information sharing that all agencies will use, including the National Crime Agency and Europol. I believe that this is a big step forward and I encourage everyone here to get behind it.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Home Affairs Committee’s report on small boat crossings, published in the summer, made a series of recommendations, one of which was more engagement with the French, so we very much welcomed the announcement this morning. Of course, it is the fifth announcement on arrangements with the French in four years, and there is not a single one thing that will solve this problem. That is why we made a series of recommendations, including: securing an agreement with the EU on the return of failed asylum seekers; and piloting the provision of initial UK asylum applications at facilities within French reception centres. That would mean that individuals wanting to seek asylum in the UK could do so without having to get into those awful dinghies and make that treacherous journey across the channel. Will the Home Secretary look again at the whole suite of recommendations that the Select Committee made after two years of looking at this subject?

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

I thank my hon. Friend for all her work on this issue over several years. As I said, I am not going to overplay this agreement. It is an important step forward and provides a good platform on which to secure deeper collaboration, and it represents progress. For the first time, UK officers will be on the ground in France, working hand in hand with their French counterparts. They will be working side by side in the command HQ. They will be working with intelligence and surveillance material together. They will be partners in a very material sense in the fight against this challenge. Is that going to solve the problem on its own? It will not, but I encourage everybody to support the deal we have secured.

[Mr Speaker]

The Home Secretary might not like it, but if I may give her some positive advice, when you answer a question you are meant to look to the Chair. That is all I will say.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary insists that the agreement announced today represents a step forward, but is she able to tell the House whether it will mean fewer small boats crossing the channel?

[Suella Braverman]

A large win from the agreement is that there will be more French gendarmes patrolling the French beaches. There is a 40% uplift to the number of personnel that the French are deploying. That must be a success, and I encourage the right hon. Lady to welcome it.

[Mr Speaker]

We come now to the shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

It is astonishing that the Home Secretary has not made an oral statement on this subject, given the number of people who want to ask questions. She is preventing full scrutiny of this deal. Could that be because her written statement admits that there have been only 140 smuggling-related convictions across all of Britain and France in 35 months? Can she confirm that that means there have been on average just four convictions a month for those dangerous crimes, even though last month alone nearly 7,000 people arrived in the UK as a result of organised criminals profiting from putting lives at risk? Why is the Government’s action against criminal smuggler gangs so pitifully weak?

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

Of course we need to go further and faster in the fight against illegal migration. I am very disappointed and concerned by the unprecedented numbers of people arriving here illegally. We are taking steps to fix it. The reality is, as I said, that this year alone more than 30,000 attempts have been prevented by the French. I have come back today from securing a deal that will increase the number of French patrols on the French coastline, which will reinforce our collaboration and intelligence work and strengthen our joint fight, but what do Labour Members do? They criticise. They criticise because the simple truth is that this is not about the French deal or our response, but about their abject failure to speak on behalf of the British people. They do not care about illegal migration; they want an open-doors migration policy, as they always have.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Stuart C. McDonald.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Of course, we all welcome closer co-operation with the French, but the Home Secretary is absolutely right to temper her expectations given that previous deals were signed in 2010, 2014, ’15, ’16, ’18, ’19, ’20 and, indeed, ’21. What discussions has she had with the French about safe legal routes for those with clear links to the United Kingdom, linked if necessary with an appropriate returns agreement? Surely she must see that only a deal that includes safe legal routes can make a significant and lasting impact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Suella Braverman]

The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, which commenced on 6 January 2022, will see up to 20,000 at-risk people resettled to the United Kingdom. If my hon. Friend sends me the details, I will ask the relevant teams to look at that case.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Stuart C. McDonald.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

On Friday, a commission established by Refugees for Justice and led by Helena Kennedy KC concluded that the 2020 stabbings and shooting at asylum accommodation in Glasgow’s Park Inn could have been avoided, and recommended important asylum reforms. Will the Home Secretary or the Minister for Immigration agree to meet Baroness Kennedy—with whom I spoke this morning—and Refugees for Justice to discuss that important report?

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Dines]

I know this issue is dear to the hon. Member’s heart. The police must use their powers carefully to target the right sort of offenders. It is of concern that that can sometimes appear to be disproportionate. Nobody should be stopped and searched because of their age, race or ethnicity. There are codes of conduct in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and there is the use of body-worn video data. About 40% of stop-and-searches that take place in London are of young men—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Minister, sit down.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The announcement today is clearly a good thing, but is the Home Secretary entirely confident that she will have sufficient aerial surveillance assets in place so that we can do our half of the job properly?

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

Why do the Government continue to extend the temporary offshore wind workers concession? The industry is not even asking for it. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the issue?

[Mr Speaker]

A quick yes or no will do.

[Robert Jenrick]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. The extension was reviewed by the Government and, on the basis of the representations made to us by the industry, we extended it to April 2023. If he has heard other representations, I would be pleased to hear about them.