Business of the House

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue. I know that many hon. Members across the House have spent a great deal of time on the Bill, including those who were directly involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of it. We will bring forward further business and announce it in the usual way. In the meantime, I will make sure that all the relevant Secretaries of State, not just the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, have heard the hon. Lady’s ask today.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

This week Care4Calais, a pro-asylum seeker British charity, contacted me to ask for my support for its legal efforts to prevent the deportation to Rwanda of asylum seekers in Dudley whom the Government have assessed for deportation. I do not think the charity got the memo. As a result, I have written to the Home Secretary, asking him to speed up the deportations. Can we have a debate on how we can stop organisations such as Care4Calais—which, as a charity, either directly or indirectly receives Government funding—actively undermining Government policy to stop illegal migration?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for making those points, and I will make sure that the Home Secretary has heard them. He will know that the processing that has been going on in the Home Office has speeded up immensely—by close to 300% during the Prime Minister’s tenure. Those cases are being cracked through, but we cannot have a system with finite resource that allows endless appeals. That is why we have brought forward legislation and why those who have exhausted the process, who should not be here and who do not have the right to be here, need to be sent either home or to a third country. That is very clear, and the legislation will enable us to make best use of the finite resource that we have.