Border Security: Collaboration

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. What we saw was the loss of control of our border security, the loss of control along the channel where the criminal gangs were allowed to take hold, and the chaos that was allowed to develop in the asylum system. At the same time, we saw the loss of control of legal migration, where the new policies that were brought in meant that the figures quadrupled in the space of just four years. Most people across the country want us to have strong border security and properly controlled and managed migration and asylum systems, so that the system is properly fair and works for this country. We have not had that for too long, and of course that has left people deeply frustrated and wanting change.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I welcome this joint action plan. It is in our national security interest that it works, and I hope it does so. I am also grateful for the Home Secretary’s points on Syrian asylum seekers, and we look forward to hearing more details as that story unfolds. She mentioned working upstream. May I encourage her to meet the interior Ministers of Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia and also interior Ministers in the Sahel, because she will know that a lot of the migration through the Mediterranean is coming out of north Africa, and particularly Libya?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a really important point about the work upstream. We did include interior Ministers from north Africa as part of the G7 discussions in Italy in October. That was important and it reflects a lot of the work with north African countries which Italy, for example, has been leading. I also agree with him about the importance of the Sahel. Some of the issues that we discussed in the Calais group yesterday included looking at areas of instability and areas from which people have been making dangerous journeys. We need to engage with those countries. We talked about the Sahel and about central Africa, and we talked about Iraq and some of the middle east areas. We also talked about Vietnam, from where we saw a significant increase in the number of people arriving in small boats at the beginning of the year.