Antisocial Behaviour: Leyton and Wanstead

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As he will learn, a number of schemes have aimed to tackle antisocial behaviour in the community. However, the size of the problem tends to bubble up, and I will come on to that.

Residents who speak up for their right to live in peace in their own community face serious intimidation, harassment, verbal abuse and threats. Many have told me that they fear that violence will be next. It is vital that we recognise and appreciate their tolerance. It is not only that residents are enduring such problems; the viability of the estate itself is questionable, and the council’s inability to regenerate the area contributes to their marginalisation. Their lack of opportunities further adds to the problem. Residents tolerate antisocial behaviour with remarkable respect and humility, and a sense of self-worth. However, their patience must not be mistaken for complacency or acceptance. They deserve solutions, and I hope the Minister will tell us how the Government’s approach to tackling antisocial behaviour will provide the framework we need. I am sure that this is something on which the council will continue to actively engage with residents, including at the meeting later this month, so that I can communicate back to them.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He is speaking very powerfully from his experience of deeply troubling issues in his constituency. Other MPs, including me, have experienced similar issues in our own constituencies, and I pay tribute to residents who endure terrible ASB problems. The Government are doing excellent work on this issue, and I look forward to much more action coming forward, such as the introduction of new orders, other powers and more police community support officers. My hon. Friend is right to point to the importance of residents working with local authorities and the police. May I commend the residents in Reading town centre who recently removed several tonnes of rubbish in a massive community clear-up, which is part of the work to tackle ASB in the area?

[Mr Bailey]

I thank my hon. Friend for his apposite intervention. People in both our constituencies have tolerated 14 years of failure, and 14 years of all our systems and services being significantly eroded. That is why it is imperative that the Minister explains to us how she will go about addressing the issues that are faced, and tolerated, by our constituents.

I know that the Minister will understand just how damaging these issues can be for our communities. When there is a sense that people are damaging others with impunity, fear and mistrust can escalate. I have met the ward officer teams locally, and they are aware of the problems and keen to support the residents affected, but no matter how attentive they are, the persistence of these issues erodes trust in the police, which is already in a bad way across many areas of London. The reality is that few residents attend the ward panels and raise their voices, partly because they are afraid of being seen engaging with the police, and partly because they have little trust that effective action will be taken. Residents have told me that they now feel like drug users have taken over the territory. They are scared to go out at night and almost feel as though they are squatters and intruders, even in their own homes, estates and neighbourhoods.

I am pleased to support the Government’s plans to place 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the streets as part of the neighbourhood policing guarantee. This will be a game changer for Leyton and Wanstead, where our overstretched resources have left communities feeling abandoned. The additional officers have a clear local mandate and will bring a much-needed visible presence to our streets, rebuilding trust and confidence in the police.

I also want to highlight the Government’s proposed respect orders, which will be crucial in empowering the police to take stronger action against the persistent offenders who make life unbearable for the ordinary resident. By addressing the small groups of individuals responsible for much of the antisocial behaviour, we can restore public spaces and ensure that they are safe for families once again. I would therefore be grateful for any more light that the Minister can shed on the respect orders that the Secretary of State has rightly proposed.

In Leyton and Wanstead, we are already seeing positive examples of multi-agency working, including initiatives such as Project ADDER, which focuses on tackling antisocial drug-related crime in hotspot areas. It has been demonstrated that when resources are properly targeted, they can make a difference. Last year, there was an operation focused on the Grove Green area of my constituency. The data shows that it worked, with a steep and sustained 75% fall in drug-related reports in the hotspot area from the peak in the previous year. However, due to its apparent success, the operation was then wound down and the resources were reprioritised. Sadly, I believe that the groups of drug users and the criminals who supply them have not really gone away; they have dispersed to a somewhat larger area.

It may be reported that drug-related offending and ASB in Leyton and Wanstead have not yet increased back to where they were last year, but that is not how it feels to our residents. That is perhaps down to two factors. First, the multi-agency action that has been taken clearly dispersed the activities away from the hotspot around Grove Green to a range of smaller areas, particularly in south Leytonstone. Secondly, I fear that in some cases residents no longer believe that reporting will lead to a long-term solution. We have to change that, so I am engaging closely with all the affected agencies and residents’ groups to try to rekindle the hope that solutions can be found. The success of initiatives such as Project ADDER shows that we are on the right track, but the work must be sustained. The long-term commitment of resources and multi-agency collaboration will be vital in breaking the cycle of addiction and criminality that traps individuals and destabilises communities.

I would also like to address the challenges that we face in reporting and responding to these issues. Too often, the distinction between antisocial behaviour and crime is blurred, leading to confusion about what should be reported and to whom. It is a particular issue where organised criminal networks seem to be involved. Residents describe it as living like they are in “The Wire”, because there is obvious co-ordination between drug users who know each other well. They report users posting lookouts on the streets and in upstairs windows to identify police and ASB teams and cover up the evidence before they can act.

As we know, these gangs do not just fuel addiction, self-destruction and antisocial behaviours. They are also involved in further crimes, including shoplifting, violent robberies and burglaries and the selling of stolen goods alongside the drugs. Residents are understandably cautious about making reports, fearing retaliation; some of our current reporting mechanisms inadvertently put them at risk. We must improve communication channels and ensure that reporting is safe and effective. I know that the Minister is committed to this. I would welcome any updates on how we can better support residents who want to help but fear the consequences.

We must also consider the impact of police abstractions on local communities. The significant amount of officer time diverted to central London for public order duties is placing immense pressure on our local services. In Waltham Forest alone, over 26,000 hours of officer time were unavailable in our neighbourhoods because of abstractions to aid with central policing duties. Whenever there is an abstraction, community response is the first thing to go, because 999 responses are rightly prioritised above all else. In some periods during the summer, some wards had no community response officers because the level of abstractions was so consistently high. Although I fully support the right to peaceful protest in a safe environment, the impact on local policing is unsustainable. I urge the Minister to review the system, especially as our neighbourhoods bear the brunt of such abstractions.

We need to be honest with residents that these problems will not go away unless the resources are in place to sustain multi-agency working over a long time. We need the council to be able not just to identify when a vacant flat has been broken into and used as a drug den, but to take possession, put security in place, make repairs and then get that home to one of the decent families who deserve it and desperately need it. We also need the police to be able to escalate; to focus on organised crime links, when they are there; and to effectively disrupt and break down the criminal forces that trap drug users in addiction, generate antisocial behaviour and create such fear in our communities.

We need to deliver on our commitments to tackle the housing crisis and drive forward economic growth that reduces poverty, creates more opportunities to get on in life and brings hope back to our communities. We need to repair our public services and economy after 14 years of Conservative failure, chaos and destruction. We need to divert ordinary users who are not yet caught up in gangs and ensure that they have multiple consistent, genuine routes to take back control over their lives and seek positive change.

The people of Leyton and Wanstead are resilient and committed to their communities. They deserve a future in which they feel safe in their homes and public spaces. With the Government’s investment in neighbourhood policing, stronger penalties for antisocial behaviour and more targeted approaches to drug-related crime, I believe we can make significant progress. I will continue to work closely with local leaders, the police and the Minister to ensure that we deliver the solutions that my constituents desperately need.

Police Grant Report

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The issue is not just about providing more resources, but making sure that the police can operate efficiently. For example, we are rolling out the “Right Care, Right Person” initiative, which started in Humberside, to make sure that when a mental health case is purely medical, and there is no threat to public safety and no criminality, it is handled medically by the health service. Implementing that across the country will save about 1 million hours a year of police time.

There are other administrative changes that we can make, and the redaction issue is one of them. I discussed that with the new Director of Public Prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, earlier this week, and I will discuss it with him again in March. Changing the rules around redaction will save very many hours of police time. There are also technology solutions that will help, not just in those 25% of cases in which the CPS decides not to charge, but in the 75% of cases in which it does charge. Automated redaction tools driven by artificial intelligence will save many tens of thousands—probably hundreds of thousands—of hours of police time. I am encouraging police forces up and down the country to adopt that technology to save a huge amount of time.

Before the intervention, I was saying that record police officer numbers and record funding are all well and good, but what the public want is results. As the Office for National Statistics has told us, the only reliable source of long-term trend data for high-volume crimes is the crime survey for England and Wales. That shows that overall crime, excluding fraud and computer misuse, which only came into the figures recently, went down from 9.5 million offences in the last year of the previous Labour Government to 4.3 million in the past year—a 55% reduction. Violent crimes went down from 1.8 million offences under the last Labour Government to just 900,000—a 51% reduction. Theft is down from about 5 million offences to 2.7 million—a 46% reduction. Robbery is down 74%, theft from the person down 40%, domestic burglary down 56%, vehicle-related theft down 39%, criminal damage down 72%, and even bicycle theft is down under this Government. The plan is working; let us not go back to square one.

As for homicide, the most serious crime of all, in the last year of the last Labour Government, there were 620 homicides. We have managed to get that down to 591. Every one of those crimes is a tragedy; every one of them is one too many. None the less, I am sure that all of us can welcome that reduction in homicide—

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

—and I am sure that the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) is about to join me in doing just that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Rodda]

May I offer my support to our local police and say what a wonderful service they provide to our community? I was curious about what the Minister said about bureaucracy. It appears that what the Government have actually done in the past 14 years is cut police numbers very substantially and then replace some of those police officers with new officers who need to be trained. What proportion of those new officers are still undergoing some form of training or receiving support?

[Chris Philp]

To be clear, there was a reduction in police officer numbers in the coalition years—the years immediately after 2010—owing to the appalling financial conditions that we inherited. However, those police officers have been more than replaced. The total number of officers in England and Wales last year was about 3,500 higher than it was in 2010. It is therefore true to say that many officers have joined relatively recently, which means that there is a training and supervision job to do—and police forces are doing it. Retention rates are quite high. The staff survey shows quite high satisfaction rates, so with each month that passes since the influx of the past three or four years, those officers become more experienced. That will benefit our constituents and make sure that the trend of falling crime continues.

We are taking action on drugs, having closed down more than 2,000 county lines since April 2022. We are also tackling knife crime, which we discussed extensively yesterday. We are removing more than 130,000 knives through stop and search, which is important. We need to use stop and search and surrender programmes with confidence. We are investing in violence reduction units, and today we renew our commitment to funding those units and doing prevention work. We renew our commitment to hotspot patrolling against serious violence, knife crime and antisocial behaviour.

This funding settlement includes £66 million of extra money that will go to every single police force in the country for hotspot patrolling in areas where antisocial behaviour and serious violence are a problem. Where we have trialled that—for example, we trialled antisocial behaviour hotspot patrolling in parts of Essex, and serious violence patrolling in places such as Brighton—we have seen a reduction of approximately 30% in antisocial behaviour and crimes such as robbery. We know that it works. From April this year, every single police force will get that funding. I urge Members from all parts of the House to talk to their local PCCs and make sure that those hotspot patrols take place in town centres, on high streets, or wherever else, so that the public can see that the issue is being dealt with.

Tackling Spiking

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his wise observations. I hope that he was able to infer from my statement that what currently exists is a urine test that the police can roll out. On more than one occasion, the police have told me that they are sometimes inhibited by the fact that even if they do the test, it is not within the window when the drug is still in the bloodstream, so they do not obtain an accurate reading. The reason the Home Office is funding research on rapid drink testing tests—it is still at an early stage—is that, hopefully, it will be possible to test the drink on site. If someone reports symptoms, the venue will be able to work out very quickly what might have happened, using a kit, and the path to redress for the victim can begin on the night itself.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement but urge her to go much further in tackling this terrible crime. In particular, I ask her to look again at further work at music festivals. Thousands of vulnerable young people attend the Reading festival in my constituency, many of them teenagers. It would be good to hear that work is under way to protect them and other young people at such festivals.

[Laura Farris]

I would like to write to the hon. Gentleman —I have said the same to others—about what we are doing in relation to festivals, but the Reading festival resonates, and not just because my constituency is nearby. When I spoke to Thames Valley police about this issue recently, they said that the Reading festival was not just a festival where they saw spiking, but the festival where they saw the highest correlation with a secondary offence—namely, a sexual offence that was perpetrated afterwards. The hon. Gentleman does not need to impress on me the urgent need for us to look specifically at festivals as a particular danger zone for this type of crime.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to a priest in my constituency for recently bringing to my attention the film “A Man for all Seasons”, which I confess I had never seen. A quote from it is very relevant today:

“Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat. It is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?”

The proposition before us today asks us to accept that Government can simply define “facts” as facts, even if they are not so. The attempt to bend our entire legal system to fit the will of Government is a high price to pay for some meagre political cover for a party that promised to deal with this genuine issue—Members from across the House would agree that it is that—and has singly failed to do so. We see, as we have seen in the past five and a half hours, the Prime Minister appeasing his right flank with promises of amendments later in order to bring some people on side, while others are debating how those very amendments would pull them away from supporting the Bill. A complete mess is playing out before us.

What a distance this Tory party has come. Its former leader, now brought back from the wilderness as Lord Cameron, said only a decade ago:

“I believe that immigration has brought significant benefits to Britain...this is our island story: open, diverse and welcoming, and I am immensely proud of it-”

From that, we get to the repugnant rhetoric of the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), in one of the most appalling speeches I have ever heard—he is not in his place, but his was a shameful speech; to the spectacle of the Immigration Minister resigning from his post, not in protest at the Government’s novel policy, but because it does not go far enough; and to speech after speech by Government Members criticising the Bill, but then saying they are going to support it.

Perhaps more important than any of the legal challenges is the moral case for why the Bill must be blocked. I take issue with the idea that we should not think about the morality of these issues. We talk about planes, boats, targets and backlogs, and forget the human beings who are seeking shelter and a better life. The Home Office’s own statistics show that at least six out of 10 of those who made the dangerous channel crossing will be recognised as refugees through the asylum process. Given that many are fleeing extreme situations to embark on one of the most dangerous routes possible, how can the Bill possibly stand as any kind of deterrent?

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that those who support refugees in our country deserve our respect and should be commended by the House for their excellent work in local communities up and down this land?

[Michael Shanks]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Over decades, immigrants have contributed so much to the country that we enjoy today, not least to our public services, and we should give them immense thanks.

Instead of thinking of other solutions to deal with the criminal gangs that are causing such misery and death as they smuggle people across the channel, the Government have decided to hold firm to a course of action that has already cost us hundreds of millions of pounds and, as we have heard throughout the debate, will cost us even more. Instead of challenging the criminal gangs at source and building better co-operation with our European neighbours to tackle them, we have a Government fixated on a plan that the Home Secretary himself does not seem to be particularly convinced by. And for what? For a law that is unlikely to succeed in even the aims it has put forward.

The assumption made in the Bill is not that Rwanda is a safe country but that all decision makers must treat it as such. In other words, they have to put aside any reality they may know and accept that Rwanda is a safe country for the purposes of decision making. There will be neither recourse to appeal on the basis that someone removed to Rwanda may be sent to another country, even if it could be demonstrated that that was a genuine possibility, nor recourse to appeal on the basis that a person may not receive fair consideration of their asylum claim, because the Government have decided that these things are all safe.

The provisions mean that only in exceptional personal circumstances would an individual have a means of legally challenging the decision. It is a deeply unsettling proposition that the Government are removing one of the key components of constitutional democracy—the right of any citizen to test any law in an independent court. Never could that be more important than on an issue of human rights.

The question of parliamentary sovereignty has already been clarified. Lord Hope stated:

“Parliamentary sovereignty is no longer, if it ever was, absolute. It is no longer right to say that its freedom to legislate admits of no qualification whatever.”

The Bill leaves open the possibility of individual challenge to the ECHR and, as we heard from a number of Members, we might be back here, a few months from now, discussing that very issue as the Government seek to withdraw us from the ECHR.

Until a few months ago, I was in the classroom teaching pupils how to identify truth from sources of information, among other things. We told young people that there is such a thing as objective truth, and yet here I am, in the so-called mother of Parliaments, faced with a morally reprehensible and legally questionable farce—a charade that even most of those who will, I suspect, eventually be persuaded to walk through the Aye Lobby do not actually endorse. At the heart of the issue is the idea that a Government can simply state what is true, even if the evidence points the other way. It is for this House to challenge the Government’s shoddy attempt to do that and to do the right thing by voting down the Bill.

Town Centre Safety

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris]

I do not have that figure, so I will have to write to the hon. Lady.

It is right that decisions about how police resources are deployed, including the number and composition of people in neighbourhood and local policing roles, are for the determination of chief constables, who know their beat better than anyone and are accountable to democratically elected police and crime commissioners. Nevertheless, the numbers have a broader significance, and I want to draw the Opposition’s attention to four points.

First, due to the investment in the police uplift programme, the number of police officers in local policing roles is the highest since comparable data began to be collected, with an increase of 6.5% in the 12 months to 31 March. We have more female officers and more officers from minority ethnic backgrounds than ever before—something that I hope the hon. Member for Nottingham North will agree is consistent with some of the conclusions that were certainly implied, if not made explicit, on the nature of representation in Baroness Casey’s report into conduct in the Metropolitan police.

We have more officers receiving specialist training for specific categories of crime. I will give the House one example, because yesterday I visited Avon and Somerset Police, the pioneering force conducting Operation Soteria Bluestone in the investigation of rape. They made it perfectly clear to me that the increase in numbers that they have seen locally has facilitated a huge increase in the number of specialist trained rape and serious sexual offences police officers. In fact, there are 2,000 nationwide. I noted that the hon. Gentleman said that we were setting the police up to fail. That could not be more different from the information that that force gave me yesterday—and if they are incorrect, I would appreciate it if he would explain why when he closes.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I put on record my support for the police, particularly Thames Valley Police—like the Minister, I represent a constituency in Berkshire. Can she update the House on the proportion of new officers who are still in training? It seems to be a very serious issue in Reading and the surrounding areas that, while officers have been recruited, they are still in training, as opposed to the fully trained and experienced officers who were lost through austerity.

[Laura Farris]

The hon. Gentleman asks a fair question, and I will have to get back to him on that. I know that the number in my part of the Thames Valley is quite low, but that may not extend to Reading. He deserves an answer on that, and I will get one to him.

The Government have also ensured that the police have the resources they need. This year they received record funding of above £17.2 billion. That is an extra £550 million for frontline policing compared with last year. I gently remind those on the Opposition Benches that they voted against our police funding settlements every single year between 2016 and 2019.

I want to draw our attention down to community level and make a few observations. We have had a commitment from the National Police Chiefs’ Council—it was announced in August, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North will recall—that the police will follow up on all reasonable lines of inquiry and that there is no offence too small. That commitment is intended to offer huge reassurance to the public. It was also this Government who introduced the safer streets fund, which has been in receipt of £120 million already, for 270 projects covering all 43 police forces in England and Wales, and which is complemented by the StreetSafe app.

All that kind of thing can seem quite microscopic, as though it only affects individual streets or individual parks, reporting a broken light or a dark and dangerous corner of a popular area for jogging. The point is that people can report the area and action will be taken, and all that contributes to improving the fabric of communities up and down the United Kingdom.

I want to spend a moment on retail crime, which I will deal with in two parts: first I will cover shoplifting itself, and then I will move on to assault on retail workers. I take issue, very respectfully, with the suggestion that somehow the Government are being complacent in shoplifting. The Government are clear that we expect the police to take a zero-tolerance approach to shoplifting and violence towards shop workers. I want to disabuse anyone of the notion that somehow we have decriminalised shoplifting offences below £200.

I gently draw the shadow Minister’s attention to the following. In 2020, the National Business Crime Centre surveyed police forces in England and Wales, asking whether they had a policy of not responding to shoplifting if the goods were worth less than £200. Not one force in England and Wales said that it had such a policy. He will know as well as I do that the National Police Chiefs’ Council recently produced a retail crime action plan, which included a commitment to prioritise police attendance at the scene where violence had been used against shop staff.

Asylum Seeker Accommodation Off Wirral Peninsula

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I am grateful to have finally secured an Adjournment debate on a matter of such great significance to my constituents and, I would hope, to all those who believe in the need for a more compassionate asylum policy. On 14 April, officers at Wirral Council were informed by Home Office officials of Government proposals to accommodate up to 1,500 vulnerable asylum seekers on a vessel berthed in my constituency of Birkenhead. The vessel will be located on the site of the Wirral Waters development, an active work site in an area of Birkenhead without adequate transport links to local amenities, services and community support networks. To all intents and purposes, it would be a floating prison ship.

I should be clear that, as far as I am aware, no deal has yet been concluded between the Home Office and the owners of Peel Ports to accommodate refugees at Wirral Waters. However, given that large barges and ferries are already being deployed elsewhere in the country for the purposes of housing refugees, and that the Home Secretary has staked her reputation on adopting a punitive approach to those who come to this country seeking sanctuary, the direction of travel is clear.

When news of the plans broke, it caused considerable concern across my constituency. Questions were rightly raised about the capacity of the borough to cope with a scheme of this scale and nature, and whether our overstretched and underfunded local services would be able to provide effective support to such a large number of refugees without there being a serious impact on the services provided to local people in one of the most deprived communities in the country.

The proposed location of the vessel is the £4.5 million Wirral Waters development site—that is a cornerstone of the ambitious programme of regeneration now under way in Birkenhead—and that has caused great consternation. After years of delay, work is well under way in bringing that project to fruition. Businesses and communities across Birkenhead are counting on the project to succeed, but it is hard to see how that work can safely continue if the site becomes home to as many as 1,500 people.

The implications of the proposal for my constituency are serious, but I want to be clear that my concerns first and foremost are for the welfare of the refugees themselves. I have not called this debate to say, as other Members have in previous debates, “Not in my backyard.” Instead, I proudly and without equivocation say that refugees are welcome here. The question that the Government must answer today is fundamentally a moral one: how on earth can they justify a policy that treats fellow human beings with such inhumanity?

Wirral has a proud tradition as a place of refuge, from my ancestors who fled famine in Ireland to the Ukrainian families who are making it their home today. We are proud of our record of opening our doors to those in need. Our borough has taken the second-highest number of refugees in the Liverpool city region across all Home Office pathway programmes, behind only the city of Liverpool itself.

It has accepted the highest number of people under the Homes for Ukraine scheme in the entirety of the Liverpool city region. However, we need to ensure that people who come to the UK in the pursuit of refuge are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech about the importance of compassion towards refugees in this country. My community has also accommodated many needy people. Does he agree that there needs to be more support from the Home Office in many cases? I raised a case with the Minister recently—he was very generous in helping me with the matter—of a child who would have been unable to sit their standard assessment tests in Reading, and would have been moved to Plymouth at a time when it was vital for them to continue their education in their existing school. Does my hon. Friend agree that there ought to be more thought from the Home Office about supporting refugees at times of great need, not moving them when it is unsuitable to do so?

[Mick Whitley]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I think this debate is all about dignity and respect, and I hope the Home Office and Ministers will be mindful of that.

The Government’s policy of using disused ferries, boats and barges to house refugees may satisfy the legal criteria of their statutory duty to house refugees, but it falls far short of the obligations we owe towards those in need and it betrays the trust that these vulnerable people have placed in us. As soon as I learned of these proposals, I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary. By the standards of the Home Office, the Minister for Immigration’s response was remarkably prompt: I only had to chase him up three times in writing and raise a point of order in the House before he got back to me. Of course, his letter fails to acknowledge my request for a meeting with him and Home Office officials, and he has not engaged in any meaningful sense with my concerns about the welfare of the refugees whom he intends to strand on an active worksite on the periphery of my constituency or the impact that will have on local services. I have been forced to pursue an Adjournment debate because of the Home Office’s stubborn refusal to be transparent about its plans. I understand that, from the Minister’s perspective, much cannot be said publicly, but refusing to engage, even in confidence, with the local Member of Parliament about a decision of such great significance to their constituency is not only discourteous but, frankly, absurd.

As I said when I raised this matter on a point of order on 17 April, Members have a right to know what is happening in the communities they represent. With the recess imminently approaching, I hope the Minister may be more obliging in providing some clarity. First, if an agreement is reached to accommodate asylum seekers on Wirral Waters, what steps will be taken to address the health needs of refugees living in a cramped and overcrowded environment, where disease could spread rapidly? Secondly, what additional financial support will be made available to Wirral Council to ensure that refugees get the support they need, without there being an adverse effect on the quality of support available to local people living in one of the most deprived communities in the country? Thirdly, what steps will the Government take to ensure that refugees can access local amenities, services and vital community networks, rather than being left to rot on a worksite, considering that dramatic cuts to local bus services have left the area without adequate transport links? Finally, what steps will the Government take to ensure the physical safety of the refugees, especially in the wake of the terrible scenes outside the Suites hotel in Kirkby in February, when a mob attempted to storm the hotel? I believe that, were the Minister to seriously and honestly engage with all those questions, he would quickly realise just how unworkable and unethical the proposal is.

The Minister for Immigration said in his reply to me—I expect this to be echoed in the response we shall hear shortly—that the Government have had no choice but to implement such extreme measures and that asylum accommodation is now costing the taxpayer £6 million a day. We have heard that this is being driven by the rise in small boat crossings experienced over the last year, but if we are looking for someone to blame for the crisis, we should turn not to the desperate men, women and children who felt they had to risk their lives on dangerous channel crossings, but to Government Members. Since 2014, the asylum backlog has more than doubled, despite the UK receiving just 8% of all asylum applications made across the European Union and the UK in 2021. As of 31 December 2022, more than 161,000 people were stranded in limbo waiting to have their claims heard with the primary cause being that applicants are waiting longer than ever to have their claims processed. This is a Conservative crisis for which innocent people are being forced to pay the price.

I secured this debate to talk about the situation facing my constituency of Birkenhead, but it would be remiss of me not to end by reflecting on the broader national context. The evolution of asylum policy in this country has followed a clear trajectory towards ever more punitive treatment of those who have done nothing more than exercise their legal right to claim asylum. It has culminated in Ministers attempting to house refugees on disused ferries and in this House’s voting for the Illegal Migration Bill, a despicable Bill which breaks entirely with international law. Yet none of it has done anything to stem the numbers of people coming to the UK in search of safety, and nor will it. All that the hostile environment has done is perpetuate the misery of people who have already experienced the most unimaginable suffering.

But there is an alternative. That begins by enshrining the principles of respect and dignity at the heart of a new, fairer asylum system. It necessitates the establishment of safe and legal routes to the UK so that no one is ever forced to risk their lives, or their loved ones’ lives, in the English channel. It requires the Government to get serious about making the investments needed to tackle the asylum backlog and end the miserable limbo which so many asylum seekers are forced to endure for so long. And it means that rather than treating them as a burden, we should be harnessing the experience, ability and talent of people waiting for their asylum claims to be heard by allowing them to seek paid work, contribute to the economy and find accommodation of their own. There is a better way.

EU Settlement Scheme

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to raise the issue of the EU settlement scheme. It goes without saying that my Scottish National party colleagues and I thoroughly regret Brexit and the loss of free movement rights. When Brexit happened, we argued that the rights of European economic area citizens should have been protected automatically rather than requiring an application to retain them. However, the Government took a different approach and 6 million citizens have secured some form of status by applying under the EU settlement scheme—a higher number than I think anybody would have anticipated. The Minister will probably quite fairly say that the implementation of the scheme has worked much more successfully than I and some of my colleagues anticipated. Indeed, there are things to be learned from the scheme for other parts of his own Department.

This debate is not about reopening all of those previous arguments. First and foremost, its purpose is to serve as a reminder that the EU settlement scheme is still very much here and, indeed, very much open for applications, despite the deadline for initial applications being 30 June 2021. Far from being finished, there are many tens of thousands still waiting for a decision on their application. There are a couple of a million who will need to apply again and hundreds of thousands who may have lost their status. Even those successfully with status in the system are too often facing some significant ongoing problems, so this is still a hugely important issue that we need to scrutinise.

That takes me to the second purpose of the debate, which is to create an opportunity to flag up some of these ongoing concerns and challenges that need to be addressed. I am grateful to the University of York’s Brexit hub for organising a recent seminar at which many of these issues were highlighted. I also pay tribute to the campaign group the3million for its relentless ongoing campaigning on behalf of EEA nationals.

There are a significant number of issues that I wish to try to cover, so I will probably be able to scratch only the surface with many of them and will need to return to some others on a future date.

First, I turn to the approach of the Government to those with pre-settled status. Obviously, this is of massive significance, because there are around 2 million or so with pre-settled status, I think, unless a small percentage have upgraded successfully to fully settled status. In December, the High Court ruled that it was inconsistent with the withdrawal treaty to place those people in a position whereby they would lose their rights and entitlements if they did not apply again for settled status. The issue of whether the policy is consistent with the withdrawal treaty is not for this place or this debate, but we do need to debate the merits of persisting with such a policy, even if it is eventually found lawful.

Why should we put people through this process again? It is a stressful process and often seriously disruptive for all involved. It is also an unnecessary burden for the Home Office, which needs all the capacity it can muster for various other tasks, so why not free up people from this pointless process? That, ultimately, is the question. What really is the point of asking these people to apply again? Is it really worth all the time and resource?

I am especially concerned about people with pre-settled status not because they have not been here for many years already, but because, for various reasons such as vulnerability, chaotic lifestyle and other challenges, they simply have not been able to prove long residence, which is required to justify permanent residence rather than pre-settled status. How can we believe that it really will be any different for them this time around? They are at serious risk of becoming undocumented altogether if they cannot provide the necessary residence evidence before their current status expires.

I turn to the challenges with digital status, which include problems with the system itself and problems with people’s understanding of the system. The Home Office has been made aware of problems that some holders of settled and pre-settled status are experiencing when using digital status. There are two types of failure. The first is technology failures. Sometimes, to put it simply, the digital status produced by the Home Office checking system is wrong. On occasions, it appears that the status of someone else entirely has appeared on a check, which is described as “entanglement”. At other times, details on the check have erroneously changed. For example, there have been cases—especially where a previous refusal has been superseded by a grant—where a person has been flagged up to border officers and held up or turned back at the border just because they previously had a refusal, and the subsequent successful application has not been reflected.

It is difficult to know the full extent of these issues, and it would be useful to hear from the Minister what the Home Office’s understanding is and what has been done to try to fix these problems. I also want to know why the Information Commissioner’s Office has not been involved, as I understand it. After all, digital status is now to become the norm, and the introduction of electronic travel authorisations in the near future will make it all the more important that these systems work smoothly.

Secondly, even if the technology works, sometimes those using it get it wrong. We hear of employers that do not accept digital status as proof, and people have lost their jobs. There is an increasing number of reports that landlords are even less likely to accept it as a form of ID than other forms of immigration proof that were already problematic. People have too often been stopped by airlines when trying to come home, because staff do not understand the status, even though guidance should mean that EU nationals are not yet having their status checked in that way. What is the strategy to ensure that people fully understand the digital status being presented to them?

On a related note, I would like to hear more about the controversial reintroduction of banking checks. They were paused by the then Home Secretary because he could not be sure of their accuracy, and the independent inspector highlighted a significant 10% failure rate. What has changed to ensure that EEA nationals and others will not be wrongly deprived of access to their finances and thus unable to pay their rent or utility bills?

These systems are vital. People are at risk of losing their jobs—some have already. They are at risk of losing their homes, their access to public services and even their ability to get back into the country that they call home. Some are now too scared to leave the UK in case they cannot return. These are not hypothetical problems but ones that too many people have already faced or are facing. We have long argued for a physical document alongside digital. Digital-first does not need to mean digital-only. If the Government want to stick to their guns on digital-only, they must pull out all the stops to ensure that they are not letting people down through either the technology or the systems and that digital status is being accepted.

People are facing challenges in understanding their rights and persuading others that they have these rights. Various complicated statutory instruments throughout the Brexit process have removed the disparate retained and domestic laws that protected the rights of EEA nationals generally. However, there has been no replacement in domestic law of the rights of those EEA nationals who have secured settled or pre-settled status. When I have raised this issue previously, the response from Government seems to be, “Not to worry—your rights are protected in the withdrawal treaty, and that’s sufficient,” but that does not recognise how difficult that can be. When applying to a civil servant or any other sort of decision maker—even a tribunal judge—it is infinitely easier to get them to understand a person’s rights if those are set out in a domestic Act of Parliament or statutory instrument, rather than a broad international treaty. Going to a jobcentre and pointing to an article of the withdrawal treaty is far from ideal. This is causing problems, and it could be easily remedied. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that.

I turn to certain aspects of the Government’s interpretation and implementation of these rights. There is an ongoing debate about the rights of those with pre-settled status, but a lot of people will be very surprised about how the Government interpret withdrawal treaty rights in relation to certain late applicants and their access to free NHS treatment. In fairness, it seems from previous discussions and correspondence that it is the Department of Health and Social Care that is the biggest block here, rather than the Home Office, but the Minister is here, so I will press the case with him.

Let us take the example of an elderly EU citizen who has been here for many years and had an old-style permanent residence card. Home Office guidance rightly says that such a person has a reasonable excuse if they apply late, but what happens if that old person first realises that they should have applied to the settled status scheme only when someone at the hospital to which they have been admitted tells them that their old residence card counts for nothing?

This elderly person undergoes medical treatment and applies for settled status afterwards. She will get settled status and will not be liable to pay for any NHS treatment from the date of her application. But bizarrely, despite the Government having acknowledged that she had an excuse not to apply in time, the very same Government will then penalise her for not having applied in time by making her pay the medical bill incurred between the deadline and her late application. That is nonsensical and cruel.

Debts of several thousand pounds will be life-changing for such people yet, given that the number of people this will happen to is probably going to be pretty small, the sums involved for the Department of Health and Social Care will be insignificant. I simply do not understand why the Department does not just return any fees that are paid or refrain from pursuing them in the first place. Perhaps the Minister would be willing to discuss that issue with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care.

A similar issue relates to the debate about comprehensive sickness insurance. Eventually, the European Court held that sickness insurance was not necessary in order for someone to exercise treaty rights in the UK. However, as I understand it the Government have not properly changed their guidance to reflect this fact. They took out a reference to NHS access not being sufficient to prove lawful residence on its own, but nothing was inserted to confirm positively that it is sufficient. I wonder whether that can be rectified.

Let me turn to the issue of late applications. As I understand it there have been around 120,000 late applications, around half of which have been refused. I also understand that no records are kept about the reasoning for such refusals. In particular, nobody knows whether the refusals were because people did not have a reasonable excuse for being late or because the eligibility criteria were not met, even if the lateness could be excused.

Transparency about this issue is very important. We need to know whether the Home Office is being harsh on late applicants, or whether it just happens that a lot of late applicants did not actually qualify anyway. One research report that I have been sent recently suggests that many late applicants would meet the qualifying criteria, which makes me worried that the Home Office is in fact now being harsh on those who are late. Will the Minister provide a better understanding of what the Home Office believes is going on?

I understand there to be around 180,000 pending applications to the settlement scheme, more than 30,000 of which have been pending for more than 15 months, including a disproportionate number of Romanian and Bulgarian cases. Why is there such a backlog? What are the reasons for the delays? Why is there such apparent disproportionality between nationalities? What is the Home Office strategy to try to resolve the matter?

I have heard people discussing what they termed the “hidden second queue” of family members from outside the EEA seeking a family permit. How many are waiting for such permits? Am I right to understand that unlike for any other application, there is no Home Office service standard for that? If that is the case, how can that be justified? Is it consistent with our treaty obligations? The backlogs are definitely interfering with the exercise of people’s rights under the withdrawal treaty. The Government should be careful that this does not become an issue of compliance with the treaty.

What strategies are in place to support marginalised communities? If I understood correctly what I heard at the seminar I attended last week, one Roma rights organisation had conducted a survey that showed that a worryingly low proportion of the Roma population was aware of digital status, and even fewer said they would be able to prove their status, with many requiring help to do so. Up to 75% did not know how to update their status from pre-settled to settled. All sorts of other groups will face similar challenges, so what is the strategy? What support will be available?

That brings me to the issue of ongoing advice and support. One danger of people thinking the EU settlement scheme is all over and done with is that it might be thought that funding for advice services is no longer needed. That could not be further from the truth; indeed, in some ways applications are becoming more complex, not less. Even if we put the application process to one side, there will be an ongoing need to assist vulnerable communities and individuals with proving their status digitally. We also need to be aware of an apparent rise in the number of advice sharks who take money off vulnerable people by pretending to be able to help them to access their rights. We cannot let them corner the market.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that there is a great deal of concern among many elderly people, particularly long-standing residents who originate from EU countries? They would like to have physical proof of their right to remain in the UK and it is deeply disturbing for them not to have that.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member. We have argued for the provision of a physical document on a number of occasions, and will continue to do so.

Let me now turn to the issue of those whose applications have been refused. I think I am right in saying there have been about 400,000 refusals; the Minister can provide me with an accurate figure if that is not correct. On top of that, there will be those who have lost status simply because they did not apply. Has the Home Office any estimate of how many people that will affect? Even if the failure rate is only 5% or 10%, it will involve 300,000 or 600,000 people. If we add those who will not successfully transfer from pre-settled to settled, we could be talking about at least a further 1 million new undocumented people in the UK. It is a huge issue, and I do not think we have even started to have a conversation about what is to happen. This is obviously one of the downsides of not adopting the approach that we advocated, namely the automatic conferral of rights. Will the Minister outline the Home Office’s thinking on that?

Finally—although this is probably an issue for an altogether different debate—I want to mention the UK citizens who face challenges in other EU countries. Who will look out for them now? In the UK, the Independent Monitoring Authority and various other organisations are tasked with ensuring that the rights of European Economic Area nationals are respected. Do we not need a similar arrangement for UK citizens in the EEA?

I will stop at this point. There are probably other issues that I could touch on, and much more that I could say about the issues I have raised, but that can wait for other debates. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply. As I have said, whatever our differences on overall policy, the motivation of the debate is to seek improvements in the way in which the implementation of that policy is affecting EEA citizens. I think we all agree that we want to do whatever we can to protect those who have made the United Kingdom their home and are contributing to our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

I will happily take up the hon. Member’s first point with the Department of Health and Social Care and revert to him. On his second point, I did give some guide as to the likely reasons why an application has been declined, but I will provide him with further statistics if it would be helpful.

The headline is that the vast majority of people who are rejected should not be here in the UK, for good reason, and their status is that of an irregular migrant to the UK. The hon. Member is right to say that that is a significant number of individuals; we will now need to work through it to ensure that those people either regularise their status or leave the UK as soon as possible.

On support and assistance for vulnerable groups, throughout the process we have been aware of the need to support those who may find this process more challenging. For that reason, we have set up a broad range of communications for minorities such as, for example, Roma and Traveller communities across the UK. The Home Office has also committed significant funding to support outreach to those communities, and that funding is ongoing. The resolution centre, which I mentioned earlier, is also available and fully staffed to support individuals by telephone or email seven days a week. We take that issue very seriously.

[Matt Rodda]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way because I have only a few minutes left and I would like to try to answer the remaining questions from the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East.

The use of digital services to access and share immigration status has continued to increase very significantly. Home Office transparency data shows there have been more than 14.5 million views by jobseekers and employers of the online right to work service, and approximately 1.8 million views by landlords and tenants of the online right to rent service.

It is right that, as far as possible, we move swiftly to digital products. That is the right approach to safeguard taxpayer value and to ensure we are providing individuals with the most portable and flexible means of proving their status. Of course, we are concerned to support those who might be left behind by a purely digital system, so we are paying close regard to those with lower digital skills, those who are vulnerable and those living in rural communities with poor access to the internet. We are fully committed to ensuring our systems are as accessible and as secure as possible. We know some will find online services more challenging, which is why we have a range of support available to them through the resolution centre.

We have been clear with landlords and employers about how to avoid unlawful discrimination when conducting checks. We have statutory codes of practice available on gov.uk stipulating that employers and landlords should provide individuals with every opportunity to demonstrate their right to work or rent; should not discriminate on the basis of nationality; and should be careful to support those who do not have access to digital forms of evidence, or who struggle to access them.

It is correct that the Home Office has chosen to implement banking checks and to recommence data sharing. This is an important tool in our armoury to tackle irregular and illegal migration, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to do it with great caution and to learn from the mistakes of the past. A great deal of work has been done in the Home Office in recent years to ensure the systems are more robust than they were in the past, and to ensure that those who fear they have been subject to injustice have a swift and appropriate route to redress.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising so many questions that will be important to the millions of our fellow citizens and residents who wish to take part in the scheme. I hope I have answered the majority of his questions but, if I have missed any, I am more than happy to write to him. Overall, despite the vast and, at times, complex undertaking that was the EU settlement scheme, it has been a significant success. I pay tribute to the thousands of Home Office employees, past and present, who have been part of that endeavour. Our approach throughout has been generous, transparent and open to scrutiny. As it continues in the months and years ahead, I and my successors in the Home Office will do everything we can to ensure the scheme works for everyone here in the United Kingdom.

Question put and agreed to.

HM Passport Office Backlog

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I rise to support today’s motion on the Order Paper. As we have heard, the delays at the Passport Office have caused huge anxiety and stress for many of my constituents and many others around the country. There is no doubt that the Home Office under this Government is, or at least it should be, in special measures. The shambolic way in which the Government have handled the situation is symbolic of their messy approach and sums up what my hon. Friend the shadow Minister rightly calls “backlog Britain”.

It is appalling that at a time when the cost of living crisis is hitting the country hard, Home Office incompetence is forcing British families to pay for fast-track passport services or face losing hundreds of pounds due to cancelled holidays. The Home Office was warned that a surge in passport applications was likely as early as November last year, but it completely failed to do the forward planning needed to prevent the chaos that we have seen over the past few months. Now the Home Office is paying millions of pounds for failing outsourced contracts across the Passport Office, including a courier service that loses hundreds of passports every year. The Government also estimated that 1,700 staff would be needed, but is it not the case that only 1,000 new recruits have been confirmed?

The Home Office’s incompetence is preventing families from going on long-awaited holidays and hard-earned breaks, preventing loved ones from being reunited, and preventing people from attending weddings and funerals. British families deserve so much better.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Over the past six weeks 26 families have contacted my office, in various states of stress and utter frustration with the Home Office. One family have been waiting 14 weeks for a passport for a family member to visit a terminally ill relative. To me, that sums up the problem. As my hon. Friend is explaining so perfectly, it is the result of a lack of planning and strategy at the Home Office. They really need to apply themselves.

[Gerald Jones]

I completely agree, and I will shortly illustrate my hon. Friend’s point with cases from my own constituency.

As we know, the target for passport processing has been increased to 10 weeks, up from three weeks pre-pandemic. However, even this increased target has repeatedly been missed. In the first three months of this year alone, over 35,000 people had to wait longer than 10 weeks for their passport to be issued, despite the Prime Minister’s claim that everybody is getting their passport within six weeks.

The number of monthly fast-track applications has more than doubled since December 2021. In April 2022, British families spent at least £5.4 million on fast-track services. The Passport Office’s own forecasts show that it expects to receive over 240,000 fast-track applications between May and October this year, amounting to up to £34 million. Is this a cash cow for the Home Office?

My constituency team are currently dealing with around 70 cases, and the chaos is causing them undue anxiety. Many applications are outstanding for more than the 10-week period. My constituents are unable to speak to a decision maker, and when they contact the helpline the information is often wrong or out of date. There is a general lack of communication regarding applications, and often the online tracker is not updated. Hard copies of documents routinely go missing from passport offices and constituents are asked to send documents to various passport centres. Applications have been cancelled, supposedly for lack of documents, despite evidence that documents have been lost at passport offices.

There are reports that applicants are being asked to pay for an upgrade, despite now being eligible for one after their application has been logged for six weeks. MP account managers are unable to make decisions on cases; they can only view information on a screen. Requests for call-backs from decision makers are hardly ever followed up. Constituents have been told to collect their passport at offices many hundreds of miles away from south Wales—I know of similar situations elsewhere across the country. Passports could be printed at any passport office, regardless of where the application was initially dealt with, so that needs to be followed up by Ministers.

All of this is having an impact on constituents and creating huge anxiety and stress. I will give a few local examples. A family were forced to cancel their holiday to Disneyland Paris, losing several hundred pounds and devastating their seven-year-old daughter. It is not just holidays that are affected, important as they are for wellbeing after the difficult past two years. Another constituent is travelling for work at the end of the month but also requires a passport as proof of identity. They do not hold any other photo ID and need the document in order to pay a tax bill to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Every day’s delay adds interest to their bill.

Another constituent wanted to update her passport after marriage. She posted her old passport and marriage certificate to the Passport Office. The passport was scanned but the certificate was lost. She has proof of postage and receipt of delivery. The Passport Office has now cancelled her application but wants to charge her a further £75 application fee.

As part of one constituent’s first passport application, a copy of her mother’s birth certificate was requested. This was posted but not matched to her application in time, so the application was cancelled. My constituent has been told to make a new application, with another fee. We have written to UKVI to complain and ask for the original application to be reinstated.

I know that these examples are repeated across the country, which is why the Government must accept full responsibility for this shambles and commit to come to the House as soon as possible to provide answers on what exactly they are going to do to end the misery that many of my constituents, and thousands more across the country, are experiencing. If they cannot sort it out, they should get out of the way and let a Labour Government work to sort out not just this mess, but the many others that they have created.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bambos Charalambous]

I agree with the hon. Member, but that is directly because we no longer have reciprocal arrangements. That is the crux of the problem with the Bill. We need more reciprocal arrangements with our international partners to allow other measures to be put in place.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Bambos Charalambous]

I will make progress.

The agreements we had previously, such as Dublin III, gave people who were eligible a safe route here, and they also allowed us to send people to other safe countries when that was appropriate. It is well known that family reunion leads to better outcomes in terms of the ability of people to integrate. It is also well known that it is only with international co-operation that we can expect other countries to accept the safe return of individuals, where appropriate. We believe that new clause 49 is a sensible and proportionate measure to tackle the issues we face.

This brings me on to new clause 51, which does two things. First, it places the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme on a statutory footing to make sure that it is fully implemented. Secondly, it calls on the Government to draw up the scheme in a way that helps prevent people from being exploited by people traffickers and smugglers. The Government have accepted that safe and legal routes are important as an alternative to dangerous routes run by criminal gangs, but they have not implemented or designed safe and legal routes. That is why we propose that the resettlement scheme be designed in a way that allows those fleeing persecution in Afghanistan who have family in the UK to apply to be included in the resettlement scheme. There would be a specified opportunity for family members to apply under the scheme. The Government have already consulted on ensuring that these family members do not end up being exploited by criminal gangs, and have promised them a route to reuniting with their family members, so we see no reason why the new clause should be controversial, or why the Government would not open the scheme and allow family reunion within it.

It has been absolutely shocking to hear at first hand the stories of desperate people who are eligible to come here from Afghanistan being effectively abandoned. I have had Chevening scholars contact my constituency office who have been left without any support at all, and without any prospect of a safe route from that country. Other MPs have told me about people who have worked closely with the British but have also been left vulnerable—interpreters, women who worked as lawyers, and many others whose lives are under threat from the Taliban. Again, if the Government are serious about drawing people away from the people smugglers and offering them safe routes, then they need to get a grip of this situation.

[Matt Rodda]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Does he agree that at the core of this is the poor quality of our relations with some of our nearest neighbours, and, indeed, our falling standing in the international community, which I am afraid—[Interruption.] If I may finish, I am afraid that that is a result of Government policy over the Brexit deal and a number of other matters. Does he agree with me on that point?

[Bambos Charalambous]

As I have previously said, international co-operation is at the root of dealing with the problems that this Bill will purportedly address.

Support for Asylum Seekers

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), and indeed the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), for having secured this important debate. In addition, I would like to thank a number of local groups within Reading and Woodley, particularly Reading Refugee Support Group, Reading Red Kitchen, and various local churches and faith groups, which have all contributed to supporting refugees and asylum seekers in our area.

It is fundamental that we treat asylum seekers and refugees with dignity, according to international law, and with respect. I wanted to focus my remarks on some issues that have happened in Reading, which I have already raised with Ministers, and I am grateful for their support in this matter. I would also like to say that the town I represent has a proud history of supporting people in difficulty, going back to at least the time of supporting Belgian refugees in world war one, and in many other conflicts since then.

The issues I will raise today are those at the George Hotel, which the Home Secretary kindly helped me with and offered some support on last year. This is a hotel in the centre of Reading where a number of refugees and asylum seekers were placed at short notice at the beginning of the pandemic. Obviously, at that time, resources were under great pressure. However, issues continued over some months, and I want to highlight some of those problems to illustrate the scale of the issues we face as a country, and also to flag this up to the Government and ask for a fundamental rethink.

We have had reports—which I have investigated with my colleague and hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), the shadow Immigration Minister—of problems with food being inappropriate or insufficient; a lack of connection with local medical services, such as asylum seekers not being registered with GPs; and a lack of financial support, which meant that those in the George Hotel were, at times, unable to make small local journeys or other journeys to meet people who they needed to see. For example, a disabled man at one point had to walk all the way to the Royal Berkshire Hospital, which is about three quarters of a mile away from the George Hotel.

Many of the issues seem to relate to the contractor, Clearsprings, and the Home Secretary was very gracious in helping to address some of them last year. From my experience, this contractor seems to have a relatively poor track record in our area. I cannot comment on the further, wider issues, but that does raise questions about the nature of the provision and whether there ought to be a much more fundamental rethink, as a number of colleagues have pointed out.

I realise that there is a lack of time this morning, and I am grateful for the Minister’s support in this matter. I hope there will be a much broader and wider rethink of the policy on how asylum seekers and refugees are supported in the UK. We need to maintain high standards of support and keep up our excellent tradition of supporting and welcoming people.