Net Migration Figures

Debate between Mick Whitley and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

According to the Office for National Statistics, the figures are starting to fall—although the ONS’s methodology itself keeps moving around, so one has to treat that with a degree of scepticism. It is now critical, to my mind, that we introduce a set of fundamental reforms. The time for tinkering is over, and I hope that the package that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I will put together in the coming weeks will meet the expectations of my hon. Friend.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

We should not forget that we are talking about fellow human beings who have made, and will go on to make, enormous contributions to our society—not least in holding together a health and social care sector that has been left broken by 13 years of Tory failure. Does the Minister regret, as I do, the fact that the fearmongering and hyperbole that we have heard from his Benches today will give succour to the forces of the far right who seek to divide our communities, and will he join me in welcoming, and expressing his solidarity with, all those who have chosen to make the UK their home over the last year?

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Debate between Mick Whitley and Robert Jenrick

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Let’s see about that, shall we? I think we have the right policy. It is one we are pursuing. As soon as we have the ability to do so through the courts, we will get those flights off to Rwanda. On the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that the UK is cruel or inhumane, I could not disagree with him more strongly. The facts bear that out. The fact that we brought more than 500,000 people to this country, including from places such as Afghanistan, on humanitarian visas shows that we are one of the world’s leading countries in that regard. One of the challenges we have, to be frank with him, about helping some people we would like to help from Afghanistan, or those who fled to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan to come to the UK, is the fact that so many people have come across on small boats from a place of safety such as France that they are putting intolerable pressure on our system. The sooner we stop the small boats, the more we can do for people who really deserve our help.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The impact assessment confirms that the Government’s Rwanda scheme, which I have criticised previously in this House for its senseless cruelty, will also come at huge expense to the British taxpayer. Does the Minister accept that there is both a more humane and financially prudent alternative to the Government’s plans, and that should begin by allowing asylum seekers to seek paid work, which the Lift the Ban coalition estimates would lead to the Government receiving more than £366 million in tax and national insurance alone?

[Robert Jenrick]

I do not support allowing asylum seekers to work in this country. The approach that we are taking under the Illegal Migration Bill means that individuals who come here will be processed swiftly—in days and weeks, not months and years—and then either returned home or sent to a safe third country such as Rwanda, so that issue will not be relevant. Let me also point out that the hon. Gentleman recently opposed the proposal for a number of asylum seekers to stay in his constituency, despite having said that it was a place of sanctuary.

Knowsley Incident

Debate between Mick Whitley and Robert Jenrick

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

We have safeguarding procedures in place to support people going into the hotels and the staff who work in them. The hon. Lady’s broader point was about the backlog. As I said earlier, the backlog was three times higher when we came to power in 2010, but that does not mean that we should not take action to get it down and return to a position where we are processing claims in a sensible and swift manner. I have put in place, with the Home Secretary, new measures, and we are in the process of recruiting a significant number of further decision makers. We are already seeing significant progress in bringing down the legacy backlog, and the hon. Lady will start to see that flowing through in the numbers that are publicly reported and in the cases that come to her surgery. I am confident that we will meet our objective of eliminating the legacy backlog of initial decisions over the course of this year.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The vast majority of those who turned out on the night of 10 February were not hardened veterans of the organised far right; they were ordinary people whose frustrations had been fostered by this Government’s decade-long neglect of their communities and whose fear had been stoked into hatred by the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that we hear all too often on the Government side of the House. Does the Minister accept that stranding refugees in hotels in left-behind communities such as Knowsley risks leaving these vulnerable people divorced from vital community support networks and means that they become a target for hatred? Will he explain what steps the Home Office is taking to find community-based alternatives to the use of hotels as contingency accommodation?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I have said, we are pursuing a strategy of replacing hotels with dispersal accommodation, which is agreed constructively between the Home Office, providers and local authorities and provides better value for taxpayers’ money. That is the way to avoid this situation, other than addressing the root cause by preventing people from coming across the channel in the first place.

I encourage the hon. Gentleman to support our further steps over the coming months to bear down on individuals crossing the channel and to create a system whereby people who come here illegally will not find a route to remain in the UK, because that is the enduring solution to this problem.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mick Whitley and Robert Jenrick

Monday 19th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and the members of the Select Committee for their interesting report, which we have considered carefully as part of the broader work that we have done to listen to the views of colleagues here in Parliament on both sides of the House and in the country before preparing our response to the White Paper in the autumn. I will of course bear in mind his suggestion about pre-legislative scrutiny, which may be a good way forward. On his second point, I must respectfully disagree, because I think levelling up involves ensuring that our big cities of the midlands and the north build more homes. That is the way we will ensure a brownfield-first approach. That is also the way we will ensure inspired regeneration and get aspirational middle-class families back into some of those great cities, and ensure that councils have the revenues they need to invest and to prosper; and of course it is the way to protect the countryside from unnecessary development.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

What progress he has made on the Government’s new deal for social housing since the publication of the social housing Green Paper in 2018.