Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Gibson Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his concern about this issue, which affects his constituency as it does many others, and he is right to raise it. Unfortunately, the introduction of knife crime prevention orders, which were scheduled to come in in London, has not yet happened, largely because of the impact of the covid pandemic and the absorption of capacity. However, there has been very significant activity on this issue, not least three weeks ago with a national week of intensification of Operation Sceptre, the anti-knife crime operation, which saw 2,005 arrests and well over 10,000 knives taken off the streets in the space of one week. That is an indication of the scale of the problem to which we are addressing ourselves with some urgency.,

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

What plans her Department has to reform the UK’s asylum system.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

What plans her Department has to reform the UK’s asylum system.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

As the Home Secretary has already announced, we will embark next year on one of the biggest ever reforms of our asylum system. The system is in need of fundamental reform in which the principles will be firmness and fairness—fair in that we will rapidly grant claims that are meritorious, but firm in the sense that, where claims do not have merit, we will rapidly refuse them and ensure that people cannot have endlessly repeated bites of the cherry, which sadly is the case at the moment.

[Peter Gibson [V]]

We are all rightly proud of the UK’s history as a safe haven for the persecuted, but can my hon. Friend outline what steps his Department is taking to ensure that claims of asylum from unsafe countries are being prioritised over those from inherently safe countries such as France?

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. The United Kingdom’s resettlement scheme aims to take people directly from dangerous conflict zones, such as those around Syria, into the United Kingdom. We have run the biggest resettlement scheme of any country in Europe over the last five years. In terms of preventing claims from safe countries, he will be aware that we introduced some inadmissibility rules a few days ago, and we are working with our French colleagues to prevent these very dangerous small boat crossings from France to the UK. Thanks to that work, I am pleased to be able to report to the House that over the last three months since September, the number of small boat crossings per calm-weather day has come down by over 60%. That is testament to the great work being done by UK officers and by our colleagues in France as well.