Priti Patel
Main Page: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful and considered remarks of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and her forensic analysis of the funding. That funding has not been as transparent as it should have been, and I will expand on that point.
I am pleased to be able to speak on the estimates for the Home Office, and to make some wider observations about expenditure. Controlling expenditure in any Government Department has its challenges, especially when events and circumstances, largely beyond the control of any Minister or Government, land on a Government. The covid pandemic, during which I was at the Home Office, was one example of that. There have been other unforeseen events, such as the war in Ukraine, although there was some planning for that, and Operation Pitting, which was a significant cross-Government initiative; funding for its operational costs was worked out by Departments after the event. As a result of such events, spending profiles change.
I can say this because I was in the Treasury a long time ago, and people know my view on fiscal form and fiscal fitness in government: domestic events can create inflationary pressures, just as macro-global economic pressures such as the war in Ukraine can. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee pointed out the inflationary pressures that were created during the pandemic, because the Government effectively had a monopoly on hotel rooms, which drove prices up. There was no real alternative that could have been adopted, because the Government did not have a plan. I will come on to the type of plan that would not have led to the fiscal situation in which the Home Office now finds itself.
During the pandemic, inevitably, public health advice relating to asylum accommodation resulted in the Government no longer being able to detain people, and distancing measures in asylum accommodation being put in place. That led to the use of hotels and a response to the growth of illegal migration, as highlighted by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. Helpful financial numbers provided by the House of Commons Library show an increase in the figures over the past five years. Moreover, since the publication of the baseline figures of the last spending review settlement, increases have gone up by 110%, so, clearly, there are some significant challenges in this area.
As the wonderful figures in the Treasury’s supplementary estimates demonstrate, the Home Office has a wide range of responsibilities, including vital work around counter-terrorism activities, keeping our streets safe, supporting the police uplift programme, and the work around violence reduction units, which were announced by the Chancellor last week. A lot of the investment that has gone into tackling domestic violence against women and girls, and the lead that the Department has taken on modern day slavery, are critical. That is now business as usual and absolutely important.
The documents mention the responsibilities around issuing visas and passports, and the income and revenue that comes in from that to sustain the system. Then we have control of our borders, immigration and asylum matters. At the heart of these activities must be transparency. Ministers and budget holders must always put transparency and value for money at the forefront of their actions. My mantra was very well known in every Government Department in which I served: we must follow the money, people, activities and outcomes and be fiscally responsible.
As this debate has shown, thanks to the introductory remarks from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, we must have transparency. It is right that there is accountability and transparency around our key policy decisions, but having seen the figures in the supplementary estimates covering the Home Office, including more than £4 billion of additional funding for resourced staff, asylum support and resettlement and accommodation, a number of issues have been raised, which I know the Minister will seek to address in his response.
I will, if I may, mention something that has been touched on already, which is asylum accommodation. It is obvious that that is not working. Serious questions need to be asked of the Department in relation to ministerial directions and decisions over, at least, the past 14 months. Again, that goes to my point about public expenditure and transparency—and I will come on to Rwanda shortly. Many of the proposals link in with the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—I know that the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the Illegal Migration Act 2023 as it now is.
When I was in the Home Office, we developed the new plan for immigration, which provided a clear policy on not just asylum accommodation, but reform of the entire system. That enabled us to break down the ultimate cost and be quite transparent about that when planning for future accommodation needs. We were working to establish Greek-style reception centres and to increase detained sites. We wanted not even to use hotels, but to have Government-funded accommodation, which would have assisted the Government in processing claims quickly and promptly. Clearly, that is the crux of the matter, as the Chair of the Select Committee has pointed out, with processing claims going up by more than 100%. Serious questions need to be asked. Why, for example, was the digital level of processing asylum claims that would have taken place in these centres not forthcoming? Why did that information not materialise? That was only one aspect of what should have been the new plan for immigration. Implementing these serious measures would have led to financial transparency and, quite frankly, accountability around public spending.
It would also have had a deterrent effect on those trying to enter the UK through dangerous and illegal routes, reducing the pull factor by having accommodation that is about not just moving from one hotel to another, but processing claims in these centres and having cost-effective solutions. The development of the site at Linton-on-Ouse is one example. That site should have been up and running by October 2022 and would now be in use, supporting the efforts to tackle illegal migration by accommodating more than 1,500 people, addressing some of those wider issues that the Government at the time sought to address. There were, of course, start-up costs involved, but they are all now blended into the estimates, the supplementary estimates and the £4 billion of additional spending being retrospectively sought. As a result of abandoning the plans, the Home Office has, again, fallen behind where it should have been on establishing a robust network of detention sites, proper accommodation facilities, proper processing plans, and transparency and digitalisation, which would have led to fundamental reform of the asylum accommodation system.
Instead, this time last year, what did we have? The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee touched on the infamous barge, Bibby Stockholm, and its set-up costs. In my district of Braintree, we have RAF Wethersfield and all the established problems there, the additional start-up costs, and all the supplementary costs of dealing with problems that were not even anticipated at the outset. Some of those problems were ones that I had raised, such as ill health outbreaks, additional resourcing for policing, and costs that the local council has to pick up, including the county council. When those decisions were made, concerns were raised about the suitability of the locations. It is incredibly disappointing that Ministers at the time were incredibly tin-eared about all this, and not transparent on the funding or the decision making.
My local authorities had to work with me to get the information out of the Home Office. As the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee will know, none of the information was readily available to the Committee, which is simply not acceptable. I am conscious that my colleagues on the Front Bench are having to pick up a lot of this, because they were not Ministers in the Department at the time. It is incredibly unfair. The money in the supplementary estimates is retrospective, but there is an opportunity to be much more transparent, demonstrate that the Department has learned lessons from frankly the most appalling processes and the ministerial indifference in the Home Office over the past 12 months or so, and improve the situation.
That is incredibly important, particularly while we are still dealing with many issues at Wethersfield, which is supposed to reach a full capacity of about 1,700 people. Currently onsite we have around one third of that level, but we have a lot of issues, which again cost money. The Home Office will bear the brunt of that through the various local authorities that are having to deal with this—Braintree District Council and Essex County Council in particular. The issues include onsite medical facilities, access to primary care, mental health, reasonable accommodation, the cost of transport, and all the various associated costs. We now have an issue around class Q, the special development order that has been issued, and what that means for the long-term costs to the Department and for running the site. Again, nothing has been published, leaving my Braintree residents in the dark, along with Parliament, frankly, on the wider cost implications.
The costs associated with illegal migration are clearly staggering, as has been exposed. This may speak to the recent publication of a report by the former chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal. Other reports, which the Department not only commissioned but sought to publish, would have led to a much more robust approach around Border Force, agreements with France, and how the Home Office conducted its business. They could have led to some serious reform, good prudent fiscal management, and importantly, proper investment in technology at the border. I suspect that some of that was touched on by David Neal. Alexander Downer conducted a review of Border Force, and gave an excellent report. I do not know whether the Home Affairs Committee even saw it; it seems to have been buried. I know for a fact that it included some very serious and good recommendations, which would have led to fundamental reform at the border. I suspect that David Neal would have agreed with some of the measures.
The Department has been silent on this. I do not think that there has been any progress or implementation of any of the recommendations. Basic things such as better engagement with industry, developing better technologies and taking a more long-term strategic approach to border security are what was planned at the Home Office. It is somewhat unfair to demand that those on the Front Bench explain what happened, but the House should know, because at the end of the day those reports were commissioned to invest in a digital border and in long-term measures that would make our border much more secure and efficient, and to tackle issues such as illegal migration and documentation being disposed of when people entered our country, as well as all the wider challenges that the Minister is familiar with. That touched on the work with France and the funding we gave France, which since my departure has increased to more than £500 million. Again, the public should know and hear much more about the value for money and, more importantly, the outcomes, because those sums are unprecedented.
Also, how is increasing use of surveillance at the border being leveraged to go after the criminal gangs? What about more activity on patrol and in law enforcement along the French coast? I should add that the French coastline is very difficult, given how large it is and how difficult it is to police. I pay tribute to everyone who works in that area, but again, so far this year the number of Channel-crossing arrivals has passed more than 3,500, which is higher than at the same point last year. When half a billion pounds is being spent, it is important that the public and the House see a level of transparency with what is going on.
I will touch on the Rwanda partnership, which is important, and there will be a debate in the House on Monday, when the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill comes back before us. I say that the partnership is important, because I negotiated the original one, but I came to the House and at the outset set out the original costings of £120 million. It was a migration and economic development partnership. Clearly, the principle of the Rwanda partnership as it now stands has moved miles from the original. That is deeply concerning. There has been zero transparency. As the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, what on earth has gone on with the partnership over the past 12 months, other than more cash being funnelled into it and to the Government of Rwanda?
I will say something about the Government of Rwanda but, on the original partnership, which was world leading, other countries in Europe are still to this day—as I know from conversations that I am having—looking at the model and may follow it. Various European countries have taken an interest because of wider migration issues across Europe and because of destabilisation in the world. However, I add that there has been far too much criticism of the country and Government of Rwanda, and much of that has been ill-informed, misleading and inaccurate. The country has experienced significant economic growth, rising living standards this century—with 1 million more people lifted out of poverty in their country—and increasing life expectancy, so it is important that we do not malign Rwanda.
Rwanda joined the Commonwealth in 2009. It has worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to support more than 130,000 refugees. It is a country that is committed to playing a leadership role on the African continent and to make a contribution to tackling one of the biggest challenges that they and we face—I say “they” about those on the African continent—which is mass migration. I pay tribute to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Vincent Biruta, and to the High Commissioner in London, because they were outstanding in their engagement with our Government, including me and others. It is important that we make this partnership work.
I am sceptical, I have to say, about what we have read in the press this week—I think that is the best way to put it—on how the partnership will work. That brings me to the issue that has been touched on already: we have to be practical. The Home Office is an operational Department, and day-to-day operational costs are inevitably high. Given the voluntary returns, removals and reception centres—which we do not have now—and the cost of running detained facilities with the required support staff, it is right to negotiate the contracts properly and transparently. Everyone needs to have the right kind of scrutiny.
I say that because something might go wrong, not just with the contracts but when incidents happen—they have happened in the past. The Home Office might have legal action taken against it, such as on the handling of a voluntary return or removal of a migrant. The challenges are enormous, and the reputational—
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend recall that when it was announced that £500 million was being made available to the French for some form of processing centre, the European Union announced the very next day that it was not going to allow them to do it? Does that not send us a big message about the potential waste of money on quite a big scale?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend makes an important point and gives me the chance to expand on that from an operational perspective. That was over a year ago. It was considered a flagship announcement from the Government, but we have not seen that detention centre in France open up yet. Although I think it was due to open in 2025, the Government should report back on it. What has happened to the money? What processes are in place? Are there any updates on that partnership?
My hon. Friend mentions the EU—that would have been the Commission in particular. I have spent a lot of time with the Commission. It was important to have those discussions. Let us not forget that the EU Commission funded the reception centres in Greece, which have gone a long way towards deterring illegal migration to Greece and stopping the awful crossings that were taking place. I pay tribute to the former Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, who did an outstanding job. I worked with him on the replication of the Greek-style reception centres in the UK, because, as we showed in the new plan for immigration, we could follow the money, develop transparent operational plans and see their deterrence impact. That is critical.
My final point is about the legislation that this House has passed in the last two years in the asylum and illegal migration space: the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which was passed when I was Home Secretary. Ministers and everyone in Government know my view on this, but I want to put on record that it is really not good enough that the legislation that we have passed has not been implemented.
I will speak in particular to the Nationality and Borders Act. If we want to follow the money and drive outcomes, implementing the legislation is crucial. We left in the Department a fully costed operational plan for the implementation of the NABA, as it now is, which would have introduced the one-stop shop. That one-stop shop—the immigration courts and tribunals—would have gone a long way towards reducing costs and the time it takes to process cases. Here we are, 14 months on since the 2022 legislation was enacted, and that has not happened.
Ditto on the reception and accommodation centres. At the time, the costs were envisaged to be £120 million, including for start-up. Processing costs would then have come into it through digitalisation of asylum cases. It is inexcusable that the needle has not been moved on that. It is no longer acceptable for people to just discard such plans, as a result of the revolving door, and say, “Actually, we don’t need these; we can have newer plans.” All that does is kick the can down the road and increase Government expenditure. We are now in the unprecedented situation of the Home Secretary of the day retrospectively trying to get approval for more than £4 billion of public spending for asylum accommodation.
Whether on a partnership with Rwanda, cross-border work with the French authorities, implementation of provisions in our legislation, or delivery of accommodation centres, I can say that plans were in place—absolutely. We must get back on track. This debate should send out two messages—to the Home Office, yes, but also for future spending reviews. We have had this period of annual spending reviews, but we must go back to five-year SR periods, with proper fiscal transparency, led by the Treasury, and Ministers must be held to account on public expenditure. We must go back to the core principle of following money, people and outcomes.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I shall speak to the main motion. I listened to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), and I am not entirely sure that she made the case for reducing resources to the Home Office. I will agree with much, but try not to repeat much, of what the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said.
It has been a long labour of love to try to get relevant information out of Home Office officials. Anything approaching financial figures is always met with a degree of reluctance and opaqueness. Even the Home Affairs Committee—described only yesterday as “Westminster’s best committee” in a leading newspaper by a leading journalist—has been frustrated by the problems we have had when interrogating officials from the Home Office. I in no way direct that criticism at the Minister on the Front Bench and his colleagues, who have been something of a breath of fresh air.
Having been a member of the Committee for 10 years, I can say that our relations with officials and our ability to get information out of them have never been worse. That is a great shame, because we have an important job to do. We are the scrutinisers of the Home Office, not least because it does not have one in the form of a chief inspector of borders and immigration—this debate is on that area—after the recent unfortunate demise of the excellent David Neal, who has yet to be replaced. The Home Affairs Committee’s work is even more important at the moment to try to fill part of that vacuum as best we can.
This is an estimates day debate about figures, and it is a complex area. The whole budget figure that we are looking at is £23.6 billion for the Home Office in 2024-25. The largest increase of £3.9 billion is for asylum support and accommodation. That figure has risen by 733% over the past five years. Net legal migration hit a record 745,000 in the last year, but most of the spend in this area of the Department, and certainly most of the increased spend, is on illegal—or shall we call it irregular—immigration. Those are people arriving without prior permission who are subsequently able to stay, either because they are permitted to stay or because they can for all practical purposes not be deported for various reasons.
The Home Office accounts are split between four areas of spending: day-to-day spending, investment spending, resource day-to-day spend and capital. I want to strip that down into five main areas under irregular immigration headlines. First, there is the money we are spending largely in France on trying to prevent people from coming here in irregular ways in the first place. Secondly, there is the cost of processing irregular migrants when they arrive in our territorial waters and then on our shores, and then the cost of accommodation and policing secure accommodation or hotels, as well as the cost of delays and the backlog—or queues, as the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said we now have to call it. Thirdly, there is the cost of returning people when we can do so because agreements are in place. Fourthly, there is the cost of those we cannot return or those who do return to countries we could not otherwise return them to because they take a voluntary payment. That includes the cost of the Rwanda scheme.
At the heart of this, the vital question that the Opposition have failed to answer every time they have been challenged on it is: what do we do with people who have come here irregularly—be it through little boats and paying people smugglers, on lorries or through other means—and had their asylum claims firmly rejected, but who come from countries to which it is practically impossible to return them, such as Iran and Eritrea? The purpose of the Rwanda scheme and much of the irregular migration spend is to try to come up with a solution to that particular problem.
Fifthly—this is slightly related—there is the cost of the big net increases in legal migration to infrastructure and services in the UK. Much of the impact of that falls on other Departments. Added to all those areas is the question of who is overseeing whether that substantial investment is achieving what is intended, in the absence of a chief inspector of borders and immigration.
It is important to put in context the whole spend and the whole activity of the Home Office on migration. Too often, we hear, “What a waste of money on the Rwanda scheme.” Much of that is up-front costs, but it must be seen in the context of what we are spending on hotel accommodation in this country while those people who should not have come here are here, and while we cannot send them to their original country or a third country.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is making an important point. It is also imperative that we recognise that some of the spending is based on forecasts. We constantly hear from the Home Office its forecasts on expected irregular migrants, small boat arrivals and so on. A methodology can be applied to be much more transparent about the funding that is allocated and the deterrence measures that can be put in place, along with all the additional costs. The Home Office should be really transparent about all of that.
Tim Loughton
I am sure that my right hon. Friend is absolutely right that a methodology is being used and that the figures could be available, but the opaqueness that is applied to prevent the Home Affairs Committee and anyone else who wants to get to the bottom of the figures from seeing whether we are getting value for money, let alone cost-effectiveness, is really frustrating. The Home Office must have those calculations—I am sure she saw them in her time at the head of the Home Office—and they should be available to Parliament and those who scrutinise the Department’s activities.
Let me look at the first area, which is effectively the £480 million subsidy that we give to the French police force to police its beaches to try to stop these people getting to the boats in the first place. We know that the number of interceptions has gone up; the trouble is that, by and large, the police do not arrest those people, so they are free to try again the following night and so on with a new boat or dinghy from China, Turkey or one of the other sources.
We have seen all the fantastic kit that the French police have—the drones, the rigid inflatable boats and the dune buggies that the Home Affairs Committee has been on—but the trouble is that people are still getting through. We have this problem because of the absence of French co-operation in detaining and processing people in France to determine their status, as is done in Belgium, where we do not have the problem, as the Committee saw at first hand when we went there.
There is also the whole question of what the French are doing with that kit. There are stories that some of the night drone capability that we provided to them is being used in the south of the country, policing the Mediterranean rather than the channel, with the money having gone on microwaves and such things as well. Are we getting value for money from the £480 million that we are giving to the French police force?
Tim Loughton
If my right hon. Friend will allow me, I will continue. I know that other Members want to speak, and I have a few more points to make.
My second point is on the whole cost of processing. There are self-inflicted costs, because the Home Office took too long to increase the number of caseworkers to speed up processing time. It has now done that, but it needs to go still further. As of last September, the asylum backlog or queue was 165,411, which was up 11% on the previous year, but up 372% over five years. We have now seen a fourfold increase in the number of decisions.
The Home Affairs Committee was particularly concerned that last year 17,316 asylum seekers withdrew their asylum applications. The permanent secretary and his No. 2 at the Home Office were singularly incapable of telling us what had happened to those 17,316 people and why they withdrew their applications, and of assuring us that they were leaving the UK. It turned out that an awful lot of them had not left the UK, and the whereabouts of rather a lot of them—about a third—are unknown to the Home Office. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister what the backlog/queue is now, and what audit has been done on the cost effectiveness of recruiting additional caseworkers, how that feeds through to quicker processing times, how that has benefited us financially, and what the efficiencies are from faster processing.
We also need to know the breakdown of the cost of accommodation and assistance for asylum claims that are in limbo. The former Immigration Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), stated that the Home Office was spending £8.3 million a day, or about £140 per person per night, on hotel accommodation. That was last year, since when some hotels have been taken out of circulation. That is good progress, and hopefully the £8.3 million a day cost is reducing, but how much is spent on accommodating those awaiting initial decisions, especially in the last six months in which they have been waiting?
Secondly, how much is spent on accommodating those who have had their claims rejected but are going through additional appeals processes, or those whom we still cannot deport to their country of origin, although they have gone through appeals processes? Thirdly, how much are we spending on those whose claims have been accepted and have leave to remain, but for whom there is a shortage of long-term and appropriate accommodation to transfer them to? That is the problem we have with Afghan families who, airlifted from Kabul airport, are here legitimately. They are still staying in hotels after many years, largely because it is difficult to find larger houses to accommodate larger families. It is completely unsuitable to have children in hotels for years at a time, when they have to go to school and try to socialise with other children.
As of the end of last year, there were 111,132 individuals in receipt of asylum support. That was down 10% on the figure for September, the previous quarter, but still included about 45,500 people in hotel accommodation. Will the Minister tell us at what rate hotel accommodation is decreasing, and by how much costs are reducing?
I want to touch on the cost of those we can return. An article in the Financial Times earlier this week, in which I was quoted, raised concerns about the shortage of detention spaces. The problem is the growing number of people who have come here since the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and who have no status to be here. They are not in jail; presumably, they are on bail, and some might disappear into the ether. The Home Affairs Committee will visit Brook House next week. Many people have been there a long time because of continuous appeals. How much is that costing? What is the cost of the returns agreements with countries such as Albania? All those are costs on the immigration and asylum budget.
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. There is an important point to make about returns agreements and removing individuals. Costs aside, section 40 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 amended section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 to cover re-entry bans. I do not know whether the Government have implemented that, but unless it is enforced, it will lead to the very problems that he is alluding to: further costs, pressures on accommodation, and entire processes restarted all over again.
Tim Loughton
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are stories—they are not apocryphal; I have heard them on good authority—of people who, under an agreement, have been returned from the UK to Albania, accompanied by an officer. That officer has then returned to Heathrow or Gatwick airport, only to see the person they just returned to Albania in the queue ahead of them, coming back into the country. There are ways and means of getting back into the country. Enforcement is absolutely crucial; otherwise the system is a complete joke—and a very expensive joke. We are returning people on a temporary basis when it should be a permanent arrangement, until and unless they apply legitimately, and are accepted as having a reason to come to the UK legitimately.
All sorts of figures have been bandied around for the cost of the Rwanda scheme; the Home Office has disclosed only the £140 million to Rwanda in the first year of the deal. I absolutely accept that there are all sorts of start-up costs, so I am not troubled by the fact that we are paying money up front. The Rwandans have said that if the scheme does not take off, literally, they will return at least part, if not most, of the money, so there are some assurances there. However, even if the amount we are spending on the Rwanda scheme turns out to be, say, £500 million, given that it costs £8.3 million a day to house people in hotels, the cost of the scheme will be just two months-worth of hotels. There is an economic case for investing in the scheme, because the alternative is people staying in hotels at an expensive rate unless we can find cheaper accommodation for them, so it will not be long before the scheme has paid for itself. We must look at it holistically, in the round.
I have a few questions to leave in the lap of the Minister. First, there is the overall question of why we are accepting so many asylum claimants in the UK. France receives more applications, but rejects twice as many as we do. We must also take account of the fact that some of the returns figures have been slightly distorted. In its rush to clear some of the backlog, the Home Office has invariably gone for low-hanging fruit—some of the easier cases to accept, such as children and women—so the acceptance rates are artificially higher, as it has not dealt with the more problematic cases that are more likely to be rejected. In 2023, the number of people granted refugee status was the highest on record, at more than 62,000. Why is the threshold apparently so much lower in this country than in many other European countries, and what calculations has the Home Office made about the financial savings that would result if we toughened up that arrangement and raised the threshold, so that we rejected more claims in the future?
I asked what would happen to those who have been in limbo since the Illegal Migration Act 2023 came into force. Does the Minister think that we may have to issue some sort of amnesty, as we did previously, to enable people to qualify for assessment of their claims?
I welcome the changes to immigration rules that have been heralded by the Minister. Certain people coming here are dependants who do not need to come with the primary visa applicant, and are likely to be a cost, rather than a contributor, to the Exchequer. There are reasons for us to allow that in certain cases, but according to the 2021 census, the size of the population had risen by 7.4% since the previous census, and the volume of resources and infrastructure have not risen comparatively. Over those 10 years, the number of GP surgeries increased by only 4%, and the number of secondary schools by only 4.9%. The population is rising, and it is forecast that there will be 6.1 million more migrants by 2036. Working people aged between 20 and 64 who were born in the UK have a much higher rate of employment than people who have migrated to the UK.
I agree that immigration is good, but not all types of immigration are necessarily adding to the UK economy rather than drawing on it, so we need to be more discriminating in deciding whom we allow into the country. Genuine refugees fleeing danger certainly have a case for safe haven here, but when it comes to dependants who will not necessarily be contributing to the UK, we need to clamp down on that more, which indeed is what was announced today.
A large part of this policy is about addressing illegal, irregular migration. It is incumbent on anyone who disagrees with it to come up with their own solution to the problem of how we should deal with people who enter the country with no legitimate, credible case for claiming asylum and being granted safe haven, because that is where an awful lot of the money is going. It is absolutely right for us to be able to scrutinise that money properly, and it is absolutely right to expect the Government to give answers about whether it is being used effectively. However, I give credit to the Government for trying to come up with proper, sustainable solutions such as the Rwanda scheme to deal with all the costs of a very inefficient migration system that treats us unfairly, given that people with absolutely no credible case for safe haven from us are choosing to pay people smugglers to cross the channel in the most dangerous and inappropriate way. Frankly, those people are jumping the queue, and the biggest victims are genuine asylum seekers, to whom we have always had a good and generous tradition of giving safe haven. They are the ones who we absolutely need to focus on, and we are spending far too much money on people who are, frankly, gaming our system.