Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

3rd reading
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

May I first add my tributes to Tony Lloyd? He did such wonderful work in policing, as well as in this place.

What a farce. Today and yesterday have been more days of Tory chaos and carnage. We have a Prime Minister with no grip, while the British taxpayer is continually forced to pay the price. Former Tory Cabinet Ministers and deputy chairs from all sides have been queueing up to tell us it is a bad Bill. They say it will not work, it will not protect our borders, it will not comply with international law and it is fatally flawed. The only thing that the Tories all seem to agree on is that the scheme is failing and the law will not solve it. The Prime Minister is failing, too, and they know it.

We have a failing Rwanda scheme that is costing Britain £400 million, that sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Kigali and that will only apply to less than 1% of those arriving in the UK. This is the third Tory law on channel crossings in two years. It will get through tonight, just like the previous two Bills did—even though they failed. Just like the last two, it is a total con on the British people. This chaos leaves the Prime Minister’s authority in tatters. He is in office but not in power. No one agrees with him on his policy, and the real weakness is that he does not even agree with it himself. The Prime Minister is so weak that he has lost control of the asylum system, lost control of our borders and lost any control of the Tory party.

Sixty Tory MPs have voted against the Government, two deputy chairs were sacked, a Home Secretary and Immigration Minister have formerly been lost, and Cabinet Ministers have been briefing openly that they do not support the Bill. The Home Secretary himself thinks it is “batshit”, the Prime Minister tried to cancel it and yet is so weak that they are still going ahead.

Under the Tories, we have seen border security weakened while criminal gangs take hold, because they have not taken the action that we need. The backlogs soar; the budget bust. Criminal smuggler convictions have dropped by 30%, and returns have halved. That is instead of the practical plans that Labour set out to set up the new returns and enforcement unit to stop the Home Office from just losing thousands of people that it cannot keep track of, to stop the halving of the returns unit, to set up the new security powers to go after the criminal gangs and stop the 30% drop in criminal gang smuggler convictions, and to have the additional cross-border police unit that we could be investing in if we were not spending so much money on this failing Rwanda scheme.

Four hundred million pounds of taxpayers’ money is going to Rwanda, all without a single person being sent. That is all in addition to the Government’s whopping multibillion-pound hotel bill. Of course, if they get flights off, it will probably cost another £10 million to £20 million for every 100 people they actually manage to send. President Kagame made an astonishing intervention this afternoon. He said that he is happy for the scheme to be scrapped and may be offering to refund the money. Think what we could do with £400 million—that is more than a third of the budget of the National Crime Agency.

The Kigali Government have clarified the position this afternoon—and it is even worse. They said:

“Under the terms of the agreement, Rwanda has no obligation to return any of the funds paid…if no migrants come to Rwanda under the scheme, and the UK government wishes to request a refund of the portion of the funding allocated to support…we will consider this request.

Unbelievable. The Government signed a deal and a whole series of cheques to send hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money to Rwanda for a scheme that they were warned would not work, might be unlawful, would not work as a deterrent, would be unenforceable and would be at high risk of fraud. They signed it because they do not give a damn about taxpayers’ money. Now they want to pass the Bill and spend even more taxpayers’ money on this failing scheme.

The scheme is likely to cover less than 1% of the people who arrived in the country last year. More than 90,000 people applied for asylum, and the Court of Appeal said that Rwanda had capacity for only 100 people. The Immigration Minister admitted that it is just a few hundred, and not any time soon. If the Government ever finally implement the Illegal Migration Act 2023, that will immediately create a list of 35,000 people the Home Secretary is supposed to send immediately to Rwanda. At this rate, it will take the Government 100 years to implement their own failing policy.

To be honest, it is probably even worse than that, because they cannot even find most of the 5,000 people they put on the initial Rwanda list. It is totally unbelievable: in the space of about 18 months, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have literally lost 4,200 people they planned to send to Rwanda. I bet the Prime Minister wishes he could lose a few of those Home Secretaries he managed to send.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

The Prime Minister did also lose his Immigration Minister as part of the chaos of the last few weeks and months—I give way to the former Immigration Minister.

[Robert Jenrick]

If the shadow Home Secretary does not like the Rwanda policy, why did she brief The Times over the Christmas holidays that she was in favour of an offshore processing scheme, which everyone knows is more expensive than a scheme like Rwanda and has far less deterrent effect? It seems that everything she does not like is her plan, except she did not have the guts to put her name to it, so she briefed The Times anonymously.

[Yvette Cooper]

Nice try with total nonsense from the former Immigration Minister, who has a history of making things up. It is not clear that there is anything on the planet more expensive per person than the Government’s Rwanda scheme: £400 million to send nobody to Rwanda and to totally fail. I give the former Immigration Minister credit for exposing the Government and the Prime Minister’s real plan—in his words, to try and get a few “symbolic flights” off before a general election, with a small number of people on them.

Not to worry about handing over a small fortune to another country, or the fact that all this focus on one small, failing scheme means that the Government are failing to go after the gangs. They have lost thousands of people the Home Office should be tracking. Not to worry that this new law is so badly drawn up that, frankly, the Government may be ordered by the courts to bring people back, at further huge cost to the British taxpayer, turning the whole thing into an even bigger farce.

This is not a workable policy; it is a massive, costly con. The Government are trying to con voters and con their own party, but everyone can see through it. A £400 million Rwanda scheme for a few hundred people is like the emperor’s new clothes. The Prime Minister and his Immigration Ministers have been desperately spinning the invisible thread, but we can all see through it. The Home Secretary is wandering naked around this Chamber, waving a little treaty as a fig leaf to hide his modesty behind. I admit, he does not have much modesty to hide.

There are things that the Home Secretary and I agree on. We agree on working with France. We agree on the deal with Albania. We agree on the importance of stopping dangerous boat crossings that are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. I think he probably agrees with us about the failings of the policy he is trying to defend today. We need stronger border security and a properly controlled and managed asylum system so that the UK does its bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, and those who have no right to be here are returned. We need Labour’s plan for the new security powers, the new cross-border police, the new security agreement, the new returns and enforcement unit, the clearing of the backlog, the ending of hotel use, and keeping track of the thousands of people the Home Secretary has lost.

The Government will get their law through tonight—the third new law in two years; the third Home Secretary to visit Rwanda with a cheque book; the third bilateral agreement with Rwanda. Tory Back Benchers have been saying that it should be three strikes and you’re out. We are now on three, six, nine strikes, and they have not even got to first base, because every time they bring forward a new law, it makes things worse. The first new law failed because its main provisions are now suspended. The second new law failed with the main provisions not even implemented.

Forgive us for not believing a word the Government say, and for voting against a third failing Bill today. The only difference now is that none of their Back Benchers believes them, either. Broken promises on clearing the backlog, on ending hotel use, on stopping the boats and on returning people who come. It is chaos—failing on smuggler gangs, failing on returns and failing to get a grip. Britain deserves better than this Tory asylum chaos.

Net Migration Figures

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on the publication of net migration figures.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The most recent published data from the Office for National Statistics estimated that net migration in the year to June 2023 was at 672,000. That places untold pressure on housing supply and public services and makes successful integration virtually impossible. As the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have repeatedly made clear, it is far too high. The Government remain committed to reducing levels of legal migration, in line with the manifesto commitment on which every single Conservative MP stood in 2019 and the express wish of the British public as articulated at every single general election in the last 30 years.

Earlier this year, we took action to tackle an unforeseen and substantial rise in the number of students bringing dependants into the UK to roughly 150,000. That means that, beginning with courses starting in January, students on taught postgraduate courses will no longer have the ability to bring dependants; only students on designated postgraduate research programmes will be able to bring dependants. That will have a tangible effect on net migration.

It is crystal clear that we need to reduce the numbers significantly by bringing forward further measures to control and reduce the number of people coming here, and separately to stop the abuse and exploitation of our visa system by companies and individuals. So far this year, we have initiated a significant number of investigations into sectors such as care companies suspected of breaching immigration rules. We are actively working across Government on further substantive measures and will announce details to the House as soon as possible.

[Yvette Cooper]

Where is the Home Secretary, and what on earth is going on? The media were briefed that he was going to make a statement on net migration yesterday or today, but we have had nothing, and he is nowhere. The Immigration Minister has been everywhere, madly briefing all his ideas, but who speaks for the Government?

Net migration figures are now three times their level at the 2019 general election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce them. That includes a 65% increase in work migration this year, which reflects a complete failure by the Conservatives on both the economy and immigration. The Immigration Minister is complaining today—he will be furious when he discovers who has been in charge of the immigration system for the last 13 years.

Net migration should come down. Immigration is important for Britain and always will be, but the system needs to be properly controlled and managed so that it is fair, effective and properly linked to the economy. Net migration for work has trebled since 2019 because of the Government’s failure on skills and training, their failure to tackle record levels of long-term sickness and people on waiting lists, and their failure to make the system work. Social care visas have gone from 3,000 a year to more than 100,000 a year, yet this spring Ministers halved the programme for recruiting care workers here. Health visas are up, yet Ministers cut training places last autumn. Visas for engineers are up while engineering apprenticeship completions in the UK have halved.

Will the Government immediately agree to Labour’s plan to get rid of the unfair wage discount that means employers can pay overseas recruits 20% less than the going rate, and which prevents training and fair pay in the UK? Will the Government immediately ask the Migration Advisory Committee to review salary thresholds for skilled workers in shortage occupations, which have not kept up, and where the MAC has warned repeatedly about low-paid exploitation? Will the Minister link the points-based system to training and employment standards in the UK and have a proper plan for the economy and the immigration system?

The Government have no serious plan; they are just ramping up the rhetoric. They have no plan for the economy, no plan for the immigration system and no plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this.

[Robert Jenrick]

I listened to the right hon. Lady for five minutes or so and detected absolutely no trace of a plan from her—

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister is being pressed on the nature of accommodation or detention that children and young people will be held in. The spirit behind the Minister’s intention matters. Therefore, will he tell us if is it true that he gave orders to the asylum reception centre to paint over children’s cartoons? If so, why? Nobody believes that Mickey Mouse cartoons encourage or deter boats from arriving; they simply think that the Minister is not showing common decency towards vulnerable children.

[Robert Jenrick]

I have been clear in answer to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that we provide very high quality care at all the centres in which we support unaccompanied children. We did not think that the set-up in that particular unit was age-appropriate, because the majority of the individuals who passed through it unaccompanied last year were teenagers. That does not change the fundamentals that we support with decency and compassion anyone who comes to this country.

The right hon. Lady is missing the point: this Bill seeks to reduce the number of unaccompanied minors coming to the United Kingdom, precisely because we want to protect them and ensure that they are not victims of people smugglers and human traffickers. I take at face value her support for those individuals, but if she wanted to reduce that trade, she would support the Bill or come forward with a credible alternative. She has not done so. Her compassion is, to a degree, performative, because she does not come forward with alternatives that would genuinely support individuals.

Let me move on to modern slavery. The provisions in the Bill relating to that have been of particular concern to my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead and for Chingford and Woodford Green. I welcome the opportunity in recent days to discuss with them the Lords amendments on this issue. It remains our view that there are clear opportunities to misuse modern slavery protections, and it is therefore essential that we take steps in the Bill to prevent misuse. The national referral mechanism rate for people arriving in the UK on small boats and being detained for return has risen from 6% for detentions ending in 2019 to 73% in 2021. The referral rate has since fallen slightly to 65% for detentions ending between January and September. The 33% increase in NRM referrals from 2021 to 2022 has put the NRM under serious strain, which is only getting worse as the trends increase in one direction. There is significant and increasing pressure on public services, which is why we want to take action.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the publication of the impact assessment on the Illegal Migration Bill.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The Illegal Migration Bill is critical to stopping the boats. Its intent is clear: if someone comes to the UK illegally, they should be detained and swiftly returned to their home country if safe, or relocated to a safe third country such as Rwanda. The impact assessment published yesterday makes clear that inaction is simply not an option. The volumes and costs associated with illegal migration have risen exponentially, driven by small boat arrivals. Unless we act decisively to stop the boats, the cost to the taxpayer and the damage to society will continue to grow.

The asylum system currently costs £3.6 billion a year and £6 million a day in hotel accommodation, but that is not the true cost of doing nothing. As this impact assessment shows, the cost of accommodating illegal migrants has increased dramatically since 2020. If these trends continued, the Home Office would be spending over £11 billion a year, or £32 million a day, on asylum support by the end of 2026. In such a scenario, the Bill would only need to deliver a 2% deterrence in arrivals to enable cost savings.

The figure of £11 billion is an extraordinary amount of money—nearly 10 times the amount of money the taxpayer spent on the asylum system as recently as 2021—and anyone opposing this Bill needs to explain how they would pay those costs. Given the Labour party’s opposition to this Bill, it represents another £11 billion black hole in its fiscal plans.

The impact assessment suggests that passing this Bill could directly save the UK taxpayer over £100,000 for every illegal migrant deterred from making a small boat crossing. It also finds that the Bill could lead to a much wider set of benefits—including reducing pressures on local authorities, public services and the housing market—that could not be monetised, meaning that the savings will in fact be much greater.

The British public are clear that they want to stop the boats. That is why we must keep using every tool at our disposal to do just that and to secure our borders, and why this Bill must become law.

[Yvette Cooper]

I was going to ask if the Immigration Minister had seriously signed off this garbage of an impact assessment, which no self-respecting Minister could possibly think was serious, but actually the nonsense he has just said is even worse and even less coherent. This is not an impact assessment. According to the Government’s own guidance, it is supposed to include the

“costs, benefits and risks...and a consideration of a range of options.”

However, we have something that does not even include some of the most basic options to assess, such as speeding up the asylum system and making savings that way. Instead, it says that this impact assessment

“does not attempt to estimate any costs of implementing the Bill…or estimate the volumes of individuals that will be impacted by the Bill.”

Really, what is the point of it, given that the document itself admits that people “may not be deterred” by any of this, and it cannot answer the most basic questions? I have never seen anything more clueless and chaotic.

The impact assessment does provide evidence of the scale of Conservative failure. The cost for one person in the asylum system for just one night has gone up fivefold in four years. That is just the cost of Tory mismanagement. It has gone up faster than mortgages or energy bills, and it has even gone up faster than the price of cheese. It is all Tory Home Office mismanagement. It shows the shocking fact that people are now staying in the asylum system for four years, and there is no alternative to try to speed up the system or to look at that.

The Government do say that it will cost £169,000 per person to pay another country to take asylum decisions for us. So far, the Government have sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda, but how many people are they actually budgeting for? The Prime Minister says he wants to send everyone, so can the Minister tell us where the billions of pounds it would cost to send everyone to Rwanda this year will come from, and if not, can he tell us how many he is really budgeting for and what in fact is going to happen to everyone else instead?

The impact assessment says it costs £7,000 per person to keep someone in detention for 40 days. That is more than double the current average cost of keeping people elsewhere in the asylum system, so where are the hundreds of millions of pounds for the detention plan going to come from, and where are these detention facilities going to come from? The Minister has not attempted to cost speeding up the system and he has not attempted to cost what we really think will happen, which is that tens of thousands more people will be in indefinite detention or indefinite asylum accommodation. The Treasury bailed out the Home Office by £2.4 billion last year. How much is it going to be this year?

The Government have crashed the economy, and now they have crashed the asylum system too. We have an impact assessment that shows the Home Office does not have a clue and the Treasury does not have a grip, and the Prime Minister who claims to be Mr Fix-It is instead Mr Muck-It-Up. The country deserves better than this.

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Lady misses the point entirely. The impact assessment bears out the cost of the current broken system and makes it clear that there is no option but to completely overhaul our asylum system and make it fit for the decades ahead. The reality, as those of us on the Government Benches see it, is straightforward: if people continue to cross in small boats, the cost to the taxpayer in one form or another will continue to increase and that is a completely unacceptable outcome—but it is the one that can be expected with Labour’s recklessly naive approach to border security.

When the right hon. Lady said that this document was “garbage” and “clueless”, I thought she was referring to her own five-point plan to tackle illegal migration, because we cannot grant our way out of the problem, we cannot simply arrest our way out of this and do nothing to dismember and dismantle the business model of the gangs. We cannot provide a safe and legal route to every single person eligible for refugee status or every economic migrant who views this country as a better place, and we certainly cannot reheat the tired old policies like the Dublin convention that she looks back on through her rose-tinted spectacles. Even members of the European Union have moved on from that, but not the Labour party. She cannot even bring herself to call these unnecessary and dangerous journeys what they are under British law: illegal.

The truth is that Labour’s do-nothing approach to stopping the boats is the fastest route to more crossings, greater taxpayer spending and more pressure on our communities. Left unchecked, the cost will spiral to £11 billion by 2026. That is the cost of a Labour Home Secretary; that is the cost of Cooper. Only the Conservative party will truly tackle the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. We are determined to secure our borders and stop the boats, and the British public can rely on us to do so.

Net Migration Figures

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on net migration figures.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

Net migration to the United Kingdom is far too high. That was already clear from the previous set of official data. The Office for National Statistics has today amended its previous published estimate of net migration for the year ending June 2022 to 606,000. The statistics published today indicate that net migration has flatlined since then. In the year ending December 2022, it estimates that net migration remained at 606,000. These particularly high figures are in large part due to temporary and exceptional factors, such as the UK’s Ukraine and Hong Kong British nationals overseas schemes. Last year, more than 200,000 Ukrainians and 150,000 Hong Kong British nationals overseas made use of the routes to life or time in the United Kingdom. Those schemes command broad support from the British public, and we were right to introduce them.

The Government remain committed to reducing overall net migration to sustainable levels. That is a solemn promise that we made to the British public in our manifesto, and we are unwavering in our determination to deliver it. This week, we announced steps to tackle the substantial rise in the number of student dependants coming to the UK. The package of measures will ensure that we can reduce migration while continuing to benefit from the skills and resources our economy needs, because universities should be in the education business, not the immigration business. We expect this package to have a tangible impact on net migration. Taken together with the easing of temporary factors, such as our exceptional humanitarian offers, we expect net migration to fall to pre-pandemic levels in the medium term.

The public rightly expect us to control our borders, whether that is stopping the boats and addressing illegal migration or ensuring that levels of legal migration do not place undue pressure on public services, housing supply or integration. The Government are taking decisive action on both counts. Under the points-based system that we introduced post Brexit, we can control immigration, we must control immigration, and we will.

[Yvette Cooper]

Today’s extraordinary figures, including the doubling of the number of work visas since the pandemic, show that the Conservatives have no plan and no grip on immigration. They show the chaos in this Government. Work visas are up 119% since before the pandemic. The Conservatives have totally failed to tackle endemic skills shortages and get people back to work. Net migration is more than twice the level that Ministers were aiming for and considerably more than the Home Secretary’s claimed aims. The asylum backlog is at a record high—the opposite of the Prime Minister’s promise to clear the backlog this year. Less than 1% of last year’s small boat arrivals have had a decision. Where is the Home Secretary, who is in charge of these policies? She has gone to ground. There are reports that she is not even going to do media. She has not come to this House. She is in internal meetings—presumably, more private courses arranged by civil servants. What is the point of her?

Net migration should come down and we would expect it to do so, but the continued gap between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality is very damaging. Rightly, the UK has given support to Ukraine and to Hongkongers. Rightly, we welcome international students who bring substantial benefits, but changes on family are sensible. International recruitment will always be important so that we get the skills and talent we need, but we have a major increase in employers turning to overseas recruitment, and the Government have no plan to increase training or to properly tackle those skills shortages here at home.

On health and social care, one of the biggest areas, why will the Minister not agree to Labour’s plan to increase the training for nurses and doctors in the UK, paid for by getting rid of the non-doms exemption? Will he ditch the unfair 20% wage discount that means that shortage occupations can undercut and pay below the going rate, making it even harder to get the training, skills and fair recruitment we need? Everyone should be paid the going rate.

There has been no action at all to address the huge backlog in the asylum system and to make sure that claims are properly processed. Immigration is important to this country, and we need a system that works, but it has to be properly controlled and managed, rather than the chaos that the Government have created.

[Robert Jenrick]

The Labour party feigns interest in cutting net migration, but I can assure the right hon. Lady that nobody is buying it. Last week, the chair of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), said that under Labour net migration would go up in the short term. The leader of the Labour party stood on a campaign pledge to defend freedom of movement if the UK remained outside the EU. He has said that there is a

“racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.

Does the shadow Home Secretary agree with that?

At every possible opportunity, Labour Members have voted against every measure this Government have brought forward to control migration. They voted against ending free movement and, at every turn, they voted against measures to tackle illegal migration. Just recently, they voted against the Illegal Migration Bill. The truth is that the Labour party has no interest in controlled and orderly migration. The Conservative party is taking tangible steps to bring down net migration. Yesterday, we took a decisive step to clamp down on student dependants, because universities should be selling education, not immigration. Belatedly, the shadow Home Secretary says she agrees with that. The Conservative party made a solemn promise to the British public to reduce net migration. Thanks to Brexit, we now have the tools at our disposal to do that. We can and we must deliver.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Let me make some progress.

I am also acutely concerned that we balance that with the very real safeguarding risks posed by young adults pretending to be children. This is not a theoretical issue; it is one that we see every day unfortunately. Today, a very large number of young adults do pose as children. In fact, even with our current method of age assessment, around 50% of those people who are assessed are ultimately determined to be adults. We have seen some very serious and concerning incidents in recent months. There are few more so than that raised in this House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) when one of his constituents, Thomas Roberts, was murdered by an individual who had entered the UK posing as a minor and, during his time in the UK, had been in education, in the loving care of foster parents and in other settings in which he was in close proximity to genuine children.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister has raised the awful case of Thomas Roberts. I have asked him repeatedly why it was not known that the murderer was wanted for murder in Serbia and why it was also not known that he had already been turned down for asylum in another European country. Why did the authorities and Border Force not know that information?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said in answer to an Adjournment debate on this issue, I have commissioned a review of all of the circumstances surrounding that most serious case so that we can understand the multiple failures that may have happened while that individual has been in the United Kingdom and what lessons we need to learn. Separate to that, I have taken further steps to enhance the security checks that are conducted when individuals arrive at the Western Jet Foil and at Manston, aided by the change in the law that I made earlier in the year so that we have, in extremis, up to 96 hours in which to hold individuals in that setting while we conduct those security checks. I am working closely with the security services, police and the National Crime Agency in that regard. If there are other things that we need to do, we will do them, and if there are other databases that we should be arguing for access to we will certainly do so, because it is critical that we secure our borders in this regard.

Illegal Migration Update

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Today’s statement is an admission of failure—perhaps that is why the Home Secretary has asked the Immigration Minister to make it instead. Four years ago, the Cabinet said that they would halve channel crossings; they have gone up twentyfold since then. A year ago, they said they would end hotel use; they have opened more than ever. They keep making new announcements, but it just keeps getting worse. People want to see strong border security, and properly managed asylum and refugee systems, so that the UK does its bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, alongside other countries, but we have got neither of those at the moment.

There is no point in the Government blaming everyone else, because they are in charge. The asylum system is broken because they broke it; they have let criminal gangs rip along the channel; people smuggler convictions have halved in the past four years, even though more boats and more gangs have been crossing—and yet Tory MPs yesterday voted against Labour’s plan for cross-border police units to go after the gangs; and they have let asylum decision making collapse—we have had a big increase in staff, but 40% fewer cases being decided. So they have failed to take basic decisions and they are still not doing Labour’s plan to fast-track last year’s arrivals from Albania and other safe countries.

As for today’s announcements, we need to end costly and inappropriate hotel use, but these plans do not do that. The Minister has had to admit that, contrary to all the briefing in the papers this morning, they will not end hotel use—instead, these sites are additional. Ministers should have been finding cheaper sites and properly managing costs years ago.

Today’s damning report from the Government’s own independent watchdog, which strangely the Minister did not mention today, says that there has been no cost control; that the Home Office contracts are highly inefficient; that there is no cross-Government transparency and oversight; and that officials did not have financial information on the contracts they were signing and did not compare costs. Most ludicrously of all, it says that

“different parts of the Home Office operating different schemes…at times, found themselves competing for the same hotel contracts, driving prices up.”

This is totally chaotic.

Basically, the Government have written a whole load of cheques in a panic. If they had put that money into clearing the backlog instead, we would not be in this mess now. They should have been working with councils to do that, but they did not. Yesterday, Tory MPs again voted against Labour’s plans for a legal requirement for councils to be consulted. Instead, the Minister has Conservative councils, backed by Conservative MPs, taking action against him. So can he confirm that the Foreign Secretary is backing legal action against the Home Secretary? Frankly, that is a first, even for this chaotic Government.

The Bill makes things worse. There are no returns agreements with France or Europe. The Prime Minister has just said that the Home Secretary was wrong: the Rwanda flights will not start this summer. The Government have nowhere to send people to and, instead of speeding up asylum decisions, they are just going to cancel them, which means more people in asylum accommodation and hotels and more flimflam headlines that just do not stack up. Today, it was barges and it turns out that there are not any. Desperate to distract everyone from the damage that they might want to do to the Dambusters heritage, they instead start talking about ferries and barges. Three years ago, they said the same thing. Last summer, the Prime Minister said that it would be cruise liners. The Home Office civil servant said that ferries would end up costing more than the hotels on which they are already spending so much money. So, instead, the Immigration Minister has been sent around the country with a copy of “Waterways Weekly”, trying to find barges, and he still has not found any.

Can the Minister tell us: are these sites going to be additional and not instead of hotel use? Will he still be using more hotels, or fewer for asylum seekers in six months’ time? On the 45,000 boat arrivals last year, can he confirm that more than 90% of decisions have not been taken because the backlog is still the Government’s failure?

Will the Minister apologise for the Government’s failure on cost control? They failed to support Labour’s plan to go after the gangs, to get a new agreement with France and to fast-track decisions and returns. They are flailing around in a panic, chasing headlines—barges, oil rigs, Rwanda flights, even wave machines—instead of doing the hard graft. They have lost control of our border security, lost control of the asylum system, lost control of their budget and lost control of themselves. Will he answer my questions and will he get a grip?

[Robert Jenrick]

Is it not abundantly clear that Labour does not have the faintest clue how to tackle this issue? It has absolutely no plan. What we have laid out today is three months of intense work, which is seeing the backlog coming down; productivity rising; more sustainable forms of accommodation; a harder approach to make it difficult to live and work in the UK illegally; illegal working raids and visits rising by 50%; and greater control over the channel—all improvements as a result of the 10-point plan that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary set out.

The right hon. Lady looks back to a mythical time when Labour was last in office— when the Home Office, according to their own Home Secretary, was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Labour calls for more safe and legal routes, even though we are second only to Sweden in Europe for resettlement schemes. It calls for more money for law enforcement, even though we have doubled the funding of the National Crime Agency, and our people are out there upstream tackling organised immigration criminals every day of the week.

Is it not extraordinary that the Home Secretary—[Interruption]—the shadow Home Secretary cannot bring herself to condemn those illegal immigrants who are breaking into our country in flagrant breach of our laws? That is weak. The truth is that the Labour party is too weak to take the kind of tough decisions that we are taking today. In its weakness, it would make the United Kingdom a magnet: there would be open doors, an open cheque book and open season for abuse. The British public know that the Conservative party understands their legitimate concerns. We do not sneer at people for wanting basic border controls. We are taking the tough decisions. We will stop the boats. We will secure the borders.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. Those are damning words that we have heard from the Board of Deputies and many other organisations on the impact this legislation will have.

At the heart of the Bill, there is a con. The Prime Minister has pledged that anyone who arrives in the UK without the right papers will be detained and swiftly removed, “no ifs, no buts”. But where to? Not to France, because the Prime Minister failed to get a returns agreement, and he has failed with other countries as well. The Bill makes it harder to get returns agreements, because it undermines compliance with the international laws and standards that those other countries are committed to upholding—standards that we used to be committed to upholding.

People will not be removed to Rwanda either; the Home Secretary has admitted already that that scheme is failing. The taxpayer has already written a £140 million cheque. The Home Office says it is unenforceable, with a high risk of fraud and no evidence of a deterrent effect. The Israel-Rwanda deal increased trafficking, rather than reducing it. At most, the Rwandan authorities say that they may take a couple of hundred people, but 45,000 people arrived last year.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

indicated dissent.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Immigration Minister shakes his head, but he said in a statement in December in this House that the initial promise was to receive 200 people and the further preparations had not been made.

Knowsley Incident

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The scenes outside the Suites Hotel in Knowsley 10 days ago—violence, intimidation and a police van smashed up and set on fire—were appalling and shameful, and all of us should support Merseyside police in its response to keep people safe. It comes just a few months after the appalling terrorist attack at Dover, when someone who had been engaging with far-right and extremist groups online attempted to use a petrol bomb on a centre. In the last year, the number of so-called migrant hunts organised by far-right groups has doubled, and there has been an increase in far-right groups organising protests and intimidation and attempting to increase and inflame community tensions.

All of us have a responsibility to take this issue seriously, and there is an important debate about asylum accommodation and asylum policy. We have disagreements, and we have criticised the Home Office for the collapse in decision making on asylum, which has led to an increase in delays and in the backlog. People should not be spending a long time in hotels—they should not be put in hotels in the first place—and we should be targeting the criminal gangs, seeking new agreements with France to prevent dangerous boat crossings, and ensuring that the UK does its bit to help those who have fled persecution. We can have that debate, but we all—Government and Opposition—have a responsibility to do so calmly, with common sense, and in a way that does not inflame tensions or divide communities. The Minister will regret the fact that some of the Home Secretary’s language has appeared on some of the placards. On all sides, we need to have a calm debate.

Let me ask the Minister some specific questions. What is being done to co-ordinate the monitoring of far-right activity around asylum accommodation? What is being done about the hateful extremism that has grown and that can radicalise people into violence? The former commissioner for countering extremism has said that the Government have actually reversed some of their action on this. Will he now revisit the downgrading of the response to far-right extremism as part of the Prevent strategy? Serious concerns have been raised about the links between some far-right extremist groups and people who have been exploiting these issues, as well as some links between them and National Action, which has been proscribed because it was so serious.

Does the Minister agree that, nationally, the responsibility is on all of us to be calm and to promote community cohesion and a sensible response to all the challenges we face, rather than divide and inflame tensions that the police and local communities then have to deal with?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her closing remarks. It is absolutely incumbent on all of us to treat this in a respectful and serious manner, and ensure that we do nothing to inflame tensions within our communities. I hope she will appreciate that that is the way in which I have always conducted myself in this role.

The Home Secretary has condemned unequivocally the violence we saw in Knowsley, and that is absolutely right, because there is never any excuse for violence, intimidation or attacks on the police. That does not mean that we should not seek to understand the level of public frustration that lies behind wider concerns about our asylum and immigration system. To understand is not to condone, and there are those who treat those frustrations as a phenomenon to be managed, rather than as a warning to be heeded. We in Government take the approach that this is a serious concern for the British public, and that is why we need to take all appropriate steps to stop the illegal channel crossings as quickly as possible.

On the right hon. Lady’s specific questions, we are co-ordinating with police colleagues to ensure that all police forces have the correct and up-to-date advice on how they can support asylum accommodation and manage protests should they happen in the future. The National Police Co-ordination Centre is assisting us in monitoring the activities of relevant groups, including on social media, and we will take such steps as are required if there is content that constitutes a criminal offence. We have also worked with our asylum accommodation providers to ensure that they put in place enhanced security where appropriate, and have the best possible advice from the police as to how they can protect the people working in the hotels and other centres, and, of course, the residents.

With respect to the right hon. Lady’s question about the review of Prevent conducted by William Shawcross, the findings of that report were not that there were no far-right activities in this country, but that we must follow the facts and take a balanced view as to where to deploy our resources. That is exactly what we will do: we will tackle Islamist extremism with all the robustness it deserves, but we will also address far-right activity, including by the groups concerned in this protest.

Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State, Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The report from Sussex police is that one in four unaccompanied children in a Home Office hotel have gone missing—one in four—and that around half of them are still missing. It would appear from the figures the Minister has given that that means one hotel accounts for 40% of the missing children.

A whistleblower is reported as saying:

“Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers”.

Greater Manchester police warned that asylum hotels and children’s homes are being targeted by organised criminals. There is a pattern here. The gangs know where to come to get the children—often, likely because they trafficked them here in the first place. There is a criminal network involved and the Government are completely failing to stop it. They are letting gangs run amok. Last year, there was only one—just one—conviction for child trafficking, even though it is now believed to involve potentially thousands of British children, as well as the children targeted here.

Where is the single co-ordinated unit involving the National Crime Agency, the Border Force, the south-east regional organised crime unit and local police forces to hit the gang networks operating around this hotel and across the channel? Why are the Government still refusing to boost the National Crime Agency? Why have they repeatedly ignored the warnings about this hotel and unregulated accommodation for 16 and 17-year-olds being targeted by criminal gangs?

It is unbelievable that there is still no clarity on whether the Home Office or the council is legally responsible for these children. Will the Home Office now agree to immediately end the contract with this hotel and move the children out to safer accommodation? Will it set up a proper inquiry and team to pursue the links between organised crime, trafficking and the children in these hotels? This is a total dereliction of duty that is putting children at risk. We need urgent and serious action to crack down on these gangs, and to keep children and young people safe.

[Robert Jenrick]

I gave the figures the Home Office has at the start of this urgent question. Of the 4,600 unaccompanied children who have been accommodated in hotels since July 2021, 440 have gone missing at one point and 200 remain missing, so I am afraid the statistics the right hon. Lady quotes are not those that I have been given by the Home Office.

On press reports that individuals have been abducted outside the hotel, those are very serious allegations. I specifically asked the officials who run the hotel whether they have seen evidence of that, and I also asked the senior leadership of Brighton and Hove Council. I have not been presented with evidence that that has happened, but I will continue to make inquiries. Senior officials from my Department are meeting the Mitie security team in the coming days to ask them whether they have seen any occurrences, whether the individual quoted in the press as a whistleblower raised issues with Mitie, and, if they did, why those issues were not subsequently passed on to the Home Office. The right hon. Lady has my assurance that I will not let the matter drop. I am also going to meet a number of staff who work at the site in the coming days to take their opinions and reflections.

On the broader point the right hon. Lady makes about our policy, she is incorrect when she says the NCA is insufficiently financed. The Prime Minister announced at the end of last year that we would step up NCA funding. In fact, I visited the NCA just last week to be briefed on the work it is doing upstream throughout Europe and into Turkey, Iraq and a number of other countries. There is very significant activity happening to tackle the evil people-smuggling gangs.

The problem the right hon. Lady has is that she does not support any of the measures the Government bring forward to stop the trade. She votes against every Bill we bring forward to try to address this challenge. There is nothing compassionate about allowing unsecure borders and allowing growing numbers of people, including young people, to cross the channel. She will have an opportunity to put her money where mouth is when we bring forward further legislation in the weeks ahead.

Manston Update

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for your words about the difficulty of responding to a statement with just 10 minutes’ notice.

I thank the Minister for the information he has given us, but why is the Home Secretary not here? This is supposed to be her top priority. In the past few weeks we have had two urgent questions, a debate and this statement on the chaos, and she has not done any of them. I have to ask: what is she for? She obviously does not have a grip, and she has made this chaos worse.

The Government have failed to stop the proliferation of criminal gangs in the channel, are still refusing to adopt Labour’s proposal for a new National Crime Agency unit to target the gangs, and have failed to sort out the chaos in asylum decision making. They are taking only half as many as they were six years ago, even though they have more staff. Just 2% of last year’s small boats cases have been decided, creating a backlog of nearly 100,000 people waiting more than six months for a decision, compared with just 4,000 when they took office. All of this has led to a completely inappropriate use of hotels, at the last minute, with no proper information for local councils or public health officials.

Then, of course, there is the chaotic handling of the situation at Manston. The Minister has just said that there are 50 diphtheria cases. Can he confirm that that compares with just three cases last year? Can he tell us when Ministers were first told of diphtheria cases at Manston? When were they warned? By mid-October, the Home Office admitted publicly that there were cases at Manston, but Home Office officials told the Home Affairs Committee on 26 October that they had sufficient health arrangements in place to address diphtheria. Clearly they did not.

The Government still kept thousands of people in overcrowded conditions, described by one person as “huddled around fan heaters, thousands of people in overcrowded conditions trying to stay warm.” These conditions clearly make it easy for infectious diseases to spread. The processes described by the Minister are important, but why on earth were they not put in place many weeks ago? It took until 11 November, after thousands of people had been held there for weeks, for diphtheria screening and vaccinations to be recommended for everyone passing through Manston. What on earth were they doing in the meantime?

Even then, on that same day, the Home Office was moving people who had been in Manston into hotels across the country, without even telling councils or public health officials. In one case, the council was specifically told that people were not transfers from Manston even though they were. In other cases, councils were told nothing at all, and there was no information for public health officials about whether people needed further diphtheria screening and vaccinations; this included leaving people to seek treatment for themselves for diphtheria symptoms at local accident and emergency departments.

The Health Secretary has said that 500 people have now been screened and vaccinated, but what about the other several thousand people who have been in Manston? Wherever they now are in the country, have they been screened or vaccinated for diphtheria as well? If not, why on earth not, because that was the public health recommendation nearly three weeks ago and that was already late? Have all those with possible symptoms now been given precautionary antibiotics? Again, if not, why not? We are told that diphtheria is an easy infection to treat and to vaccinate against, which is why we have a universal vaccination policy in the UK. But that needs proper information for health officials to be able to use and the Home Office to get a grip.

Clearly, the Government have ignored health advice and legal advice. The Business Secretary said publicly that when he was a Home Office Minister he was advised that he had to act as he was breaking the law. The permanent secretary has now said that the Home Secretary was given the same legal advice, so why did she not act, either on the legal advice or on the health advice?

I am sure that the Immigration Minister is working really hard to try to sort this out. The problem is that everyone else is struggling to clear up the Home Secretary’s chaos and she is not even here. It is chaotic. This issue is too important not to have a grip in place, and if the Home Secretary is too frit to attend this House and take responsibility for her decisions, she should get out the way and let someone else do the job.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for those questions. She asked how long we have been aware of diphtheria cases. When I addressed the House for the first time, on 1 November, I reported that there had been four cases. I am able now to say that that has increased to 50 cases, and I will continue to update the House as this issue develops.

The right hon. Lady asked whether Ministers have followed the advice of the UK Health Security Agency throughout. To the best of my knowledge, they have. We have always sought and followed the advice of Dame Jenny Harries and her colleagues. In fact, the measures I have announced today go beyond the UKHSA’s baseline advice, because we want to take a precautionary approach. For that reason, we will be ensuring that further individuals who have any symptoms are not transported around the country; they will either remain at Manston or go to specialist accommodation. That accommodation is readily available, because we made good use of it during the height of the covid pandemic and we will be making sure it is brought into use in the coming days.

The right hon. Lady asked about screening arrangements. Those have been in place for some time. All individuals arriving at Western Jet Foil are screened. That is, by necessity, a relatively simple screening, because on occasion thousands of illegal migrants arrive in the course of a single day, but screening is followed up at Manston and we have asked the UKHSA to advise us on whether further measures are required to ensure that that screening is more sophisticated. Dame Jenny and her colleagues will advise on that.

We have had the vaccination programme in operation for a number of weeks. It is a voluntary programme; we do not compel migrants to take it up. It began at a relatively low level of acceptance—about 45%—but that is now increasing; as I said, I am pleased to say that we have reached 100% for those who came over the weekend. We will do everything we can to maintain it at or around that level, because that clearly is a very important line of defence.

For those individuals who have already left Manston and have flowed into asylum accommodation elsewhere in the country, we and the UKHSA are now going to work closely with local directors of public health to ensure that they have the right guidance to protect those individuals. Those local public health directors will work with local NHS partners to ensure that the individuals have treatment under the NHS and that they isolate in their rooms within those hotels or other forms of accommodation. The outsourced partners will ensure that the people have food and laundry brought to the door, so that there is no reason whatsoever that they should leave their room until they are well again and can re-enter broader society.

If there are further measures that we need to take, we will do so. Dame Jenny and her colleagues are meeting directors of public health this week, as they have been doing repeatedly in recent months, to hear their concerns and ensure that these procedures are progressively improved as required.

Migration

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on migration.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The continued rise of dangerous channel crossings is completely unacceptable. This phenomenon is not only a clear abuse of our immigration laws and deeply unfair on the British people, but puts the lives of those who attempt these journeys in grave danger. This Government are determined to put the people smugglers out of business and to make this route unviable.

This week, my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary met her counterpart, Minister Darmanin, to agree a new multi-year strategic and operational plan with France. That will be supported by UK investment of up to €72 million in 2022-23. It includes a 40% uplift, with UK-funded officers patrolling the French coast over the coming months, improved security at ports, cutting-edge surveillance technology, drones, detection dog teams and CCTV, to help detect and prevent those crossings. For the first time, reciprocal teams of embedded officers will be deployed on the ground in control rooms, to increase joint understanding of this issue. This renewed partnership will enable us to build on our joint partnership with France, which so far has seen good progress, with more than 30,000 illegal crossings prevented since the start of the year, hundreds of arrests made and 21 organised crime gangs dismantled.

Beyond our ever closer collaboration with France, we will also work closely with other international partners, including further upstream, to help address issues closer to their source. The UK will be joining near neighbours and other countries, to agree collective action to tackle illegal migration. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is today discussing those issues at the G7 Interior Ministers meeting in Germany.

These are issues of the utmost seriousness, and they have been discussed at prime ministerial level. We are taking action to deter those intent on exploiting the UK’s generosity, by implementing the Nationality and Borders Act 2002, pursuing migration partnerships with safe countries such as Rwanda, cracking down on those here illegally, and expediting returns agreements. There should be no doubt whatsoever about the Government’s determination to grip this problem and deliver the strong and secure borders that the British people desperately want and deserve.

[Yvette Cooper]

Twenty-seven lives were lost in the channel a year ago, and a criminal gang profited from sending people to their deaths. Will the Minister tell the House whether anyone has been prosecuted or convicted for that awful event? We have long called for a stronger agreement with France to stop these dangerous boat crossings. That is why it is important that there is scrutiny on this issue. Additional beach patrols are welcome, and intelligence sharing is vital—it is unfathomable that it was not happening already.

The level of convictions is pitiful: just four a month, on average. The Minister said that 21 gangs had been dismantled, but on Monday the Home Secretary said that it was 55. Which is it?

Journalists report 100 gang members operating in one small corner of Calais alone. The scale of response to the criminal gangs is tiny compared with the scale of the challenge, and the Government are simply not doing enough. This multimillion-pound criminal industry is putting lives at risk. The Minister referred to a joint intelligence cell. How many national crime agencies are currently involved in that, how many are deployed in Europe, and what will that number increase by? We need to know.

This agreement does not include anything on safe returns or safe family reunion. The number of children safely reuniting with family has plummeted since the end of the Dublin agreement, and charities warn that they are trying to go by boat instead. Asylum returns have plummeted from 1,000 people returned to the EU in 2010 to a tiny handful today. Of the 16,000 referred to the third country unit, just 21 returned. Did Ministers even try to get an agreement on returns and family reunion, and if not, why not? What is the Minister’s timescale for getting a grip on the total collapse in Home Office decisions on asylum, and at what point will they double so that we get a faster pace? The way the Home Office is handling local authorities has been disgraceful, with many of them not being told what is happening.

Finally, what is the £140 million from the Rwanda agreement actually being spent on? Too often, the Home Office talks about things but is not delivering—this is too important.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased that the right hon. Lady welcomes our agreement with France. She is right to raise the anniversary of the tragic and abhorrent deaths that occurred in the channel one year ago. I am pleased that a concerted effort with partners across Europe has led to arrests and the disruption of gangs, and to the capture and destruction of boats, directly as a result of that. The good work that our intelligence services did with respect to that incident is now being rolled out with respect to other criminal gangs right across Europe.

The agreement that we have reached with France will enable our world-class intelligence services to be directly in the room with their French counterparts, ensuring that the intelligence they are gathering, which is rich—I observed it myself on visiting the clandestine command in Dover—can now be passed on in real time to their French counterparts, ensuring that more crossings are stopped, more arrests are made and more criminal gangs are disrupted. That will make a positive impact in the months to come.

I politely point out to the right hon. Lady that she is becoming like a broken record on immigration. She opposes everything helpful that the Government have done and suggests nothing useful. She voted against the Nationality and Borders Act that created deterrents for people crossing the channel. She voted against measures that would have increased sentences for people smugglers. She would scrap our world-leading migration partnership with Rwanda. She voted against our plans to remove dangerous foreign national offenders. One of the key policy platforms on which her leader, the Leader of the Opposition, stood for the leadership of the Labour party was to close down our immigration removal centres—the very centres where we house people like foreign national offenders, murderers and rapists as we are trying to get them out of the country.

The truth is that Labour is the party of uncontrolled migration and the party of mass migration. We understand the instincts of the British people, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and I will do everything to ensure that their will is implemented and we secure our borders.

Cross-Channel Migrants: Manston Facility

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Immigration Minister and congratulate him on his appointment, and I thank the Cahir of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), for securing this urgent question.

The Government’s handling of the dangerous channel crossings has been disastrous. There has been a huge proliferation of criminal gangs operating in the channel and a failure to put the requisite policing and cross-border co-operation in place. We have seen a big increase in dangerous boat crossings, putting thousands of lives at risk, which everyone should be working to stop. And there has been a collapse in asylum decision making, with 14,000 decisions a year compared with 28,000 initial decisions just six years ago.

Reports say it is now taking, on average, 480 days to make an initial decision, which plays into the hands of people traffickers and people smugglers. We have also had reports of hundreds of children going missing, soaring backlogs, huge hotel bills and security and fingerprinting failures, as well as the devastating reports of what is happening at Manston, including the chief inspector saying Manston is dangerous and describing an Afghan family who have been in a marquee for 32 days. This follows damning independent reports on the Government’s handling of this, including their rhetorical and expensive gimmicks that do not actually solve the problem.

The Minister’s response sounded complacent, so can he confirm that the Home Secretary was previously given options to ease the situation at Manston and refused to act? Will he now accept that these expensive gimmick policies, such as spending £140 million on a Rwanda policy that is unworkable and unethical, and that the Home Secretary herself has said is failing, is the wrong approach and that he should instead put that money into boosting the National Crime Agency and tackling the criminal gangs? And when will the backlog be cleared? This is too important for the kind of chaos we have had for the last few years.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for welcoming me to my position and for her questions. I do not detect any plan from the Labour party for how it would tackle this issue. We intend to bear down on illegal immigration and ensure that those who come to the UK illegally on small boats are processed as swiftly as possible and, if their asylum claims are rejected, removed from the United Kingdom. That is what we need to do to have a robust but fair immigration system.

Of course any individual who comes to the UK must be treated compassionately and humanely while they are under our care, which is why I will be making inquiries and visiting Manston to ensure the site is operating appropriately. The backlog is a serious concern, which is why we now have 1,000 members of the Home Office team working on these cases, and I want to ensure it is done as swiftly as possible.

We will also ensure that Border Force continues to robustly police the channel, to ensure we deter people from making the dangerous crossing. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, the new Prime Minister and I are particularly concerned to ensure that we take the opportunity of his premiership to build a productive and constructive relationship with our friends in France to see whether there are further measures we can take together to bear down on the issue.

In particular, we will see how we can tackle the growing issue of Albanians coming to the United Kingdom, which is a priority for the Home Secretary. Up to a quarter of people making the crossing to the UK this year, and at times 80% of them, come from Albania, which is a safe country. Those individuals have crossed through multiple safe countries to come to the UK, which is not acceptable. We need to ensure that we deter these individuals as swiftly as possible.

Antisemitic Attacks

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The Community Security Trust has an absolutely essential role in supporting Jewish institutions such as schools, nurseries and places of worship—frankly, places that should not need to have security. As the father of Jewish children, it shocks me every time I take my children to synagogue or to their nursery to see individuals in stab-proof vests guarding the entrance to those places. That should not have to happen in this country, but it does happen today, and we will continue to support the Community Security Trust, giving it all the funding it needs to protect Jewish communities.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The whole House will stand in solidarity with Jewish people across the country in the face of vile antisemitism, misogynistic hate speech, violence and incitement. No one should be in any doubt that attempting to blame Jewish communities for the actions of the Israeli Government is appalling antisemitism and is wrong. The Secretary of State will know that the kinds of incident we saw over the weekend are also being fuelled by online antisemitism and extremism, and he will have seen the recent CST report on Google and antisemitic imagery. What more is he doing to tackle this awful online antisemitism?

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Lady raises an extremely important point. The Home Secretary and the Culture Secretary are working closely on this issue. They are in contact with the providers to ensure that antisemitic and other hate speech is taken down quickly and that action is taken against the perpetrators. Of course, this is an issue that we will return to and debate when considering the online harms Bill, which I hope will play a role. My Department is also funding organisations that are taking action to put a counter-narrative on social media, to educate people about the harm that is caused by antisemitism and to ensure that people of all backgrounds—particularly young people—understand that some of the memes and graphics that are being circulated as we speak are deeply antisemitic and deeply offensive to communities and are fuelling the kind of hatred that boiled on to the streets over the weekend.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Yvette Cooper

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. and learned Friend and constituency neighbour tempts me to go into areas that I should not, but the Chancellor has said that we will be prepared and that we have fiscal room available—that was what he stated in the Budget, as certified by the Office for Budget Responsibility. My right hon. and learned Friend appears to be making the case for prudent preparations in case of a no-deal scenario, which is all that clause 89 seeks to achieve.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

We are leaving the European Union. We wish to do so with a deal. The House will vote on the deal next week, but we must and will prepare for all scenarios.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

I give way to the right hon. Lady because, of course, amendment 7 is hers.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Minister confirm that he will still be able to use clause 89 powers if he either gives the House a chance to vote on no deal or, alternatively, takes the opportunity to apply for an extension of article 50?

[Robert Jenrick]

Clause 89 would give the Government the ability to provide certainty to taxpayers now. That is what we want to ensure. We do not want to inhibit the ability of HMRC and the Government to provide that critical certainty. Who would want to do that? Who would want to diminish certainty for taxpayers at this time? The right hon. Lady listed a number of businesses. Those businesses want certainty, and by supporting her amendment, we would diminish that certainty and our preparedness—admittedly only modestly—for a no-deal scenario.

We will not be deterred from making sensible preparations—the public expect us to do so—and using the Finance Bill to prevent or frustrate preparation for any eventuality is unwise and irresponsible. I therefore urge the House to reject all the amendments and new clauses tabled against clauses 89 and 90 so that we give our constituents and taxpayers across the country the degree of certainty they deserve.