(1 year, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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I could not agree more strongly with my hon. Friend. There is a naivety to the Labour party’s position. If Labour Members think that they can solve the problem just by granting people asylum quicker, doing a few more arrests and trying to reinvent the Dublin convention, which even European leaders have moved on from, they do not know what we are dealing with. Just the other day, the shadow Immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), supported a proposal to loan Ukraine the small boats that we have seized to help its citizens deal with the recent floods. Does he have any idea what these boats are like? They are the most unseaworthy craft that I have ever seen, produced by the most evil and ruthless people smugglers and human traffickers. That suggests that Labour Members do not understand the problem. If we are to beat the people smugglers, we need to take robust measures, and that is what we are doing.
The Minister is claiming that, without the Bill, the cost of the current system will rise to £11 billion—by the way, that figure is not in the impact assessment. Will he confirm that his calculation is based on the idea that per-person accommodation costs will keep rising at the same pace as they have over the last few years as a result of his Department’s failure to get a grip both on the asylum system backlog and, as I have said before, on the rip-off merchants who are scamming the Home Office for billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on dodgy contracts?
I will always hold the providers to account for the quality of the service they provide for the taxpayer. I take that very seriously, as I have said to the hon. Lady in the past, but I am afraid that, like the shadow Home Secretary, she is missing the point. The more illegal migrants who come to the country, the greater the cost to the taxpayer. If we want to tackle the problem, we need to break the business model of the people smugglers. Tinkering around at the edges and trying to manage the system better, which seems to be the Labour party’s approach, will never work.
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Lady’s argument is not borne out by any available evidence. There is no material difference in unemployment and economic activity between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The reports produced by the Migration Advisory Committee raise a number of questions for the Scottish Government about the policies that they could implement to make Scotland a more attractive destination for migrants and, indeed, workers from elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
There are now 172,758 people in the growing asylum backlog. I have met asylum seekers in my constituency who have been housed for well over a year in overcrowded hotel rooms, many of them with small children who have nowhere to play. Will the Government finally admit that their illegal Illegal Migration Bill will make the backlog, and those people’s traumatic wait, worse rather than better?
The hon. Lady is entirely wrong about that. The Illegal Migration Bill creates a fast and simple scheme whereby those who come here illegally, in small boats or otherwise, will have their claims processed not in months or years but in days or weeks, and will either be returned home to a safe country such as Albania or sent to a safe third country such as Rwanda. That will break the business model of the people smugglers by infusing the system with deterrence, and will bring about a substantial reduction in the numbers entering the country in this manner.
(1 year, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI can assure the hon. Lady that our intention is that there will be no diminution in accommodation standards, whether for asylum seekers or anybody else, but it is critical that we get those people out of hotels, saving the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds per year, and house them in the most appropriate forms of accommodation.
(1 year, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI would be pleased to meet my hon. Friend and her colleagues. Again, I am acutely aware of the pressures that face Kent and the local authorities there. This policy will not only reduce the dependence on hotels but ensure that significantly increased funding is made available to local authorities such as my hon. Friend’s to alleviate some of the burdens they face.
The Minister knows that while asylum seekers are living in often very difficult conditions in the hotels, a large proportion of taxpayers’ funding is not even going to the hotels or the food providers but is haemorrhaging out into the pockets of a network of often dodgy contractors and subcontractors. What is he doing to address this mismanagement of Government funds?
I now meet very regularly with exactly those firms, our Home Office providers. The hon. Lady can be assured—in fact, I think I have said this to her privately—that I have been very clear with those companies that they have a job to do and we need them to find suitable accommodation, but the accommodation must be of good quality, must meet our contractual terms, and there must be value for money. They have been left in absolutely no doubt about my views and if the hon. Lady or any other Member of this House has concerns or criticisms, they should bring them to me and I will ensure that they are heard.
(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am sorry to disappoint the hon. Lady with her pre-prepared question, but as she will have heard in my answer a few moments ago, the Department was fully informed of my attendance at the event. I discussed with my officials that the applicant had raised the matter. I advised the applicant that I was not able to discuss it, so I think I have answered her question comprehensively.