Migrant Crossings
Debate between Sajid Javid and Chris Philp(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
As I am sure the hon. Lady will know, we do a great deal. This Government, and successive previous Governments, have done much to help refugees across the world. We have the vulnerable children’s and the vulnerable persons resettlement schemes, and we will work actively with our European partners to reunite families, particularly children. One of my first acts as Home Secretary last summer was to ensure that a new right to stay would be established for unaccompanied refugee children brought into the UK from Calais, to make it easier for them to do that. We will continue to meet our obligations on family reunion under the Dublin regulation.
Just a couple of months ago, alongside Canada and unlike many other countries, we were the first to help the former White Helmets who were facing certain death under Assad in Syria. We took more than 25 of them, along with their families—nearly 100 people—and gave them our protection, because that is in accordance with our values and the kind of country that we are.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s decisive action. Under the European Union’s Dublin regulation, asylum seekers should claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach. I think Members on both sides of the House agree that we want to deter people from making this dangerous journey. Is not the best way of doing that to ensure that people who are intercepted in the English channel return to the French shoreline where they embarked? That would remove the incentive to attempt the crossing in the first place.
Sajid Javid
We are working closely with our French friends in disrupting more of the boats to prevent them from setting out in the first place. When they are detected in French waters, they are returned to France. We are also working with France—using our own detection systems, which reach out into French waters—to establish whether we can return more. However, the safest option is not just to return boats but to concentrate on the criminal gangs that are feeding on these vulnerable people, and to ensure that no one sets out on this journey in the first place.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sajid Javid and Chris Philp(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
When we leave the European Union, we will of course have control of all aspects of immigration policy. Does the Home Secretary agree that we can then prioritise higher-skilled immigration as a way of boosting our nation’s productivity?
Sajid Javid
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. That is exactly what we will do, and we will set out the approach in the White Paper in a few weeks.
Windrush
Debate between Sajid Javid and Chris Philp(6 years ago)
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Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Home Secretary to his post—I know the whole team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will greatly miss him—and also welcome the rapid action that has been taken to right the injustice that the Windrush generation have suffered. They are, of course, as British as any of us. When it comes to people here illegally, however, does he agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, who, when shadow Home Secretary, said we needed proper enforcement and proper action to combat illegal immigration?