Illegal Migration Update

Scott Benton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has made very strong representations on behalf of his community, and he and I met earlier in the year to discuss that further. When we are in a position to close hotels, it will be ones like his—small hotels in market towns that take away very important community assets—that will be top of the list.

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Ind)]

Reducing the asylum backlog is important, but we absolutely must not fall into the trap of having a de facto amnesty to try to achieve that. In the past year we approved the claims of 73% of applicants, including many from undisputed safe countries, while France approved just 25%. Why are we approving nearly three times the proportion of claims approved by France, given that this is clearly one of the pull factors that draws people across the channel?

[Robert Jenrick]

That is a very important question. We have not done an amnesty—that is what the last Labour Government did when they had a backlog of asylum decisions. We have chosen to do good, old-fashioned management reforms to make this service more productive and deliver for the taxpayer. We have also taken on this issue in respect both of countries with high grant rates, such as Afghanistan, and of those with low grant rates, such as Albania, and we have rapidly got through those cases. There are a number of nationalities—Egypt, Turkey, India—where grant rates should be very low indeed because there are very few circumstances in which somebody should be successfully claiming asylum in this country. We want to ensure that our asylum grant rates are no higher than those of comparable European countries.