Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Shabana Mahmood and Chris Murray

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

15. What steps her Department is taking to close asylum hotels.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Shabana Mahmood)]

I recognise the huge pressure that asylum hotels have placed on communities. This Government are committed to exiting asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament. We have already halved the number of hotels in use since the peak under the Conservative party, but I would like to go faster. That is why I am exploring the use of large sites, including military sites.

[Chris Murray]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Home Secretary for that response. The Home Affairs Committee report on asylum accommodation shows that private companies have made millions from the taxpayer, while communities and asylum seekers have suffered. What is the Home Secretary doing to address the appalling profiteering that the Tories allowed, and the disastrous asylum contracts, and will she trigger the break clause next year?

[Shabana Mahmood]

So far, the amount that has been recouped by this Government is £74 million, of which £46 million is excess profit and the remainder is service charges or service credit and VAT. We are rapidly reviewing the contracts that we inherited, including the break clause, to ensure that they are providing value for money for taxpayers. I will keep the matter under review and update the House in due course.

Asylum Policy

Debate between Shabana Mahmood and Chris Murray

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I disagree with the hon. Lady—there is no reason to believe that. The people who come into this country on small boats constitute about 40% of all asylum claims. About the same number of people come through a legal route—a visit visa, a work visa or a study visa—and then apply for asylum when that visa comes to an end. I hope that she will recognise that it is important that we stop that abuse of the asylum system, so that we can retain public confidence in the legal migration system that I think we can all agree this country needs.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Over the past few years, three times as many people have come to this country from Ukraine and Hong Kong, fleeing war or persecution, as have come in small boats, and there has been no public outcry about that. The lesson is that the British people are compassionate and generous to refugees when the system is controlled, fair, and gripped by the Government. Over the 15 years that I spent working on asylum issues before being elected, I saw the dysfunction that this Government have inherited. There is nothing progressive about ducking asylum reform and allowing public support for refugees to drain away. How will these reforms address the manifest unfairness in the asylum system, and rebuild public support for the system, and for immigration overall?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. This country is an open, tolerant and generous place, but there are conditions for that openness, tolerance and generosity—there must be order and control in the system. When people can see that a system is not working, and that rules are being abused and not enforced, they rightly feel angry. It is important that this Government deal with those problems, so that we can have public consent, not just for a new system that works better, but for the safe and legal routes that I know my hon. Friend and others in this House want. The two principles that underpin all the reforms that I am announcing today are fairness and contribution. Those are quintessential Labour values, but they are also quintessential British values.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Shabana Mahmood and Chris Murray

Monday 15th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I think the hon. Member has just admitted to having a hotline to a bunch of people smugglers. Perhaps he would like to contact the National Crime Agency and tell it that he is in touch with a bunch of criminals, so that they can be appropriately dealt with. All he and his party have is a bunch of rhetoric and no answers to the problems that the previous Government left behind. It is this Government who will clean up the mess and secure our borders.

[Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)]

Illegal immigration is, by definition, an international crime. That is why it is so important that we work with our allies, such as France, in targeting this issue, which affects our communities. I welcome the Government’s “one in, one out” deal with France, which has the potential to be the most game-changing step in British migration policy in decades. Can the Minister give us an update on how the “one in, one out” deal is going, and has she spoken to her counterparts in France in her new role?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that international co-operation is the key to us securing our borders here at home and assisting our international partners to do the same with theirs. I am already in touch with my French counterparts. That was a landmark agreement, which the Conservatives tried to achieve for many years, but they were all words and no action. It is this Government who struck that landmark deal, and we are working with our partners in France to get the first flights off the ground as soon as possible.