Home Office Removal Targets

John Bercow Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am keen to accommodate a few more colleagues, but there is huge pressure on time and therefore all inquiries, without exception, need to be brief, and the responses characteristically so from the Home Secretary.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I commend the Home Secretary for her response to the Windrush scandal but press her on the separate issue of illegal immigration? Press reports this week show that 27,000 illegal immigrants have been arrested by 28 forces in the past four years. Why is it being left to the police to arrest illegal immigrants? Why are they not being stopped at the border?

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the strong difference between legal and illegal migration. If Opposition Members looked back at their own former Home Secretaries, they would find some very strong language and some clear targets on removing illegals from this country.

[Mr Speaker]

Single-sentence inquiries without semicolons or subordinate clauses, please.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I will do my best to delight, Mr Speaker. Many highland families have faced deportation or have been deported because of the highly technical rules, or even because of rule changes during compliance. Does the Secretary of State agree that this aggressive targeting is ripping the heart out of highland communities?

[Amber Rudd]

I have resolved to put in place a more personal system for when applicants go to UKVI, and I think and hope that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will, in due course, notice a difference.

[Mr Speaker]

Brevity personified, Anna Soubry.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

It is not fair, Mr Speaker. You set me up to fail and I always do. This is a serious issue. Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of Labour’s dreadful legacy was an obsession with targets? As an excellent new broom, will she assure us that she will search in every nook and cranny, and ensure that immigrants, migrants, are seen as people and not numbers?

[Amber Rudd]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend’s approach, and I do not want us to be run by a target culture. I want to ensure that the individual is put at the heart of every decision.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Richard Burden, who in my experience is also brevity personified.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, I will do my best. Is not the problem that a culture of tunnel-vision suspicion has been encouraged in the Home Office? Only last week in my constituency, that culture led officials to attempt to remove a man who had come to this country legally on a multi-entry visa, to be with his wife who had just been through a difficult pregnancy and termination. He had booked a return ticket to Jamaica, but officials said that he had “undermined his position” because he said that he wanted to spend as much time with his wife as he was legally able to do. Is not there something wrong with that kind of mindset?