Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Suella Braverman and Kate Osamor

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

1. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure an adequate standard of accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)]

The asylum accommodation support contracts ensure the provision of safe, habitable, fit-for-purpose and correctly equipped accommodation for destitute asylum seekers. The contracts also require compliance with the law, local authority licensing and best practice guidance. We have been working with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to minimise the potential impact on homelessness, and have agreed an asylum placement funding for local authorities.

[Kate Osamor]

We hear the Government talking about £6 million per day being wasted on hotels, but we do not hear about the billions being forked out on private companies such as Serco and Clearsprings Ready Homes, both of which have seen scores of complaints, including about unsanitary conditions, a lack of safeguarding, and sexual abuse. Does the Home Secretary think that it is appropriate to entrust those companies with taxpayers’ money to run asylum accommodation in hotels and former Ministry of Defence sites?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Suella Braverman and Kate Osamor

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What steps she is taking to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the (a) Serious Fraud Office and (b) Crown Prosecution Service in tackling fraud and economic crime.

[The Attorney General (Suella Braverman)]

Economic crime is highly complex. In the year ending September 2021, the CPS prosecuted 7,609 defendants where fraud and forgery were the principal offence, with a conviction rate of 84.9%. As for the SFO, it performed strongly last year: in 2021, it secured three deferred prosecution agreements, including one with Amec Foster Wheeler Energy Limited involving a financial settlement of £103 million. Furthermore, it successfully prosecuted GPT Special Project Management and Petrofac, resulting in just over £100 million in financial penalties.

[Kate Osamor]

Between 2013 and 2019, the Serious Fraud Office secured convictions against five corporations out of 43 investigations. We can literally count the number of successful prosecutions on one hand. Does the Attorney General regard that as an acceptable recent track record for the Serious Fraud Office? If not, how does she plan to change it?

[The Attorney General]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. Just yesterday I met the director of the Serious Fraud Office; I am glad that this year looks like a very active year. The SFO is taking seven trials involving 20 defendants to court in 2022, and will be pursuing those convicted to ensure that funds from criminal conduct are confiscated and victims are rightly compensated. The estimated value of fraud across all seven trials this year is more than £540 million in a number of jurisdictions. That is a great amount of work, and something we should all be getting behind.