Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation

Suzanne Webb Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

As I have already said, we have a very effective resettlement scheme, which takes people directly from conflict zones. The resettlement schemes that we have run over the past five years have principally focused, for obvious reasons, on Syria. A total of 25,000 people have come in via those schemes over five years. The Dubs scheme focuses on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Europe. If we have to prioritise our scarce resources, we should prioritise people, including children, who are in dangerous places such as Syria, not people who are in Italy, who are already in a safe European country. Furthermore, in terms of UASCs in Europe, this country had more UASC applications last year than any other European country. The figure was about 3,800 applications, which means that we are doing our bit for UASCs in Europe, but it is right that we prioritise people in dangerous places, not people in countries such as Italy when it comes to direct resettlement.

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I welcome the immediate steps this Government have taken to overhaul our broken asylum system. What steps is my hon. Friend taking in the longer term to fix the system once and for all?

[Chris Philp]

My hon. Friend is right: the measures in this set of rules are only a first step. The asylum and immigration system has far more systematic and fundamental problems that cause it, unfortunately, to be abused on many occasions. We need to have fundamental legislative change and, as I said in oral questions just a few days ago, we intend to legislate in the first half of next year to make sure that the legal system is tightened up, so that it cannot be abused and we have a system that is fair to those who need protection, but firm on those trying to abuse it.