Borders and Asylum

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Many of those disruptions are exactly about pursuing gangs, and there are more than 40 high-profile and high-value disruptions that the National Crime Agency itself has said are having a significant impact on degrading, undermining and stopping the criminal gangs. Some of the arrests that have been co-ordinated with France and Germany are also preventing criminal gang activity by, for instance, taking out the leaders of some of those gangs.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Is it any wonder that an Opposition Member described the shadow Home Secretary’s asylum policy as “silly”, given that it was a Conservative Government who failed to process claims, filled up hotels, left people in limbo and broke the bank in the process, just as they broke the bank when it came to everything that they touched? Opening asylum hotels did not happen on our watch, and we want to shut them. We want to save the public purse significant sums of money, and we want to get the system right. Will the Home Secretary tell the people of Bournemouth East, whom I represent, how she is speeding up the process of closing asylum hotels in Bournemouth and in Britain?