Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No one wants to see this conflict go on for a moment longer than necessary. We do want to see an immediate and sustained humanitarian pause to get more aid in and, crucially, the hostages out, helping to create the conditions for a sustainable ceasefire. I have set out the conditions for that in the House. The Foreign Secretary is in the region today, and we will continue to press all our allies and partners to make sure that we can bring about that outcome.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Q10. Access to NHS dentistry is a key issue in Ipswich and Suffolk. Locally, we have done something about it, and the University of Suffolk and the local NHS deserve great credit for establishing a new dental centre that will carry out 18,000 hours a year of NHS dental appointments. However, a source of great frustration for me and a number of constituents is that many people who train to be a dentist at university for five years and have their training heavily subsidised can immediately go private or go abroad without giving anything back to the NHS. That seems wrong to me. Will the Prime Minister support the view of many of my constituents that those dentists should work in the NHS for, say, five years and give something back? That would make a huge contribution to addressing the problem.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is a long-standing campaigner for better dental access in his constituency. I congratulate him on the new dental centre that is opening, which I know he worked hard to deliver. I agree that it is right and fair that we seek better value for the significant investment that the taxpayer makes in the education and training of the dental workforce. That is why, as our workforce plan outlined, we are exploring whether a tie-in would ensure that dentists spend a better proportion of their time in the NHS. We will launch a consultation on that policy later this year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am sorry to hear about the situation in the hon. Lady’s constituency. The Health Secretary heard what she said and is in touch with the relevant drug bodies to ensure that we can have the provision of ADHD medicine for all those who need it.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

For about a decade, over 200 of my constituents in the Mill complex in Ipswich have been caught in the cruellest form of limbo. The building has deep structural problems and cladding problems. A few years ago, they got about £15 million in an out-of-court settlement to make a contribution towards cladding costs, but the freeholder, the National Asset Management Agency—an Irish financial entity set up after the Irish banking crisis—ran away with that money, putting my constituents back to square one with little to no hope. Will the Prime Minister talk to the Irish Taoiseach to raise this immoral case and meet me to discuss a way forward for my constituents, who I meet every week?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sorry to hear about my hon. Friend’s case. I will ensure that the Government look into the details and get back to him in the shortest order about how we can support him and his constituents.

Israel and Gaza

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I think it is disgusting to choose the day after the massacre to start waving Palestinian flags outside the Israeli embassy. I also find what happened at the Cenotaph disgusting, but those who are explicitly pro-Hamas are on a different level. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is important to work with the Home Office and, where possible, to deport these individuals, because they do not share our values and they are not welcome in this country?

[The Prime Minister]

The military wing of Hamas has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK for some time, in addition to the political wing more recently. Once a group is proscribed, it is a criminal offence for people in the UK to do various things in support of that organisation, under the Terrorism Act 2000. Furthermore, the Terrorism Act 2006 created the offence of the encouragement of terrorism, which gives the police the powers and tools they need to arrest those individuals who are perpetrating that kind of support. I will ensure that they face the full force of the law.

Civil Service Impartiality

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

As I said earlier, I am not trying to engage in a discussion about a particular individual. I have noted what my predecessor Lord Maude said. As I say, I have personal, direct experience of working with Sue Gray, and have no reason to question her integrity in any way, but this urgent question is about the process; we need to understand it. This is an unprecedented appointment of a permanent secretary to this position. When very senior civil servants choose to leave the service, it is incredibly important that everything is done appropriately. Analysis of that is being undertaken. We need to establish the facts, and it would help if the Labour party assisted us with that.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that if the shoe was on the other foot, the Labour party would be asking exactly the same questions? All that we have seen today from those on the Opposition Benches is rank hypocrisy. Does he also agree that the line put out by the Labour party that somehow the Leader of the Opposition’s most senior adviser and chief of staff would not have a role in a general election campaign is utterly ridiculous?

[Jeremy Quin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have attended a number of urgent questions in this House, and I have rarely seen the Opposition Benches as empty as they are today.

Illegal Immigration

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As a matter of priority, we are looking at those countries with which we already have returns agreements, but where we are not sufficiently able to send people back. We will renew our diplomatic efforts to make that a priority, but also use visa penalties, where appropriate, to get the outcomes that we need.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement and the personal attention he has devoted to this issue. My constituents continue to be concerned about the use of the Novotel in Ipswich, which is on a 12-month contract; I thought it was six, the Home Office told me it was six, but it turned out to be 12—but that is by the bye. I welcome the move towards cheaper and more basic accommodation, but can the Prime Minister indicate when my constituents will get a timescale for when the Novotel can be back in proper use?

[The Prime Minister]

I share the frustration of my hon. Friend and his constituents that their local hotel, like so many others, is currently being used to house illegal migrants. That is wrong and we want to stop it as quickly as we can. The Immigration Minister is working on finding alternative sites as fast as possible, but we also want to stop the flow of new illegal migrants so that there is not unsustainable pressure on our local services. That is what my hon. Friend and his community want, and that is what we will deliver.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I am very grateful to the hon. Member for his question. It is fair to say that this is a Government who have consistently been supporting people during the significant cost of living challenges that they face. Of course, we have the energy price guarantee, which is a significant part of that package, but I am sure that Ministers in Departments across Government would be very happy to engage with him on the particular point he raises about the warm home discount.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

We know that a key challenge for many young people with disabilities is getting assessments and getting them funded, so that they and their parents can find out what disabilities they have. I have a constituent who has been told they must wait up to 18 months for an assessment to find out whether they have autism to be completed. Is there an opportunity in the national disability strategy to better enable and fund the accessibility—and accelerate the completion—of those assessments, which can make a life-changing difference to individuals?

G20

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We may have left the EU, but we have not left Europe, and it is important that we maintain strong and positive relationships with our European partners and allies. That is very much what I intend to do, and I am pleased that those conversations have been going well.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I am glad that the situation with regard to refugees all over the world was discussed, but no debate on refugees can be complete without a discussion about the plight of the Rohingya. Could my right hon. Friend confirm that world leaders considered and discussed what further support we can provide to Rohingya refugees in the largest refugee camp in the world, which is a great concern for my constituents?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that this is an issue of concern for my hon. Friend, and it is right that he raises it and champions the case. I am pleased to tell him that we have sanctioned those people responsible, and we will continue to make sure we provide whatever support we can to the people who need our help.

Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. I hope the Select Committee will be able to get answers, because if the then Home Secretary, now the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), was clear on 20 October that overcrowding was getting worse and that emergency measures were needed to stop the Home Office breaking the law, why on earth did the current, and former, Home Secretary fail to act in her meeting on 19 October, just the day before—a meeting on Manston that she told us about in her resignation letter to my right hon. Friend?

It has been reported that the Home Secretary was warned in the middle of September about the deteriorating circumstances, the fact that things were going to get worse and the high risk of successful legal challenge because the Home Office was breaking the law. She was warned on 1 October and again on 4 October, but she still failed to take the emergency measures that her successor was forced to take. She told the House:

“I have never ignored legal advice.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 639.]

The advice made clear what the law said and how things would get worse unless she acted, so what on earth is her definition of the word “ignored”? The definition I looked up says, “To disregard intentionally”, and that appears to be exactly what she did.

If the Home Secretary wants to claim it was not intentional, but somehow accidental—that she just did not really have a clue what the consequences were of her inaction—I think that makes things worse.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

If my memory serves me correctly, the right hon. Lady brought an urgent question to this place about a year ago opposing the use of Napier army barracks for those who enter this country illegally. She has just said she also opposes costly hotels. Just where would she accommodate those who have entered our country illegally?

[Yvette Cooper]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recall that what happened at Napier was that the Government ended up with a huge outbreak of more than 200 covid cases, at the height of a covid crisis, because they were failing to follow basic public health rules and requirements. To be honest, it was an incident that the Home Office again does not seem to have learned from, as we have had outbreaks of diphtheria, MRSA and scabies at Manston. Frankly, if the Home Office and the Government want to solve this properly, they need to address the total collapse in decision making, with just 14,000 decisions being made a year, which is half the number being decided just five or six years ago. That huge backlog has increased as a result of Government legislation that has added to the bureaucracy and made those delays much worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

You caught me slightly off-guard, Mr Deputy Speaker—I do not think that I have ever been called so early. It was quite dramatic, but one will have to do what one can. Bearing in mind that I have spoken quite fluently on many of these issues recently, it should not be too much of a challenge.

I note that I did not have an answer to my question, when I made an intervention on the shadow Home Secretary, about quite where these individuals should be based. She has opposed former Army barracks being used. She has opposed costly hotels being used. We do not know what the answer is.

I have slightly lost track—I do not know whether the approach of the Opposition is to go through every single mechanism for debating the same issue over and over again— but I think we have had an urgent question; maybe we have had a statement and had it raised at Prime Minister’s questions; and now we are having an Opposition day debate. It seems ever so slightly extraordinary. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) has had nine emails on it. Perhaps we should not use our phones in here but sometimes we do to communicate with our staff on important matters, so I did say to my team, “How many emails have we received?” The answer was, actually, zero, so we will have to confirm that that is the case. But what I have had emails about is the small boats crisis. What I have had emails about is the use of a hotel in the town centre in Ipswich by 200 of these individuals and the impact that that could have on the local area. That is what they have raised. That is what they would much rather we discussed in this Opposition day debate.

Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but perhaps we are ever so slightly at risk of certain colleagues on the Government side of the House occasionally straying into topics that are slightly beyond the strict remit of this debate. But that is because it is incredibly difficult to debate something that we have already debated about eight times. What is there to say about it? Ultimately, it is difficult, when we are dealing with what is quite clearly a highly personalised political campaign against the Home Secretary, not to talk about the wider issues.

Why is it that those on the Opposition Benches dislike the Home Secretary so much? Actually, I took part in an interesting debate yesterday with a Labour shadow Minister who said that the reason why the Home Secretary was in place was that there was some sort of shabby deal with the extreme far right. I thought that it was interesting that the mask slipped there, because the Home Secretary’s views on immigration are actually, I think, shared by tens of millions of people up and down the country. The fact that there are shadow Front-Bench Members who think that many of their constituents’ views are actually the views of the far right is shocking. That tells us everything that we need to know about the Labour party’s approach to immigration—where there is an approach. It suits the Labour party to talk to death this issue about emails, because it has absolutely nothing to say when it comes to tackling the small boats crisis. Labour Members do not know where they would accommodate the individuals in question. They talk vaguely about speeding up the process for dealing with the applications, because we know what their approach to speeding up the applications would be: to grant everyone immediate refugee status, whether they are or not. So admittedly, there would be no queue, but we would also have huge numbers of people staying here indefinitely who quite probably are not refugees. I do not think that is the appropriate approach.

You have allowed me to discuss some of these issues, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I think that is necessary, because we are dealing with a highly personalised campaign against a Home Secretary who Labour Members do not like because they do not like her views. But the news is that those views—a belief in controlling our borders, a belief in controlled immigration, and a belief in distinguishing between genuine refugees and those who illegally, by choice, enter our country from another safe European country—are shared by, I believe, the majority of the country.

My political advice to the Labour party is that its current approach of ignoring the debate is not sustainable in the long term. We would like to know what its approach is. What we do know is that it opposed the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and opposed the Rwanda scheme, but I assume we will be back here soon discussing the same issue about emails.

I think I have concluded what I have to say—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]—much to the enjoyment of the Opposition. In my Westminster Hall debate earlier today, I spoke at length about my concerns about the Novotel situation in Ipswich. I have also made lots of interventions in statements from the Home Secretary in which I have made my support for her clear.

Ultimately, I take issue with the fact that so much parliamentary time is being spent on doing this issue to death. I have received no emails about it. What my constituents are concerned about is illegal immigration and how we tackle it. If we had spent these two or three hours talking in depth about how we can put rocket boosters under the Rwanda scheme, that would have been much more appropriate.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Tom Hunt]

I am not giving way—I am simply not giving way. I have said my piece and I look forward to the wind-ups.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I do sympathise with hon. Members, but it is quite a narrow motion. I am really pleased that I am sitting in the Chair and not on either side of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The reason we are in this situation is the unprecedented number of people arriving here illegally, often from safe third countries. If the Labour party was really serious about this, it would realise that we have to stop illegal migration and stop the exploitation of vulnerable people abroad. But Labour Members have opposed every single measure we have taken. They are not serious about this problem, because they do not think it matters.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

Both myself and many of my constituents remember fondly the Prime Minister’s visit to Ipswich when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. We spoke about levelling up and he made it clear to me that levelling up is not just about one part of the country; it is a national mission. Therefore, does he agree that a great way to show that to the people of Ipswich would be by supporting our levelling-up fund bid to get Ipswich active? We are talking about £18 million—£15 million for Gainsborough sports centre, and £3 million for the outdoor lido in Broomhill.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right: levelling up is about spreading opportunity in every part of our United Kingdom, ensuring that people have pride in the place they call home. I look forward to seeing his levelling-up fund bid. I know it will be being considered over the course of this year and I wish him every success.

Departure of Previous Home Secretary

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think I will decide that, though.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

My constituents were informed yesterday that 200 economic migrants will be accommodated in a hotel in Ipswich town centre, at great cost to the taxpayer, putting pressure on local public services and also putting local jobs at risk. Will the Minister confirm to me that the new Home Secretary will prioritise the unsustainable practice of accommodating illegal immigrants in hotels and throw support behind things like the Rwanda scheme, which the Labour party opposes? That is potentially the only way that we can nip this problem in the bud.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. In terms of reassurance, we have seen the Prime Minister acting swiftly to get a new Home Secretary in place yesterday afternoon. That is because the Government are committed to pushing ahead with our agenda and important issues that need attention, such as those that my hon. Friend highlighted. That is why it is so important that we have that stability and why the Prime Minister took the action that she did.