Tony Vaughan
Main Page: Tony Vaughan (Labour - Folkestone and Hythe)Department Debates - View all Tony Vaughan's debates with the Home Office
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Alex Norris
The right hon. Gentleman will know that this Government have removed 60,000 people with no right to be in this country—a 31% increase on our predecessors. It is not possible to effect return in every case; everybody knows that. There are certain countries to which we are unable to do so. In those cases, we are not effecting returns, but we have to have a system that has a backstop of removal. I think that is an accepted principle.
Tony Vaughan (Folkestone and Hythe) (Lab)
I acknowledge the considerable challenge that the Government have in winning back public confidence in the asylum system. The Home Office published a report last year concluding that there was insufficient evidence that restrictive asylum policies reduce claims, so will the Home Office publish evidence to show that cutting refugee leave from five years down to 30 months will deter claims in the UK? Does the Minister accept that a substantial settlement pathway of 20 years-plus is also unlikely to deter those claims?
Alex Norris
My hon. and learned Friend knows that we bring forward our impact assessments alongside the policies as we publish them, and as we seek to debate or implement them. He knows about the case that we made in our document in November as well. With regard to whether these policies work, I would gently say that Germany and Denmark have a similar period of time for protection, and both are seeing reductions in asylum claims. In the UK, there have been over 80,000 asylum claims for the last two years; for the previous decade, claims averaged 27,500. I do not think we can say that no change is an option.