Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley)Department Debates - View all Yvette Cooper's debates with the Home Office
(5 months ago)
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Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
I beg to move amendment l, at the end of the Question to add:
“but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech does not commit to boosting defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 with a fully funded plan, fails to include measures that provide an adequate deterrent to migrants crossing the channel illegally, fails to mention rural communities, farming and fishing, does not include a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security or a commitment to increase the UK-wide agriculture budget by £1 billion over the course of the Parliament, introduces new burdens on businesses without sufficient measures to support them, fails to set out a concrete plan to tackle the unsustainable post-covid rise in the welfare bill, does not adequately protect family finances and the UK’s energy security in the move to net zero, and fails to provide adequate protections for pensioners and working people to keep more of the money they have worked hard for.”
Yesterday, at the Dispatch Box, I welcomed the Home Secretary to her role, and I now take the opportunity to congratulate the wider ministerial team who work with her. They will have inherited a hard-working team of civil servants dedicated to the protection of this country and the people within it. However, I am sad that the hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock) has not made the transition from shadow immigration Minister to immigration Minister. His contributions are a great loss to the Conservative party.
With the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) in her new ministerial role, I am sure the Clerks of the Home Affairs Committee will be looking forward to arranging her first session promptly and will, like me, be closely monitoring how quickly her new boss fully implements all the recommendations of the Committee she formerly chaired.
While I do not have time to mention each of the new ministerial team individually, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). She knows I planned to single her out and I do not apologise for doing so; I think that it is a very good appointment and she is well suited to her role as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for victims and safeguarding. She knows that tackling violence against women and girls was a priority for me. We have previously shared the stage at events in the House discussing that subject. I genuinely look forward to working with her and contributing in any way I can to her success in this incredibly important area of public policy. She has highlighted some of the crucial work that this place can do in bringing to the attention of the country and the wider world the continued plight of too many women.
The election highlighted the important work of the Home Office in defending democracy. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), the former security Minister, for his work with the defending democracy taskforce. Again, that is an area where we will seek to be a constructive Opposition. I was disgusted to see how the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley and many other, mostly female, colleagues and candidates were treated during the general election campaign. No one who cares for democracy, irrespective of their party affiliation, should be willing to tolerate that. The defending democracy taskforce continues to have incredibly important and urgent work to do. We should continue to work together, as we did when our roles were reversed, to root out violence and intimidation, and to ensure that candidates and Members can vote with their conscience and campaign with their hearts, free from intimidation or threats.
While the Prime Minister has been enjoying his honeymoon period at NATO and welcoming visitors to the European Political Community event at Blenheim Palace, which was very well organised by this Government’s predecessors in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the same honeymoon period has sadly not been afforded to the Home Secretary. Members will all be familiar with the seven days of creation; the new Home Secretary has managed seven days of destruction. On day one, she cancelled the partnership with Rwanda, taking away the deterrent that the National Crime Agency said we needed in order to break the business model of people smuggling gangs. In doing so, on day two, she created a diplomatic row with Rwanda, whose Ministers sadly had to read about the Government’s decision in the British media, rather than receiving direct communication from the Government. That was a level of diplomatic indecency that will cast a shadow over the relationship not just with that country, but with many others.
On day three, the Home Secretary announced an effective amnesty for tens of thousands of people who arrived here illegally. We said that the incoming Labour Government would do that. They promised that they would not, yet that is exactly what they did. On day four, she started work on getting back into the EU through the back door by negotiating to take more migrants from the continent. On day five, a Labour Government Minister went on national radio to advocate the relaxing of visa rules from the EU, before being slapped down for saying the quiet bit out loud.
On day six, Home Office figures released by the Government showed that the visa curbs that I put in place when I became Home Secretary have cut migration by 48% since last June—she can thank me for that later. On the seventh day, the Home Secretary probably tried to get some rest, but she will now know what I have long known, which is that, as Home Secretary, there is not the luxury of that day of rest.
Therefore, despite a terrible first week of weather to bring in the new Labour Government, we saw almost 500 asylum seekers arrive on small boats. As of today—
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
Will the right hon. Member give way?
Mr Cleverly
The Home Secretary will be making a speech in due course.
As I say, almost 500 asylum seekers arrived in the first week, and, as of today, more than 2,000 asylum seekers have arrived in small boats since Labour took office. The second week at work was not much better.
Mr Cleverly
The right hon. Member has the opportunity to speak in a moment. We have seen riots in her back garden, on the streets of Leeds, and police officers, clearly not confident that they will enjoy her support, having to take a backseat. Like so much of what was said ahead of this general election, “Take back our streets” was clearly just a Labour slogan.
We then saw Neil Basu, a very highly respected former police officer, with whom I worked when I was on the Metropolitan Police Authority, and General Stuart Skeates, a senior official at the Home Office, with whom I worked in a former life as well as when I was Home Secretary, ruling themselves out of leadership of the new so-called border security command. They did so, I am sure, because they know what we know, which is that that is little more than a fig leaf to hide the fact that the Labour Government are doing less on migration and hoping to achieve more. The reality, as everybody including the people smugglers know, is that the small boats problem is only going to get worse under Labour.
Yvette Cooper
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for giving way. It is a shame to puncture his fantasy and bring him down to the real world in which he and his party trebled net migration and left us with the highest level of spring boat crossings on record. Perhaps he can answer just one factual question. He has spent £700 million over two and a half years running the Rwanda scheme; can he tell us how many asylum seekers he has sent?
Mr Cleverly
As I said on the radio this morning, if the right hon. Lady is going to pluck figures out of the air, she should avoid nice round numbers, because it is a bit of a giveaway. She will know that we brought people into detention and that we had chartered flights. The fact that the new Government scrapped the scheme and, with a degree of diplomatic discourtesy, did not even—[Interruption.] Labour Members can groan from their Benches, but they will get used to the fact that we cannot treat international partners in this way.
Our relationship with Rwanda was entered into in good faith by both parties. The Rwandans discovered that the incoming Government were tearing up that bilateral relationship in the pages of the British media. The Home Secretary should learn that her new Foreign Secretary should have had the diplomatic courtesy at least to pick up the phone to his opposite number in Rwanda to explain what was going to happen before they read about it in the British press. She and I both know that her Government would not have acted with that level of vile discourtesy had that partner been a European country. [Interruption.] Labour Members can groan all they like, but we all know that is true.
The simple fact of the matter is that the new border security command replicates in all respects the work of the small boats operational command. It took almost the whole general election campaign before the right hon. Lady attempted to clarify the roles. We still have very little clarity on the division of labour between the so-called new border security command and the small boats operational command. Yesterday, at the Dispatch Box, she tried to imply that there had been no returns under the Conservative Government, but let me put some facts and figures on the record. Last year, we returned more than 25,000 people to their home countries, including almost 4,000 foreign national offenders, in order to keep ourselves safe—foreign national offenders for whom, I would remind the House, her Prime Minister in his former guise fought tooth and nail to prevent being deported. Voluntary and enforced returns were both up by more than two thirds, at their highest level for five years—operations done by our immigration enforcement officials, which sounds a lot like a returns unit to me.
I am not sure what the right hon. Lady was doing while in opposition, but she might be surprised to learn that we were indeed smashing the gangs, and we were making sure that people were arrested and incarcerated. Last year, we smashed almost 100 criminal gangs through our law enforcement agencies. I remind the House that Labour Members voted against the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which is the legislation that we have been using to incarcerate those people smugglers. They voted against that legislation. Labour, in government, are now so worried about their continuing reputation for being and for looking weak on immigration that they felt the need to announce a raft of things to sound tough which basically already existed. They announced the border security command, even though there is already a small boats operational command. They announced a returns unit, even though immigration enforcement already does that. What will they announce next? What will they invent—the RAF? I look forward to seeing what functions are to be replicated.
We will look at legislation when it comes forward but, as I have discussed, the Government already have the tools they need, and as long as they do not undermine their own efforts by scrapping more things, we might see an opportunity for them to reduce numbers, in large part because we passed the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The right hon. Lady has tools at her disposal.
On legal migration, I remember coming to the Government Dispatch Box in December last year and presenting to the House a series of visa curbs to cut net migration. With our measures, 300,000 people who came here last year would no longer have the right to come, reducing migration by a record amount. Already the data is showing that, because of the actions I took as Home Secretary, visa applications are down by 48% compared with June last. On the current trajectory, net migration is set to halve in the next 12 months, thanks to the actions that I took—actions opposed by the Labour party at the time.
The Labour manifesto said that net migration would come down, but not by how much. As I said, the first 50% of that reduction is because of actions I took. Perhaps, in her speech, the right hon. Lady can confirm how much further than that 50% she envisages bringing net migration down. Labour talked tough ahead of the election about clamping down on employers bringing in foreign workers, but those plans have apparently now been shelved, as we saw nothing of them in the King’s Speech and have not heard anything more about them.
On policing and crime, I am delighted to have my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) as shadow Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime. There are many brilliant things about Stockton, a place I have visited and enjoyed, and he is of course one of those wonderful things. I welcome the plans set out in the King’s Speech for a crime and policing Bill to tackle issues such as antisocial behaviour, retail crime and knife crime and to drive up standards in the police force. Of course I welcome them, because those are issues that I put forward when I was Home Secretary. The Government can therefore count on our general support for these measures, if they bring forward detailed proposals that properly address the issues. I really hope that the right hon. Lady has more success than I had getting her colleague, the Mayor of London, to focus on bringing down violent crime in our capital city. We will of course scrutinise the legislation alongside the victims, courts and public protection Bill.
Over the previous Parliament, it was the Conservative party that put 20,000 new police officers on the streets. At the election, we promised to hire an additional 8,000 full-time, fully warranted police officers to protect our neighbourhoods. During the general election campaign, the Labour party made no such commitment, limiting their aspirations to only 3,000 full-time, fully warranted officers. I hope that they will match our commitment to 8,000.
Mr Cleverly
I am very proud of the fact that in many parts of the country, including my county of Essex, there are now more warranted police officers than at any time in the force’s history—in sharp contrast to Labour-run London, where the Conservative Government put money on the table to recruit extra Metropolitan police officers and the Labour Mayor of London has spectacularly failed to recruit those officers, has not backed officers when they said they needed to do more stop and search, and has seen knife crime accelerate, distorting the whole national picture. I really hope that the right hon. Lady takes this seriously. She can chuckle all she likes, but this is about kids getting stabbed on the streets of London, and she should take this more seriously. [Interruption.] She should recognise that we introduced tougher sentences under the Public Order Act 2023 to clamp down on disruptive protests—the benefit of which we have already seen this week with the jailing of Just Stop Oil protesters—in addition to plans to grant the police further powers to clamp down on protests that go too far and disrupt the lives of people around this country.
Yvette Cooper
The shadow Home Secretary knows he should not make such disgraceful, unfounded allegations about my response to knife crime. He knows that I have met families right across the country who are devastated by knife crime, including in towns and smaller communities and suburbs where this terrible crime is going up. His party, when in government, repeatedly failed to ban serious weapons on our streets. Will he now support this party and this Government when we bring in the bans on ninja swords and dangerous machetes that he should have brought in long ago?
Mr Cleverly
I made the observation that, while I was talking about young people getting stabbed, the right hon. Lady was chatting and chuckling with her colleagues on the Front Bench. That was a statement of fact. The point is that we have got a grip of crime, but in the parts of the country controlled by Labour police and crime commissioners, including London, that is sadly not the case.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)
I welcome everybody to the final day of the King's Speech debate. I also welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s words about the excellent ministerial team that we now have in the Home Office, and his continued support for the defending democracy taskforce, which I know he and his shadow Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), took immensely seriously when they were in government. I can tell the House that we will be meeting later this week, our first meeting after the election, to review some of the issues that I know have affected Members right across the country. We are extremely serious about what happened during the election and how we all need to respond and to stand up for our democracy.
To listen to the shadow Home Secretary, no one would think he had just spectacularly lost a general election; apparently under the Conservatives we have just all had it so good for such a long period of time. However, I am glad to see him enjoying opposition so much. Long may it continue!
This may be the final day of the King’s Speech debate, but of course it is only the beginning of the Tory leadership hustings. The shadow Home Secretary’s name is on the list, and we look forward to his launch, maybe late this week—it is very exciting. As someone who has unsuccessfully stood for their party’s leadership in the past, I do have some sympathy with his predicament. It is not just that he is only the bookies’ fifth favourite; he is not even the leading candidate from Essex, or even the leading candidate from his shadow Home Office team.
I have some bad news for both the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge. Their chances have been dealt a hammer blow by that strategic brain and deputy leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), who was elected at the same time as them in 2015. When asked who the stars of his generation are, he said:
“There’s only two people from my generation that I could see leading the Conservative party: Rishi Sunak or Vicky Atkins.”
How disappointing is that? Discounted by the great election guru of the Conservative party before they have even started.
Mr Cleverly
Just for expectation management, may I ask when the Home Secretary will start talking about her portfolio?
Yvette Cooper
The shadow Home Secretary spent his entire speech not talking about any of the challenges that the country faces but simply playing to the Conservative Back Benches with a fantasy leadership application speech.
What is it about these former Home Secretaries and Ministers? Apparently, of the last seven Home Office Ministers in Cabinet, six of them are running. We have the previous Home Secretary, the Home Secretary before that and the Home Secretary but one before that—the same person, strangely, because, never forget, it is possible to be sacked from the same job twice—plus the Home Secretary before that, the former Security Minister and the former Immigration Minister.
They have quite a record between them: they have trebled net migration, let boat crossings hit a record high this spring, decimated neighbourhood policing—there are 10,00 fewer neighbourhood police and police community support officers on our streets—let record numbers of crimes go unsolved, bust the Home Office budget by billions, and, yes, spent £700 million sending just four volunteers to Rwanda. If they are now lining up to do to the Tory party what they have already done to the Home Office and the country, well, frankly, they deserve each other. Every one of them championed that policy on Rwanda—although the shadow Home Secretary, to be fair to him, did notoriously describe it as “batshit” crazy. Well, maybe that is what someone needs to be to stand for Tory leader right now. [Interruption.]
We have heard that the Conservatives are going to run this contest until November. We have five months—[Interruption.] Oh, does the shadow Home Secretary want to deny having ever described the Rwanda programme and development partnership as “batshit”? I will give way to him if he would like to respond.
Mr Cleverly
If the right hon. Lady can say when, where and to whom that was said, carry on.
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Gentleman was the one who said it, so he is the one who will know. If he wants to deny that he ever said it, I will not say it again—honestly—but I think that he protests a little too much with this sort of wriggling. He would not do very well under interrogation.
We have heard today that the leadership contest will run until November. We have five months of this. There are hardly any Tory MPs here because they are all off doing their little chats and meetings. It is like a cross between “Love Island” and the jungle. Rob and Suella have broken up, and now John has gone off with Kemi. Everyone is looking over their shoulder for snakes and rats. Apparently somebody has had a nervous breakdown, and that is probably all of their Back Benchers, dreading getting a little text saying that another candidate wants a chat. We can see it. Look at them all. They are all saying, “I am a Tory MP. Get me out of here.” That is exactly what our Labour MPs have just done: they have got a lot of Tory MPs out of here because the country is crying out for change—for what the Prime Minister has described as a decade of national renewal on our economy, our public services and our relationship with the world, and in politics itself, by bringing politics back into public service again.
I say to all hon. Members, on my side and on the Opposition Benches, that I will work with everyone to restore Britain’s sense of security, public safety on our streets, secure borders, and confidence in our police and criminal justice system. Yes, I will repeatedly challenge the Conservatives on the legacy that they have left us, because the damage is serious, and I think that they have been hugely reckless with the safety of our country. Yes, the approach and values of our parties may be different, but I think that there are important areas where we should be able to come together to bring change in the interests of our country, our communities and our security, because that is what public service means. That is what this Labour Government are determined to do. We have set out in the King’s Speech three Home Office Bills on crime and policing, borders and asylum, and security. I will cover each issue in turn, starting with safety on our streets and confidence in the police and the criminal justice system.
Everyone will have, fresh in their minds, the concerns raised by constituents during the election campaign. I fear that, at a time when we have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs, confidence in policing has dropped. Street crime and knife crime are surging in towns and suburbs—not just in our cities—and shoplifting has become an epidemic. Those are the kinds of crimes that really affect how people live in their own communities, yet too little is being done.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her new position. Before the election was called, we had succeeded in a cross-party campaign to make cuckooing a criminal offence in the Criminal Justice Bill, which then sadly fell. I notice that in the crime and policing Bill, there is no mention at all of cuckooing. Does she support the idea of making cuckooing—using the homes of the most vulnerable in society for criminal behaviour—a criminal offence? If so, will she commit to introducing that process again? She would have my support, and I can guarantee that she would have the support of the previous Government, because I told them so at the time. Over to her.
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Member raises an immensely important point, which we support. I am happy to talk to him further, or he can talk to the Minister with responsibility for victims and safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). A series of issues included in the Criminal Justice Bill, which fell when the election was called, had cross-party support and need to be taken forward.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her appointment. One issue that was agreed on a cross-party basis was the campaign that we led on abolishing the Vagrancy Act 1824. We concluded that that change would be beneficial for homeless people because they would no longer face arrest and would be provided with assistance. Will she commit, on behalf of the Government, to introducing that change as part of the legislation?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes an important point—there was a lot of cross-party agreement. There were also areas where the last Government’s attempt to respond ended up provoking a lot of disagreement and where we had different views. I suggest that he discusses the detail further with the new Home Office Ministers, because we take the matter seriously but want to ensure that we get it right and do not make the errors that the previous Government made in the detail of their response.
As well as the issues around community and town centre crime, we have had an important report from the police today warning that violence against women and girls is “a national emergency” that has not been taken seriously for far too long. We have record levels—90%—of crime going unsolved. The criminal justice system and prisons are being pushed into crisis. Too many people have the feeling that nothing is done and no one will come. We cannot go on like that.
For us in the Labour party, this is rooted in our values. Security is the bedrock of opportunity. Families cannot prosper and get on in life if they do not feel safe. Communities cannot be strong if they do not feel secure. A nation cannot thrive if it is under threat. Respect for each other and the rule of law underpin who we are as a country; they are how we sustain our democracy and our sense of justice and fairness. Too often, those things have felt undermined.
That is why we have made safer streets one of the five central missions of this Labour Government—a mission to restore and rebuild neighbourhood policing, to restore trust and confidence in policing and the criminal justice system, and to deliver our unprecedented ambition of halving serious violence within a decade. That is a hugely ambitious mission: halving serious violence means halving knife crime and violence against women and girls over the next 10 years. I know that will be extremely difficult, but I ask everyone to be part of it, because it is so important and we should all be trying to keep people safe.
Florence Eshalomi
I welcome the Home Secretary to her place, and I know that she has campaigned on this really important area for many years. She talked about all of us being involved in this mission. Does she agree that the people who are working with these communities on the ground—youth workers, independent domestic violence advocates, doctors in A&E units, school employees and teachers—all need to be involved in this conversation? Many of those people see what is happening before the authorities do, and it is vital that they are part of this national conversation.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. This has to be a mission for all of us—it is not just about what the Home Office does, although we want the Home Office to do so much more in this area. It is not just about what the Government do; it has to be about all of us. It has to be about recognising that for generation after generation, people have just shrugged their shoulders about unacceptable violence against women and girls. It has just been seen as normal—just one of those things that happens—when actually, we should not stand for it. This is an opportunity for change, and to bring everyone together to make that change. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that those who are on the frontline, seeing that violence in practice, are often also those who know what needs to be done.
As part of the new crime and policing Bill, we will bring forward measures to tackle violence against women and girls. That includes making sure that we have specialist rape and sexual assault units in every police force and specialist domestic abuse experts in 999 control rooms, recognising the terrible tragedy of what happened to Raneem Oudeh and how devastating it was: she called 999 four times on the night she was killed, and no one came. For her and her family, we have to make sure that we make changes. We have to get neighbourhood police back on the beat, so we will introduce a new neighbourhood policing guarantee and new arrangements to cut waste, compelling forces to change the way they procure, in order to make the savings we need—savings that we will put back on the frontline.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Home Secretary for her speech and for all the possibilities she has put forward, which we will hopefully endorse later today when the votes come. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) mentioned, an attitude change needs to happen in society, and it is important that the media promote it in a positive way.
There have been, I think, 28 murders of women and girls across Northern Ireland over the past few years. That concerns me greatly, so when the Home Secretary brings forward the ideas she is describing in the form of legislation in this House, will she share those policy and legislative changes with the Northern Ireland Assembly? What she has described today can be beneficial for all of us in this United Kingdom, and in particular for Northern Ireland. It is really important that my constituents and ladies and girls across Northern Ireland feel safe, and at the moment, they do not.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member makes a really important point: this is about all of us, and Northern Ireland has some of the highest levels of domestic abuse murder. This issue is immensely serious, and the safeguarding Minister is already planning to have those discussions, because we should all be learning from each other about what it takes to save lives and keep people safe.
We will bring in new powers on antisocial behaviour, including new respect orders and new action on off-road bikes, which are dangerous and deafening and are being used to terrorise some communities. We will also take action against the soaring shoplifting that has seen supermarkets chain butter, cheese and fabric conditioner to the shelves, reversing the previous Conservative policy on low-value theft, and we will stand up against the appalling violence against shop workers. For years, the Co-op, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, major retailers, small shop owners and shop workers across the country have urged us to strengthen the law against assaults on shop workers, and through this King’s Speech, we will do so.
We will also increase standards in policing, including through mandatory vetting standards across forces and improvements around misconduct.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
On the topic of mandatory vetting, does my right hon. Friend agree that we should also have psychological testing for the police? Some of the incidents that have been brought to light, such as the kidnapping and killing of Sarah Everard and the pictures taken of Bibaa and Nicole in Brent, are appalling and can only be done by people who have lost compassion in their job.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Some of this is about the vetting standards before people are appointed as police officers, but some of it is about the culture that can operate within forces—or small groups within forces—that always needs to be challenged, including by leadership. We want to see national vetting standards.
Let us be clear: there are police officers who do an incredible job every day of the week to keep us all safe, while also showing immense bravery. For 14 years running, I have been to the police bravery awards to hear incredible stories of heroism, but those brave officers are badly let down—just as communities are badly let down—when other officers fail to meet those standards or when they abuse the power they have. That is why the standards and safeguarding issues are so important.
Turning to knife crime, no parent should have to lie in bed worrying that a son or daughter might not come home. One of the hardest things is to talk to parents who are grieving—who stand with a photo in a frame, because that is all they have. It is important that all our communities take action to prevent our young people from being dragged into crime and violence. The King’s Speech means new laws to get dangerous knives off the streets, such as ninja swords of the type that was used to kill 16-year-old Ronan Kanda near his home in Wolverhampton two years ago. I pay tribute to the tireless campaigning of Pooja, Ronan’s mother. We will also set up a radical new Young Futures prevention programme to stop our teenagers being drawn into a life of violent crime, bringing services together around young people in the way that the last Labour Government’s Sure Start programme did for our youngest children. It will be a programme for teenagers, to help them get back on track.
We will also bring forward new legislation on borders, security and immigration. Legal migration has trebled in the past five years; the biggest driver has been overseas recruitment, with work visas soaring because the last Government ran what was effectively a free-market, laissez-faire approach to both the economy and the immigration system. They completely failed to tackle skills shortages: areas such as engineering have been on the shortage list for decades if not generations, never having a proper programme. We have seen the number of engineering visas go up while the number of engineering apprenticeships has gone down. We have to turn that around, which is why, as well as continuing with visa controls, we will draw up new arrangements to link the points-based system with new skills plans. That is why the Education Secretary has drawn up plans for Skills England.
Jim Shannon
One of the issues we have been pursuing over the past few years has been the fishing visa scheme to bring crews in. The last Government brought suggestions forward, but they put a very high ceiling on wages, meaning it was impossible for some of the crews in the fishing boats to bring people in under the visa scheme. Will the Home Secretary meet me and other interested parties in this Chamber who represent fishing communities to discuss a way forward? I believe there is a way of doing it, and I very much look forward to working with the Home Secretary to ensure that that is a possibility and that we have a future.
Yvette Cooper
I am sure the hon. Member will continue to raise issues in this Chamber until every Minister has met him on one issue or another, and I am sure all of our Home Office Ministers will be willing to do so.
Let me turn to the issues of asylum policy, many of which we discussed yesterday. I have highlighted them, and I will continue to do so because I am still, frankly, shocked about the amount of money that was spent.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
We have heard lots about tough action on asylum seekers and tough action on immigration. What the Home Secretary has not talked about in her statement yesterday and her speech today is the value of immigration, how it assists our economy and how it enriches some of our communities. Can we hear some more about that from the Home Secretary, because surely we are not going to replace one Tory hostile environment with a new Labour hostile environment?
Yvette Cooper
Let us be clear: immigration is important to our country and has been through the generations, with people coming to this country to start some of our biggest businesses or to work in a public services, but it also needs to be properly controlled and managed, so that the system is fair and so that rules are properly respected and enforced. The issue of illegal migration trebling over the last five years has, I think, reflected some fundamental failures around skills and fundamental failures around the way the economy works. It is important that those are addressed, and that we do not just shrug our shoulders and turn our backs. We believe in having a properly controlled and managed system, and that is the right way to deal with this.
Similarly, turning to asylum, it has always been the case that this country has done its bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, and we must continue to do so, but we must also have a properly managed and controlled system. We raised yesterday the shocking scale of the £700 million spent sending four volunteers—just four volunteers—to Rwanda. The decisions on the asylum hotel amnesty that the Conservatives have in effect been operating are actually even worse and have cost even more money. I know that the shadow Home Secretary has said that he does not recognise those figures, but I wonder if he actually ever asked for them. I would say to him that it was one of the first things I asked for, because I am sick and tired of seeing Governments just waste money with careless policies when they have never actually worked out how much they are going to cost.
The Conservatives’ policy under the Illegal Migration Act 2023—with the combination of sections 9 and 30 —was to have everybody enter the asylum hotel system or the asylum accommodation system, and never to take any decisions on those cases. There is a shocking cost to the taxpayer of up to £30 billion over the next few years on asylum accommodation and support. It also means that the rules just are not being respected and enforced. It is deeply damaging and undermines the credibility of the asylum system, but it also leaves the taxpayer paying the price.
Yes, the King’s Speech does bring forward new legislation on borders, asylum and immigration. That will include bringing forward new counter-terror powers, including enhanced search powers and aggressive financial orders for organised immigration crime, and we are recruiting new cross-border police officers, investigators and prosecutors, as well as a new border commander. This is part of a major upgrade in law enforcement, working with cross-border police stationed across Europe to be able to tackle, disrupt and dismantle the actions of criminal gangs before they reach the French coast.
Finally, let me turn to national security, because when it comes to defending our nation against extremists and terrorists, against state challenges and hostile threats, or against those who try to undermine our democracy and values, I hope this House will always be ready to come together. I pay tribute to the police and the intelligence and security services, which work unseen to keep us safe. In that spirit, I hope the whole House will be ready to support Martyn’s law, drawn up by the tireless Figen Murray in memory of her son Martyn Hett, so that we learn the lessons from the terrible Manchester attack, when children and their parents who went out for a special night never came home and lives could have been saved. That, I hope, is the moment to end on, because we will debate, argue and have differences of view, but in this House, at the very heart of our democracy, we can also come together to keep communities safe.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Christopher Chope)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.