Yvette Cooper
Main Page: Yvette Cooper (Labour - Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley)(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give direction to the Home Secretary that, no later than 16 January 2024, there be laid before this House:
(a) a list of all payments, either already made or scheduled, to the Government of Rwanda under the Economic Transformation and Integration Fund, including the cost of the fourth- and fifth-year payments due to the Government of Rwanda under the fund;
(b) any document provided by his Department to HM Treasury relating to the per person cost of relocating individuals to Rwanda under the Agreement for the Provision of an Asylum Partnership Agreement to Strengthen Shared International Commitments on the Protection of Refugees and Migrants (CP 994);
(c) an unredacted copy of the confidential memorandum of understanding referred to in response to question 20 at the Public Accounts Committee meeting on 11 December 2023;
(d) any paper setting out the cost per person of relocating individuals to Rwanda and the Government’s assumptions about the number of asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda per year shared with or provided by HM Treasury between March and July 2022; and
(e) his Department’s internal breakdown of the 35,119 non-substantive asylum decisions made between 1 January and 28 December 2023 showing the number of such decisions that were classified as withdrawn asylum applications and the number further sub-classified as either:
(i) non-substantiated withdrawals
(ii) other withdrawals.
I move the Humble Address to get some basic facts out of Government Ministers. Facts that, so far, they have been desperate to hide: facts about the Rwanda scheme; facts about the asylum backlog; and just basic facts about policies that the Government claim are their flagships but, in fact, are failing. Taxpayers have a right to know how much of their money this Government have promised the Rwandan Government in exchange, frankly, for a series of press releases. More Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda so far, and some pretty expensive trips they have turned out to be, with an average cost of around £100 million a trip so far.
The public also has a right to know what has really happened to the asylum backlog, which still stands at nearly 100,000 cases. A total of 35,000 cases have been removed from the figures in the past year with no answers on why or where those people are. Are they still in the UK, or has the Home Office lost them? There are basic facts we need to know, in particular the facts about the Rwanda policy that we need in advance of the debates in Parliament next week. It matters that we know those facts, because we now know that the Prime Minister himself had huge doubts about the costs and efficacy of the scheme when he was Chancellor. However, he is still going ahead with it and he still will not tell us what those costs and those doubts were.
We know now from papers leaked to the BBC that the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister said that the “deterrent won’t work”. He was so sceptical about the scheme that he tried to cancel it in the leadership election and had to be persuaded against doing so, and he pushed for smaller volumes and lower costs, yet he will not tell us what the final agreement on costs and numbers was between the Home Office and the Treasury. Is it true that he watered down the scheme, just as the former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) claims he watered down so many of her proposals?
We still need to know the facts, because the Prime Minister is still going ahead with a scheme that he does not believe in, does not think will work and knows is extortionately expensive, because he is too weak not to. We can see on his face that he does not support it and does not believe in it. He is just desperately hoping, in the words of the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), for
“one or two symbolic flights off before the next election”,
even if everyone ends up being sent back again, even if the whole thing collapses after that and even if the cost is a total fortune, because the Prime Minister is not planning to tell anyone before the election what the total costs are. In the end, the only deterrence that the Prime Minister believes in is deterring his Back Benchers from getting rid of him. It is weak, weak, weak, and the taxpayer is paying the price.
It is a totally farcical situation: a Prime Minister who does not think it is a deterrent, a Home Secretary who thinks it is “batshit”, a former Home Secretary who says it will not work, a former Immigration Minister who says it does not do the job and everyone who thinks that what we have is an incredibly expensive sham with the taxpayer being conned. If Ministers disagree with everything that I just said describing their plans, what is there to hide? Tell us the facts, and show us where all of that is wrong.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
We do know a few facts here, and one of the facts we know is that the scheme has been in the making for 18 months. In that 18 months, the money that has been spent on it would have employed 6,000 caseworkers in the Home Office. Might that not have been a better way of proceeding?
Yvette Cooper
The right hon. Member is right. There are many ways in which the hundreds of millions of pounds spent could alternatively have been invested. It is probably roughly equivalent to about a third of the budget of the National Crime Agency, for example, to take action on criminal gangs.
The right hon. Member is right, and we do know some figures on the costs of the Rwanda scheme. We know that Ministers wrote a cheque for £120 million in April 2022, and then there was another £20 million in summer 2022. They then did not want to tell us anything more at all. It was only thanks to the Rwandan Government and the information that they provided to the International Monetary Fund that the Home Office has been forced to give us a bit more information. Against Ministers’ will, we know that they have written another cheque for £100 million during 2023, and they promised another £50 million in spring this year, in just a few months’ time.
We have £290 million of cheques to Rwanda for no asylum seekers to be sent, £290 million to send more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers, nearly £100 million per Home Secretary trip, and there is more. The permanent secretary has admitted that there is a further payment planned for 2025 and another one for 2026, all independent of whether any asylum seekers are ever sent. I asked the Home Secretary in December whether in fact those payments were also £50 million each; he said that he was happy to confirm that. The following morning, it was put to him in media interviews that the Government were now spending £400 million on Rwanda, and he did not deny it. So we can only conclude that the sums are indeed nearer £400 million. Independent of what happens with this law, the plans and the flights, £400 million of cheques are being written to Rwanda when that could have been invested in tackling criminal gangs and could have been invested in making a difference. If it is not £400 million, again, Ministers should tell us what the actual figures are.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The right hon. Lady is making a persuasive case, with which I entirely agree. But does the Labour party have any moral or ethical opposition to processing in third countries?
Yvette Cooper
We already have, and have had for a long time, processing in other countries within the UK asylum system. For example, the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which I think both he and I support, means processing cases in other countries. It is also what happened for the Hong Kong scheme.
We know that the cost is now £400 million, and we can conclude that it is possibly considerably more. According to the treaty, there are additional per-person costs—if anyone is actually sent—to cover asylum processing, to cover accommodation costs for five years, and to cover three meals a day for five years. That is in the treaty, but the Government will not tell us how much all that adds up to. We know from the impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Act 2023 that the Home Office was prepared to say that the average cost of sending someone to a theoretical third country would be £169,000—a remarkable level of precision for a figure picked out of thin air. However, it will not have chosen a figure for that assessment that was higher than the Rwanda costs, because it will not assume that it would have to pay for three meals a day for five years everywhere. That suggests that the actual figure per person is higher. Maybe nearer £200,000 per person? Again, if that is wrong, Ministers should tell us.
Otherwise, it suggests that if the Home Office manages to sort out its legal wrangles and get flights off the ground, another whopping bill is coming. Suppose the Home Office manages to send 100 people to Rwanda this year, which is what the Court of Appeal said was Rwanda’s capacity. Well, that means another £20 million cheque. If that is wrong, again, tell us the additional per-person costs.
Ministers say that they cannot possibly tell us any of these things because it is somehow commercially confidential. What a load of total nonsense. This is not a contract with a company with shareholders and intellectual property rights and competitors who will not bid if they think all their cost details will be scrutinised by other companies; this is an agreement with a sovereign state. If the Kigali Government choose to contract out housing to a private provider, that might have some commercial considerations, but that is a matter for them, not for us. Ministers claim that it will somehow make it harder to agree deals. Again, they are making up these arguments because they are embarrassed and do not want to reveal the figures.
In other areas, the Government have told us the facts. In March 2023, the Prime Minister announced £476 million over three years for the agreement with France. It was set out in detail, with £124 million in 2023-24, £168 million in 2024-25 and £184 million in 2025-26. We know what the future spending will be on that agreement with France, so why not tell us the future spending agreed with Rwanda? The work with France, which we support, covers coastal patrols, drones and technology. It needs to be properly scrutinised to ensure that we are getting value for money, but we support working with the French police along the coast to prevent dangerous boat crossings and to protect our border security. We want to go further, working with other countries to tackle the criminal gangs, but why publish those details in full and set them out several years in advance for France and not for Rwanda? The Government cannot claim that it is because they might be trying to negotiate agreements with other countries compared to Rwanda and not with France. They might have to negotiate future agreements with Belgium, the Dutch police and other Governments, given that the borders inspectorate has pointed out that many of the smuggler routes pass through there, but that is not preventing the Government being public about the facts on the France scheme. It is time that the Government gave us the facts that Parliament would normally be entitled to, and that the public and, crucially, the taxpayer should be entitled to. How much of taxpayers’ money have they promised to Rwanda for a scheme that is failing?
The motion sets out some of the facts that we want: payments made or scheduled, including the fourth and fifth year figures; the per person costs; the memorandum of understanding that sets out the money agreement; and the agreement between the Home Office and the Treasury while the Prime Minister was Chancellor on costs and numbers, so that everyone has the chance to see what doubts the Prime Minister had, rather than their being hidden away from the taxpayer. We are holding this Opposition Day debate to give the Government the chance to give us the proper figures, which cross-party Select Committees such as the Public Accounts Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Liaison Committee have been asking for.
The Government also claim that none of that matters because the costs will be outweighed by the savings on asylum hotels, but I must break it to them that all this money for Rwanda is in addition to asylum hotels. It has been reported this week that the Prime Minister told the Home Office to keep open some asylum hotels. We know their plans for bases and barges have been unravelling. One hundred people were quietly moved out of Wethersfield in the Home Secretary’s constituency and moved into hotels. Plans to put people into Catterick, in the Prime Minister’s constituency, have now been dropped. It is costing more to keep people on the Bibby Stockholm than it is in hotels. It is total chaos and a total mess, which is why there are 20% more people in asylum hotels than there were a year ago when the Prime Minister promised to end them. Rwanda does not change any of that. In fact, their migration legislation, supposedly to enable Rwanda, is likely to make the backlog and the costs worse.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lack of clarity over the Rwanda plan and its cost is happening at a time when the Tories have weakened our border security and broken the asylum system? For six years we have had criminal smuggler gangs continuing to take over the channel, while Home Office asylum decision making has collapsed. It is incredibly important that we get control of our borders and our systems at the Home Office, and it is vital that that transparency comes to Parliament.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is completely right. Over the last five years, the Conservatives have let criminal gangs take hold along our borders, along the channel. That is undermining our border security. We should be strengthening our border security and fixing the asylum chaos that has built up over the last few years. That includes going after the criminal gangs and stronger border security measures.
The Court of Appeal says that the Rwanda scheme capacity will be only about 100 people. Rwanda’s asylum system is used to deciding only about 100 cases a year, and the Immigration Minister has admitted that the likely number of people is only in the hundreds. The current backlog is over 100,000 people, and last year over 90,000 people applied for asylum in the UK. We have a policy that will likely cover less than 1% of those arriving in the UK, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds that the Government will not come clean about. That raises another important question.
Yvette Cooper
Before I get to that important question, I will give way briefly to both hon. Members in turn.
James Daly
Will Labour’s policy, or proposed policy, for addressing border security be to allow offshore processing claims in Turkey?
Yvette Cooper
In theory, someone who was in Turkey and applied for the Homes for Ukraine scheme would be processed while in Turkey. However, it is not clear what the Government are proposing, or what the hon. Member is proposing, because nothing has been proposed by the Government. Labour’s proposal is to go after the criminal gangs through a new cross-border unit, with stronger security powers, and a new security agreement with other European countries, and to stop the boats before they reach the French coast by going after the supply chain of the criminal gangs. Under the Conservatives there has been a 30% drop in the number of people smuggling convictions, which shows that they are not taking action on the smuggler gangs but instead have let them take hold, and we will tackle that.
Yasmin Qureshi
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Are not the problems with the Rwanda scheme compounded by the fact that it means we have to take people from Rwanda as well? What benefit do we get?
Yvette Cooper
That is an interesting point. It is true that the Rwanda treaty that has been agreed states that first the United Kingdom will need to take some refugees from Rwanda, but it does not specify who will pay for those refugees. We know that people who are transferred to Rwanda will be paid for by the UK taxpayer, and also that people can be returned if, for example, they commit serious crimes in Rwanda, which will mean that, effectively, foreign national offenders are being returned. There is a question mark over that as well. We assume from the lack of information that the UK taxpayer will also pay those costs, but again, if the position is different it would be helpful to know about it. The Minister has the opportunity to respond by giving us details of all the costs.
This raises another important question to which we have not yet received answers. Under the suspended provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which the Prime Minister often boasts about as if they were law but which, in fact, have never been enacted, everyone who arrived in the country after July 2023 should be detained and removed to a third country. The Home Office has suggested that that provision will be enacted once the flights to Rwanda start, but more than 33,000 cases—probably involving more than 40,000 people—are already on the list. Are Ministers really saying that all those 40,000 people will be sent to Rwanda this year, even if the Government manage to get the flights off the ground? Given the rate at which they are talking of sending people to Rwanda, it will take more than 100 years to clear the backlog—and presumably all those people will be in hotel accommodation in the meantime, paid for by the UK taxpayer.
Will the Minister tell us what the actual plan is? Are the Government planning to implement the Illegal Migration Act if the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is passed and to push up the backlog for perhaps a century, or are they in fact planning an amnesty in respect of the Act for tens of thousands of people? They have not admitted such a plan to their Back Benchers, and they certainly do not admit it in the social media graphics they send out.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that instead of spending this vast amount of money on a failed Rwanda scheme, Britain and the other European Governments ought to be thinking about the numbers of people, many from Afghanistan, who are leading a marginal existence, in desperate poverty and freezing to death, on the streets of Calais and other cities around Europe? They are the victims of human rights violations and war all around the world. Should we not be thinking about them and helping them rather than pouring money into the Rwandan Government, which has achieved absolutely nothing?
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend has made an important point about, in particular, the issues relating to Afghanistan, where we know there has been huge persecution by the Taliban. We also know that there are people who helped our armed forces and, effectively, worked for the UK Government in Afghanistan, and as a result have been targeted by the Taliban. The Afghan resettlement scheme set up by the Home Office has had all kinds of problems. It is important that there are proper reforms to the resettlement schemes to make sure that they are effective, and that they prevent people being exploited by people traffickers and people smugglers. That is why it is so important to take action to stop these dangerous boat crossings, which are putting lives at risk and undermining our border security, and on which the criminal gangs have made profits of probably £0.5 billion over the last few years as a result of being able to take hold along the channel.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The right hon. Lady mentioned 34,000 cases so far since the printing of the Illegal Migration Bill. Of those cases, if people are found to have no credible case for asylum to stay in the United Kingdom, and if they come from countries to which it is virtually practically impossible to return them, what would she do with them?
Yvette Cooper
As the hon. Member will know, we should be returning people who do not have a foundation in persecution or conflict, who do not have a well-founded asylum claim. They should be being returned to their own country. But he will also know that there has been a 50% drop in the returns of failed asylum seekers since 2010—a huge drop. We should be working with a new returns and enforcement unit, with proper staffing in place, to reverse that drop. He will also be aware, because it was in evidence given to the Home Affairs Committee, where he has worked immensely hard over many years, and because he takes these issues very seriously, that only 5% of those who arrived from Albania—including on small boats—over the past few years have been returned to Albania. Although we support the Albania agreement, it is in fact being used predominantly to return historic cases, and has not been used for the kinds of cases he is talking about, in which decisions should be fast-tracked and people should be being returned quickly.
Tim Loughton
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way again, but she has answered a question that I did not ask. I was referring not to Albanians but to people from countries that she knows it is practically impossible to return them to. The Iranian Government will not let them off the plane. Eritreans would put them in jail and say they would be appealed on human rights. What would her party, in government, do with those people who had come here illegally from such countries, with no basis on which they could stay and no way of negotiating returns agreements with countries like Iran?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Member will know that people from countries such as Eritrea and Iran are very often granted asylum, and will not be sent to Rwanda under his Government’s policy because Rwanda will only be able to take a hundred or a couple of hundred people a year, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds. That is the core dishonesty and the failure at the heart of the Government’s programme—they are promising people that they will make huge changes to the existing system, but they are not at all. Instead, if anything, all they will do is stack people up in asylum hotels for even longer than the taxpayer is funding them, for a bill, currently, of £8 million a day—up from £6 million a day.
The Prime Minister declared the asylum backlog cleared—that is what he said—which is taking the country for fools. There are 99,000 cases in the backlog. That is probably over 120,000 people, and all the Home Office have tried to do is clear the cases before July 2022—cases that are already more than 18 months old. Those cases should not be in the system by now anyway. Any properly functioning system would have cleared cases that were more than 18 months old, but that is the scale of Tory chaos. Why are they just trying to catch up with themselves, clearing those very old cases? Of course, the backlog since July 2022 has doubled. Even their weak, limited target to clear the so-called “legacy backlog” has failed, with 4,500 cases not cleared and 35,000 cases simply withdrawn. We want the facts about that. What has happened to those 35,000 cases?
We know from the evidence to the Select Committee in November that as of November, the Home Office had no idea where 17,000 of those claimants were. How many of the 35,000 does the Home Office know to have left the country? How many of them does it know to be deceased or to be duplicate cases? And how many are probably still here? They might be working illegally, they might have restarted their asylum application and gone back to the beginning of the system, or they might be destitute on the streets. Whatever has happened to them, they are still here and the Home Office does not have a clue. Can the Minister give us a breakdown of the 35,000 cases? Is enforcement action taken if those people should not be here? It not, this all looks like more smoke and mirrors from a dodgy salesman Prime Minister.
We support some of the Government’s measures relating to France, and we support the agreement with Albania. We want to see more proper international co-operation like that, and we should be on steroids in tackling the criminal gangs.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Yvette Cooper
I will give way one more time. I need to finish so that others can speak.
Dame Meg Hillier
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. She will recall that at the end of the last Labour Government, there were returns at the rate of one every eight minutes. Does that not demonstrate that, where there is a will, we can tackle those who should not be in the country and welcome those who should?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right, which is why Labour will set up a new returns unit with 1,000 staff to do returns and enforcement—to actually get returns agreements in place, to go through individual cases and to reverse the 50% drop in returns since 2010.
Instead of the Rwanda scheme, as part of our five-point plan to strengthen border security and to fix the Tories’ asylum chaos we would use the money to fund proper action to go after the criminal gangs. We would have new cross-border police with stronger powers, similar to counter-terror powers. We would have new security agreements with Europol and other countries to stop the boats reaching the French coast in the first place. We would properly clear the backlog, ending hotel use; we would have a major returns and enforcement unit, alongside reform to resettlement routes, so that the UK continues to do our bit to help those fleeing conflict and persecution and so that we prevent people from being exploited by criminal gangs; and we would have proper international co-operation and proper plans to deal with the problems at source by providing in-region support to refugees, which is something this Government have repeatedly cut back.
We believe in strong border security and a properly controlled and managed asylum system, so that the UK does its bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, as we have always done, and so that those with no right to be here are swiftly returned. Under the Tories, we have none of those things. We just have chaos. We just have a con.
Five broken promises from a failing Prime Minister. He promised to clear the backlog—it is still 100,000. He promised to stop the boats—last year saw the second-highest number of crossings on record. He promised to end hotel use—it went up, not down. He promised to return everyone—returns are down 50%. He promised to pass a new law and, to be fair, he did pass a new law—he just did not implement it.
That is the problem with this Prime Minister: shiny graphics but shoddy gimmicks; wide-eyed promises but never delivery. The Tories all know it, which is why they should all be calling for the same facts as us, because those facts will expose what is really going on in this Government—the con on everyone. They should stop letting their Front Benchers play smoke and mirrors. They should be asking for the figures. The House should get those figures, as they are the figures we need. That is what this Humble Address should deliver.
Tom Pursglove
It is absolutely right that the Government prioritise closing hotels. That is a policy we have set and are delivering against. [Interruption.] Labour Members keep saying it is going up, but what we are seeing is hotels being closed. That is happening week on week, and we will continue to sustain that process.
Tom Pursglove
I will gladly give way to the shadow Home Secretary, as perhaps she will have a credible policy to put to the House.
Yvette Cooper
Will the Minister confirm that the latest figures show that the number of people in asylum hotels is 20% higher than it was last December, when the Prime Minister promised to end asylum hotel use, and that the costs have gone up from £6 million a day when the Prime Minister complained about this last December to more than £8 million a day, as the Minister just said today?
Tom Pursglove
The fact is that we are closing asylum hotels and it is absolutely the right strategy to pursue. I regularly hear colleagues across this House complain about hotels being open in their constituencies. I want to get on and close those hotels, as do my colleagues, and that is precisely what we will do. It is not sustainable just to continue with the status quo, in the way that the right hon. Lady advocates, in respect of the flow of people into the system. We must not forget that all those individuals making perilous crossings of the channel, facilitated by evil criminal gangs, are coming from a fundamentally safe country. That is why, through our multifaceted approach to this issue, we will get to grips with it, because we are attacking illegal migration at every stage, through work both at home and abroad.
Tom Pursglove
It is slightly uncharacteristic of the hon. Lady to be mean-spirited. It is fair to say that we are having a good debate, and both Front Benchers have taken many interventions. The Government have provided those costings to Parliament, and we will continue to report the costs in the annual report and accounts in a way that is perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable and perfectly respectable.
Tom Pursglove
I will give way to the shadow Home Secretary just one last time, as I have been very generous. I am also conscious that there are many Members who wish to speak.
Yvette Cooper
The Minister has been generous. Given that he has published the future costs of the agreement with France, why is he still refusing to publish years 4 and 5 of the Rwanda agreement? We know how much will be paid in ‘24, ‘25 and ‘26 for France. Why not tell us the same figures for Rwanda? The taxpayer is entitled to know.
Tom Pursglove
That information will be provided in the usual manner—through the annual report and accounts. The right hon. Lady will recognise that, within that, there are elements such as the number and circumstances of individuals who will be relocated, and we will publish those costs. That transparency will come as part of the annual report and accounts, as she would expect.
We have touched in this debate on commercial sensitivity and the ongoing relationships with our partners. The courts acknowledge that Rwanda entered the partnership in good faith, and the mechanisms that we have introduced through the treaty will provide cast-iron guarantees to ensure the welfare of all those relocated. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which is the toughest immigration legislation ever introduced in Parliament, will enable Parliament to confirm that Rwanda is safe. There will be very limited, specific circumstances under which someone can claim that Rwanda is unsafe for them in their exceptional circumstances. If a foreign court chooses to interfere, we will do whatever it takes to get flights off the ground. We will debate all of that again next week.
Rwanda is a beacon of Africa, a country full of potential and promise that stands ready to welcome people into its communities. Rwanda cares deeply about providing humanitarian protection. It is incorrect and, frankly, offensive to reduce Rwanda’s interest in this policy to a financial incentive. Claims like that are often made by people who have never been and who choose to ignore the brilliant work that Rwanda does with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide sanctuary to many people in the spirit of partnership. That should be celebrated and welcomed, not traduced.
To be clear, the Government of Rwanda did not ask for money to sign the treaty, nor did we offer any. That said, doing nothing is not a free option. It is right that there is additional funding to reflect the future costs. The total cost of the partnership will depend on the number of people relocated, the timing of when it occurs and the outcomes of individual cases. Rwanda has the capacity to deliver on this uncapped partnership, and we have been working with it to build its capacity over the past year. As I say, it already hosts 135,000 refugees and asylum seekers working with the UNHCR and other partners.
We must stop the boats and save lives. The moral imperative could not be clearer. Ensuring that those who arrive in the UK through unnecessary, illegal and dangerous means cannot stay here should prove a deterrent to others who may try to do the same thing. We need to stop criminal gangs profiting from this through decisive action. We know deterrents work. We have seen that clearly demonstrated through the returns agreement with Albania. That strong deterrent has seen us return 5,000 Albanians in 2023 alone and Albanian arrivals fall by 90%.
We want every people smuggler to know that the UK is off limits and that we will not tolerate any further loss of life. Nor will we accept the strain that high levels of illegal migration place on our communities and public services. To the criminal gangs profiting from misery, we say, “Your despicable business model will no longer be viable.” We remain firmly committed to getting flights to Rwanda off the ground as soon as possible. We want the British people to know that we are putting them and their interests first. We will not be deterred. We accept and embrace the challenge. Unlike Labour, we have a credible plan, are working through it and are making progress. By sticking the course, we can and will stop the boats.