Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has been in post for two weeks, during which time he has used the same language to pick a fight with Stockton and show what he thinks of his own Rwanda policy, he has been attacked by his Back Benchers, and Downing Street has already been forced to confirm it still has full confidence in him. Twelve days ago he said the number of asylum hotel bed spaces are down, but four days ago Home Office figures showed they are up to a record 56,000—10,000 more than at the beginning of the year. Does he even know what is going on?

[James Cleverly]

Yes, I do. Let me expand—that answer was a by-product of the right hon. Lady asking a closed question at the Dispatch Box. I have been in this job for 14 days, and I am conscious that my counterparts around Europe and the world are grappling with many of the same issues. I would love nothing more than to be able to resolve them all in 14 days—I am good, but I am not a magician.

[Yvette Cooper]

Perhaps that mean an end to the magical thinking that the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor called for. We still have 10,000 more bed spaces than when the Prime Minister promised to end hotel use. The Home Secretary owes the House the facts. There is still no sign of anything on the failed Rwanda plan, because he knows it will not work, and nothing on the trebling of net migration to tackle the skills gaps that are driving work visas. The Government have been in power for 13 years and all we have is chaos and briefing wars. His Back Benchers are already calling him “Colonel Calamity”, and he has Corporal Chaos next to him on the Front Bench. Given the mess he has inherited and his penchant for profanity, does he accept that he is now up a certain kind of creek without a paddle?

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady is someone I admire hugely, and one of the things I admire most is how she has managed to be at the Dispatch Box twice but has failed to ask anything resembling a sensible question about the issues we are discussing. When her party was in government, it addressed the volumes of migration by simply redefining people, wiping the slate clean and pretending there was never a problem.

I have said this about the right hon. Lady’s party in broadcasts, and I say it from the Dispatch Box: there is a gaping vacuum where the Labour party’s policy on migration, whether it be legal or illegal, should be. Unless and until Labour Members come up with something approaching a policy, I will continue to do what we know to be right: driving down small-boat arrivals and reducing the number of hotel rooms needed. We have closed 50 hotels and we will do more.

Illegal Immigration

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Home Secretary to his post. He is the eighth Conservative Home Secretary in eight years—and what a mess he has inherited. The Supreme Court’s conclusion today is damning. It exposes the complete failure of the Prime Minister’s flagship Rwanda policy, of his judgment in making it the central part of his policy and of the Conservatives in getting the most basic grip on the boats and asylum chaos.

There is no serious plan on the dangerous boat crossings that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk, the end of which we all want to see. There is no serious plan to sort out the chaos in the asylum system, including ending placing people in costly asylum hotels because of the soaring backlog. There was a readiness to spend more than £140 million of taxpayers’ money on this plan—money we cannot get back now that the policy has totally failed. That adds to the Prime Minister’s disastrous judgment in appointing and backing the previous Home Secretary, who was unfit for the job.

I do not agree with pretty much anything the Home Secretary’s predecessor ever said, but she was right in this message to the Prime Minister:

“If we lose in the Supreme Court…you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one…your magical thinking…has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’.”

Wasting time, wasting money and letting the country down: that is the Conservatives’ record.

The Supreme Court judgment outlines a catalogue of problems with the policy, but Ministers knew all about them. When it was first announced 18 months ago, I raised in the House the problems with the Israel-Rwanda deal. Ministers were warned many times about failures and weaknesses in the Rwanda asylum system, but they just pressed on. Even if the plan had been found lawful today, they have admitted it would have covered only a few hundred people anyway—at a time when 100,000 people applied for asylum in the UK last year, on the Conservative watch—and that it would have cost about twice as much per person as deciding cases in the UK.

The truth is the Government have wasted not just one but five years by failing to deal with the situation. Five years ago there were just a few hundred people crossing in boats, but they let criminal gangs take hold along the channel. They let asylum decisions collapse, so the backlog soared and there are now 20% more people in asylum hotels than there were when the Prime Minister promised to end that.

Will the Home Secretary tell us how much in total the Government have spent on the failed Rwanda plan so far? The House has a right to know. He says he wants a new treaty. How much more will that cost? Despite his optimism, the Supreme Court judgment says

“the Rwandan government indicated that the contemplated arrangements might not be straightforward to implement in practice…the provision of resources does not mean that the problems which we have described can be resolved in the short term.”

Again, we have more of the magical thinking.

What does this mean for the Prime Minister’s flagship legislation? He boasted about passing it only yesterday, but the Government have not actually commenced the central clauses of the law, because without Rwanda—and, frankly, even with Rwanda—the policy does not work and will just lead to an endless, ever-increasing permanent backlog. Will the Secretary of State confirm now that he will not be implementing the central tenets of that law this year? Will he also confirm that this means that the Prime Minister’s pledges to introduce the new law to stop the boats and end hotel use will all be broken this year?

Why will the Home Secretary not put that money into a proper plan to tackle the boats? I do not believe that he ever believed in the Rwanda plan. He distanced himself from it and his predecessor’s language on it. He may even, on occasion, have privately called it batshit. But he and I agree that we need action to stop the boat crossings that are undermining border security and putting lives at risk. We need a properly controlled and managed system for asylum and refugees.

Let us concentrate instead on the things that can work. We support the work with France along the northern coast; we want it to go further. We support the work with Albania and with other countries across Europe to tackle the gangs, but it is far, far too weak. We need a proper, comprehensive and massively scaled-up plan to go after the criminal gangs, a proper system to clear the backlog, and a proper returns unit in place so that we can end hotel use. Instead of that cost going up from £6 million to £8 million a day on his watch, let us end hotel use and save the taxpayer £2 billion. That should be common ground, so I suggest that he stops wasting taxpayers’ money on more failing schemes, that he ditches the magical thinking and the culture wars of his predecessors and that he ditches the gimmicks and finally gets a grip.

[James Cleverly]

One of the dangers of writing a critique of Government policy before reading the facts laid out in a statement is that the statement makes the critique obsolete. The right hon. Lady talks about hotel usage, which I remind the House is coming down. She talks about small boat arrivals in the UK, which I remind the House are coming down. She talks about forming closer working relationships with our European partners, which I remind the House we are already doing.

In response to the right hon. Lady’s various questions, I have written here, “Does Labour have a plan?” [Interruption.] If those on the Labour Benches could curb their enthusiasm and listen to what I was about to say next, they would hear that I was going to concede that it is clear that they do have a plan. Their plan—their great idea—is to do what the Government are already doing, which is bucking the European trend. When other countries are seeing 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 100% increases in their illegal arrivals, we are seeing a reduction of one third in ours, bucking the trend.

We have always said that Rwanda, and the deterrent effect of the Rwanda plan, is an important tool in our toolbox; we have never claimed that it was the only one. We have always pursued a range of options—when I say “we”, I mean my right hon. Friend the Immigration Minister, with me watching him from King Charles Street, although the collective “we” is appropriate here—and, as I set out in my statement, those activities are having an effect.

My final point is that the mask has slipped. The glee that I detect from those on the Opposition Benches for this temporary setback on the delivery of our plan displays what we on the Government Benches know to be true: they do not want migration control to work. They do not want to take control of our borders; they would rather delegate it to anybody else—[Interruption.]

Metropolitan Police: Operational Independence

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the operational independence of the Metropolitan police.

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

About a month ago, Hamas perpetrated a sickening terrorist attack in Israel, murdering 1,400 innocent people, often in horrific circumstances. About 200 people remain held hostage by Hamas, a terrorist organisation, and I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House are with those hostages today. We have also seen, in the United Kingdom, thousands of people demonstrating in recent weeks. Thanks to the tireless work of the police, those incidents have largely passed without significant incident. However, a number of arrests, now nearly 200, have been made, where people have committed disorder, racially aggravated crimes or assaults on police officers. It is right that police officers have acted robustly in those cases.

It is also right that the police are operationally independent of government. That is a fundamental principle of British policing, as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday. The Metropolitan police asked protesters to postpone their planned protest this weekend, but the request was refused. The Prime Minister met the commissioner yesterday to seek reassurances that remembrance events will be protected. Of course, remembrance events play a special part in this nation’s long and proud history, and it would be a grave insult if they were to be disrupted in any way. It is for the Metropolitan police to decide whether to apply to the Home Secretary to ban any march. As of this morning, no such application has been received, but the Home Secretary will, of course, carefully consider one should it be made. I reiterate that the police retain the confidence of the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and myself in using all the powers available to them, under terrorism legislation and public order legislation, to prevent criminality and disorder, and hate speech.

Let me say to the House that I have been contacted this morning repeatedly by members of the Jewish community who are deeply apprehensive about what this weekend may bring, and I want to put on record that we expect the police to protect those members of communities in London, including the Jewish community, who are feeling vulnerable this weekend. There are comprehensive powers in place to do that. Hate has no place on London’s streets and we expect the police to ensure that the laws are upheld. There are powers in place to deal with people spreading hate or deliberately raising tensions through harassment and abusive behaviour. The police can impose conditions on marches, as indeed they have done to prevent pro-Palestine protesters from approaching the Israeli embassy, to give one example. The police have also used section 60AA conditions to require people to remove face coverings, but the use of those powers is, of course, an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Service.

This weekend should first and foremost be about remembering those who gave their lives in defence of this country. Any disruption to remembrance services would be completely unacceptable and an insult to their memory. I have confidence that the Metropolitan police and other police forces will ensure that this weekend passes off peacefully and without disruption.

[Yvette Cooper]

Where is the Home Secretary? She has sent the Policing Minister here to refuse to repeat her words. We have seen her words this morning; she has been attempting to rip up the operational independence of the police, attacking their impartiality in the crudest and most partisan of ways, deliberately undermining respect for the police at a sensitive time, when they have an important job to do, and deliberately seeking to create division around remembrance, which the Policing Minister rightly said should be a time for communities to come together and to pay our respects. She is deliberately inflaming community tensions in the most dangerous of ways. She is encouraging extremists on all sides, attacking the police when she should be backing them. It is highly irresponsible and dangerous, and no other Home Secretary would ever have done this.

Remembrance events are really important to all of us. Those events need to be protected. That is the job of the police: to enforce and respect the law, while maintaining public safety, tackling hate crime and extremism and respecting rights in law to peaceful protest. They have to follow the law and the evidence, whatever politicians think, not be the operational arm of the Home Secretary, because whether she likes it or not, that is the British tradition of policing and I, for one, am proud of it.

We know what she is up to—claiming homelessness is a lifestyle choice, picking fights with the police to get headlines—but the job of the Home Secretary is to keep the public safe, not run an endless Tory leadership campaign. Cabinet colleagues refuse to agree with her and former police chiefs are lining up to condemn her, so I have two questions: does this Government still believe in the operational independence of the police and how can they do so while this Home Secretary is in post? And did the Prime Minister and No. 10 agree to the content of the article? Either the Prime Minister has endorsed this or he is too weak to sack her. If he cannot get a grip on her conduct, it means he has given up on serious government, and he and the Home Secretary should both let someone else do the job.

[Chris Philp]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for her questions, as always. She asked about where the Home Secretary is. It may have been wise to ask that privately rather than publicly, but she is with a close family member who is having a hospital operation this morning. I have the Home Secretary’s permission to say that to the House in the event that somebody raised it, as the shadow Home Secretary has done, so I am passing that message on to the House.

As we consider this topic, the House should keep in mind the fact that many of our fellow citizens are feeling deeply uneasy about what is going on in the middle east and the domestic repercussions. We have seen a spike in Islamophobic offences—there have been 21 arrests in the last four weeks for Islamophobic offences. We have seen a surge in antisemitic offences—there have been 98 arrests for antisemitic offences in the last four weeks.

I have been contacted this morning by members of the Jewish community who are deeply uneasy about what this weekend will bring. I do not think it is acceptable that our fellow citizens feel scared or uneasy walking about the streets of London. It is reasonable for politicians—the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others, including, I am sure, some on the Opposition Benches as well—to raise those concerns and make sure that the police are protecting those communities. It is not acceptable to have fear and hatred on our streets. Let that message go out from this House today.

In relation to the question about operational independence, yes, of course the Government resolutely back operational independence, as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday, after his meeting with the commissioner at No. 10. But the Prime Minister also said after that meeting that he would hold the commissioner to account, as politicians are supposed to do—police and crime commissioners, including the Mayor of London, as London’s PPC, do that, and so do we, as Members of Parliament. That is perfectly proper and perfectly right.

In terms of the approval process with No. 10, I am afraid I do not have any visibility on that at all, but let us keep in mind that we are seeing a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, there are 200 people being held hostage, some 1,400 people were slaughtered by terrorists and members of our own community are feeling scared this weekend. Let us keep that at the front of our minds, not party political point scoring.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We really do have a problem, don’t we? Home Secretary, I am talking to you. I am bothered, because these are topical questions and there are people here who want to catch my eye. You cannot carry on making statements to every question. Topical means topical. We are going to be here for some while, so I hope you understand. I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On 7 March, the Home Secretary emailed Conservative supporters saying

“today we’re changing our laws—and bringing the small boat crossings to an end.”

Since then, 20,000 more people have arrived. She is not applying her own law, because it does not work. The use of asylum hotels is up, with no date to end their use, and foreign criminal returns are down. The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has said:

“This is no way to run a government department.”

He is right, isn’t he? Is that why the Home Secretary is getting rid of him?

[Suella Braverman]

I am incredibly proud of the landmark legislation passed by this House, which was opposed by the Labour party every step of the way. This will allow us to detain those who arrive here illegally and remove them to a safe country like Rwanda.

The point is that at least we have a policy. I am not sure that anyone on the Labour Front Bench knows what Labour’s plan is for stopping the boats. Shadow Ministers certainly seem to be making it up as they go along. There were quotas and then no quotas. The EU has made it clear that we would be expected to take thousands more migrants from the EU. Will there be family reunion? We already have a scheme for family reunion. They are making it up because they do not have a plan. I think the British people can see exactly what Labour’s plan is—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not think the Home Secretary understands what “topical” means. Could the Whips please explain to their Front Benchers that we have to get through the Order Paper? You are not helping me, and I do not know why.

[Yvette Cooper]

What the Home Secretary said is total waffle. She has no answer on the inspector because she is afraid of scrutiny. There was no answer on her failure, just invented garbage about Labour. The Home Office’s immigration director, asylum director, borders director and accommodation director are all going or gone because the only people she removes are the people she needs to do the job. There has been a 40% increase in the use of asylum hotels since she became Home Secretary. When will she end the use of asylum hotels? When will she deal with this shambles, stop the gimmicks and get a grip?

[Suella Braverman]

The right hon. Lady talks about a shambles, but the last four days have been a great example of a shambles. The EU has called her party “delusional” when it comes to its grand plan for stopping the boats. Labour disagrees with the National Crime Agency on how to solve the problem. The reality is that Labour is on another planet on how to stop the boats. It is not based in reality, it is not grappling with this challenge and it is not being honest with the British people.

Prevent: Independent Review

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. I join the Government in paying tribute to the work of our security services, our counter-terrorism police, the myriad different agencies—local communities, councils and education bodies—that work on the Prevent programme, and all those who work so hard to keep us safe.

Extremists try to divide us and to undermine our democratic values and our respect for one another. Extremist ideologies are a stain on our society: they feed on fear and vulnerabilities to promote hatred and violence. We have seen appalling terror attacks, from the attack on children in Manchester and the attack in Fishmongers’ Hall to the attacks on our own Jo Cox and David Amess. A strong and determined response to extremism and terror threats and threats to our national security, wherever they come from, is immensely important to our safety.

The Contest strategy rightly includes “prevent”, “pursue”, “prepare” and “protect”, and it was right for the Home Secretary to update the House on the approach to extremism and to the Prevent programme. However, on a day when there are grave unanswered questions about how a terror suspect could possibly have escaped from prison, before trial, hidden on the bottom of a food van, I am astonished that she said nothing about Prevent and prisons. We have unanswered questions about how on earth the escape could have happened, and also about staffing levels. There have been repeated warnings of 30% staff absences and shifts not being covered. Those staffing issues are a matter for Prevent as well. The independent review highlighted an issue about which countless other reports have warned: the lack of sufficient action on deradicalisation and Prevent in our prisons. Prisoners are actually leaving prison more radicalised than they were when they went in. Referring to extremism-related training for staff, Sir William said:

“it became clear during the review that this training was frequently cancelled due to staff and resource shortages…I was further told that there have been delays to staff beginning Prevent training and to extremist prisoners beginning rehabilitative programmes. These delays are attributed to staffing and resourcing issues”.

The Government have been warned repeatedly about this, and I am concerned about the complete lack of reference to it in the Home Secretary’s statement. Will she please tell us what action is being taken, and also what action is being taken for those due to be released from prison—those who are due to be deliberately released, that is, as opposed to those who escape? Contest has warned that

“four of the nine declared terrorist attacks since 2018 were perpetrated by serving or recently released prisoners.”

The joint inspectorate warned just a few months ago that there were not enough senior officials in place to oversee the 120 prisoners with terror-related convictions who are due to be released by next March. What deradicalisation and Prevent work have those 120 prisoners undergone in prison, and what provisions are in place in the community to ensure that there is no risk to the public? We cannot afford any suggestion of failure by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to take national security treats in prison seriously.

Today’s report from the borders inspectorate is highly critical of Border Force’s failures on insider threats, saying that organisational structures for addressing

“insider threat were found to be confused, with complex inter-relationships and unclear lines of accountability”.

What action is the Home Secretary taking to deal with insider threats?

There is also no mention of any action on online radicalisation or the use of artificial intelligence. Online radicalisation was raised by the independent review, and we know that generative AI raises further challenges and questions. We have identified potentially serious legal loopholes in our ability to take action against those who choose to use generative AI to try to radicalise people. What action is being taken on that? We have asked the Home Secretary about this before. Will she agree to Labour’s proposal to tighten the law?

The majority of the extremist threats our security agencies deal with are Islamist extremism, followed by far-right extremism. Other warped ideologies have also driven violent threats, but the main focus must continue to be on Islamist extremist threats. I welcome the emphasis on antisemitism, but the agencies, the police and the Prevent programme need to follow the threats of violence and hateful extremism wherever the evidence goes, rather than having to follow any political hierarchies that have been set.

Neil Basu, the former counter-terror chief, has said that we also need to make sure there is earlier intervention and prevention. He said:

“If we set the bar for Prevent so high that it can deal only with those who are already radicalised, we will have more terrorists, not fewer.”

Finally, what action is being taken in response to the former countering extremism commissioner’s report on hateful extremism, published some years ago? Are the Government ever going to respond to that or update the countering extremism strategy, which is now eight years out of date? We need that action. Prevent is not a whole countering extremism strategy. We need broader action if we are to keep our democratic values safe.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her response. She raised several points to which I will respond.

First, I pay tribute to all the professionals and experts in our agencies who work day and night to keep the British people safe from the evolving, changing and, indeed, increasing risk we carry when it comes to terrorism. They work in many ways of which we will not be aware, but they make huge sacrifices. I am very proud of the progress that they and this Government have made in recent years. That includes the opening of a new counter-terrorism operations centre that is now up and running and delivering state-of-the-art counter-terrorism work between all the agencies—be they the police or others—working in one place in a co-ordinated and streamlined way. I was pleased to visit CTOC recently. Our Contest strategy was relaunched earlier this year and, since 2018, 39 attacks have been disrupted by the brave men and women working in law enforcement and other agencies. That huge amount of work is going incredibly well.

Of course, the threat remains substantial, which means an attack is likely. There is no room for complacency on this issue, which is why I am wholly committed to focusing on the effective delivery of Sir William Shawcross’s recommendations. That is why I have come to update the House today.

The right hon. Lady mentioned prisons and, of course, William Shawcross referred to the threat of terrorism, extremism and radicalisation within the prison estate. In fact, recommendation 27 makes it clear that better and more training is required for prison officers, which is why I am very pleased that there has been significant progress on the roll-out of the new terrorism risks behaviour profile. This new prison-based product is led by the Ministry of Justice, building on the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall and reiterated and built on by Sir William. That roll-out will be completed by the end of the year. The value of this new tool is that prison officers will be better trained. They will have more skills and more tools at their disposal to better identify terrorism and the risk that it poses within the prison estate. That is a direct response to recommendations and concerns that have been raised.

I refer the right hon. Lady to the previous statement made by the Lord Chancellor on the broader issues. I am receiving regular briefings on the circumstances leading to the escape of Daniel Khalife yesterday and on the wide-ranging operation involving the police, Border Force and the agencies to track him down.

The right hon. Lady also mentioned resources. Let me be clear that funding for counter-terrorism is as high as it has ever been, and Prevent funding has not been cut. However, we are redirecting resources to better reflect the evolving threat picture, so that our resources are directed at the priorities informed by the intelligence picture. For example, I am very pleased that all local authorities now have a dedicated Home Office point of expertise and contact. That has been rolled out throughout England and Wales. It will properly equip those in the local authority sector to have proper training and a connection, a dialogue and a meaningful relationship with the Home Office so that they can be better tooled up to respond to radicalisation and the risks relating to Prevent in the community.

The right hon. Lady also said there should not be a hierarchy of threats. Of course, there is no such hierarchy. Prevent is ideologically agnostic, but we must always be clear about the facts. When I last updated the House, for example, 80% of live investigations by the counter-terrorism police network were Islamist in nature, and MI5 is clear that Islamist terrorism remains our predominant threat, accounting for 75% of its case load, yet only 16% of Prevent referrals in 2021 were Islamist. That is a fundamental problem that Sir William identified and that I am addressing right now through these robust and wide-ranging reforms.

Prevent is a security service, not a social service. The role of ideology in terrorism has too often been minimised, with violence attributed to vulnerabilities such as mental health or poverty and to the absence of protective factors, rather than focusing on individual responsibility and personal agency in the choices that these people are making.

I am implementing all the review’s recommendations, and I have committed to reporting back to the House on progress. I am clear that Prevent must focus solely on security, not on political correctness or appeasing campaign groups. Its first objective must be to tackle the ideological causes of terrorism. We will not be cowed by fear, and we will not be hampered by doubt. I am very grateful to the House for hearing this update.

Illegal Migration Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister is being pressed on the nature of accommodation or detention that children and young people will be held in. The spirit behind the Minister’s intention matters. Therefore, will he tell us if is it true that he gave orders to the asylum reception centre to paint over children’s cartoons? If so, why? Nobody believes that Mickey Mouse cartoons encourage or deter boats from arriving; they simply think that the Minister is not showing common decency towards vulnerable children.

[Robert Jenrick]

I have been clear in answer to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that we provide very high quality care at all the centres in which we support unaccompanied children. We did not think that the set-up in that particular unit was age-appropriate, because the majority of the individuals who passed through it unaccompanied last year were teenagers. That does not change the fundamentals that we support with decency and compassion anyone who comes to this country.

The right hon. Lady is missing the point: this Bill seeks to reduce the number of unaccompanied minors coming to the United Kingdom, precisely because we want to protect them and ensure that they are not victims of people smugglers and human traffickers. I take at face value her support for those individuals, but if she wanted to reduce that trade, she would support the Bill or come forward with a credible alternative. She has not done so. Her compassion is, to a degree, performative, because she does not come forward with alternatives that would genuinely support individuals.

Let me move on to modern slavery. The provisions in the Bill relating to that have been of particular concern to my right hon. Friends the Members for Maidenhead and for Chingford and Woodford Green. I welcome the opportunity in recent days to discuss with them the Lords amendments on this issue. It remains our view that there are clear opportunities to misuse modern slavery protections, and it is therefore essential that we take steps in the Bill to prevent misuse. The national referral mechanism rate for people arriving in the UK on small boats and being detained for return has risen from 6% for detentions ending in 2019 to 73% in 2021. The referral rate has since fallen slightly to 65% for detentions ending between January and September. The 33% increase in NRM referrals from 2021 to 2022 has put the NRM under serious strain, which is only getting worse as the trends increase in one direction. There is significant and increasing pressure on public services, which is why we want to take action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary wish the deputy chairman of the Conservative party, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), a speedy recovery from the terrible bug that I understand has, this morning, prevented him from launching an entirely different Conservative immigration policy from the policy of the Conservative Home Secretary? Does she agree with him that social care visas should be cancelled—yes or no?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just say that you have no responsibility for the Labour party and, in fairness, this is Home Office questions?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary could not answer the question: does she support her own social care visas or not? She spent all weekend briefing that she agrees with her Back Benchers, but today she cannot even answer the basic question. Making up stuff about the Labour party will not help her when her party has been in power for 13 years and when work visas have doubled, exactly because the Government have failed to tackle skills shortages or issues in the labour market.

This is total chaos. We have a Rwanda policy that is not removing anyone; an impact assessment that says her policies will not work and will cost much more; a 50% drop in removals of foreign criminals—the inspector says this is because the Home Office cannot even identify who can be removed; a record number of people in hotels; a record high asylum backlog; and Back Benchers writing the Home Secretary’s immigration policy because they do not think she is up to the job. It has been a humiliating few weeks for the Home Secretary—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Sorry, but you are not going to take advantage of me in that way—that is totally unfair. I cannot pull one side up and allow the other to take advantage of it. I expect all the Back Benchers to be able to get their questions in today. This is about everybody having the same opportunity to get involved, so please do not do that again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary will be aware of the documentary last week on the relationship between Boris Johnson and others, and former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev, and about the meeting in an Italian villa, the ignoring of security advice on Lords appointments, and the decision not to sanction Alexander Lebedev. Given the importance of national security, will she tell the House whether she has any concerns about those reports? Will she set up an independent investigation into what happened, into who knew what, and into how far the security risk spreads?

[Suella Braverman]

At the Home Office, the Minister for Security and I take seriously the threats posed by hostile state actors. That is why the Minister for Security is chairing the Defending Democracy Taskforce, bringing together agencies and Departments in a cross-Whitehall approach to tackling the serious threats that we all face as parliamentarians and facing those in public office. I gently remind the right hon. Lady that one of her own parliamentary colleagues has a very dubious track record when it comes to working with the Chinese Communist party.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Today’s judgment shows that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have no plan to fix the Tories’ small boats chaos. Their only policy, to send everyone to Rwanda, is now completely unravelling. Ministers have admitted that it will cost £169,000 to send each person to Rwanda—on top of the £140 million cheques that they have already written, with more costs to come —but now the court has found that they did not even do the basic work to make sure that the Rwanda scheme was legal or safe.

Over four years, this Tory boats crisis has grown and grown, and the Government have completely broken the asylum system. They have failed to stop criminal gangs taking hold along our borders—gangs that have seen their profits soar from £3 million four years ago to more than £180 million today. They promised four years ago that they would end boat crossings in six months, but the number has increased more than twentyfold since then. Convictions for people smuggling have dropped, asylum decision making has collapsed—down by a third—but the costs of the asylum system have soared. A fivefold increase in the cost for just one person in the asylum system is no one else's fault; it is just Tory mismanagement and chaos, resulting in a backlog that has soared to a record high of 175,000. The projection of the Home Office itself is that those Tory failures will rise to a cost of £11 billion. That is the cost of the Government’s failure—and instead of getting a grip on any of that, all they can come up with are gimmicks to make things worse.

This Rwanda scheme is unworkable, unethical, extortionately expensive, and a costly and damaging distraction from the urgent practical action that we should be taking—from the plan that Labour has set out to stop wasting all this money on a failing Rwanda scheme and instead to go after the criminal gangs, and to secure a stronger agreement with France and sort out the massive backlog that is costing a fortune: action to stop the dangerous boat crossings that are undermining our border security and putting lives at risk.

The Home Secretary has defended her Rwanda plan, but this is what the judgment reveals. Not only will it cost £169,000 for each person, as well as the £140 million cheques that have been sent; according to the Lord Chief Justice, there will be substantial sums of future aid support. How much? The Government are expecting Rwanda to take asylum decisions under a memorandum of understanding, but the judgment reveals that the Rwandan asylum system takes only about 100 decisions a year at the moment, and has a 100% rejection rate for Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. Under the Israel Rwanda deal, the Government breached the memorandum of understanding. People were routinely targeted by agents and gangs and moved clandestinely to Uganda, which has made trafficking worse.

The judgment also says that Rwanda has only one committee that takes all the asylum decisions and only one eligibility officer preparing cases. So on the idea that the Government are going to be able to deliver on their pledges, even the Lord Chief Justice, who finds that the scheme could be lawful, has said that it is only on the basis that the scheme is small—just 100 people.

The Home Secretary talks again today about thousands of people being sent. The Lord Chief Justice says that

“the talk of Rwanda, within a few years, being a destination for thousands of asylum seekers”

is “political hyperbole”. A hundred people is less than 0.5% of those who arrived in the UK, so no wonder the Home Office admits there is no evidence that it will act as a deterrent. It is a total con on the British people.

There are two questions for the Home Secretary. Does she agree with the Lord Chief Justice that “thousands” is “political hyperbole” and that, even if she succeeds, it will just be a few hundred instead? And how long is she going to keep wasting all of this taxpayers’ money on a failing policy and wasting everybody’s time on ramping up the rhetoric rather than coming up with a serious plan?

This afternoon, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration set out a damning indictment of the Tory Home Office and its ability to pursue casework or have accurate data. It says that in the Home Office,

“there is no single version of the truth”

and concludes that

“This is no way to run a government department.”

But this Home Secretary is running it. She is running this chaos, failing to sort out the boats chaos, failing to clear the backlog or mend the broken asylum system, failing to get a grip. I do not doubt that she will now stand up and read from her pre-prepared script, blaming everyone else and making up stuff all about the Labour party rather than answering the two questions that she has been asked, rather than answering anybody’s questions about the decisions that she has made. [Interruption.] She is in charge. The Tories have been in charge for 13 years. This is their chaos—their Tory chaos, their boats chaos and their broken asylum system. We do not need more slogans; we need solutions. We do not need more gimmicks; we need a Government with a grip. She is clearly not capable of it, so why does she not move over and give way to someone else?

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her pre-prepared script as well—very well delivered. I have to say, she seems unusually upbeat today, which I find, frankly, quite odd, given that today’s judgment will be frustrating for the majority of the British people who have repeatedly voted for controlled migration, for all those who want to see this Government deliver on our promise to stop the boats. I cannot help but contrast that public sentiment of disappointment with her excitement and delight today. As so many of her colleagues on the Opposition Benches are cheering this decision, we see an opposite view here.

Today is a bad day for the British people. Today is a good day for the people smugglers. It is a good day for Labour. As ever from the shadow Home Secretary, there is no regard for the will of the British people. I know she sees the will of the British people as an inconvenience and an irritation, because her statement demonstrates that she simply has no empathy for the impact of illegal migration on local communities. She fails and refuses to recognise that those crossing by small boat are doing so illegally.

As ever from Labour, there is no alternative plan, and moreover, it does not care that it has no alternative plan. The truth is that our current system is rigged against the British people. That is why we are changing the law. The Labour party is perfectly content with this rigged system. Labour Members would like to keep it in place. That is why they are opposing our Illegal Migration Bill. That is why they would scrap our partnership with Rwanda. Rather than proposing any meaningful reforms to the asylum system, Labour would keep the system as it is to enable more people to come to the country illegally so that they can be settled into local communities more quickly. That is simply open borders masquerading as humanitarianism, and she should be honest with the British people.

I wonder if the right hon. Lady has actually read the judgment, given her gleeful disposition. Let me repeat some of it to her. Although the Court of Appeal did find by majority, with a dissenting view from the Lord Chief Justice, that there are deficiencies in the Rwandan asylum system, specifically relating to the risk of refoulement, all other grounds on which the appeal was brought were unanimously dismissed. That means the policy does not breach our obligations under the UN refugee convention and does not breach our domestic laws, as she and the Opposition have consistently maintained.

As I have said, we will seek permission to appeal the disappointing aspects of the judgment, but I think the British people will see quite clearly that, while we are trying to stop the boats, Labour has simply obstructed progress time and time again and has offered no solutions. The Prime Minister and I have promised to do whatever it takes to stop the boats; Labour has apparently pledged to do whatever it takes to stop us stopping the boats.

Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on the publication of the impact assessment on the Illegal Migration Bill.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

The Illegal Migration Bill is critical to stopping the boats. Its intent is clear: if someone comes to the UK illegally, they should be detained and swiftly returned to their home country if safe, or relocated to a safe third country such as Rwanda. The impact assessment published yesterday makes clear that inaction is simply not an option. The volumes and costs associated with illegal migration have risen exponentially, driven by small boat arrivals. Unless we act decisively to stop the boats, the cost to the taxpayer and the damage to society will continue to grow.

The asylum system currently costs £3.6 billion a year and £6 million a day in hotel accommodation, but that is not the true cost of doing nothing. As this impact assessment shows, the cost of accommodating illegal migrants has increased dramatically since 2020. If these trends continued, the Home Office would be spending over £11 billion a year, or £32 million a day, on asylum support by the end of 2026. In such a scenario, the Bill would only need to deliver a 2% deterrence in arrivals to enable cost savings.

The figure of £11 billion is an extraordinary amount of money—nearly 10 times the amount of money the taxpayer spent on the asylum system as recently as 2021—and anyone opposing this Bill needs to explain how they would pay those costs. Given the Labour party’s opposition to this Bill, it represents another £11 billion black hole in its fiscal plans.

The impact assessment suggests that passing this Bill could directly save the UK taxpayer over £100,000 for every illegal migrant deterred from making a small boat crossing. It also finds that the Bill could lead to a much wider set of benefits—including reducing pressures on local authorities, public services and the housing market—that could not be monetised, meaning that the savings will in fact be much greater.

The British public are clear that they want to stop the boats. That is why we must keep using every tool at our disposal to do just that and to secure our borders, and why this Bill must become law.

[Yvette Cooper]

I was going to ask if the Immigration Minister had seriously signed off this garbage of an impact assessment, which no self-respecting Minister could possibly think was serious, but actually the nonsense he has just said is even worse and even less coherent. This is not an impact assessment. According to the Government’s own guidance, it is supposed to include the

“costs, benefits and risks...and a consideration of a range of options.”

However, we have something that does not even include some of the most basic options to assess, such as speeding up the asylum system and making savings that way. Instead, it says that this impact assessment

“does not attempt to estimate any costs of implementing the Bill…or estimate the volumes of individuals that will be impacted by the Bill.”

Really, what is the point of it, given that the document itself admits that people “may not be deterred” by any of this, and it cannot answer the most basic questions? I have never seen anything more clueless and chaotic.

The impact assessment does provide evidence of the scale of Conservative failure. The cost for one person in the asylum system for just one night has gone up fivefold in four years. That is just the cost of Tory mismanagement. It has gone up faster than mortgages or energy bills, and it has even gone up faster than the price of cheese. It is all Tory Home Office mismanagement. It shows the shocking fact that people are now staying in the asylum system for four years, and there is no alternative to try to speed up the system or to look at that.

The Government do say that it will cost £169,000 per person to pay another country to take asylum decisions for us. So far, the Government have sent more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers to Rwanda, but how many people are they actually budgeting for? The Prime Minister says he wants to send everyone, so can the Minister tell us where the billions of pounds it would cost to send everyone to Rwanda this year will come from, and if not, can he tell us how many he is really budgeting for and what in fact is going to happen to everyone else instead?

The impact assessment says it costs £7,000 per person to keep someone in detention for 40 days. That is more than double the current average cost of keeping people elsewhere in the asylum system, so where are the hundreds of millions of pounds for the detention plan going to come from, and where are these detention facilities going to come from? The Minister has not attempted to cost speeding up the system and he has not attempted to cost what we really think will happen, which is that tens of thousands more people will be in indefinite detention or indefinite asylum accommodation. The Treasury bailed out the Home Office by £2.4 billion last year. How much is it going to be this year?

The Government have crashed the economy, and now they have crashed the asylum system too. We have an impact assessment that shows the Home Office does not have a clue and the Treasury does not have a grip, and the Prime Minister who claims to be Mr Fix-It is instead Mr Muck-It-Up. The country deserves better than this.

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Lady misses the point entirely. The impact assessment bears out the cost of the current broken system and makes it clear that there is no option but to completely overhaul our asylum system and make it fit for the decades ahead. The reality, as those of us on the Government Benches see it, is straightforward: if people continue to cross in small boats, the cost to the taxpayer in one form or another will continue to increase and that is a completely unacceptable outcome—but it is the one that can be expected with Labour’s recklessly naive approach to border security.

When the right hon. Lady said that this document was “garbage” and “clueless”, I thought she was referring to her own five-point plan to tackle illegal migration, because we cannot grant our way out of the problem, we cannot simply arrest our way out of this and do nothing to dismember and dismantle the business model of the gangs. We cannot provide a safe and legal route to every single person eligible for refugee status or every economic migrant who views this country as a better place, and we certainly cannot reheat the tired old policies like the Dublin convention that she looks back on through her rose-tinted spectacles. Even members of the European Union have moved on from that, but not the Labour party. She cannot even bring herself to call these unnecessary and dangerous journeys what they are under British law: illegal.

The truth is that Labour’s do-nothing approach to stopping the boats is the fastest route to more crossings, greater taxpayer spending and more pressure on our communities. Left unchecked, the cost will spiral to £11 billion by 2026. That is the cost of a Labour Home Secretary; that is the cost of Cooper. Only the Conservative party will truly tackle the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. We are determined to secure our borders and stop the boats, and the British public can rely on us to do so.

Stop and Search

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Knife crime destroys lives, devastates families and creates fear and trauma in communities. Last year, too many young people lost their lives to knife crime—young people who had their whole lives ahead of them

Knife crime is up nearly 70%, compared with just seven years ago. Knife-enabled rapes and knife-enabled threats to kill are at record highs, with some of the steepest increases in the suburbs, smaller cities, towns and counties. Compared with over a decade ago, knife crime is up more than fivefold in Surrey and has almost trebled in Sussex. From Milton Keynes to Swindon to Newcastle, I have spoken to distressed parents and community leaders about rising knife crime and their devastation at young lives being lost.

The Government’s response is wholly inadequate. The serious violence strategy is more than five years out of date, the serious violence taskforce was disbanded and everyone knows, from their own communities, that too little is being done to divert young people away from violence and crime. There are just 18 violence reduction units. When the Home Secretary claims serious violence is going down, she is focusing on the covid period, because the worrying truth is that knife crime and gun crime are rising again.

Today’s statement, therefore, is wholly inadequate as a response to knife crime. Stop and search is an extremely important tool in the fight against knife crime, but it is not the whole strategy. That is why we need a much more comprehensive approach: as part of our mission, Labour has set the determination to halve knife crime and serious violent crime. As stop and search is an important tool, it also needs to be used in an effective and fair way. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary said that

“well-targeted stop and search is a valuable tool”,

but how the police do it is as important as the act itself, and communities have clear concerns about the fair use of stop and search. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services had previously said:

“Unfair use of powers can be counterproductive if it leads people to think it is acceptable to not comply with the law. It may also make people unwilling to report when they are the victim of crime or come forward as witnesses.”

That is why it is important that the recommendations that the inspectorate and the police watchdog have made are taken seriously and implemented, and why best practice from forces who are doing a good job is spread across the country.

There have been reports from the inspectorate in 2015, 2017, 2021 and from the police watchdog, little of which the Home Secretary has even acknowledged. She has dismissed concerns about disproportionality. Of course, stop and search for knife crime and for dangerous weapons will likely be used most in the areas and communities where attacks have been the highest. That will affect the number of searches for weapons among young black men, but the chief inspector has said that the presence of disproportionality in crime victimisation rates does not adequately explain why there is disproportionality in stop and search rates. In her statement, the Home Secretary seems to be focusing only on young black men. I think she refers to them around six times, with only one reference to people who are white, even though her own statement recognises that young black men are still the minority of knife crime victims. Does she recognise the importance of following the evidence wherever it takes the police?

The inspectorate said that

“35 years since the introduction of stop and search, the police still cannot explain why these powers are used disproportionately.”

It points out that that is partly because the majority of searches are for drug possession, not for knife crime, and yet figures show that drug use is lower among black people than among white people. The Home Secretary has not addressed that at all in her statement. Will she address the issue of disproportionate drug possession searches?

I welcome the references to the introduction of stronger community scrutiny and better data collection. Those are vital, but they should have been mandatory for many years—they were recommended many years ago. Where is the action that has been repeatedly recommended: training on the use of force; training on de-escalation and communications skills; and proper data collection on traffic stops. None of those has been referred to in her statement. How many of the 18 recommendations by the Independent Office for Police Conduct last year have been fully implemented? How many recommendations from the inspectorate have been fully implemented?

Stop and search is a vital tool as part of a proper strategy, but we need the wider strategy, too. Why is the violence reduction unit approach being used by the Home Secretary in only 18 areas when knife crime is rising in communities across the country? Why has there been no new serious violence strategy for five years? Many people now fear a long, hot summer without swift action. Why is there still no action to bring in a new law on the criminal exploitation of young people, which we have called for? Why is there still no comprehensive action on youth mentors and support for early intervention?

We need a serious approach to tackling knife crime and supporting the police to use their tools in an effective and fair way so that they can save lives. Too many young lives are at stake. We need more than this from the Home Secretary.

[Suella Braverman]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her response. It is not just my view, but the view of police that stop and search is fundamentally about saving lives and keeping the public safe. Where used proportionately, stop and search works. Since 2019, more than 40,000 weapons have been seized through stop and search, and 220,000 arrests have been made. The 2021 inspectorate report concluded that the vast majority of stop and search decisions are based on reasonable grounds. That is potentially thousands of lives saved and countless violent incidents prevented.

To those who claim it is a disproportionate tool—a racist tool—I say that we must be honest about what that means for victims. The right hon. Lady, when she was Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, stated:

“Stop & search is more disproportionate now than 22yrs ago, with no adequate explanation or justification for nature & scale of racial disparities.”

Yet again, she is on the wrong side of the argument, and yet again she is not on the side of victims.

What is disproportionate is that black people are four times more likely to be murdered than white people. What is disproportionate is that young black men are more likely to be victims of knife crime than young white men. That is the disproportionality that I am focused on stopping. It is important that we look at the matter with a cool head and on the basis of the evidence.

The emerging picture based on London suggests that when we adjust the data to consider the proportion of suspects in an area and its demographics, rather than considering the data for the country as a whole, the disproportionality of stop and search falls away hugely. I urge the right hon. Lady to consider and reflect on those facts rather than jumping to knee-jerk assumptions. Of course it is right that the powers are used in a responsible and measured way—that is why engagement with communities must be respectful—and it is right that the powers are subject to the highest levels of scrutiny. We now see very few complaints about individual stop and searches. Training on legal and procedural justice has improved and we have seen confidence levels increase.

Overall, I am very proud of this Conservative Government’s achievements: a record number of police officers ever in the history of policing, 100,000 weapons seized since 2019 and falling crime—in fact, serious violent crime has fallen by 40% since 2010. What has Labour done? Labour Members voted against our measures to strengthen the police. They voted against tougher sentences for rapists. They voted against our Bill to stop the militant protesters. Same old Labour—they never fail to miss an opportunity to be on the wrong side of the argument. This Conservative Government are on the side of common-sense policing and on the side of the British people.