Border Security: Collaboration
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Chris Philp(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for the timely sight of her statement, and I thank her for her comments on Syria. We certainly support the efforts of this Government and others around the world to secure a transition to a stable Government in Syria that can ensure the return of peace. We also support the suspension of asylum processing; I am glad that the Government made that decision a few hours after I called for it yesterday.
Does the Home Secretary agree that, given that most if not all the asylum claims are predicated on the threat posed to the individual by former President Assad, now that that threat has gone and the basis for the asylum claims has therefore gone, it would be reasonable to ask Syrians who are claiming or have recently been granted asylum on that basis to return once they are safe? Earlier today, the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister if he would ensure that no former UK residents who are in Syria and who supported the murderous Daesh regime that killed and raped innocent women and children, persecuted minorities and severely persecuted its opponents return to the UK. In government, the Conservatives ensured that those people did not return—the Shamima Begum case was an example—so will the Home Secretary take similarly robust action to ensure that people who supported Daesh do not return to the United Kingdom? I think the House would appreciate such an assurance.
Let me now turn to the question of small boats and border security. The Home Secretary asserted, I must say rather boldly, that her approach was “delivering results” , but I am afraid the facts do not bear that out. Let us have a look at the results that are actually being delivered. In the 150 days since the election, more than 20,000 people dangerously and illegally crossed the English channel, 18% more than did so in the same 150 days in the previous year. I do not call an 18% year-on-year increase “delivering results”; that is a failure. Why are these figures up year on year? The National Crime Agency told us that we needed a deterrent but that law enforcement alone would not be enough, yet the Government cancelled the Rwanda deterrent before it had even started. The first flight was due to take off on 24 July, and they cancelled it before it even took off. Of course we welcome the law enforcement that continues the work done by the last Government, but according to the NCA that alone will not be enough, so we need a deterrent. When will the Home Secretary introduce one?
In the spirit of examining the right hon. Lady’s claim that she is delivering results, let us look at the Government’s record on asylum hotels. In their manifesto, they promised to close down and end the use of asylum hotels. According to figures that we obtained recently, in the three months following the election, far from reducing asylum hotel use they increased it, by 6,066 people. In places such as Peterborough and Altrincham, which are now represented by Labour MPs, asylum hotels were opened up in express contradiction of their own manifesto commitment.
Let me say a word about removals. It is welcome that overall removals have gone up, continuing the trend under the previous Government, although I observe that almost all those removals were to European and North American countries. The Home Secretary did not break out the numbers on small boat returns, and I wonder why that was. I have looked into the figures, and it turns out that in the three months after the election, less than 5% of people crossing by small boat were returned. More than that, the number of people returned, having crossed by small boat, in the three months after the election was, in fact, lower than the number returned in the three months prior to it. So the number of people returned after crossing by small boat has gone down under this Government.
The Home Secretary mentioned criminal gangs, and I am glad that the work started under the last Government, including by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly), is being continued. That includes the international co-operation that he pursued both as Foreign Secretary and as Home Secretary. But I ask the Home Secretary this: why, in opposition, did she vote against life sentences for people smugglers?
We heard a bit about the Calais group’s discussion yesterday. Of course, co-operation is important—we, too, co-operated when in government—but I wonder whether the Home Secretary had the chance to ask her French opposite number one or two questions. First, will the French accept returns of people crossing the channel? That would provide a very powerful deterrent. As she will know, the post-EU exit documentation—the political declaration—expressly allows individual member states to engage in bilateral arrangements on borders. Did she raise that with her French counterpart, and what did they say?
Secondly, was the Home Secretary able to ask her French counterpart whether France will intercept small boats close to the French shore, as the Belgians safely do? In Belgium, it has resulted in a 93% reduction in crossings. If the French would do the same and intercept near the shore, it would have a dramatic effect.
The Home Secretary said that she is delivering results, but these are the results: crossings are up by 18%, asylum hotel places are up by 6,066 and small boat returns are down under the new Government. She is delivering results—I am afraid they are worse.
Yvette Cooper
I gently point out to the shadow Home Secretary that his party left us with the highest ever level of small boat crossings in the first half of a year—the highest level on record. If we had carried on with small boat crossings at the same level as in the first half of the year, when he was in the Home Office, we would have had to deal with thousands more arrivals over the last few months. When he was the Immigration Minister, small boat crossings increased about tenfold because he let criminal gangs take hold along the channel. They built an entire criminal industry on his watch that he did nothing to stop, which is why we now have to deal with those criminal gangs.
On returns, I gently point out to the shadow Home Secretary that by the time the Conservatives left office, returns were down by more than a quarter compared with under the last Labour Government because of the Conservatives’ continued failure to even get the system working. That is why we have put substantial additional resources into returns and into making sure that the rules are enforced, which they simply have not been for far too long.
On the asylum backlog, perhaps the shadow Home Secretary will take responsibility for the total crashing of the asylum system in the last few months before the general election, when the Conservative party and the Home Office of which he was a part ended up cutting asylum decisions by more than 70% compared with the beginning of the year. That shocking dereliction of duty means that we have had to deal with the increased backlog that his party left behind over the summer, and we are getting it back under control.
There are some important issues on asylum decisions involving Syrians. Let us be clear: many claims for asylum relate to the Assad regime, which is clearly not in place now. It would therefore not be appropriate to grant asylum decisions on those cases in the current circumstances. We need to monitor the evolving situation so that we can get new country guidance in place and take those decisions, but we will do that in a sensible and serious way, which is about getting the asylum and immigration systems back under control. By contrast, the shadow Home Secretary and the Conservative party seem simply to want to go back to the Rwanda scheme. Once again, I point out to them that it cost the taxpayer £700 million and sent just four volunteers to Kigali—the most shocking waste of public money, over two years, on a failing scheme. All they delivered were gimmicks, instead of ever getting a grip, and all the shadow Home Secretary wants to do is turn the clock back to failure again.
Migration and Border Security
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Chris Philp(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank Mr Speaker and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for ensuring that we had the proper time to consider the statement.
The Home Secretary seems to have a great deal to say about the last Government and rather less to say about her own record since the election, but fortuitously there was a large release of data last week that gives us an insight into her first five months in office. Having looked at that data, I can see why she is so silent on her own record. Let me start with small boats. Yesterday marked 150 days since 4 July, and in that time a staggering 20,110 people have made the dangerous, illegal and unnecessary crossing—over 20,000 since this Government were elected. That is an 18% increase on the same 150 days last year, and a staggering 64% increase on the 150 days immediately prior to the election.
Why have those numbers gone up so much? Let us turn to what the National Crime Agency said last year. It said that no amount of funding or action against people smugglers would end crossings on its own, and went on to say—and I quote—that “you need an effective removals deterrence.” After the Labour Government were elected, they cancelled that deterrent—the Rwanda deterrent—before it had even started. The first flight was due to take off on 24 July this year, but they cancelled it. Had that flight taken off as planned, we would not have seen the 64% increase in crossings that we have seen since the election, exactly as the National Crime Agency foresaw. It is not just me and the National Crime Agency; even Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, has called for European member states to implement an offshore processing scheme, a proposal that 18 member states are said to support. As such, my first question is whether the Home Secretary will agree with the National Crime Agency and do what Ursula von der Leyen has urged, and re-establish that scheme.
As a consequence of the Home Secretary’s failure to reduce small boat numbers, the use of asylum hotels—which Labour promised to end—has gone up by 6,066 in the three months following the election. The asylum backlog, which the Home Secretary had a great deal to say about, has gone up by 11,000 in the three months following the general election, something that she did not find time to mention. She did talk a bit about her deal in Iraq, which spends £500,000 with the Iraqi Government. That is not a great deal of money—it is what would probably be spent on a road surfacing scheme in any of our constituencies. I am afraid that the idea that spending £500,000 is going to stop people smuggling from Iraq is naive and fanciful. What might have helped smash the gangs is life sentences for people smuggling, so perhaps the Home Secretary could explain why in the last Parliament she voted against a Bill that contained life sentences for the people-smuggling gangs she says she wants to smash.
On the question of legal migration, I agree with the Home Secretary that the numbers have been far too high for many decades under successive Governments. It is welcome that the numbers for the most recent year have come down by 20%, but that is not far enough—we need to go further. I welcome the fact that the Government are going to maintain most of the measures introduced by the last Government that led to that 20% reduction. We have also seen the number of visas go down, which of course are a leading indicator of net migration. Work visas are down by 28% year on year, student dependant visas are down by 84%, student visas are down by 19% and care visas are down by 84%, all thanks to measures introduced by the last Government.
However, I would like to know why this Government have decided to suspend the planned increase in the dependant visa salary threshold up to £38,700 which was due to take effect next April. If they are serious about reducing net migration, as the Home Secretary says, why have they suspended the measure announced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Cleverly) last December? If they are really serious about reducing net migration, as we are, what we really need is a hard cap on the numbers, as proposed by the Leader of the Opposition and me last week. Will the Government follow our suggestion and introduce that hard cap?
Behind all the bluster and all the chat about previous Governments, we see the Home Secretary’s record and her Government’s record: a 64% increase in small boat crossings since the same period before the election, 6,000 extra people in hotels and the asylum backlog up by 11,000—all since 4 July. We see the Rwanda deterrent, which the National Crime Agency and even Ursula von der Leyen say is necessary, cancelled by this Government before it even started. I call on the Home Secretary to think again on those issues, to introduce in April the measures that the previous Government announced and to introduce a hard cap. If she is serious about combating illegal migration and getting the net legal migration figures down, she will adopt those measures.
Yvette Cooper
If anyone had believed that flights were going to go off to Rwanda this summer, the Conservatives would not have called the general election when they did. They would have hung on hoping that it might happen. However, we saw just the same thing time and again: they kept promising and kept saying it was going to happen, and everybody can now see that it was a total failure. The policy ran for over two years, and they kept promising that the flights were going to go off, but they never did. They just spent £700 million instead. So much do they know that this was a total failure that their newly elected leader will not even promise to reinstate it, because she knows the whole thing was a con.
Let me remind the shadow Home Secretary that in the first half of this year—the last six months of his Government—crossings hit a record high for that season. If that trend of a record high had carried on and the increase for the first half of the year had carried on through the summer, we would have been dealing with thousands more crossings. Instead, because we had an increase in the number of people arriving from Vietnam, this Government introduced a major charter flight—a return flight—to Vietnam, and we have been working with the Vietnamese Government to make sure that the number from Vietnam comes down. We also had to deal with the total collapse in asylum decision making that the Conservatives left us with, which meant that we have had to get caseworkers who they had deployed elsewhere back in place. The Conservatives also let the backlog soar.
The shadow Home Secretary wriggles a little around the net migration figures, which have gone up to a record high of 900,000 because of the rules that the Conservatives —his Government—introduced in 2021. Who was the Immigration Minister who brought in those rules? It was the shadow Home Secretary.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Chris Philp(1 month ago)
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Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Let me start by offering the Home Secretary a belated congratulations on her appointment. Having been a Minister in that Department, I know how difficult her job is and I genuinely wish her well in doing it. We will always seek to work constructively with the Government in the national interest. I also associate myself with the remarks she made about International VAWG Day—International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. Since the election, 19,988 people have dangerously and illegally crossed the channel, a 23% increase on the same period last year. Why does the right hon. Lady think the numbers have gone up so much on her watch?
Yvette Cooper
I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his opening words. I think he described his time in the Home Office as his best ministerial job ever. Given that he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Liz Truss, we can perhaps wonder why. He was also the Immigration Minister who, I remind him, told the Commons and the Select Committee that he would not rule out using giant wave machines as the way to stop small boat crossings. We inherited record high levels of small boat crossings in the first half of this year. We have taken action to fix the previous Government’s chaos.
Chris Philp
I am asking the Home Secretary about her record. I am asking the Home Secretary why small boat crossings have gone up during her time in office. Perhaps it is because, as the National Crime Agency said, we need a deterrent. Yet she cancelled the Rwanda deterrent before it even started. Now we hear Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, asking European member states to look at offshore processing. Is that not why it has gone up? Is that not why the Minister for Border Security and Asylum admitted last week that she is opening new hotels instead of closing them down?
Yvette Cooper
Seriously, what a lot of chaos! Highest level on record: that was the six months of the last Conservative Government, while the right hon. Gentleman was in government. In fact, the numbers since the summer are not the highest on record. That, unfortunately, was his legacy. While he was the Immigration Minister, he increased the number of asylum hotels by 500% and increased the number of people in asylum hotels by over 900%. Seriously, he should not try to give lectures to anybody else at all.