Border Security: Collaboration

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend has considerable experience in these issues, and I thank him for all his work on this. He is right to say that, with something as basic as the right kind of information and intelligence sharing, if the systems are removed and no new systems are put in place, basic operational actions simply do not happen, whether they involve going after the criminal gangs or preventing dangerous boat crossings and criminal activities. This is as basic as making sure that we now have much stronger systems, including using the Europol secure information exchange network application—SIENA—system, so that when the German police get information from the National Crime Agency, it is in a form that they can swiftly use to pursue investigations and prosecutions. My hon. Friend is right. We have to make sure that the detail works, which has often not been taken seriously for far too long.

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to maintaining the relationships with the Calais group interior Ministers that I was developing when I was in her role, and to building on the UK Frontex agreement that I signed with Commissioner Johansson in February of this year. However, I want her to explain this to the House: if the role of the Border Security Command is so clear, if the division of labour between it and the small boats operational command is so clear, and if this issue is so pressing, why has it taken five months to give them a mission?

[Yvette Cooper]

I recognise the points that the former Home Secretary has made. To be fair to him, he had to do a lot of work to try to repair the relationship with the Calais group and with some of the European partners, after some of his predecessors had been rather more careless, shall we say, and rather more destructive in that relationship. But we now have these further agreements in place, and they are crucial, practical arrangements about strengthening law enforcement co-operation to go after the criminal gangs.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the Border Security Command, I know this has been a bugbear of his, in that he wants to see it as the same as the small boats operational command, but they are very different. The small boats operational command is rightly focused on the operations in the channel and it does some excellent work to ensure that we can have order around the system in the channel. The Border Security Command is a much broader programme of work. For example, Martin Hewitt travelled with me to Iraq and Kurdistan in order to build those operational relationships so that we can work upstream. He was also part of the Calais group meetings yesterday in order to build those co-operation arrangements as well. We have provided continual updates on the work of the Border Security Command and we will continue to do so, but we are already getting on with work that I am afraid his party, and he as Home Secretary, never did.

Police Accountability

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement, and for the recent Privy Council briefing that I received from her.

I very much welcome what the Home Secretary has set out. I agree with almost all of it and disagree with almost none of it. As a society, we demand that our firearms officers put themselves in dangerous and difficult situations to protect others. Every firearms officer in the UK is a volunteer, and although we rightly value having have a predominantly unarmed police force, we do of course need a cadre of armed police officers across the country.

I have had the privilege of visiting the police firearms training centre in Gravesend, and I have seen at first hand just how rigorous that firearms training regime is—not just in marksmanship, but in the use of judgment. Split-second life-or-death decisions must be made, often in circumstances in which the risk picture is incomplete and the cost of not acting is considerably more severe than the cost of acting. In all our debate and conversation about the use of force by police, that fundamental truth should be at the forefront of our minds.

As the right hon. Lady said, we rightly expect that all officers will act with restraint and professionalism at all times, but we cannot allow circumstances to be created in which officers are disincentivised from being decisive, or become unwilling to take the right action for fear of trial by media or a long period of suspension under investigation.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for acknowledging in her statement that when my party was in government—under my predecessors and led predominantly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) —we initiated a review of the use of force by police officers and the accountability regime. I am genuinely grateful that, under the Home Secretary’s leadership, the review is continuing. As she says, giving confidence to police officers, so that they can act in accordance with their training and not be penalised for those actions, is absolutely key. Simultaneously ensuring that the public have confidence that police officers still have an appropriate accountability framework is equally important. She made the point that both those aims are being pursued in the accountability review that she is taking forward.

The commitment that such investigations will be more speedy is key. Specifically, it is important that the Home Secretary continues with the Conservatives’ proposal to allow the IOPC to refer cases to the CPS earlier. Prolonged periods of uncertainty undermine the confidence of both police officers and the public they serve. I am pleased to see that the Government are continuing with our reforms to ensure that when police officers act in accordance with their training, and in the line of duty, they are not subject to a lower threshold for prosecutions than members of the general public. I ask the Home Secretary to seriously consider ensuring that training in those roles forms a legitimate part of the defence of officers if and when criminal prosecutions are brought forward.

I particularly welcome the move to introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a shooting. We now know that Chris Kaba was involved with a violent gang, and that Sergeant Blake and his family had—and still have—a well founded fear of violent reprisals. That fear was amplified when Sergeant Blake’s name was put in the public domain.

In the light of the review by Dr Gillian Fairfield, what further recommendations is the Home Secretary minded to take forward? Does she recognise that in the era of social media, all people of public profile, including Members of this House, should be very thoughtful and careful about making public statements when facts are unknown or contested? The police should know instinctively that they will have the backing of both their chain of command and the politicians involved in their governance, at all levels, when they do the right thing at our behest, and that they will be backed by their chain of command even if those actions are not popular or convenient. We have too often seen police leadership bend to inappropriate levels of public pressure.

In conclusion, I welcome the statement from the Home Secretary, and her commitment to taking forward the reforms of the police accountability review. Conservative Members will work constructively with her to ensure that the appropriate balance is struck to reinforce confidence in policing, and the confidence of police.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his response. I hope that there will be widespread agreement on both sides of the House on the importance of these issues, which go to the heart of the British tradition of policing by consent. All of us want to know that there is proper accountability for decisions that police forces and officers make, but also that the police have the confidence to take what are sometimes the most difficult decisions of all to keep the rest of us safe.

The shadow Home Secretary is right that firearms officers have to deal with some of the most difficult parts of policing, sometimes having to make split-second decisions in fast-moving and difficult circumstances that none of us would want to be in. Frankly, if any of us were in those situations, we would want to know that there were firearms police officers there to protect and support us.

In the UK, police officers discharging firearms is very rare, particularly compared with other countries. That reflects the nature of our unarmed policing tradition, as well as the professionalism and training of the police, and the different ways in which they manage often very difficult situations, but of course they need to know that when they follow their training and operate within the law, they will have our support for the difficult decisions that they have to take, and will not find their lives upturned as a result. The anonymity provisions are important, and I hope that they will have support from the whole House. The Government want to bring in the presumption of anonymity in the forthcoming crime and policing Bill.

The shadow Home Secretary also raised the issue of training. I want that to be looked at when the investigative guidance is updated; that way, it can be addressed relatively quickly to ensure that issues around police driving and training more widely are taken into account in early investigative decisions before cases are pursued.

On the Fairfield review, we are taking forward further measures, and will look, in wider policing reforms, at how the IOPC needs to work. It is important that we continue to have an independent process. That has to be set against the backdrop of the wider policing reforms that are needed to ensure that we strengthen confidence for both officers and communities. That is how we will maintain for the new generation the proud British tradition of policing by consent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to the Home Secretary that I expect short answers. These are topicals. If there are questions where she wants to go long, she should do so early. Otherwise, it is not fair to the Back Benchers I represent on both sides of the House. We will now be staying here longer than she probably expected. James Cleverly, let us have a good example of a short topical.

[Mr Cleverly]

Will she be drawing down from Treasury reserves—yes or no?

[Yvette Cooper]

This Government have already been putting in place the funding to try to make good the total chaos that the right hon. Member’s Government left us with. They spent £700 million to send four volunteers to Rwanda—and how much did he spend on a flight?

Violent Disorder

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of her statement.

I wish, once again, to pay my respects to the victims of the Southport attacks. The murder of three young girls in Southport was horrific, and our thoughts are with them, their families and friends, and of course the local community.

My thoughts are also with the families and friends of those who were killed at the Notting Hill carnival. The Government and the Mayor of London must do more to end the criminality and violence that too regularly mar this event, and they must bring forward credible plans to improve safety well ahead of next year’s carnival.

I pay tribute to the bravery of our police officers across the country who put themselves in harm’s way to deal with the violence perpetrated by thugs this summer. There is not, and never can be, any excuse, justification or rationale for the violent disorder that we have seen. We cannot and will not let rioting thugs or extremists win. The Government must always back our police officers to do what is necessary to maintain law and order. Attacks on the police by any group must not be tolerated, and intimidation of the public or the media cannot be allowed.

Does the Home Secretary now see that the comments made by one of her Ministers at the time of the riots, seemingly making excuses for armed thugs who intimidated the media, undermines the Government’s credibility, reinforces the accusations of bias, and puts people, including police officers, at increased risk?

Does the Home Secretary now also recognise that the Labour leadership kneeling in the immediate aftermath of the Black Lives Matter disorder, when violent protestors attacked police officers, makes it look like her party takes some forms of violence less seriously than others? Does she accept that any perception whatsoever of treating the same crime differently, based on the race, religion or community of the perpetrator, increases tension rather than reduces it? Does she accept that, at times of heightened tension, Ministers must be, and must be seen to be, even-handed and demand even-handedness of others?

Does the Home Secretary also recognise that the delay in holding a Cobra meeting until almost a week after these events started was a mistake, that it created a vacuum and that it delayed the actions that could have brought this disorder to an end more quickly? At the time of the disorder, the Prime Minister claimed that he would create a “standing army” of public order police officers. What progress has been made in the intervening weeks to make that claim a reality?

After the murder of the three young girls in Southport, the right hon. Lady and I discussed across the Dispatch Box the impact of misinformation and disinformation online. When I was Home Secretary, I travelled to the United States to deliver this message directly to the leadership of the tech firms and to make clear what the British Government expected from them in this regard. Has the Home Secretary had any similar conversations with the social media platforms about their responsibilities? And can she inform the House whether her Department will continue the review into police use of force, instituted by the Conservative Government of which I was a member, to ensure that the police are able to take firm action and clamp down on crime with all the force that the law allows, without fear of being strung up for years in endless investigations?

In government, we recruited 20,000 new police officers, but their work will be hampered if they do not feel supported by the Government when they take the firm action needed to keep the people of this country safe. Violence has absolutely no place on our streets. Anyone who engages in violent disorder or commits violent crime must face the full force of the law, no matter who they are. We will continue to hold the Government to account to ensure that they deal with disorder swiftly, effectively, fairly and even-handedly.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s words of support for the Southport families and his reassertion that there can be no excuse for violent disorder, but I have to say that the rest of his response sounded an awful lot more like a pitch to Tory party members in the middle of a leadership election than a serious response to the scale of the disorder we saw and the need for a serious policing response.

He asked about the strategic reserve—the “standing army”. We set up the strategic reserve and it was in place for the second weekend; we had thousands of police officers who were ready. We did not use the old arrangements that we inherited from him, where mutual aid had to be on call and stood up in a rush when it was called for. We got the police public order officers ready and deployed at strategic locations around the country, so they could move fast and be where they were needed.

That goes to the heart of the problems we inherited from the shadow Home Secretary and his predecessor. The central co-ordination that he had left in place was far too weak. The chief officers involved in trying to get mutual aid in place and to co-ordinate intelligence had very weak infrastructure and systems in place. They had not been supported over very many years. In fact, some of his predecessors had tried to get rid of a lot of the work of the National Police Coordination Centre. Instead, our approach is to strengthen it. We believe that we should strengthen central co-ordination and we will work with the police to do so, which is why I have asked the inspectorate to operate.

Secondly, the shadow Home Secretary referred to the issues around social media. Seriously—his party delayed the Online Safety Act 2023 for years. The Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hove and Portslade (Peter Kyle), has already been working closely on putting more pressure on the social media companies, but the shadow Home Secretary’s party did nothing for years. It is far too late for Members of his party to try to call for action. And the review into police use of force is important and will continue.

Finally, I have to say that the shadow Home Secretary is playing games, undermining the credibility of the police. He is trying to blame the Prime Minister for something that happened four years ago—saying he is somehow responsible for the violent disorder on our streets this summer—and undermining the credibility of police officers. Each individual officer takes an oath to operate without fear or favour. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that his predecessor as Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), tried to undermine and attack the credibility of the police in the run up to Armistice Day? That is why we ended up with a bunch of thugs trying to get to the Cenotaph to disrupt the service and launching violent attacks on the police. The only reason the right hon. Gentleman got the job of Home Secretary in the first place was because everyone condemned his predecessor for her behaviour. I am so sorry that he has decided, in a leadership election, to follow her example—I really thought he was better than that.

Southport Incident

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of her statement.

This was a heinous attack on innocent children and those caring for them at the start of the summer holidays. It has no doubt left families broken and a community scarred. I am grateful to the Home Secretary for coming to the House to update us on the situation, and I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing flexibility on the Order Paper so that this event could be discussed.

The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have, of course, done the right thing by going to Southport today to offer the Government’s condolences, and I echo their sentiment. All our thoughts are with the victims of this appalling attack, their families and the people of Southport at this incredibly difficult time. Our thoughts are especially with those who have lost their lives and those who are currently being treated in hospital, some of whom are in a critical condition. We think of their families at this time.

I want to thank our emergency services who responded to this horrific attack. We should never take the bravery of the people who serve us for granted, and it is a reminder that when they run towards danger and unknown circumstances, we are duty-bound to give them our support so that they can act decisively and with confidence, and do everything they can to save lives. Of course, our ongoing thanks go to the staff of the national health service who are currently caring for the victims who are receiving hospital treatment. Particular thanks go to the members of the public who intervened to help, despite the significant danger to them. Their bravery cannot be overstated.

We still know little about the details of what happened yesterday, and the right hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that we should give the police the time to do a proper and thorough investigation. She is also right to highlight the impact of misinformation and disinformation online; enough people are already distressed without their distress being amplified by speculation and gossip online. I would ask that she follow up on the conversations that I had in the United States of America with the social media platforms about their responsibility in this regard. This is also a reminder to all of us that we have a personal responsibility to check before we share, and that we should not feel the need to get involved in the grief of others.

There will, of course, be a time when we must ask how this happened, so that we can take the right steps to ensure that no child, no family and no community has to face the anguish that the people of Southport are feeling today. It is too early for us to know the full picture, but an attack on innocent children enjoying their summer holiday strikes to the hearts of us all. No matter what drove this individual to commit this appalling crime, we stand together in solidarity with the people of Southport today.

I want to finish by saying that our hearts go out to the three young girls who have lost their lives: Bebe, Elsie and Alice. We cannot imagine what their families are going through now, and I know the whole House will join the Home Secretary and me in expressing our condolences to them. I thank the Home Secretary for her statement.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for his words, and for his support for the families and whole community in Southport. I particularly thank him for his tribute to the emergency service workers. He will know from all his past experience the heroism they show, but that was strained beyond anything we could have imagined by what they had to deal with yesterday. I also thank him for his recognition of the bravery of the passers-by who came forward to help.

I agree with the shadow Home Secretary about the responsibility on every one of us; the police need to be able to pursue their investigation. There will be wider questions for other days, but the most important thing is that every one of us supports the police in their investigation. I also agree with him about the responsibility on social media companies; we need to recognise that things are taking place on social media that go against their terms and conditions and their commitments. They need to take some responsibility for that.

Above all, this is about young children and their families, who will be grieving, and there will be many other children who were involved yesterday who will be facing great trauma as well. This is a moment when it is not just the people of Southport who will be desperately wanting to come together to support their own; this is about all of us, not just across this House but across the whole country, being there for the people of Southport and the families who have lost loved ones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 29th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Once again, I welcome the right hon. Lady to her place. I welcome her Government’s commitment to halving violence against women and girls. It is an incredibly important agenda, and it builds on the work that the previous Government —my Government—did in this area. This issue remains a long-standing priority for me. I am very proud that, as Foreign Secretary, I led the international women and girls strategy, which meant that this issue was addressed internationally, not just domestically. Her desire to halve incidents of violence against women and girls fits neatly with my aspiration at the time to make the United Kingdom the safest place in the world to be a woman or girl.

We have seen an increase in arrest rates for violence against women and girls—they went up by 25% between 2019-20 and 2022-23—and a 38% increase in charge rates for rape over a year, but we recognise that there is significant and regular under-reporting of violence against women and girls. I want to make sure the right hon. Lady’s agenda does not inadvertently dissuade women from coming forward, so what specifically will be the metric by which we measure the halving of violence against women and girls?

[Yvette Cooper]

The shadow Home Secretary has made the important point that we need to be addressing the prevalence of violence against women and girls, not simply the reporting. We know that there are many areas in which reporting needs to increase because there is often under-reporting, and we have work under way at the moment in order to ensure that that can be measured.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the increase in charge rates. If a very small number increases by just a little bit, it is still a very small number. The charge rate is still far too low, and the number of prosecutions and convictions for domestic abuse is more than 40% lower than it was eight years ago. This requires a major overhaul of the system, and I look forward to working with the right hon. Gentleman’s party and with all parties in order to do that, but we must be very honest with ourselves about the damage that has been done.

Immigration and Home Affairs

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment l, at the end of the Question to add:

“but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech does not commit to boosting defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 with a fully funded plan, fails to include measures that provide an adequate deterrent to migrants crossing the channel illegally, fails to mention rural communities, farming and fishing, does not include a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security or a commitment to increase the UK-wide agriculture budget by £1 billion over the course of the Parliament, introduces new burdens on businesses without sufficient measures to support them, fails to set out a concrete plan to tackle the unsustainable post-covid rise in the welfare bill, does not adequately protect family finances and the UK’s energy security in the move to net zero, and fails to provide adequate protections for pensioners and working people to keep more of the money they have worked hard for.”

Yesterday, at the Dispatch Box, I welcomed the Home Secretary to her role, and I now take the opportunity to congratulate the wider ministerial team who work with her. They will have inherited a hard-working team of civil servants dedicated to the protection of this country and the people within it. However, I am sad that the hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock) has not made the transition from shadow immigration Minister to immigration Minister. His contributions are a great loss to the Conservative party.

With the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson) in her new ministerial role, I am sure the Clerks of the Home Affairs Committee will be looking forward to arranging her first session promptly and will, like me, be closely monitoring how quickly her new boss fully implements all the recommendations of the Committee she formerly chaired.

While I do not have time to mention each of the new ministerial team individually, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). She knows I planned to single her out and I do not apologise for doing so; I think that it is a very good appointment and she is well suited to her role as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for victims and safeguarding. She knows that tackling violence against women and girls was a priority for me. We have previously shared the stage at events in the House discussing that subject. I genuinely look forward to working with her and contributing in any way I can to her success in this incredibly important area of public policy. She has highlighted some of the crucial work that this place can do in bringing to the attention of the country and the wider world the continued plight of too many women.

The election highlighted the important work of the Home Office in defending democracy. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), the former security Minister, for his work with the defending democracy taskforce. Again, that is an area where we will seek to be a constructive Opposition. I was disgusted to see how the hon. Member for Birmingham Yardley and many other, mostly female, colleagues and candidates were treated during the general election campaign. No one who cares for democracy, irrespective of their party affiliation, should be willing to tolerate that. The defending democracy taskforce continues to have incredibly important and urgent work to do. We should continue to work together, as we did when our roles were reversed, to root out violence and intimidation, and to ensure that candidates and Members can vote with their conscience and campaign with their hearts, free from intimidation or threats.

While the Prime Minister has been enjoying his honeymoon period at NATO and welcoming visitors to the European Political Community event at Blenheim Palace, which was very well organised by this Government’s predecessors in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the same honeymoon period has sadly not been afforded to the Home Secretary. Members will all be familiar with the seven days of creation; the new Home Secretary has managed seven days of destruction. On day one, she cancelled the partnership with Rwanda, taking away the deterrent that the National Crime Agency said we needed in order to break the business model of people smuggling gangs. In doing so, on day two, she created a diplomatic row with Rwanda, whose Ministers sadly had to read about the Government’s decision in the British media, rather than receiving direct communication from the Government. That was a level of diplomatic indecency that will cast a shadow over the relationship not just with that country, but with many others.

On day three, the Home Secretary announced an effective amnesty for tens of thousands of people who arrived here illegally. We said that the incoming Labour Government would do that. They promised that they would not, yet that is exactly what they did. On day four, she started work on getting back into the EU through the back door by negotiating to take more migrants from the continent. On day five, a Labour Government Minister went on national radio to advocate the relaxing of visa rules from the EU, before being slapped down for saying the quiet bit out loud.

On day six, Home Office figures released by the Government showed that the visa curbs that I put in place when I became Home Secretary have cut migration by 48% since last June—she can thank me for that later. On the seventh day, the Home Secretary probably tried to get some rest, but she will now know what I have long known, which is that, as Home Secretary, there is not the luxury of that day of rest.

Therefore, despite a terrible first week of weather to bring in the new Labour Government, we saw almost 500 asylum seekers arrive on small boats. As of today—

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mr Cleverly]

The Home Secretary will be making a speech in due course.

As I say, almost 500 asylum seekers arrived in the first week, and, as of today, more than 2,000 asylum seekers have arrived in small boats since Labour took office. The second week at work was not much better.

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Cleverly]

The right hon. Member has the opportunity to speak in a moment. We have seen riots in her back garden, on the streets of Leeds, and police officers, clearly not confident that they will enjoy her support, having to take a backseat. Like so much of what was said ahead of this general election, “Take back our streets” was clearly just a Labour slogan.

We then saw Neil Basu, a very highly respected former police officer, with whom I worked when I was on the Metropolitan Police Authority, and General Stuart Skeates, a senior official at the Home Office, with whom I worked in a former life as well as when I was Home Secretary, ruling themselves out of leadership of the new so-called border security command. They did so, I am sure, because they know what we know, which is that that is little more than a fig leaf to hide the fact that the Labour Government are doing less on migration and hoping to achieve more. The reality, as everybody including the people smugglers know, is that the small boats problem is only going to get worse under Labour.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for giving way. It is a shame to puncture his fantasy and bring him down to the real world in which he and his party trebled net migration and left us with the highest level of spring boat crossings on record. Perhaps he can answer just one factual question. He has spent £700 million over two and a half years running the Rwanda scheme; can he tell us how many asylum seekers he has sent?

[Mr Cleverly]

As I said on the radio this morning, if the right hon. Lady is going to pluck figures out of the air, she should avoid nice round numbers, because it is a bit of a giveaway. She will know that we brought people into detention and that we had chartered flights. The fact that the new Government scrapped the scheme and, with a degree of diplomatic discourtesy, did not even—[Interruption.] Labour Members can groan from their Benches, but they will get used to the fact that we cannot treat international partners in this way.

Our relationship with Rwanda was entered into in good faith by both parties. The Rwandans discovered that the incoming Government were tearing up that bilateral relationship in the pages of the British media. The Home Secretary should learn that her new Foreign Secretary should have had the diplomatic courtesy at least to pick up the phone to his opposite number in Rwanda to explain what was going to happen before they read about it in the British press. She and I both know that her Government would not have acted with that level of vile discourtesy had that partner been a European country. [Interruption.] Labour Members can groan all they like, but we all know that is true.

The simple fact of the matter is that the new border security command replicates in all respects the work of the small boats operational command. It took almost the whole general election campaign before the right hon. Lady attempted to clarify the roles. We still have very little clarity on the division of labour between the so-called new border security command and the small boats operational command. Yesterday, at the Dispatch Box, she tried to imply that there had been no returns under the Conservative Government, but let me put some facts and figures on the record. Last year, we returned more than 25,000 people to their home countries, including almost 4,000 foreign national offenders, in order to keep ourselves safe—foreign national offenders for whom, I would remind the House, her Prime Minister in his former guise fought tooth and nail to prevent being deported. Voluntary and enforced returns were both up by more than two thirds, at their highest level for five years—operations done by our immigration enforcement officials, which sounds a lot like a returns unit to me.

I am not sure what the right hon. Lady was doing while in opposition, but she might be surprised to learn that we were indeed smashing the gangs, and we were making sure that people were arrested and incarcerated. Last year, we smashed almost 100 criminal gangs through our law enforcement agencies. I remind the House that Labour Members voted against the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which is the legislation that we have been using to incarcerate those people smugglers. They voted against that legislation. Labour, in government, are now so worried about their continuing reputation for being and for looking weak on immigration that they felt the need to announce a raft of things to sound tough which basically already existed. They announced the border security command, even though there is already a small boats operational command. They announced a returns unit, even though immigration enforcement already does that. What will they announce next? What will they invent—the RAF? I look forward to seeing what functions are to be replicated.

We will look at legislation when it comes forward but, as I have discussed, the Government already have the tools they need, and as long as they do not undermine their own efforts by scrapping more things, we might see an opportunity for them to reduce numbers, in large part because we passed the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. The right hon. Lady has tools at her disposal.

On legal migration, I remember coming to the Government Dispatch Box in December last year and presenting to the House a series of visa curbs to cut net migration. With our measures, 300,000 people who came here last year would no longer have the right to come, reducing migration by a record amount. Already the data is showing that, because of the actions I took as Home Secretary, visa applications are down by 48% compared with June last. On the current trajectory, net migration is set to halve in the next 12 months, thanks to the actions that I took—actions opposed by the Labour party at the time.

The Labour manifesto said that net migration would come down, but not by how much. As I said, the first 50% of that reduction is because of actions I took. Perhaps, in her speech, the right hon. Lady can confirm how much further than that 50% she envisages bringing net migration down. Labour talked tough ahead of the election about clamping down on employers bringing in foreign workers, but those plans have apparently now been shelved, as we saw nothing of them in the King’s Speech and have not heard anything more about them.

On policing and crime, I am delighted to have my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) as shadow Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime. There are many brilliant things about Stockton, a place I have visited and enjoyed, and he is of course one of those wonderful things. I welcome the plans set out in the King’s Speech for a crime and policing Bill to tackle issues such as antisocial behaviour, retail crime and knife crime and to drive up standards in the police force. Of course I welcome them, because those are issues that I put forward when I was Home Secretary. The Government can therefore count on our general support for these measures, if they bring forward detailed proposals that properly address the issues. I really hope that the right hon. Lady has more success than I had getting her colleague, the Mayor of London, to focus on bringing down violent crime in our capital city. We will of course scrutinise the legislation alongside the victims, courts and public protection Bill.

Over the previous Parliament, it was the Conservative party that put 20,000 new police officers on the streets. At the election, we promised to hire an additional 8,000 full-time, fully warranted police officers to protect our neighbourhoods. During the general election campaign, the Labour party made no such commitment, limiting their aspirations to only 3,000 full-time, fully warranted officers. I hope that they will match our commitment to 8,000.

[Mr Cleverly]

I am very proud of the fact that in many parts of the country, including my county of Essex, there are now more warranted police officers than at any time in the force’s history—in sharp contrast to Labour-run London, where the Conservative Government put money on the table to recruit extra Metropolitan police officers and the Labour Mayor of London has spectacularly failed to recruit those officers, has not backed officers when they said they needed to do more stop and search, and has seen knife crime accelerate, distorting the whole national picture. I really hope that the right hon. Lady takes this seriously. She can chuckle all she likes, but this is about kids getting stabbed on the streets of London, and she should take this more seriously. [Interruption.] She should recognise that we introduced tougher sentences under the Public Order Act 2023 to clamp down on disruptive protests—the benefit of which we have already seen this week with the jailing of Just Stop Oil protesters—in addition to plans to grant the police further powers to clamp down on protests that go too far and disrupt the lives of people around this country.

[Yvette Cooper]

The shadow Home Secretary knows he should not make such disgraceful, unfounded allegations about my response to knife crime. He knows that I have met families right across the country who are devastated by knife crime, including in towns and smaller communities and suburbs where this terrible crime is going up. His party, when in government, repeatedly failed to ban serious weapons on our streets. Will he now support this party and this Government when we bring in the bans on ninja swords and dangerous machetes that he should have brought in long ago?

[Mr Cleverly]

I made the observation that, while I was talking about young people getting stabbed, the right hon. Lady was chatting and chuckling with her colleagues on the Front Bench. That was a statement of fact. The point is that we have got a grip of crime, but in the parts of the country controlled by Labour police and crime commissioners, including London, that is sadly not the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Yvette Cooper)]

I welcome everybody to the final day of the King's Speech debate. I also welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s words about the excellent ministerial team that we now have in the Home Office, and his continued support for the defending democracy taskforce, which I know he and his shadow Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), took immensely seriously when they were in government. I can tell the House that we will be meeting later this week, our first meeting after the election, to review some of the issues that I know have affected Members right across the country. We are extremely serious about what happened during the election and how we all need to respond and to stand up for our democracy.

To listen to the shadow Home Secretary, no one would think he had just spectacularly lost a general election; apparently under the Conservatives we have just all had it so good for such a long period of time. However, I am glad to see him enjoying opposition so much. Long may it continue!

This may be the final day of the King’s Speech debate, but of course it is only the beginning of the Tory leadership hustings. The shadow Home Secretary’s name is on the list, and we look forward to his launch, maybe late this week—it is very exciting. As someone who has unsuccessfully stood for their party’s leadership in the past, I do have some sympathy with his predicament. It is not just that he is only the bookies’ fifth favourite; he is not even the leading candidate from Essex, or even the leading candidate from his shadow Home Office team.

I have some bad news for both the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow Security Minister, the right hon. Member for Tonbridge. Their chances have been dealt a hammer blow by that strategic brain and deputy leader of the Conservative party, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), who was elected at the same time as them in 2015. When asked who the stars of his generation are, he said:

“There’s only two people from my generation that I could see leading the Conservative party: Rishi Sunak or Vicky Atkins.”

How disappointing is that? Discounted by the great election guru of the Conservative party before they have even started.

[Mr Cleverly]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

I will give way on that subject.

[Mr Cleverly]

Just for expectation management, may I ask when the Home Secretary will start talking about her portfolio?

[Yvette Cooper]

The shadow Home Secretary spent his entire speech not talking about any of the challenges that the country faces but simply playing to the Conservative Back Benches with a fantasy leadership application speech.

What is it about these former Home Secretaries and Ministers? Apparently, of the last seven Home Office Ministers in Cabinet, six of them are running. We have the previous Home Secretary, the Home Secretary before that and the Home Secretary but one before that—the same person, strangely, because, never forget, it is possible to be sacked from the same job twice—plus the Home Secretary before that, the former Security Minister and the former Immigration Minister.

They have quite a record between them: they have trebled net migration, let boat crossings hit a record high this spring, decimated neighbourhood policing—there are 10,00 fewer neighbourhood police and police community support officers on our streets—let record numbers of crimes go unsolved, bust the Home Office budget by billions, and, yes, spent £700 million sending just four volunteers to Rwanda. If they are now lining up to do to the Tory party what they have already done to the Home Office and the country, well, frankly, they deserve each other. Every one of them championed that policy on Rwanda—although the shadow Home Secretary, to be fair to him, did notoriously describe it as “batshit” crazy. Well, maybe that is what someone needs to be to stand for Tory leader right now. [Interruption.]

We have heard that the Conservatives are going to run this contest until November. We have five months—[Interruption.] Oh, does the shadow Home Secretary want to deny having ever described the Rwanda programme and development partnership as “batshit”? I will give way to him if he would like to respond.

[Mr Cleverly]

If the right hon. Lady can say when, where and to whom that was said, carry on.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman was the one who said it, so he is the one who will know. If he wants to deny that he ever said it, I will not say it again—honestly—but I think that he protests a little too much with this sort of wriggling. He would not do very well under interrogation.

We have heard today that the leadership contest will run until November. We have five months of this. There are hardly any Tory MPs here because they are all off doing their little chats and meetings. It is like a cross between “Love Island” and the jungle. Rob and Suella have broken up, and now John has gone off with Kemi. Everyone is looking over their shoulder for snakes and rats. Apparently somebody has had a nervous breakdown, and that is probably all of their Back Benchers, dreading getting a little text saying that another candidate wants a chat. We can see it. Look at them all. They are all saying, “I am a Tory MP. Get me out of here.” That is exactly what our Labour MPs have just done: they have got a lot of Tory MPs out of here because the country is crying out for change—for what the Prime Minister has described as a decade of national renewal on our economy, our public services and our relationship with the world, and in politics itself, by bringing politics back into public service again.

I say to all hon. Members, on my side and on the Opposition Benches, that I will work with everyone to restore Britain’s sense of security, public safety on our streets, secure borders, and confidence in our police and criminal justice system. Yes, I will repeatedly challenge the Conservatives on the legacy that they have left us, because the damage is serious, and I think that they have been hugely reckless with the safety of our country. Yes, the approach and values of our parties may be different, but I think that there are important areas where we should be able to come together to bring change in the interests of our country, our communities and our security, because that is what public service means. That is what this Labour Government are determined to do. We have set out in the King’s Speech three Home Office Bills on crime and policing, borders and asylum, and security. I will cover each issue in turn, starting with safety on our streets and confidence in the police and the criminal justice system.

Everyone will have, fresh in their minds, the concerns raised by constituents during the election campaign. I fear that, at a time when we have 10,000 fewer neighbourhood police and PCSOs, confidence in policing has dropped. Street crime and knife crime are surging in towns and suburbs—not just in our cities—and shoplifting has become an epidemic. Those are the kinds of crimes that really affect how people live in their own communities, yet too little is being done.

Border Security and Asylum

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I welcome you back to your place, on my first opportunity to do so. In my time as Home Secretary and, before that, Foreign Secretary, you were very kind about my minor indiscretions at the Dispatch Box, my late deployment of statements and my slight overruns. You have always been very kind to my family in sometimes quite trying circumstances, which I very much appreciate.

I also take this opportunity to congratulate the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper) on her appointment as Home Secretary. It is a challenging but incredibly rewarding job and, because the nation’s security is now very much in her and her Ministers’ hands, I genuinely wish her all success in everything she is looking to do.

The right hon. Lady inherits a dedicated team of Home Office civil servants who will help her to keep the country safe and secure. They helped me when I was in her position and, although it is disorderly to recognise their presence, if I were to wave my hand vaguely in their direction, I might take the opportunity to thank my previous private office civil servants.

My notes say that I want to thank the Home Secretary and her team for advance sight of her statement, but I will put a line through that.

The Labour party, and indeed the Home Secretary, likes to talk tough on border security, but today’s statement, despite all the hyperbole and the made-up numbers, is basically an admission of what we knew all along, which is that the Labour party has scrapped the Rwanda partnership on ideological grounds, removing a deterrent that the National Crime Agency said we needed.

The level of discourtesy directed towards the people and Government of Rwanda is quite breathtaking. To have them read about this decision in the papers before anyone from the UK Government had the good grace to formally notify them is an error, and no one in this House believes for a moment that this level of discourtesy would have happened had the partnership been with a European country.

Labour has given an effective amnesty to thousands of asylum seekers who were banned under Conservative plans. Labour’s plans amount to doing less than the Conservatives were doing when we were in government, merely changing the signs above a few desks in the Home Office with its so-called border security command and returns unit. Before the election, the right hon. Lady said that she would create a returns unit, and now the narrative is that she will redeploy some staff—not increase the number of staff, but redeploy some staff—which shows that the returns function already exists.

There is no safe third country to which to return people who cannot be returned home, so where will the right hon. Lady send people who come here from countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Syria? Has she started negotiating returns agreements with the Taliban, the ayatollahs of Iran or Assad in Syria? If she is not going to send to Rwanda anyone who arrives here on a small boat, to which local authorities will she send them? We were closing hotels when I was in government, so I wonder which local authorities will receive those asylum seekers. If not Rwanda, will it be Rochdale, Romford or Richmond? Most importantly, can the right hon. Lady now confirm that people who arrive here illegally in a small boat will be able to claim asylum? Finally, how long after the right hon. Lady briefed the media that she is scrapping the Rwanda partnership did she have the courtesy to speak directly with the Rwandan Government?

It is because we now have no deterrent that nobody wants to head her new so-called border security command. Neil Basu, a former senior police officer for whom I have huge respect, was Labour’s No. 1 choice, and he has ruled himself out. We now learn that General Stuart Skeates, a highly respected former general in the British Army, who was, in large part, responsible for delivering the Albania deal, which cut small boat arrivals from that country by 90%, has resigned from his position as director general for strategic operations. To misquote Oscar Wilde, “to lose one border commander could be seen as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness”—perhaps even incompetence. I notice that the new job advert—it is available online for those who are thinking of applying—for Labour’s border security command says that the role is not located in Kent, where the channel is, but is flexible from Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Durham, Glasgow, Liverpool or Manchester, none of which, the last time I checked, are anywhere near the English channel.

The reality is that everybody knows, including the people smugglers, that the small boat problem is going to get worse—indeed, has already got worse under Labour—because there is no deterrent. People are being sold a lie when they are being smuggled into this country, across one of the busiest shipping lanes. We need to stop them. Too many lives have already been lost. Sadly, six more have been lost in the channel in the last few weeks, and our hearts go out to them and their loved ones. We disagree on many things, but we can agree that we need to put an end to this evil trade. Sadly, the initial decisions made by her Government have made the problem worse, not better.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the shadow Home Secretary’s words about the dedication of Home Office officials and about the importance of work on national security. As he knows, when I was shadow Secretary of State, I always worked with him and supported him around national security issues. I know he will do the same and I welcome him to his shadow post. I presume what we heard was the first of the Conservative leadership contest speeches.

I will respond to some of the things the shadow Home Secretary said. We need to be clear about what we have inherited from him and his party. Under his party, we have had the highest level of spring crossings ever. Gangs have been left to wreak havoc, not just along the French coast but across our border, through our country and back through Europe. Asylum support costs are set to rise to £30 billion to £40 billion over the next four years as a result of his and his party’s decisions.

As for the idea of deterrence, I am sorry but four volunteers being sent to Rwanda is not a deterrent to anyone for anything at all. The idea that he would spend £10 billion on this fantasy, this fiction, this gimmick rather than ever do the hard graft—£700 million has already been spent on sending just four volunteers in two and a half years. We have often warned that, frankly, it would be cheaper to put them up in the Paris Ritz. As it turns out, it would have been cheaper to buy the Paris Ritz.

As for the amnesty, I do not know if the right hon. Gentleman has ever understood the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which he voted for and he inherited from his predecessors. He asks if people who arrive illegally can claim asylum—that is exactly what happens under section 9 of that Act. They can all claim asylum, enter the asylum system and be entitled to asylum support. That is what happens in the system, which we have inherited, that he has presided over and run since he became Home Secretary. The problem is that people enter the asylum system but never leave. He did not bring in operational arrangements to try to take decisions properly. His Home Office effectively stopped taking the majority of asylum decisions in May. Perhaps he did not know that, but that is what happened in his Home Office. This party and this Government do not believe in amnesties. We think that the rules need to be respected and enforced. His party is the one that has given an effective amnesty to people who can end up staying in the asylum system forever. We believe that the rules should be enforced. The problem is that that is what the shadow Home Secretary believes too. He does not believe any of the stuff that he has just said. He is only saying it for his Tory leadership contest; he is just too weak to tell his party the truth. He thought that the whole policy on Rwanda was “batshit” and then he went out to bat for it. It is just not serious.

Russia

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement.

It is the first job of any Government to keep our country safe from those who wish to do us harm, not least those who wish to undermine our democracy and everything that we stand for. We pay tribute to the remarkable work of our intelligence and security services and our law enforcement agencies—at home and abroad—which strain every sinew to keep us safe. We will always work with the Government on those national security issues.

The arson attack that the Home Secretary describes was a very serious one. The charges now laid are important. We support the work of law enforcement in this case, and it is immensely important that nothing is done to cut across that criminal justice case. I simply ask for the Home Secretary’s reassurance that a investigation is under way not just into the specific offences, but into the wider context and any wider threats to our national security that might be linked with this incident.

The Home Secretary has been clear in linking these charges to Russia and we echo his strong condemnation of Russian interference and hostile activity here in the UK and throughout Europe. Repeatedly, we have seen a brazen disregard by Russia for the rule of law, for the UK, for our allies and for our domestic security. As my right hon. Friends, the shadow Secretaries of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and for Defence have made clear, we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government in our support for Ukraine. Any change in Government will not change that strong cross-party support, as we stand with our allies. Putin must be defeated in Ukraine, and Britain must stand four-square behind our Ukrainian friends.

Russia under Putin is a long-term, generational threat to the security of Europe, which requires a long-term response. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Defence Secretary said just yesterday, the defence of the UK starts in Ukraine, but as the Home Secretary has made clear, these challenges are also to our homeland security, which is why we support wholeheartedly the measures that the Home Secretary set out today. Just as we worked on a cross-party basis with the Government to pass the National Security Act 2023, so we will work closely with them in going further. May I ask the Home Secretary a few further questions about these and any further measures that the Government may be able to take and ask him whether he expects there to be a diplomatic response from Russia?

As we saw in Salisbury to an appalling extent, there is a willingness of Russian-sponsored actors to put the safety of British citizens and British residents at risk through cyber-threats—threats to undermine our democracy and our economy. I am concerned that we have known about the scale of these threats for some time, and that, in some areas, we have been too slow to respond. The Home Secretary has been too slow to rid the UK of illicit finance. He will know that concerns have been raised about prohibited imports of Russian-origin oil through third countries making their way to UK shores. Can he tell me what action is being taken to ensure that sanctions are being enforced?

The Home Secretary will know that there is real concern that the UK is still too easy for lawyers and accountants and for the laundering of Russian money through the UK that potentially aids and abets Putin’s war. The US has seized huge amounts of Russian-related assets as part of the sanctions evasion and charged more than 70 individuals in that regard. Can he confirm that no one has yet been charged with sanctions evasion in the US and set out what is being done to address the issue?

The Government said that in principle they support the seizing of Russian assets to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine, but there have been no proposals to take that forward. Will the Home Secretary tell us what is happening there? We have also still not had a full account of the scale of risk from golden visas. He will know, too, that there are threats to our democracy. The work of the defending democracy taskforce is far too limited. While the Security Minister is working on that, what engagement has the Home Secretary had, and has it been discussed at the National Security Council?

Finally, the update to the Government’s integrated review warned in March last year that

“the transition into a multipolar, fragmented and contested world has happened more quickly and definitively than anticipated.”

From the Iranian-sponsored kidnap and kill threats on UK soil to the repression of Hong Kong protesters outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester, the UK has undergone, because of behaviour not just from Russia but more widely, a fundamental shift in the threat landscape, as increasingly aggressive state actors feel emboldened to target the UK, often in co-operation with serious and organised crime. I urge the Home Secretary to look at the work that was done after the huge shift in the terror threat that we faced following 9/11 and 7/7 to draw up the Contest strategy. We do not have a similar strategy for state actors and state-sponsored threats. The work is far too fragmented. The Labour party would like to see a comprehensive equivalent to Contest. I urge him to look again at that. We will work with him on that too.

[James Cleverly]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her party’s commitment to the ongoing support for Ukraine’s self-defence. She was right to read that into the record. There is no doubt about her commitment among Government Members. I reassure her that we do look at the wider threats emanating from Russia. We liaise closely with our international partners. We suspect that other countries in the coalition of support for Ukraine are being targeted by Russia. Those countries will take discrete, domestic actions, but I draw the House’s attention to the shared commitment set out in the North Atlantic Council statement. I do not have the precise quote in front of me, but from memory it said that nations will take both individual and collective action.

Our response is calibrated. It is designed to send a very clear message, as well as hampering Russia’s ability to conduct espionage here in the UK. We will look closely at Russia’s response and whether it seeks to escalate matters. We will always ensure that we protect our ability to have lines of communication with Russia, even during these most challenging of times. Routes for de-escalation, error avoidance and the avoidance of miscalculation are very important. We recognise that, and I believe that Putin’s regime in Moscow recognises that. We will seek to maintain lines of communication, even while we take these decisive actions.

With regard to the extensive sanctions, we moved quickly, in concert with our international friends and allies. Those sanctions are having an effect. Of course Russia seeks to evade sanctions where it can. While sanctions enforcement is primarily the responsibility of the Treasury, it is a cross-Government piece of work. All parts of Government—this was very much the case when I was Foreign Secretary, speaking with our international counterparts and interlocutors—try to close off opportunities for sanctions evasion.

The defending democracy taskforce is incredibly important, particularly as we head towards a general election. We will of course adapt, and seek to work cross-party, because it is in all our interests that we defend democracy. I will continue to ensure that both the Security Minister and I work closely with the shadow Front Bench and other Opposition parties’ Front-Bench teams to protect something that is incredibly valuable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Mr Speaker, I remember the kindness that your father showed me and our long discussions on rugby league. I add my condolences.

The Hillsborough tragedy was 35 years ago to the hour. We remember the 97 who were lost and support the families’ campaign for a Hillsborough law.

We strongly condemn Iran’s attack on Israel this weekend, and we must do everything we can to prevent further escalation in the middle east, but there are also domestic security issues in relation to Iran. The Iran International journalist Pouria Zeraati was attacked on the streets of London a few weeks ago following repeated Iran-related security threats on British soil, including threats to kidnap and kill. Does the Home Secretary believe it is now time to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the UK?

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady will know that we keep our response to Iran under constant review, and of course we have done so in the light of the attack in Wimbledon. We do not speculate about future designations or sanctions, but she will know that the IRGC is sanctioned in its entirety and a number of its members are sanctioned as individuals. As she knows, we will keep this under constant review.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary will know that we have raised this many times. I understand the complexity of the issue. The proscribing legislation was drawn up more than 20 years ago to address terrorist threats such as al-Qaeda, rather than state-sponsored threats that have both domestic and international security objectives. Our bottom line must be keeping this country safe, which is why Labour has proposed new security legislation to allow the Government to put appropriately targeted proscription-style restrictions on the operations of state-linked organisations such as the IRGC. The Government previously resisted this, but will he look at it again in the light of recent events and work with us on any legislation that is needed to keep this country safe?

[James Cleverly]

We have the National Security Act 2023 and a range of tools at our disposal. Defence against state threats is one of the Department’s priorities, and my right hon. Friend the Security Minister leads on its practical implementation. I can reassure the shadow Home Secretary and the House that we constantly review the range of options at our disposal and deploy those that are most appropriate. Protecting the UK and the people living and working here against state threats will always be a priority of this Government.

Angiolini Inquiry Report

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement.

Three years ago this Sunday, a young woman walking home was abducted and brutally killed by a serving police officer who she should have been able to trust to keep her safe. Today we think of Sarah Everard and her parents, family and friends, who have to live with the shattering consequences of what happened. This is also a day when many families who have lost sisters, daughters and mothers to violence are here in Parliament to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), read out the names of the women killed this year.

Today’s damning report is about women’s safety. It is for all the women across the country who worry about walking home alone, or who worry about their daughters’ safety. It is also about trust and confidence in policing, and whether we have the standards in place to maintain confidence in individual officers. The work of the vast majority of police officers who work immensely hard and with integrity to keep communities safe is undermined when standards fail. I thank Lady Elish Angiolini for her inquiry and this comprehensive first report. I also thank those who came forward to give evidence.

The report exposes a catalogue of appalling failures in police vetting and misconduct processes, and in the investigation of indecent exposure and sexual offences. Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer. He should have been stopped, and he could have been stopped, from being a police officer. It is truly appalling. His history of alleged sexual offending stretches back so many years, yet the opportunities to investigate were repeatedly missed. Most disturbing of all, Lady Angiolini says that there is

“nothing to stop another Couzens operating in plain sight.”

Although I agree with most of what the Home Secretary says, I have to be blunt about this: his response is too weak—too little, too late. The lack of urgency is unfathomable to me. The Government have been repeatedly warned about failures around vetting and misconduct. Independent inspectorate reports in 2012, 2019, 2022 and 2023 all highlighted serious failures in vetting procedures, which is why, two years ago, I called for mandatory national vetting standards. Forces are working hard, but there are no mandatory standards for all forces. All the Government have done is bring in a code of practice two and a half years after Sarah Everard’s murder, and it is not strong enough. Frankly, it is not even clear that Wayne Couzens, or officers such as David Carrick and Cliff Mitchell—both now convicted—would definitely have failed the vetting standards and the code of practice had they been in force at the time. The Home Secretary has to go further, and that has to be driven by the Home Office.

As for the misconduct changes that the Home Secretary referred to, most of them are not even in place yet. Again, this is three years after Sarah Everard was murdered. Will he commit today to a new mandatory vetting framework, underpinned by legislation, that all forces must abide by, under which any evidence about past domestic abuse or sexual offending will be pursued, and that will not simply take into account convictions? We will support him in that. At a minimum, will he accept recommendation 6, which is about a

“Review of indecent exposure allegations and other sexual offences recorded against serving police officers”?

At a minimum, surely he can accept that today.

The automatic suspensions that the Home Secretary announced do not go far enough. Are we to suspend people for criminal offences only once they have been charged? Once the police launch an investigation into domestic abuse or sexual offences by a serving police officer, that officer should be automatically suspended. Again, we have called for that repeatedly. The Home Secretary is not going far enough. As for the response on women’s safety more widely, that, too, is frankly too week.

I welcome many of the policies the Home Secretary referred to and that the Government have introduced over the past few years—most of them are things we called for—but, again, this goes nowhere near far enough. On indecent exposure, we know about the awful murder of Libby Squire in 2019 and the failure to take indecent exposure seriously enough. Libby’s mother, Lisa Squire, and the Home Affairs Committee Chair have been campaigning for stronger action on indecent exposure for years now. Again, surely the Home Secretary can accept at least the first three recommendations of Lady Elish’s report, which are on stronger police training and guidance on, and a stronger approach to, investigating indecent exposure.

When it comes to women’s safety, the reality is that the number of prosecutions for domestic abuse has halved; rape prosecutions are still taking years; early action and intervention just does not happen. There is a shocking drift on women’s safety and in what the Home Secretary has said today. I urge him to: support Labour’s call for new vetting rules, and for specialist rape and sexual offences units in every force; support Raneem’s law, so that the police respond with urgency to domestic abuse and save lives; and listen to Lisa Squire, the mother of Libby Squire. We say that this report should be a watershed, but we said that Sarah Everard’s murder three years ago should have been a watershed, and far too little has changed. How long must we go on saying the same things?

The first women’s safety march was on the streets of Leeds nearly 50 years ago, and we are saying the same things about our daughters’ safety today. I am sick and tired of nothing changing. I am sick and tired of women and girls who face abuse and violence not getting support, while perpetrators get away with it. Enough is enough. Let us have some urgency in the Home Secretary’s response. We cannot stand for this any more.

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady makes a number of points about the findings in the report, and about the issues raised because of Sarah Everard’s brutal murder. I have continued the work of my predecessors, including that initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), to make sure that not just the Department, but police forces around the country and other organisations, statutory and non-statutory, that deal with the safety of women, are focused relentlessly on this issue. We have made it clear that there is still much work to do, and, as I committed to do, we will respond promptly to the findings of this report.

I understand the frustration that not enough has happened; things have not moved fast enough, and cultural change still needs to be driven through, including on leadership. I have made clear to police leaders, both in forces around the country and at the College of Policing, my expectation of leadership. This is not just about process and procedure, but about these matters being amplified and supported by leadership, and about a real commitment to driving through change in forces. I will continue to ensure that that happens.

I do not think it is right for the right hon. Lady to say that nothing has changed. That would not be an accurate reflection of the situation from the time to which she makes reference. There have been a number of improvements. My first visit as Home Secretary was to Holborn police station to look at the team working there. There have been improvements, although I concede that they have not been universally applied. The differential performance among forces is not good enough. I have discussed what can happen to ensure the least well performing forces match the performance of the best forces.

There remains a huge amount of work to be done. We are not waiting for the outcome of the second inquiry before we take action. We will look at changes to the recruitment and vetting processes, which have been highlighted, but in her inquiry Dame Elish shows that there were plenty of occasions when the current system flagged problems that were not properly responded to by the force. Those are not procedural problems but a culture problem. We will look at what processes and procedures need to change, but I will not wait for the second report before doing so. I will continue to push for cultural change through society and policing, to ensure that where issues are flagged, as they were, they are taken seriously and investigated properly to ensure that such a situation will hopefully never happen again.

Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

2nd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

That is not an element of this Bill. On a commitment for the Prime Minister to meet with the Committee, I will look at the details.

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

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[James Cleverly]

I want to make progress to ensure that everyone who wishes to speak in this debate is able to do so, but I will give way to the right hon. Lady.

[Yvette Cooper]

On that point, will the Home Secretary encourage the Prime Minister to go before the Intelligence and Security Committee at the soonest opportunity? My understanding is that that has not happened for 10 years.

[James Cleverly]

I cannot make a commitment on the Prime Minister’s behalf. Members of the Committee will know that I appeared before the Committee in my previous role, and I think it is important that Government do make themselves available for this scrutiny. As I say, it would be inappropriate for me to demand of the Prime Minister attendance anywhere, but I will pass on the right hon. Lady’s point.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

3rd reading
Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman certainly speaks for a number of Members in the House, although maybe not too many on his own Benches, because it sounds as if he wants this to work, whereas plenty of Opposition Members have tried to frustrate our attempts to deal with illegal migration. But we will of course want to assess the success because we want to be proud of the fact that this Government, unlike the Opposition parties, actually care about strengthening our borders and defending ourselves against those evil people smugglers and their evil trade.

To be clear, we will disapply the avenues used by individuals that blocked the first flight to Rwanda, including asylum and human rights claims. Without that very narrow route to individual challenge, we would undermine the treaty that we have just signed with Rwanda and run the very serious risk of collapsing the scheme, and that must not be allowed to happen. But if people attempt to use this route simply as a delaying tactic, they will have their claim dismissed by the Home Office and they will be removed.

The Bill also ensures that it is for Ministers and Ministers alone to decide whether to comply with the ECHR interim measures, because it is for the British people and the British people alone to decide who comes and who stays in this country. The Prime Minister said he would not have included that clause unless we were intending and prepared to use it, and that is very much the case. We will not let foreign courts prevent us from managing our own borders. As reiterated by the Cabinet Office today, it is the established case that civil servants under the civil service code are there to deliver the decisions of Ministers of the Crown.

The Bill is key to stopping the boats once and for all. To reassure some of the people who have approached me with concerns, I remind them that Albanians previously made up around a third of small boat arrivals, but through working intensively and closely with Albania and its Government, more than 5,000 people with no right to be here have been returned. The deterrent was powerful enough to drive down arrivals from Albania by more than 90%. Strasbourg has not intervened, flights from Rwanda have not been stopped and the House should understand that this legislation once passed will go even further and be even stronger than the legislation that underpins the Albania agreement.

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

We obviously support the Albania agreement, but will the Home Secretary confirm that only 5% of Albanians who have arrived in the country over the past few years on small boats have been returned or removed? What has happened to the other 95%?

[James Cleverly]

As I have said, it is about deterrence, and the deterrent effect is clear for anyone to see, with a more than 90% reduction in the number of Albanians who have arrived on these shores.

I am glad that the shadow Home Secretary chose this point to intervene, because it reminds me that the Labour party has no credible plans at all to manage our borders. The Opposition have tried to obstruct our plans to tackle illegal migration over and over again—more than 80 times. They even want to cut a deal with the EU that would see us receive 100,000 extra illegal migrants each and every year. [Interruption.] They cheer. The shadow Home Secretary is pleased with the idea that we are going to receive an extra 100,000 every year. They can laugh, but we take this issue seriously, because it is not what our country needs and it is not what our constituents want.

We are united in agreement that stopping the boats and getting the Rwanda partnership up and running is of the utmost importance. Having a debate about how to get the policy right is of course what this House is for. That is our collective job, and I respect my good friends and colleagues on the Government Benches for putting forward amendments in good faith to do what they believe will strengthen the Bill. While my party sits only a short physical distance from the parties on the Opposition Benches, the gulf between our aspiration to control our borders and their blasé laissez-faire attitude to border control could not be more stark. Stopping the boats is not just a question of policy; it is a question of morality and of fairness. It is this Government—this Conservative party—who are the only party in this House taking this issue as seriously as we should. I urge this House to stick with our plan and stop the boats.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

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

We welcome the proscription of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Five more lives were tragically lost in the channel this weekend. As criminal gangs profit from those dangerous boat crossings, it shows how vital it is to stop them, but we need the Home Office to have a grip. The Home Secretary gave no answer earlier on the 4,000 people he has lost from the Rwanda list. Can he tell us if he has also lost the 35,000 people he has removed from the asylum backlog? How many of them are still in the country?

[James Cleverly]

I join the right hon. Lady in expressing sadness and condolences for those who lost their lives in the channel. That reinforces the importance of breaking the people-smuggling gangs. The fact is that we are driving down the numbers of people in the backlog: we are processing applications more quickly and ensuring that decisions are made so that those who should not be in this country can be removed either to their own country or a safe third country. That is why the Rwanda Bill is so important, and why we will continue working on these issues.

[Yvette Cooper]

Returns have dropped 50% since the last Labour Government. The Home Secretary is still not telling us where those missing people are. He appears to have lost thousands of people who may have no right to be in the country, and lost any grip at all. In the ongoing Tory asylum chaos, we have Cabinet Ministers, countless ex-Ministers and the deputy Tory chair all saying that they will oppose the Home Secretary’s policy this week—a policy that we know he and the Prime Minister do not even believe in. If the deputy Tory chair this week votes against the Home Secretary’s policy, will he be sacked, or is the Prime Minister so weak that he has lost control of asylum, lost control of our borders, and lost control of his own party, too?

[James Cleverly]

Conservative Members of Parliament are absolutely united in our desire to get a grip of this issue. I am not the person who has held up a sign saying, “Refugees welcome”; I am not the person whose colleagues oppose each and every rhetorical flourish. Until the Labour party comes up with a credible plan, I will not take its criticism any more seriously than it deserves.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

With the indulgence of the House, I intend to make some progress. I want to make sure that others have a full chance to speak in this debate.

The Bill sets out to Parliament and to the courts why Rwanda is safe for those relocated there. The treaty that I signed last week puts beyond legal doubt the safety of Rwanda. It provides the basis to end the merry-go-round of legal challenges that have second-guessed the will of Parliament and frustrated this policy, this House, and the desire of the British people.

Rwanda will introduce an even stronger end-to-end asylum system, stronger still than the one that underpins its relationship with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It will have a specialist asylum appeals tribunal—

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

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. Since we last spoke in this House, it has been confirmed that the Government have given the Rwandan Government £240 million, with a further £50 million to come in April—all independently of anybody be being sent to Rwanda. Will he now confirm that the Government’s deal also means a further £50 million in 2025 and a further £50 million on top of that in 2026?

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady is asking me to confirm figures that we have put in the public domain. Unsurprisingly, I am totally comfortable confirming what I have already said. Rwanda will introduce an even stronger—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady has the chance to make a speech in just a few moments.

The system of specialist asylum tribunals to consider individual appeals against any refused claim within Rwanda will have one Rwandan and one other Commonwealth co-president and will be made up of judges from a mix of nationalities, selected by the co-president. To the point the right hon. Lady is making about the money spent by the British Government, as is the case with many countries around the world, the Government spend money capacity building with our international partners, and we have been working extensively with Rwanda to build capacity too.

The treaty makes clear that anyone relocated to Rwanda cannot be removed from Rwanda to another country except back to the United Kingdom. It is binding in international law and enhances the role of the independent monitoring committee, which will have the power to set its own priority areas for monitoring. The committee will have unfettered access to monitor the entire relocation process, from initial screening to relocation and settlement in Rwanda. Relocated individuals and legal representatives will be able to launch confidential complaints directly with that committee. It is that treaty and the accompanying evidence pack that enable the Government to conclude with confidence that Rwanda is safe. We will need to be certain that domestic and foreign courts will also respect the treaty, and that is why we have introduced this Bill.

Legal Migration

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of the statement.

Today’s statement is an admission of years of total failure by this Conservative Government—failure on the immigration system and failure on the economy. It is another example of the total chaos at the heart of this Government. Net migration has trebled since the last election, when the Conservatives promised to reduce it, as a result of their policies on the economy and on immigration, including the Prime Minister’s policy decisions. In a chaotic panic, the Prime Minister now opposes the policies that he introduced and thinks that the Government’s own decisions are a problem. Who does the Home Secretary think has been in charge for the past 13 years? More chaos, more veering all over the place.

Net migration should come down. Labour has called for an end to the 20% unfair discount, for increased salary thresholds to prevent exploitation and for the inclusion of advice from a strengthened Migration Advisory Committee. Most of all, we have called for a proper plan, with clear links between the immigration system, training and the economy, and workforce plans, none of which are in the statement, because the Government have no grip and no proper plan. This is a chaotic approach.

Immigration is important for Britain, and we have rightly helped Ukraine and Hong Kong. We benefit from international talent and students. That is why the immigration system needs to be controlled and managed, so that it is fair and effective, and why net migration should come down from record levels. But there needs to be a proper plan. It was this Conservative Government who brought in the 20% wage discount that allowed employers to recruit at less than the going rate, even though the Migration Advisory Committee warned against it, and even though it is completely unfair. They chose to apply salary thresholds that were lower than the Migration Advisory Committee originally proposed, and to not update them for years. As Chancellor and then as Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) repeatedly blocked proposals to tighten the rules, including in May this year, and including when the Government refused Labour’s calls to end the unfair 20% discount. They repeatedly failed to listen to warnings about the failure to train or pay properly in the UK. Twelve months ago, I warned that work visas had substantially increased as a result of major skills shortages in the UK and that the Conservatives were not taking any serious action to address those shortages. The Leader of the Opposition warned 12 months ago that the immigration system should be linked to new requirements to train up workers at home, but the Conservatives did nothing; unbelievably they are still doing nothing.

There is nothing in this statement about training requirements or workforce plans. The Conservatives say that they want fewer shortage occupations, but it was only four months ago that they added bricklayers, roof tilers and plasterers to the shortage list. They have totally failed on construction training, and there are no plans to tackle that. Engineering apprenticeships have halved since 2018, so it is no wonder that engineering visas have gone up. Again, there is nothing to tackle those failures.

Social care visas have gone up from 3,500 a year to more than 100,000 a year because the Government have failed for years to heed warnings about recruitment and retention in social care. They halved the budget for social care workforce recruitment and support back in the spring, and they are still not listening and still refusing to adopt Labour’s plan for a proper workforce strategy for social care, including professional standards and a fair pay agreement. They are failing to tackle the delays in the asylum system that have also pushed the net migration figures up. They are failing to tackle NHS waiting lists that are preventing the long-term sick from going back to work.

The Prime Minister is just crashing around all over the place, reversing policies that he introduced, criticising policies he defended six months ago and introducing new immigration policies without any of the economic policies to match. A previous Prime Minister was accused of being a shopping trolley, veering around from one side to another. The current Prime Minister is clearly veering, but he certainly is not steering; he has just climbed into someone else’s shopping trolley and is being pushed around all over the place.

Can the Home Secretary tell us where the workforce plan is on social care, on engineering, on bricklaying and on all the shortage occupations that the Government’s total economic failure has left us with? Has the Migration Advisory Committee advised on these policies? Where are the reforms to strengthen the committee so that it can do so? Why have the Government still not introduced our requirements on employers or on the Government to address the skills and labour shortages that are driving the increase in net migration in the first place? The Conservatives are in chaos. They have no serious plan for the economy, no serious plan for the immigration system, and no serious plan for the country. Britain deserves better than this.

[James Cleverly]

I was waiting for the policy announcement from the Labour party, and sadly I am still waiting. The right hon. Lady talks about skills training. Hers was the party which, in government, dissuaded people from investing in their own skills, telling people that the only good job was a graduate job, undermining apprenticeships. That is something we have set about repairing through our entire time in government. Hers was the party that, in government, failed to put transitional measures in place when the EU expanded, importing significant numbers of people in the construction industry, which meant there was a disincentive to investing in people, technology and productivity—a situation that she now decries. She fails to make reference to the £7 billion employment package announced in the spring Budget that will help 1.1 million people get back into work and stay in work.

When I was at the Dispatch Box in the days after my appointment, I said that Labour had a plan for migration. The problem that Labour Members have is that the plan they are proposing is the plan I am already implementing. Working with the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) since the day I was appointed, we have put forward the most substantial package of legal migration reforms that the country has ever seen. Their great idea is already being put in place by this great Government.

Criminal Justice Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Victims of crime must have justice, and lawbreakers must face the consequences of their actions. This Criminal Justice Bill will give the police the powers they need to crack down on criminals and ensure that those who pose the biggest threat to the public are imprisoned for longer. It will give the public greater trust in the police and more confidence that the system works for them. We have always faced criminal threats, but those threats mutate and evolve, so we have to stay ahead of them by updating our technological capability and also updating our laws.

We are building on strong foundations. Compared with the year ending spring 2010, as measured by the crime survey of England and Wales, domestic burglary is down 57%, vehicle-related theft is down 39% and violent crime is down by 52%. Police-recorded homicide is down by 15% and the number of under-25 NHS admissions for assault by a sharp object is down by 26% in the year ending June 2023, compared with the year ending December 2019.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for giving way. It is so good to see him in the Chamber now. Could he tell us what the percentage increase has been in knife crime since 2015?

[James Cleverly]

I do not have the figures to hand, but the—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Lady has made an intervention. Let me make some progress now—[Interruption.] If she had the answer, she could have just stood up and said it rather than making this rather performative intervention. I will make some progress.

We have also taken the fight to the county lines drug gangs and to antisocial behaviour. Of course, these successes are not the Government’s alone, but we have enabled and supported that success with record funding for police; record numbers of police officers in England and Wales; expanding the powers to stop and search; and expanding the powers to tackle disruptive protests. Of course, we have also cut red tape, which means that more of those police officers are out on the beat fighting crime. We are building over 20,000 more prison places and ensuring that offenders face the toughest possible punishment for their crimes.

We will never rest, and we will go further still. This Bill will support the Government’s zero-tolerance approach to crime by giving the police, the courts and the other criminal justice agencies the powers they need to make our neighbourhoods even safer still.

Illegal drugs and knife crime bring chaos and misery to individuals. They destroy families and ruin neighbourhoods. Knife crime is a scourge in many of our cities and, during my time on the London Assembly and as a Member of this House, I have seen for myself the devastation it can bring to families.

Any family can be affected by drug misuse. I send a message to so-called casual users of recreational drugs that their actions underpin a vicious trade that has a profound and negative human cost. That is why we are giving the police more powers to seize and destroy bladed articles and to drug test more suspects upon arrest.

The Bill increases the maximum penalty for selling dangerous weapons to under-18s and creates a new criminal offence of possessing a bladed article with intent to cause harm. It will enable the police to seize, retain and destroy knives held in private when officers are lawfully on private property and have reasonable grounds to suspect the item or items will likely be used in violent crime.

The police will also be able to test individuals in police detention for specified class B and class C drugs, just as they can already test for specified class A drugs. This will mean that the police can direct more suspects using illegal drugs into treatment, which will help to reduce drug use, support recovery and, of course, cut crime. Those who refuse a drug test, or who fail to attend or stay for the duration of a directed drug assessment, may be committing a further offence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[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

Debate between Yvette Cooper and James Cleverly

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.]