Immigration System
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Lincoln Jopp(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right to say that this is a cross-Government approach. It links to the work that the Work and Pensions Secretary is doing on helping people back into work, the work that the Education Secretary is doing on boosting training, and the work that the Business Secretary is doing on building up our industrial strategy so that we can plan for the workforce of the future. This is a cross-Government approach, which is how we will make sure that we have control of our migration system and boost the productivity of the economy.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
What was it about the local election results that first attracted the Home Secretary to the idea of rushing out an immigration White Paper?
Yvette Cooper
Even I could not draw up a White Paper in the space of two weeks. This White Paper was announced by the Prime Minister before Christmas when we saw the scale of the huge increase in net migration that the hon. Gentleman’s party had presided over. It is implementing the policies that we set out in our manifesto to properly link the immigration system with training and skills in the UK.
Migration and Border Security
Debate between Yvette Cooper and Lincoln Jopp(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Yvette Cooper
As the hon. Member will know, we strongly support Ukraine, given what it has had to endure and go through. We continue to condemn the Putin Government for the things that they have done and the impact that they are having on Ukraine, and we will continue to support Ukraine in every way possible.
Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
A constituent wrote to me recently asking if I could get a hurry-up on his application under the EU settlement scheme. It turns out that he is subject to a deportation order, and that we actually did deport him in 2018, but he managed to get back into the country somehow and to make his application under the EUSS. The Home Office told me last week that it could not deport him until his EUSS application had been played out, including all the appeals. He made the application in 2020, and it is now nearly the end of 2024. In a spirit of bipartisanship, may I suggest that the Home Secretary should change the rules with a stroke of her pen, and that anyone who is subject to a deportation order should simply be deported? In a similar spirit, may I suggest that if she can get it done by Friday, I will gladly drive him to the airport myself?
Yvette Cooper
The last Government had 14 years—or at least four years, since the EU settlement scheme was introduced—to deal with some of these issues. We take very seriously the need to speed up and improve enforcement of returns for those who have no right to be here. The immigration system and the asylum system can only work and command public confidence if the rules are respected and enforced. That means that if someone does not have a right to be here, there should be proper enforcement. We are working to speed up enforcement, which is why there was a significant increase in returns over the summer, but we will continue to do so, and we will continue to consider what further amendments can be made to improve matters.