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Question
The shadow Home Secretary criticised government actions, noting that since they took office, more than twice as many people have crossed the English Channel compared to those removed. He mentioned tragic statistics and pointed out the cancellation of the Rwanda scheme before it could start.
Minister reply
The Minister welcomed the right hon. Gentleman to his new position but challenged his view on deterrence and criticised his record, noting that under his tenure as Home Office minister, 74,486 people crossed in small boats.
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Question
The MP asked if the new injection of cash into border security command is a better use of taxpayers’ money than gimmicks introduced by the Conservatives.
Minister reply
Yes, the Minister agreed that dealing with cross-border organised immigration crime requires international cooperation and operational coordination.
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Question
The MP urged closer co-ordination with Europol and French counterparts to smash criminal networks and address root causes of the problem.
Minister reply
The Minister agreed that tackling organised, internationally focused immigration crime requires operational cooperation across borders.
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Question
The MP welcomed the Government’s approach on this issue and urged attention to the shadow Home Secretary's record in office.
Minister reply
The Minister agreed with the observations made by her hon. Friend regarding the need for operational cooperation.
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Question
When does the Minister expect measures to start reducing small boat crossings? Will she commit to keeping the Select Committee informed on progress?
Minister reply
The Department will keep the right hon. Lady's Select Committee informed about progress. Significant international co-operation is underway, including G7 collaboration and bilateral memorandums of understanding across Europe.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that public money should be spent on smashing gangs and freeing victims rather than on a failed Rwanda plan?
Minister reply
Yes, the Government has changed tack to focus on dismantling criminal gangs.
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Question
What new actions is this Government taking beyond scrapping the Rwanda plan?
Minister reply
The border security command will co-operate across borders to track, apprehend, and dismantle organised criminal gangs.
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Question
Will the Minister assure that the border security command will break smuggling gangs and bring ringleaders to justice?
Minister reply
The new approach includes international co-operation in real-time information sharing for bringing gang members to justice.
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Question
What is the difference in function between the border security command and the small boats operational command?
Minister reply
The border security command focuses on cross-border co-operation, while the small boats operational command deals with channel crossings.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that enforcement measures have shown results?
Minister reply
Yes, there has been a 23% increase in enforced returns since last summer.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that looking at root causes is essential? Does she support an increase in development and aid budgets?
Minister reply
Prevention upstream, including through development or aid, can address some causes of immigration.
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Question
Will the Minister assure constituents that this Government will focus on practical measures?
Minister reply
We are focusing on returns and ensuring integrity in the immigration system.
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Question
Why is the Minister continuing with a failed approach? What about safe and legal routes?
Minister reply
We have to ensure proper processing of asylum seekers while dismantling people smuggling.
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Question
Does the Minister welcome data showing fewer small boat crossings compared to 2022?
Minister reply
Yes, but patience is needed as there are no magic solutions and it takes time to address inherited chaos.
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Question
What percentage reduction in small boat crossings would the Government view as success?
Minister reply
No specific numbers are provided; the focus is on dismantling the smuggling trade established under previous governments.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that repeating a failed policy is insanity?
Minister reply
Yes, the previous government's Rwanda plan was rejected by the electorate and was not effective.
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Question
Do the Labour Government need to rethink their spending priorities urgently?
Minister reply
No, we have a Budget that is currently being debated and voted on.
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Question
The 23% increase in returns of people who have no right to be here is a really positive step in giving the public confidence in our systems. What measures are in place to continue to ensure that our processes remain robust and that the trajectory of returns continues?
Minister reply
We are ensuring that the enforcement part of the Home Office that deals with returns is given the resources it needs to do that job, but to make it even more successful, we have to engage with those countries to which we wish to return people so that we can have papers issued. Again, the significant shift in international co-operation is what will deliver that.
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Question
If Rwanda was a gimmick, why are Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania looking at similar schemes? Given the number of crossings and deaths in the channel, would it not, with hindsight, have been wise at least to have allowed the Rwanda scheme a trial run?
Minister reply
Those countries are not considering a Rwanda scheme; they are all saying that they will stay within the confines of international law. The Rwanda scheme definitely tore up international law, and it was planned to spend nearly £10 billion up until 2027 on trying to remove 250 people a week from this country, and to spend nearly £3 billion on extra detention camps for them in this country.
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Question
Given that only 3% of people who arrived by small boats between 2018 and June 2024 have been returned, a period of reflection from the Conservative party on this issue would be welcome. Does the Minister agree that a Government who have dispensed with gimmicks and who focus on the day job are delivering that progress on returns?
Minister reply
Yes, but let us not underestimate the fact that under the Illegal Migration Act 2023 nobody who arrived in that way could be processed, so 118,000 people are waiting to be processed because the previous Government stopped the system dead. We have to get the processing system going again—that is what we are doing—so that we can get the flow of decisions, return those who are not entitled to be here and integrate those who are entitled to stay.
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Question
The Government have a mandate for trying out their approach, and I wish them well. I have always felt that unless the boats are intercepted and turned back near the start of their journey, nothing will deter people from using that method. Will the Minister, whom I respect greatly, explain how it is possible to smash gangs who operate in other jurisdictions once they get to the point where they withdraw their headquarters to countries where there is no possibility of co-operation with the authorities in charge of those states?
Minister reply
Well, getting to that level of withdrawal would be a fantastic development that would put incredible pressure on many of the supply lines currently being used; if we could get to that stage, we would have already made significant progress. The answer to what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about is international co-operation to put the maximum pressure on this terrible international trade in human lives and exploitation.
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Question
People in West Brom are appalled by these criminal smuggling gangs. Does the Minister agree that the last Government wasted £700 million on the totally failed Rwanda scheme? Could she set out how the new Government are going to fix the situation?
Minister reply
Yes, and the repurposing of some of that money and resource that has not been lost is funding the new approach.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that the loss of life is colossally too high on these channel crossings, including the loss of a two-year-old child just the other week? Does she also agree that we should reopen safe routes so that we can treat those coming to this country with the dignity and respect that they deserve?
Minister reply
I do not believe that safe routes would stop people from attempting to come over the channel in small boats. I have some sympathy with the idea of safe routes, but I do not think they would stop this trade.
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Question
The shadow Home Secretary referred to the lives lost in the channel—every single one of them is a tragedy —but does the Minister agree that his trying to make a political point about those deaths, as he appeared to do, is beneath the Conservative party, as were gimmicks such as the Rwanda scheme?
Minister reply
Yes, I agree. The loss of life in the channel this year has been the highest on record, and that is because more pressure is being put on the gangs, the boats are being overloaded and there is more anarchy on the beaches in France.
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Question
My constituents want to see an end to the small boat crossings and an end to the use of hotels for asylum seekers—as pledged in the Government’s manifesto. Will the Minister undertake to ensure that, where hotels have seen asylum seekers moved out, more are not put back in?
Minister reply
The issue with hotels and other dispersal accommodation is that we have inherited a backlog. Owing to the way in which the Conservatives ran the system, there was no processing of asylum seekers, who then had to be put up in hotels.
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Question
The Government came to power this year in the worst year on record for small boats crossings, which were 6% higher than in the previous record year of 2022. That was the legacy of chaos left by the last Government. There is no room for complacency, but does the Minister agree that we should be welcoming the now 20% lower level of small boats crossings this year compared with 2022?
Minister reply
I agree that the first six months of this year were the worst on record. There were then a quiet three months, and now there has been a huge increase, not least because of benign weather conditions.
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Question
Does the Minister recognise the distinct lack of humanity about this urgent question and the discussions surrounding small boats and migration? Does she not recognise that those people who risk all to get into those very dangerous boats and cross the chancel are doing so in an act of desperation? The lack of a safe routes system across Europe has created a market for people traffickers. Instead of the current approach, does she not think it necessary to look seriously at safe routes for asylum seekers, to avoid the tragedy of all these deaths in the channel and, for that matter, in the Mediterranean?
Minister reply
I said earlier that safe routes would not stop all the channel crossings. There is now an industrialised system run by organised immigration criminals.
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Question
The last Government were responsible for an asylum backlog so large that they ended up spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money every day on asylum hotels, including in my constituency. As the Minister said, we are now dealing with that legacy, and I welcome her statement. Does she agree that we will take no lessons from the Conservative party, and that we will continue to make progress towards our manifesto commitment to bring down the backlog and end hotel use?
Minister reply
I could not have put it better myself.
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Question
I think there is unanimity in the House that this is a moral issue. When I raised the issue of deterrence with the Home Secretary at her last statement on 22 July, she seemed to agree that we needed a deterrent. Since then, the Government do not seem to have brought forward any specific deterrence. If not the Rwanda scheme, will the Minister look at the schemes that other European nations are considering to see whether we can deter the small boat crossings?
Minister reply
The way to deter the small boat crossings is to deal with those who are organising and profiting from that immoral trade.
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Question
The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and Conservative Members are still banging the drum for the failed Rwanda gimmick. Does the Minister agree that if the previous Government were so confident that that policy would work, they would not have called an election before that theory could be put to the test?
Minister reply
My hon. Friend makes an intriguing point, given that Conservative Members have said repeatedly that they were about to start the Rwanda scheme the week after the election, and that all of a sudden it would work and be perfect—after 83,500 people crossed in small boats knowing that the scheme was legislated for and in place.
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Question
The Minister is claiming credit for an increase in deportations of people with no right to be in this country. I want an approximate figure, please, of how many of the 9,400 people who have been sent back since the Labour Government came in arrived here in small boats since 2018?
Minister reply
Given that the Conservative party processed virtually nobody who came over in a small boat, they are still in the asylum backlog that we are attempting to deal with.
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Question
I am pleased to see this Government taking swift action to tackle the small boats crisis, including scrapping the Rwanda scheme. Will the Minister confirm that it is possible to manage our borders in a way that is both effective and humane?
Minister reply
That is certainly the balance that this Government are aiming to achieve.
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Question
The Minister has said that her policy to smash the criminal gangs will reduce the number of migrants crossing the channel. Can she give the House her estimation of when that policy will start to work?
Minister reply
I said in an earlier answer that there are no magic wands in this area. Tough operational processing and international co-operation will begin to bear down on this, and work by the National Crime Agency and by prosecutorial authorities, often cross-border in different jurisdictions.
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Question
At a time of highly stretched resources right across Government, thanks to the mess in the public finances left by the Conservative party, my constituents will be pleased that £75 million has been secured for further investment in the Border Security Command. Does the Minister agree that it is a far better use of taxpayers’ money than paying people to go to Rwanda or housing them in hotels at great expense?
Minister reply
Yes, it is advisable to try to deal with the immediate causes of the problem—organised immigration criminality—as well as bearing down on the longer-term causes, which often are about political stability in other areas of the world.
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Question
I thank the Minister for her answers. I want to take a slightly different look. Can the Minister assure us that those who come across the Northern Ireland border will also be subject to the terrorism provisions?
Minister reply
A border security Bill will be introduced. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will want to serve on the Committee, so that he can be certain that the points he just made are accurately reflected by the Government in that Bill.
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Luke Myer
Lab
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland
Question
Can the Minister reassure my constituents of the serious steps she is taking to disrupt the gangs, speed up returns and end this chaos?
Minister reply
Yes, my hon. Friend’s constituents can be assured that a great deal of work is going on and more resources are being applied. A lot more intelligence is being gathered, much of which cannot be discussed publicly. We are on it.
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Question
Will my hon. Friend ensure that the new Border Security Command works closely with Kent police to deal with the effects across the whole of Kent and the wider country?
Minister reply
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Some areas have suffered particular pressure from this phenomenon over the years, and Kent is one of them, so I am acutely aware of the pressure that he and the local authorities in that area are under.
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Question
Does the Minister agree that a 3% chance of a trip to Kigali is not a deterrent? The only way of getting a handle on this is to go back to where the problem originates. Waiting for people to get to the channel is delaying the response and creating the crisis.
Minister reply
I agree very much with my hon. Friend’s observations, and so do the figures. Between the date of the announcement of the Rwanda scheme and the date of the last general election, 83,500 people came across in small boats.
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Question
Given that at the end of 2022, under the last Conservative Government, the asylum backlog had reached 166,261, an elevenfold increase in 12 years, does my hon. Friend agree that Conservative Members—who are very small in number for their own urgent question—are exhibiting a high degree of audacity?
Minister reply
They are indeed, and perhaps they should also be reminded that returns collapsed on their watch as well.