Angela Eagle MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  There is a safeguarding and safety issue going in both directions. I see reports of asylum seeker service users being attacked and injured, as well as of attacks in the other direction in a small number of cases. We always liaise with the local police and local authorities. We take an intelligence-led approach to see whether there is outside agitation or difficulty, and we are in constant contact with local services and our service providers to ensure the safety of service users and local populations.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  No. The previous Government did not do that either, for safeguarding and public safety reasons, as the hon. Gentleman knows.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  We certainly want those who gain status to be usefully employed, and my part of the system is ensuring that we get those asylum decisions up and running as fast as possible. Unfortunately, we have inherited a difficult situation, which we are working hard to resolve. Once someone has gained status in this country, of course they are able to work, so we have to get the system working faster.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  We are prioritising getting the system up and running again so that we can have throughput in our asylum accommodation estate. The fact that the system had ground to a complete halt when we came into government, with 90,000 unprocessed cases, has meant that there have been delays in getting it up and running. I explained to the House that we have gone from making 1,000 asylum decisions a month to 10,000. The system is beginning to get flow-through, and as that happens, we will exit from hotels. We have had to have a small increase. We have been in power four months. The manifesto did not say that we would end the use of hotels in four months. When the Conservatives were in power, more than 400 hotels were in use at its height, and they did not give any MP two weeks’ notice that those hotels were opening.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  We certainly are having to get the system back up and running from a virtual standing start, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out. That means that we have been able, as I said, to go up from processing only 1,000 asylum claims a month to nearly 10,000 a month. Those who have gone through the whole system and have received a grant, for example, need then to exit our asylum accommodation. That allows us to backfill and, in the end, to exit hotels. However, that is not an instant solution; the system has ground to a halt and we must redeploy resource to get it up and running again.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I certainly do agree.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I agree. Of course, the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) knows only too well that the same hotel was open from 21 November 2022 to 8 February 2024, and he did not complain about it in the House then.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  Our manifesto commitment was not to close all asylum hotels within four months of being elected.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  Yes, but it is tough and difficult, and to be successful, it requires international co-operation across borders operationally, politically and diplomatically, and we are doing that.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  No, I do not. I noticed the revelations at the weekend about why the Conservatives decided to call the election earlier than some of us had perhaps thought. One reason set out in Tim Shipman’s book “Out” was that illegal migration was a problem, “with a new armada of small boats predicted and the issue of whether they would be able to get a repatriation flight to Rwanda in the air before polling day.” They evidently decided that they could not. We are now hearing this complete fiction from Conservative Members that somehow the Rwanda scheme was just about to work before we scrapped it, when they had spent £700 million on an increasingly futile and ridiculous attempt to get the scheme off the ground.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  That was quite a rant. It made certain assumptions that are completely untrue, including that the Rwanda scheme would have worked. We already know that it cost £700 million to send four volunteers to Rwanda. The Conservative party was planning to spend £175,000 per person sent to Rwanda, and it had not managed to send anyone to Rwanda. Had the Conservatives put aside the money, going into billions of pounds, to pay this £175,000 per person sent to Rwanda? No, they had not. No money was set aside. What we inherited was a system where no processing was going on—well, fewer than 1,000 asylum cases a month were being processed. We are now processing up to 10,000 asylum cases a month. The right hon. Gentleman knows, because he was a Home Office Minister, that there are backlogs and lags between the first decision in processing and all the potential appeals. We cannot exit people from the asylum estate until they have a final decision. We inherited backlogs of more than two years in the tribunal system because the Conservatives did not fund it properly. In the last period, we have returned nearly 10,000 people, which is nearly a 20% increase on the numbers returned last year. We are working on making the asylum system fit for purpose. We inherited an unholy mess from the Conservatives.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  We are working on it, but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, we have inherited a huge mess with large backlogs that are not easy to clear.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I am happy to check out the report, and I will write to my hon. Friend.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  As a senior member of the last few Administrations, the right hon. Gentleman will know that we inherited an asylum system that had been ground to a standstill by the previous Government’s pursuit of the Rwanda policy, which was doomed to failure. They spent £700 million over two years to send four volunteers to Rwanda. Conservative Members claim that the Rwanda scheme was somehow a deterrent, but from the day that it was announced to the day that it was scrapped 83,500 people crossed the channel in small boats. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that that is the definition of a deterrent, I think he needs to look it up in a dictionary. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member talks about a 19% increase in channel boat crossings since Labour came to power, but in the first six months of this year when the Rwanda scheme was up and running and apparently about to start at any minute, there was an 18% increase in channel crossings. Again, the Rwanda scheme was an expensive distraction, not a deterrent. The right hon. Gentleman asks whether we will produce a list of hotels that are currently in use. He will know that, when he was in government, hotel use peaked at more than 400. I can tell him that, currently, there are 220 hotels in use. At the time of the election, there were 213 hotels in use, but since July seven hotels have shut and 14 have opened, which has created a net increase of seven.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  We have a relatively new Government in France just bedding in. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that we are working closely with them to see how we can strengthen and deepen our co-operation and partnership.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  That is certainly the balance that this Government are aiming to achieve.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  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. Those are all things that we have to try to deal with in co-operation with our French colleagues.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  Yes, but the House has to have patience. There are no magic wands to wave in this policy area, and there are no fantasy policies now that we have got rid of the Rwanda scheme. There is hard, day-to-day operational work to try to get the system that we inherited—which is in complete chaos, with huge backlogs—back into some kind of order, so that we can run it properly, fairly and efficiently. That is what we are focusing on.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  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. The fact that we have made such a good start with international co-operation and the significant shift in attention here will bear down on this, but I will not stand at this Dispatch Box and pretend that there is an easy timeframe or answer for when that will have the effect that we all want it to have. We will bear down on it and we will make progress.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  I said earlier that safe routes would not stop all the channel crossings. There is now an industrialised system run by organised immigration criminals. The Vietnamese would never have a safe route into the UK—there is no visa system—yet they now comprise 20% of the people crossing on small boats. With all due respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I do not think that safe routes would solve the problem.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  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. I am glad that he is giving me a little bit of time to prove that we can make a difference.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  Yes, I agree profoundly with my hon. Friend, which is why the new Government have changed tack in this area. I am sure that we will see the results in due course.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  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. I suspect, somehow, that the date of the election might have had a bit to do with the fact that they realised the Rwanda scheme would fail.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  First, the border security command is operationally completely different from the command on the channel, which is deliberately there to try to save life and find out what is going on on the water. Operationally, the border security command will co-operate across borders in a very different way. If I were the right hon. and learned Lady, I would not be boasting about the colossal morass of wasted expenditure that the Rwanda scheme represented—£700 million down the drain, with plans to spend nearly £10 billion on the plan over the next few years. It was a gross waste of money that did not deter a single boat crossing.

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

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  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.