Angela Eagle MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  We are doing all that we can with the existing contracts to drive value for money, and we are also looking to pilot some other potential alternatives to supply.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I understand that, ahead of the reductions that were announced, 20% is currently spent on housing asylum seekers in this country. Clearly, if we can get the system running faster from start to finish and we can get people through it faster, we can reduce those costs.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  If my hon. and learned Friend wants to talk to me about any of the details, I would be happy to listen, but of course we want to operate that site properly and appropriately until we hand it back to the Ministry of Defence in September.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I will not take any lessons from the shadow Minister. In his last three months as Immigration Minister, nearly 10,000 people crossed the channel in small boats, but he is complaining about half that level of crossings happening in the past three months. Neither will I take any lessons from someone who served in a Government who presided over a situation where, at its height, there were 56,000 people in more than 400 hotels. We are getting a grip on the problem by starting up asylum processing once more, but we inherited a huge backlog. There was a 70% fall in asylum processing in the run-up to the general election, with more than 100,000 people stuck without being processed in the asylum system. We are getting a grip of that, but by definition, the backlog and chaos that the Conservatives left us is taking time.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  Yes. Of course, we have to crack down on abuse of our asylum system, but also on the exploitation of vulnerable and desperate people by vicious criminal gangs.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree with the hon. Lady that the shadow Home Secretary sounds like a broken record; we are well used to him running that argument in this place. I also agree that the key to dealing with hotels is to get the system back up and running from the chaos that it was in. I can tell the hon. Lady that asylum processing at first decision has ramped up considerably and we are getting through the backlog we inherited, but there is also a huge backlog by definition in the appeals system, partly caused by the legacy appeal—the dash to end the legacy system ahead of the fantasy Rwanda scheme beginning—which has led to a big backlog in appeals. We are looking to see what we can do about that, because it is important that we get a fast and fair system from end to end, and that includes appeals.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  We have put more resource into Europol to co-operate with European partners across borders. Operationally, we are working across Europe; we have a new agreement with the German Government and an agreement on sanctions and illicit finance with the Italian Government, and the Calais Group has met in London. We are doing a lot of work with source areas and countries such as Vietnam, not only on returns but on countering some of the adverts that tell lies about the kind of lives that await those who get on perilous small boats. We are working with our international colleagues across the piece, both diplomatically and operationally, to try to put pressure on the international criminal gangs and begin to close down this evil trade.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  Yes, that is our aim.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  As the right hon. Member is aware, the Home Office discharges its statutory duty to provide accommodation and to support destitute asylum seekers through seven asylum accommodation and support services contracts. Those contracts were entered into by the previous Government, commencing in 2019, and are split between three providers: Clearsprings Ready Homes Ltd, Serco Ltd, and Mears Ltd. Significant elements of the behaviour and performance of one of the sub-contractors of Clearsprings Ready Homes fell short of what we would expect from a Government supplier. That is why the Home Office has informed Clearsprings Ready Homes that it must exit the arrangements with a subcontractor in its supply chain, Stay Belvedere Hotels. We will not hesitate to take further action in respect of Clearsprings and its wider supply chain if that proves necessary, and we are conducting a full audit of our supply chain. We expect the highest standards from those contracted to provide essential services, and this Government will always hold them to account for delivery, performance and value for money. Where there are concerns about how contractors or their subcontractors are discharging their contractual obligations, we will not hesitate to take swift and decisive action. The Home Office progresses matters relating to these contracts with its providers in commercial confidentiality. I will not give a running commentary, but I assure the House that whatever the position with any of its providers, the Home Office remains focused on maintaining continuity of service and ensuring that our statutory obligation is met at all times, and has contingency plans in this regard. None of that takes away from our commitment to reducing the huge cost of asylum hotels, which remains our priority. In relation to channel crossings, this Government have put forward a serious, credible plan to restore order to our asylum system, including tougher enforcement powers, ramping up returns to their highest levels for more than half a decade, and a major crackdown on illegal working to end the false promise of jobs, used by gangs to sell spaces on boats. Increased law enforcement action and disruption is already showing some indication of pressure on the business model of the gangs, and we are introducing new powers for law enforcement to use against the vile trade in people smuggling and trafficking.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  It is important, in order to deal with the chaos that we inherited, to create a system that is faster, fairer and much easier to get through than the one we inherited. Unless the hon. Lady wants people to be destitute on the streets, we have to look after them while we are processing their asylum claims. Speed is important, as well as ensuring that we do that processing fairly.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I will write to the hon. Gentleman.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend. Between the announcement of the Rwanda scheme and its ending, 85,000 people came across in small boats.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady is talking about the prime contractor, which in this case is Clearsprings Ready Homes. As with the other two contractors, the break clauses are with it. We have approval or not of sub-prime contractors. Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd is a sub-prime contractor, and as the Home Office we have withdrawn our approval for it to be in the supply chain.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  Asylum seekers who wait longer than a year are allowed to work, so long as that wait has not been caused by them—that is, a wait through no fault of their own. We have that system now, and I am not considering shortening the length of time that must elapse before work is allowed.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister made some announcements recently about the capacity to increase house building in this country in order to deal with some of the pressure on demand. It is important from an asylum seeker point of view that we make the system work end to end much faster so that we can get people through it, deport those who have no right to be here, and integrate those who have been accepted as asylum seekers.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  We do not believe that it is sustainable to keep hotel use indefinitely, and we are working to close hotels.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  I do not apologise for deporting people who have no right to be here or who have been through the system and are discovered neither to be asylum seekers nor to have any right to stay in the country. I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the desperate situation that people are in. They could claim asylum in the country they are in, and we need to work with our counterparts in the European Union and along all the routes to see what we can do to divert those people who are seeking a better life in our country and see if we can look after them closer to home.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  Mr Deputy Speaker—sorry, Mr Speaker. I do not know why I am calling you Mr Deputy Speaker today; I have gone back a very long time to when you were, but that was so long ago that I can scarcely remember it. My apologies, Mr Speaker. The right hon. Lady should remember that the Rwanda scheme was about deporting people for good, not dealing with their asylum claims. That is not in any way what this Government would ever consider doing, which is why that scheme was cancelled.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  We inherited a system in chaos and a series of asylum contracts worth billions of pounds that were 10 years long, with a break clause in 2026, so we are looking seriously at what we can do to get better value for public money in those contracts. The action on Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd is one example of the work we are doing to drive better value in the contracts that we inherited. We will not tolerate the behaviour of subcontractors or contractors who do not provide good value for money, which is why we have insisted that Clearsprings Ready Homes removes Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd from its supply chain.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  We are doing that work day in, day out. If the Conservatives had not allowed smuggling gangs to take hold across the channel for six years, we would not be experiencing the difficulties that we are experiencing now in dealing with them. [Interruption.] This takes time, there is no simple, easy solution, and chuntering about it from the Opposition Front Bench—which, let us face it, is where the Conservatives belong—will not make any difference.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Asylum Hotels and Illegal Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  It is clearly important that overseas development moneys are used to try to prevent the flows of people that have been the result of collapses in various countries. We in the Home Office will do all we can to minimise the spend that we currently take from the overseas development aid budget.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  New clauses 34 and 42 reprise some of our debate on the last group of new clauses, but they also introduce the idea of the visa penalty that, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent has just explained, is encompassed in new clause 42. New clause 34 seeks to extend automatic deportation to any foreign national convicted of an offence in the UK, or charged with an immigration offence, without consideration of their human rights. We dealt with some of that in the last debate. It would remove protections for under-18s and victims of human trafficking, and it seeks to extend the automatic deportation provisions to certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens who are currently afforded exemption from deportation. I do not believe these new clauses would be workable. They are unrealistic and would undermine our international obligations. We already have the power to deport any foreign national on the grounds that doing so would be conducive to the public good, regardless of whether they have had to serve the 12-month prison sentence that the UK Borders Act 2007 requires. If they are subject to a 12-month prison sentence, it is a duty to deport them. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent was a special adviser in the Home Office, so she knows about these things, and the hon. Member for Stockton West is a spokesperson in the shadow Home Office team. The Conservatives talk a lot about deportation, but they did not do a lot about it when they had the power to do so.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  On that point we agree, so why was his Government so tardy at actually deporting foreign national offenders when they were in office?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady will have noticed that I have not dismissed the idea completely, but I do not think the idea is anywhere near a position where one could talk about how it might be practicable, and certainly it is not at a stage where one could consider putting it into primary legislation.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  New clause 36 seeks to provide a right of access upon request for Home Office teams working within immigration enforcement to asylum accommodation centres in order to visit those centres and residents at any time.