Chris Murray MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Nov 2025 · Asylum Hotels · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Home Secretary for that response. The Home Affairs Committee report on asylum accommodation shows that private companies have made millions from the taxpayer, while communities and asylum seekers have suffered. What is the Home Secretary doing to address the appalling profiteering that the Tories allowed, and the disastrous asylum contracts, and will she trigger the break clause next year?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Asylum Hotels · Hansard source

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  15. What steps her Department is taking to close asylum hotels.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Asylum Policy · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Over the past few years, three times as many people have come to this country from Ukraine and Hong Kong, fleeing war or persecution, as have come in small boats, and there has been no public outcry about that. The lesson is that the British people are compassionate and generous to refugees when the system is controlled, fair, and gripped by the Government. Over the 15 years that I spent working on asylum issues before being elected, I saw the dysfunction that this Government have inherited. There is nothing progressive about ducking asylum reform and allowing public support for refugees to drain away. How will these reforms address the manifest unfairness in the asylum system, and rebuild public support for the system, and for immigration overall?

• 29 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: MOD Housing · Hansard source

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  The Home Affairs Committee this week released a report into asylum accommodation and it is utterly damning. In 2019, the Conservative Government bound the country into asylum contracts that have been disastrous for local communities, disastrous for asylum seekers themselves and disastrous for the taxpayer, but they have been brilliant for private providers who have made tens of millions of pounds of profits. It is right that the Government are looking at alternative ways to house asylum seekers that will be better for communities, asylum seekers and the taxpayer. Scotland is a welcoming, tolerant country, and we are willing to play our part, but will the Minister give us assurances that he will learn from the mistakes of the previous Government and work with local communities, local authorities and devolved Administrations to make sure that this works and solves the problems we have seen?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this important debate on the 25th anniversary of devolution. My constituency of Edinburgh East and Musselburgh is home to many of Scotland’s jewels. It is a privilege to represent Edinburgh castle, Holyrood palace and the Edinburgh festivals and fringe, although I think the performers are safe given some of the jokes we have heard from Opposition Members. However, the most important building in my seat—indeed, in the whole of Scotland—is at the foot of the Royal Mile. Not only is it architecturally a huge addition to Edinburgh’s scenery, but it is where the Scottish political heart beats. Calling the Scottish Parliament the centre of Scottish political life may sound like a bland truism, but it is not. It is a huge achievement, and not to think so would be to underestimate the achievement of devolution. Before 1999, critics of devolution said that it would amount to an overgrown town council, cause a brain drain, or be of interest only to the political class, not ordinary Scots. I am of the devolution generation: for as long as I can remember, devolution has simply existed. That devolution generation is now reluctantly facing middle age, but for us it has become a fact of life that the Scottish Parliament is the primary Parliament in which decisions that affect our lives are taken. The community groups and local businesses that I speak to orient themselves towards Holyrood. When they say “the Parliament,” they mean that place, not this one. That is testament to the Scottish Parliament’s success in establishing itself as the fulcrum of Scottish political life. However, we should consider a counterfactual. Imagine if devolution had been thwarted. Our health service, education and justice systems and housing policy would all receive only scraps of parliamentary time, with little scrutiny and even less reform. That would be a democratic affront even now, when the Government have 37 Scottish MPs, but it would have been an outrage over the 14 years under the last Conservative Administration, with little Scottish representation. The Scottish Parliament has its flaws, but it has undeniably remedied that democratic deficit, and in so doing, has removed one of the greatest threats to constitutional stability in Scotland.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an important point. The concentration of power in the Scottish Parliament does not work for cities, rural areas, the central belt or the highlands and islands, because it treats Scotland as one monolithic whole and does not address the differences in its communities. That brings me to my next point. Although devolution has been successful in establishing the Scottish Parliament, we have to be honest about where it has fallen short. Many hon. Members have laid out a litany of failures: poorer health outcomes, falling schools standards that were once the envy of Europe, a housing emergency and stubbornly high poverty, and the drugs crisis, which shames us all. We once led the world in setting climate targets, but we now lead the world in ditching them. We must understand why that happened. If we think of devolution only as the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, we get it wrong. In 1999, another institution was created—the Scottish Government, then the Scottish Executive.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend gets exactly to the nub of the issue. We have seen good debate, gestures and discussion in Scotland, but we have not seen the concomitant focus on policy, delivery and outcomes. The Scottish Parliament has been a success; the Scottish Government have not. It is important to draw that distinction. A highly centralised structure has concentrated decision-making in St Andrew’s House, to the detriment of local communities. As we have heard, councils have had their funding and influence hollowed out. There has been a proliferation of quangos and agencies; there are now more quangos in Scotland than there are Members of the Scottish Parliament. That breeds a clientelism and elitism that shut ordinary people out of decision-making processes.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is eloquently setting out a whole host of policy challenges that we face in Scotland, whether they are in industrial strategy, opportunities for the young or the provision of further education. Does he agree that when the Government of Scotland say that the answer to every single one of those challenges is independence, that shuts down any thinking on what we actually need to do to tackle the challenges and denudes Scotland of the ability to think through how we deal with the real issues that we face in our communities?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Lady may be psychic, because she makes exactly the point I am about to make. I could not agree with her more. What this breeds is a culture of gesture and tokenism. That means we side-step tough choices in Scotland. We duck the trade-offs that are required to implement policy change. We now have roundtables and co-production as substitutes for reform, and consultations and strategies as substitutes for action. I would take that argument one step further. When Labour came to power in 1999, it set about tackling Scotland’s pressing problems, as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), referred to: free bus passes; banning smoking in public places; repealing section 28, for which I will personally be forever grateful; and pursuing radical homelessness and housing reforms. But fundamentally, that policy agenda had been developed in the 1990s and the Government set about implementing it when they got in. When the SNP took office in 2007 with its fundamental policy goal of independence, all policy development was shaped around that objective. I have to say that the fact that independence has not been realised has become the alibi for every policy failure on its watch. What that means is that the Scottish Parliament never became the policy development hub in Scottish political life. It was denuded of its ability to form ideas and for those to be turned into action, and to do the full spectrum of policy development in Scotland, such as identifying social problems, working through how reforms would work, weighing up the trade-offs, brokering the consent among the people and then turning those ideas into tangible reality in people’s lives. I am a devolutionist not just because I believe in Scottish representation, but because I believe in the power of the state to change Scottish lives. The Scottish Parliament gave us the locus to debate that, but the Scottish Government have failed to give us the mechanism to operationalise and turn it into reality. It is my assertion that the Scottish Parliament now stands, along with Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and the Good Friday agreement, as a firmament of the British constitutional set-up. Donald Dewar said it should be not just an end, but a means to a greater end. We have the means now, but it is lamentable that we have not used them to achieve those ends. The last 18 years have been heavy on argument, short on policy delivery. A different direction is needed to fulfil the promise of devolution, which is the devolved Government using the power of the state not to further their own ambitions, but to materially improve the lives of Scotland’s people.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Rape Gangs: National Statutory Inquiry · Hansard source

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  The Minister has heard me implore her many times to move as speedily as possible to address the challenges of the victims of these awful crimes, but on this occasion I implore her to take the right time to find the right judge. It is not a normal public appointment; this is someone who has to command the confidence of the House, the public, and most importantly, survivors. They must leave no stone unturned and investigate everything, whether that is ethnicity, class-related or institutional, and make the Minister’s life harder if they have to do so. Will the Minister take the time to find the right judge and not repeat what we saw with the child sexual abuse inquiry several years ago?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I draw the Chamber’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests and the support that my office receives from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. This is a really important debate, and I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) on his eloquent introduction to this difficult issue. The previous speaker, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler), alluded to the fact that the Home Affairs Committee has undertaken an inquiry into asylum accommodation and a report is coming out on Monday. I will be speaking in a personal capacity as well, but there may be some overlap in our conclusions. One thing that was patently clear to us as we undertook a 15-month inquiry into asylum accommodation was that it has been a complete disaster. It has been disastrous for the local communities where asylum seekers are being housed and for the local authorities that are trying to provide services. It has been disastrous for asylum seekers; we found numerous pieces of evidence of safeguarding issues. It has also been disastrous for the public purse. It has cost an unbelievable amount of money, considering the terrible externalities it has created. How did we end up in this situation? Asylum is not a new concept. The UK has faced asylum challenges for decades, but until six years ago we never had asylum hotels. It is clear to me, based on the 10 years for which I worked on asylum issues before coming to this House and my last 15 months on the Home Affairs Committee, that we must follow the money. The smoking gun in this scenario is the asylum contracts that the Conservative Government signed in 2019, when they handed over all responsibility and discretion to three private providers. That has cost £7 billion of taxpayers’ money, of which hundreds of millions have gone on profits, but there is no effective oversight of these contracts by the Home Office, no holding the providers to account for failure and no grip on spiralling costs. There has been poor management of where public money is spent, and, as the hon. Member for Wimbledon said, poor use has been made of clawback clauses. The providers would argue that they have never breached the profit share that the Conservatives baked into the contract at 7%, but as costs spiralled following the pandemic and the disastrous Rwanda scheme, they had every incentive to move people into hotels and keep them there. As the clear financial incentive grew, the Conservative Government put nothing in place to stop the runaway train. One of the owners even entered T he Sunday Times rich list. Over the weekend, T he Times covered reports of a property owner bragging on TikTok from Dubai about how easy it is to get rich by leasing his properties to Mears, Clearsprings and Serco. We have also seen real scandals in the Clearsprings subprime supply chain, about which there still needs to be more transparency. The asylum accommodation contracts are a public procurement failure of the highest order. They were signed in 2019 by the Conservative Government, and they are fully that Government’s responsibility. The scandal is why they did nothing to derail the train when they could see it coming. The worst part is that we have nothing to show for that £7 billion of taxpayers’ money. It has gone on receipts to hotels and profits for private providers. We have no buildings or new social housing; we have nothing about which the public can say, “At least we got this as we accommodated asylum seekers.” I do not know about other Members, but I think about what could have been done if I had been given the share of that money for my city of Edinburgh and asked to look after asylum seekers and invest in housing stock. The things the Conservatives could have done with that money had they been able to get a more effective grip on public spending! The Conservatives locked the country into these asylum contracts in 2019. It is a crowded field, but I think that is one of their most appalling legacies. Next year, as has been alluded to, is the break clause, where the Government have the opportunity to substantially rewrite or break these asylum contracts at no penalty. My questions to the Minister are: what is the Home Office’s assessment of how these contracts have been handled so far? What is his view of how Home Office officials have managed the contracts and their capacity to get a grip on them? Is he looking at the break clause and thinking about whether he should use it? It may sound a bit technical and dry, on such an emotive issue, to be focusing on contracts, procurements and supply chains, but I have always believed that the role of Government is to drill down into the nuts and bolts, deal with manifest failures and make the system work. That is what I think the petitioners are asking us to do—not to posture, to grandstand or to use inflammatory rhetoric, but to solve the problem. We can do that by getting a grip on these asylum contracts.

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I draw the House’s attention to the support that I receive from RAMP. Six years ago, we did not have asylum hotels in Stanwell or anywhere else, but we do now, because the previous Conservative Government signed contracts with private providers, which led to the mass increase in hotels. This Government’s policy is to reduce the number of hotels to zero. When the hon. Member was engaging with his constituents, did he set out that it was his party’s responsibility for opening asylum hotels in the first place?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  The Home Affairs Committee heard evidence last week from the new Border Security Commander, Martin Hewitt, who told us that he was working to bring together different parts of Government to focus on cross-border activity as a kind of organised crime similar to terrorism. When I pushed him specifically on whether that was new or whether it had been happening under the previous Government, he was very clear that it was a new way of doing things. Does the hon. Gentleman know more than the Border Security Commander about this?

• 20 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation · Hansard source

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  How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile his point about the UK Government with the fact that, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, the Scottish Government’s policy was to house Ukrainian refugees in hotels across Scotland, and on cruise ships?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I know I speak for my whole constituency when I welcome this long-overdue ceasefire. May I put on the record my thanks to the Prime Minister and Foreign Office Ministers for the many opportunities to put my constituents’ views to them? As we turn to the ceasefire, our thoughts turn to rebuilding, but that is not just physical. Children make up 50% of the population of Gaza. They are traumatised, and their educations and futures have been profoundly disrupted. Giving them a future is the best guarantor of future peace, so what can the British Government do to ensure that the children of Gaza have a real future?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Channel Crossings · Hansard source

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  Illegal immigration is, by definition, an international crime. That is why it is so important that we work with our allies, such as France, in targeting this issue, which affects our communities. I welcome the Government’s “one in, one out” deal with France, which has the potential to be the most game-changing step in British migration policy in decades. Can the Minister give us an update on how the “one in, one out” deal is going, and has she spoken to her counterparts in France in her new role?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support that my office receives from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. I want to make a couple of points today, but I also want to pick up on the point that all Members have made about the enormous contribution that both these groups of migrants have made to British society. Nowhere is that more true than in my constituency of Edinburgh East and Musselburgh. As we are talking about indefinite leave to remain, I think it is important that we recognise that the British immigration system in this country does not really draw a distinction between indefinite leave to remain and citizenship. Almost all the main rights of migrants are accessed at the stage of indefinite leave to remain, but citizenship is important. Madeleine Albright was first a refugee in the UK before she was a refugee in America. She commented that when she came to Britain, people said, “You’re a refugee. You’re welcome here. How long until you leave?”, but in America they said, “You’re a refugee. You’re welcome here. How long until you become a citizen?” It is important that we reflect on whether the Government should be agnostic about someone actually taking that step and becoming a citizen—or is it something that we should incentivise and make meaningful? My second point is that not only are the Government agnostic on whether migrants gain citizenship or stay with indefinite leave to remain, but they are impassive and uninterested—this is an inherited system—in the path that migrants take to get there. Some migrants make enormous contributions to our countries. They volunteer, stand up for their communities, pay taxes, work hard and follow the rules. However, let us be honest: some do not, and the system is not very strenuous in distinguishing between them. As long as they wait long enough, pay a fee and pass the “Life in the UK” test, which is ridiculously bad, then they get ILR. We have precious few levers to influence behaviour and precious few opportunities to foster social cohesion and integration. Shouldn’t we be thinking more creatively about that? If we are going to have a distinction between indefinite leave to remain and citizenship, and if the pathway is going to extend from five to 10 years, can the Government not think more creatively about how we build a migration system that works for migrants and for the communities where they settle? My third point is that the immigration system has to be realistic. About a couple of years ago, under the Conservative Government, net migration came up to almost a million a year. That means that a big group of people will soon become eligible for indefinite leave to remain, and that means they become eligible for benefits and for social housing. In her remarks at the end of the debate, I hope the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), will accept responsibility and apologise for the complete lack of grip that the Conservatives left on the immigration system. We have to be realistic that there is a large group of people who will become eligible for benefits and for social housing that is currently unavailable because we have not built it yet. We have to address public concerns about immigration; people who support immigration understand that. We need to think more creatively about how the immigration system works. If we do not give people indefinite leave to remain, that means they do not become eligible for benefits. If we extend that period, that happens too. Can we think more creatively, and will the Minister look at taking steps to address some of the points that have been made in the debate? For example, access to pensions, home fee status and difficulty travelling are things that can be addressed with those two groups while still taking account of the reality of the system that we inherited from the Conservatives. My argument is this: if there is no substantive distinction between citizenship and indefinite leave to remain; if the challenge is that a large number of immigrants will become eligible for benefits and housing when they get indefinite leave to remain; if there is no mechanism to account for the contribution that people make or to incentivise their integration into our communities; if the system is blunt, uncreative, impassive and rigid; and if we want people to take the step of becoming one of us and a British citizen, then surely reform of both indefinite leave to remain and citizenship is needed. I recognise the enormous contributions of both those on skilled worker visas and British national overseas visas, but I have a contention with the premise of the petition: the proposals have implications for fairness and the perceptions of fairness because they suggest that some groups should get a carve-out based on the route through which they entered, not what they have done while they are here. My view is that the system should look at the contributions that migrants have made in the UK and not the visa that they came in on. I ask the Minister to look with clarity, a proper consultation, creativity and a view to a migrant’s contribution to the UK as these proposals are rolled out.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

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  One of the most shocking indictments in Baroness Casey’s evidence to the Home Affairs Committee was the long list of inquiries and speeches, and the shocking lack of action that had followed, so I welcome the announcement that the Minister has made about action to tackle these issues. Can she update us on the establishment of the child protection agency, how it will be set up as this inquiry goes on, and how it will adjust and evolve as learnings from the inquiry come out?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  A couple of years ago, I was working in local government in Scotland, trying to deal with the impact of asylum hotels. At that time, the shadow Home Secretary was a Minister in the Home Office, and he opened hotel after hotel, without even telling councils that that was happening, so his amnesia today is staggering. We did not have asylum hotels five years ago, but we have them now because the last Government signed a contract with private providers that has cost billions of pounds, putting pressure on communities, as well as being a procurement scandal. Will the Home Secretary commit to reading the report on this issue that the Home Affairs Committee is about to publish, and to looking as creatively as she can at managing those asylum contracts to get the best deal possible for the taxpayer?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity · Hansard source

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  I draw the attention of the House to my declaration of interests. People who come to this country legally and work hard are welcome, but the Minister is right to say that those who do not are not. We know that one of the big pull factors is the ability to work illegally in the UK. Can the Minister set out what the Government are doing to stamp out illegal working, and in particular the role of the new fair work agency introduced by the Employment Rights Bill, which will be critical in stopping illegal working in the UK?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Global Plastics Treaty · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend share my horror that global plastic production will double by 2050? He said that his constituents in Edinburgh South West feel strongly about this; I can assure him that people across Edinburgh do. Will he join me in calling for a global plastics treaty that the Government should take forward as a priority?

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  I welcome this Government’s focus on the urgency of the climate crisis, and I know that many climate activists in my constituency will as well, because the evidence is unequivocal: only sustained reductions in greenhouse gases will slow global warming and the only way to that it is to accelerate the transition to net zero. Will the Secretary of State commit to staying resolute in the face of opposition on the commitment to net zero? Does he agree with me that as the first country to industrialise, the UK has a special responsibility to show global leadership in this area?

• 14 Jul 2025 · UK-France Migration: Co-operation · Hansard source

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  As the Home Secretary points out, we did not have small boat crossings 10 years ago, but we left the EU without incorporating a returns agreement into the withdrawal agreement. On a point of clarification, can the Home Secretary confirm that it is completely unprecedented for an EU country to allow returns from outwith the EU’s external borders? I note that it comes on the back of a highly successful state visit by President Macron. We have come a long way from having a Prime Minister question whether France is friend or foe—Macron is our friend, and our foes are the people smugglers. On the pilot, what are the Home Secretary’s parameters for success, how does she envisage it scaling up, and how does she envisage the UK-EU relationship will have to adapt in the future to accommodate it, if successful?

• 10 Jul 2025 · Electricity Market Review · Hansard source

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  Last summer was the hottest on record and this summer may be even hotter still. The world faces a climate crisis. To tackle that, we need to move fast to net zero, and Scotland’s energy sector will be crucial in this country’s achieving that. To do that, we need to encourage—not discourage—investment, and we cannot waste any time. Does the Secretary of State think the decision will help Scotland boost its energy sector and through that, this country’s fight against climate change?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Refugee Citizenship Rights · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman and I have debated this issue a lot. I was not debating whether citizenship is a good or a bad thing—I fully believe it is a good thing. My point was that citizens do not get many more rights and entitlements in Britain today than people who are settled. We could have a wider debate about whether that is fine—I think we should—but a lot of things, such as applying to institutions, colleges or universities, or entitlement to benefits, to housing or to vote, are contingent not on citizenship, but on settlement. The distinction on voting depends on whether the person is a Commonwealth citizen or not. My argument is that in Britain, unlike other countries, we do not make a clear distinction between settlement and citizenship. The distinction between citizenship and indefinite leave to remain—settlement—makes little material difference for refugees living in our communities. That brings me to my second point. There is clearly a case for citizenship reform in this country. It has been decades since we seriously looked at the issue. I welcome the fact that we are having the debate and that the immigration White Paper has kicked off a discussion about the distinction. The system should be managed, controlled and fair. As I said, the real distinction with citizenship is whether the person has been here an extra year or two and whether they can pay the fee. That is how they get citizenship. However, some people come to this country and work hard, obey the rules, pay loads of tax, volunteer, do good in their communities and make a huge contribution. Some go on to score goals and win medals for us. Other people come here and do not do any of those things. They do not commit a huge offence, but they do not do any of those things. Is it right that the system treats those people just the same? I would argue that we should differentiate between them. Madeleine Albright’s family fled the Nazis. They came first to Britain, and the question they were asked was, “Okay, you are refugees and are welcome here, but how long until you leave?” Then they went to the US—