Zubir Ahmed MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Ms Tennant, I represent Glasgow, which is one of the areas in the country with the highest need for asylum accommodation. We are a welcoming city and are proud of being so, but you can imagine that the welcome is being tested due to the infrastructure stresses that this is placing on us. You have a long and distinguished career in the United Nations and have seen when asylum housing and refugee housing works well and when it does not. Presumably, you feel that the confidence of the host community is in large part a determinant of that. In your assessment of what has been happening in Britain, particularly over the last decade, where do you think that that confidence level lies at the moment? Are you concerned that we are perhaps not in the place we should be in terms of people perceiving the rules-based order to be intact when it comes to asylum? Vicky Tennant: I would certainly say that the issue of asylum accommodation and the way in which the reception of asylum seekers and support to asylum seekers are managed has contributed to a crisis of confidence. As I said, the objective of restoring public confidence through a fair and efficient system is one that UNHCR absolutely welcomes. A key element is the fact that asylum seekers have been accommodated for very extended periods of time waiting for decisions on their claims. Simply by virtue of that fact, the volume of support and accommodation required while people are not able to work has grown over the years. We are pleased that there is progress in that space. It is a hugely challenging issue to address. However, alongside the work on how asylum support accommodation is provided in a way that fosters community welcome and community cohesion, the work on the system itself has to continue. That is certainly where UNHCR has brought our international experience to bear: we have really been leaning in and trying to work closely with the Home Office to see how we can have a system that is functioning more efficiently and getting decisions out more quickly, but also getting decisions right first time. That is where we go back to the discussion around the appeals body. The most important lever that could be pulled is to improve and ensure the quality of first-instance decision making, such as by ensuring that there is a second pair of eyes on those decisions, so that we do not see cases going into the appeals system unnecessarily. At the moment, there is quite a high rate of cases being withdrawn by the Home Office from the appeals system. That should not be the case. There is also quite a high rate of first-instance decisions being overturned. Those are cases that ideally would not be in the appeals system in the first place. That work on efficient, quality decision making in the first instance is also critical, and it then plays into the issue of asylum support and the length of time that asylum seekers are hosted in the community.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q By what order of magnitude do you think that could happen, and in what timeframe? Daniel Flury: In terms of how quickly it could happen, I think the expectation is that this should all happen as quickly as possible. We are working with the Home Office on a number of assumptions around its expansion and our contraction. It is quite difficult to put a timescale on it just yet, but I think the expectation, certainly from the Home Office, is that it should happen pretty quickly. Our overall planning assumption is that we expect it to be somewhere between one and three years.

• 15 Sept 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Minister, you heard me earlier mentioning my home city of Glasgow and my constituency of Glasgow South West, which has the highest number of asylum seekers. There is real pressure on local infrastructure and housing, compounded by some ill-advised housing policies from the Scottish Government. Can you provide some reflection on why the measures in the Bill are necessary, and what impact it will have, not only on restoring trust and public confidence in the immigration and asylum system, but on social cohesion more widely? Anna Turley: I think you are absolutely right. This is such an important issue to all of our constituents across the country; it is one of the biggest things that comes up on the doorsteps in all the conversations we have. Everything is seen through the prism of fairness in this country, and rightly so. That is what the Bill is aiming for, through a number of measures, such as repayment of support and so on. This is about fairness; if people come here, we want them to integrate and to settle. If they have a genuine right to be here, we will always provide that, but we also have to be conscious that, in a country where our resources are not infinite, we have to have a managed system, where we remove those who have no right to be here and ensure that we support people in a way that is compliant with our international obligations, but does not go over and above them, which perhaps in the past we have done too much. In 2024-25, for example, the entire cost of asylum was £4 billion. At a time when our public purse is under strain, that is a challenge. We are working hard to do everything we can, all the way up to the source, to prevent the illegal movement of people across this country—the people trafficking that we have seen—and to disrupt the industrial network of gangs that exploit desperate people who wish to come to this country. We are doing that through doubling our investment in the National Crime Agency, working with the French to reduce the number of boat crossings, and processing and removing people. The key part of the Bill is the speeding up of appeals. That is one of the most important ways that we can accelerate the process. Nobody should have to wait 72 weeks for an asylum appeal. No one should be able draw things out and exploit the system through last-minute loopholes, using provisions that are designed genuinely to protect people but that are being exploited to draw out cases. This is a matter of fairness and due process, and of making a system that is fair and well managed so that it is fair both on the taxpayer and on those who are here genuinely fleeing persecution.