Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“We will take further steps, as required, to ensure that young people are safe in these hotels and not unduly preyed on by the evil people smuggling gangs that perpetuate the trade. The key task ahead of us—other than deterring people from making dangerous crossings in the first place, of course—is to ensure that these young people are swiftly moved out of hotels, as the hon. Lady rightly said, and into more appropriate settings in local authorities. Since being in position I have reviewed the offer that we have for local authorities and significantly enhanced it. From next month—this has already been announced—any local authority will receive a one-off initial £15,000 payment for taking a young person from one of these hotels into their care in addition to the annual payment of about £50,000 per person.”
“I have been told that any young person leaving one of these hotels and not returning is treated in exactly the same way as any young person of any nationality or immigration status who goes missing anywhere else in the country and that the police follow up as robustly as they would in any other circumstances. That is quite right, because we have a responsibility to any minor, regardless of why they are here in the United Kingdom. Working with police forces and local authorities, we have created a new protocol, known as “missing after reasonable steps”, in which further action is taken to find missing young people. That has had significant success: I am told that it has led to a 36% reduction in the number of missing people occurrences.”
“A number of social workers are on site 24/7. There are also nurses on site and team leaders to manage the site appropriately. So there is a significant specialist team provided in each of these hotels to ensure that the young people present are properly looked after. The report by the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration in October last year—I believe that Ofsted was involved in the inspection—did find unanimously that the young people reported that they felt safe, happy and treated with respect. Now, that does not mean that we have any cause to be complacent, because it is extremely concerning if young people are leaving these accommodation settings and not being found.”
“If the hon. Lady has not visited the hotel in her constituency, or indeed in her neighbouring constituency, I would be happy to organise that. I spoke with the chief executive and director of children’s services of Brighton and Hove City Council yesterday to ask for their reflections on the relationship with the Home Office and the management of the hotel. We have a good relationship with that council and I want to ensure that that continues. As regards the level of support provided in that hotel, and indeed others elsewhere in the country, it is significant. On any given day, there will be a significant security presence at the hotel. Those security guards are there to protect the staff and the minors and to raise any suspicious activity immediately with the local police. I have been assured that that does happen in Sussex.”
“Our objective is to reduce demand for hotels as fast as possible, so that young people are in this accommodation for a very short period of time while we get them to local authorities where they can be cared for properly in accordance with the law.”
“As I said earlier, there is a very significant amount of specialist support in the hotels. I specifically asked the officials running them what we would find on any given day. It is several security guards, a number of nurses and a number of social workers, as well as team leaders running the operation. So they are well staffed by well-trained and professional individuals who are drawn from other settings where they are used to looking after vulnerable young people. Lastly, on the first point my hon. Friend made, there is a challenge around the legal status of a local authority with respect to these hotels.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those questions. He is right to make the final point, which is that these are not secure locations. Young people are not detained in them. We do not have the legal powers to do that and I do not think any right hon. or hon. Member from across the House would wish us to do that. It is inevitable that some young people will choose to leave these settings, as, very sadly, they do from local authority care homes, but that is not to diminish or renege on our responsibility to reduce that as far as we possibly can. We have relationships with charities and the voluntary sector. I will happily take up with the Department whether there is more we can do there. We have made good use of those relationships in other settings, such as hotels for adults and Manston.”
“In fact, I visited the NCA just last week to be briefed on the work it is doing upstream throughout Europe and into Turkey, Iraq and a number of other countries. There is very significant activity happening to tackle the evil people-smuggling gangs. The problem the right hon. Lady has is that she does not support any of the measures the Government bring forward to stop the trade. She votes against every Bill we bring forward to try to address this challenge. There is nothing compassionate about allowing unsecure borders and allowing growing numbers of people, including young people, to cross the channel. She will have an opportunity to put her money where mouth is when we bring forward further legislation in the weeks ahead.”
“Senior officials from my Department are meeting the Mitie security team in the coming days to ask them whether they have seen any occurrences, whether the individual quoted in the press as a whistleblower raised issues with Mitie, and, if they did, why those issues were not subsequently passed on to the Home Office. The right hon. Lady has my assurance that I will not let the matter drop. I am also going to meet a number of staff who work at the site in the coming days to take their opinions and reflections. On the broader point the right hon. Lady makes about our policy, she is incorrect when she says the NCA is insufficiently financed. The Prime Minister announced at the end of last year that we would step up NCA funding.”
“I gave the figures the Home Office has at the start of this urgent question. Of the 4,600 unaccompanied children who have been accommodated in hotels since July 2021, 440 have gone missing at one point and 200 remain missing, so I am afraid the statistics the right hon. Lady quotes are not those that I have been given by the Home Office. On press reports that individuals have been abducted outside the hotel, those are very serious allegations. I specifically asked the officials who run the hotel whether they have seen evidence of that, and I also asked the senior leadership of Brighton and Hove Council. I have not been presented with evidence that that has happened, but I will continue to make inquiries.”
“Those issues are very important to us, which is why, for my part, I have made available significantly increased funding for local authorities so they can, for example, use that money to procure more supported accommodation. On the case my hon. and learned Friend referred to, that is a truly shocking case. We are reviewing how it has happened and how the individual was able to enter the UK posing as a minor. We will learn the lessons and set out more in due course.”
“My hon. and learned Friend raises a very important issue. There is, as he knows as well as almost anyone in this House, a lack of capacity in relation to specialist foster carers. That is why the Department for Education conducted its care review, is considering the findings, and will be bringing forward recommendations in due course. Most young people in the hotels we are discussing today are older—predominantly 16 and 17-year-olds—so it is about a national lack not only of foster care capacity, but of supported accommodation and the kind of settings that a 17-year-old, for example, might be placed in for a relatively short period of time before they move forward with their life.”
“That is why we have taken the steps that we have in the recent past; that is why the Prime Minister set out his plan at the end of last year; and that is why we will shortly be bringing forward legislation, which I hope the hon. Lady and her colleagues will support. I will certainly look into the Scottish guardianship model that the hon. Lady raises, but as I have said many times, it remains true that as a proportion of its population Scotland takes far fewer unaccompanied asylum-seeking children than England. One practical step that she could take would be to encourage the SNP Government and local authorities in Scotland to play a fuller part in ensuring that these young people are given the care and attention they deserve.”
“I want to end the practice of putting children in hotels, but the key to that is stopping people crossing the channel in the first place. If we continue to have tens of thousands of people, including very significant numbers of minors, crossing the channel every year, I am afraid that there is no choice but to accommodate people for a short period of time in hotels before they can flow into better accommodation within local authorities. The hon. Lady and others across the House should appreciate that this is a national emergency. It is part of a global migration crisis, and we need to take the most robust action we can to deter people from making the journey, or I am afraid that we will find this problem magnified in the years to come.”
“Friend makes a valid point that we should be working with local police forces and others to see whether the procedures that we have in place are sufficient or whether we need to go further. That work was done last year, and it led to the new protocol that I described earlier. From the numbers that I have received, that has made an impact: occurrences have reduced by about a third, but if there are further steps that we should be taking, we will do so. This is a broader challenge, because the numbers going missing from these settings are, sadly, not dissimilar from the numbers going missing from local authority children’s homes. We should be applying all our learnings from this to local authority settings as well.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that, as I made clear earlier, we should treat any child who goes missing with the same focus and intensity of effort, regardless of their background, nationality and immigration status. That is exactly what happens in this case. If a young person leaves a hotel—for example, the one that we are discussing this afternoon—and does not return within four hours, they are immediately recognised as a missing person. The local police—in this case, Sussex—are contacted, and the case is treated with all the same effort as it would be for any other individual. That is why a significant proportion of these young people have, fortunately, been found and returned to care. But too many have not, so I think my right hon.”
“The first part is to work with local authorities and provide the incentives for them to boost their own capacity. The other is to deter people from making the crossing in the first place. We are trying to do everything within our power to do so, including by making further legislative changes, but until we beat this trade, there will be young people placed in this position.”
“I respect the right hon. Lady and her Committee, but it is not as simple as my being able to set a date by which these hotels will close, because we have to be honest with ourselves about the challenge that we face as a country. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of young people crossing the channel on small boats every year. What we need to do is flow those young people as swiftly as possible into local authority care, but if local authorities do not have the capacity to take them immediately, we have to bear in mind that we can detain somebody for only 24 hours—or now 96 hours, with the recent legal change that we have made. In a relatively short timeframe, we have to have a short period of bridging accommodation. For as long as the challenge remains as pronounced as it is today, we will need that. The task for us is twofold.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a symptom—a very serious and disturbing symptom—of the problem, which is the people-smuggling gangs luring tens of thousands of people, a significant proportion of whom are minors, across the channel. We have to do everything we can to deter those people and break the business model of the people smugglers. That is what we are determined to do, and that is the purpose of the legislation that we will bring forward very shortly. My right hon. Friend and others have only a short period to wait until we present it to the House. I hope it will have broad support, because if we do not address the problem, all the evidence suggests that in the years to come we will find it magnified, with tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, attempting to make the crossing.”
“I hope that I have given her the assurance that we do.”
“The hon. Lady and I have met to discuss the issue on a number of occasions. We take this very seriously. We have asked all our providers, of course, to take their responsibilities for safeguarding seriously. We have a safeguarding hub in the Home Office and we work closely with the local authorities, which also have a duty to support people in their care. The hotels that we are discussing today are not run by private providers. There are providers that support us in terms of security arrangements, but these hotels are run by the Home Office, so the hon. Lady is not correct to say that they are run by external providers. But that does not change the reality that, as I have said on a number of occasions, we should take the care of these minors as seriously as we would take that of our own children.”
“That is an important point. We want to place these minors in the care of local authorities, and, of course, we want to place them in the care of local authorities with good track records of looking after young people. I presume that my hon. Friend is referring to his own local authority, Sefton Council. If there are concerns about its performance, he should bring them to my attention and, in particular, to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education.”
“If he would like to meet me and discuss this, I should be happy to do so, because it is in all our interests to ensure that this never happens again.”
“Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I should visit the hotel and see its facilities together, as I am due to visit it in the coming days. According to the assurances that I have had, when we visit the hotel—if the hon. Gentleman does visit it— he will see that there are several security guards who immediately raise with the police any suspicious activity that they find, and also a number of nurses and social workers, so there is a strong set of support staff on site. He will also see that there are robust procedures for signing in and out when young people want to leave the facility, and that as soon as any concern is raised that someone has not returned within the agreed time, Sussex police are alerted and the usual procedures are followed. However, I take the hon. Gentleman’s remarks very seriously, and will continue to listen to him.”
“My hon. Friend is entirely right. This is a serious issue, but it is also a symptom of the problem of people smugglers bringing very large numbers of people across the channel, and we must tackle that with the most robust response possible. However, the Opposition continually oppose any effort by us to strengthen our borders. We will be introducing further legislation, and, as my hon. Friend knows, we are reviewing whether we can adopt a more scientific approach to the verification of ages, as is being done by a number of our European counterparts. It is right for us to do that, because any adult who poses as a child coming into this country poses a serious risk to the young people alongside whom they then live, whether in these hotels or in any other setting.”
“We both want to see the number of hotels of this kind reduced and, ultimately, to see them closed, through better use of the national transfer scheme. However, that does require local authorities to come forward and offer places. We have therefore provided significant financial support, so there should be no financial barrier to local authorities’ investment in more accommodation and, indeed, more social workers and supporters.”
“Let me say first that there is no pitting of the Home Office against the local authority. The Home Office is working closely with Brighton & Hove City Council, and we have a good working relationship. My officials speak regularly to those at the council, and, having spoken to the chief executive and the director of children’s services, I can say that they too feel that the relationship is working. We also work closely with other partners, including Sussex police. Can we do more to strengthen those relationships? Perhaps we can, and that is exactly what we intend to do in order to prevent any of these instances from happening again in the future. As for the hon. Gentleman’s ideal solution, we are in agreement.”
“I will certainly arrange that. As my hon. Friend knows, Kent has borne a particular burden in this regard, so it is right for us to do everything we can to support it and his constituents.”
“Before I arrived at the Department in the summer there was already an initial payment to local authorities, which I believe was £6,000 or thereabouts. That did ensure that more local authorities came forward, but, given the scale of the challenge that we have been discussing today, I took the view that it needed to be more, which is why we made this more generous offer available. We have operated it as a pilot to establish whether it encourages more local authorities to come forward. I am receiving advice in respect of the number of local authorities that have taken up that offer, and before it is closed we will decide whether it was successful enough to warrant its continuation. However, I am open to continuing it further into the future.”
“My right hon. Friend is right to say that this is a terrible case, and our thoughts are with the family and friends of Thomas Roberts. As he will know, sentencing has yet to take place but we will be investigating the full circumstances surrounding the case so that we can ensure that we learn all the lessons. One that we will certainly take forward is, as I said earlier, a more robust method for assessing the age of those coming into the country, taking advantage of modern scientific methods.”
“These young people are not being put at risk primarily by the Home Office; they are being put at risk by dangerous people smugglers and criminals—those who smuggle them into the country and those who might exploit them when they are here. Our efforts are focused on protecting the young people in the hotels, as I described earlier, and we are also doing everything we can to fight the people smugglers, whether upstream or here in the United Kingdom, through working with the National Crime Agency and the security services and police forces.”
“It is wrong to generalise about where all the missing young people go. Some leave hotels to meet up with familial contacts, but my hon. Friend is right to say that others are drawn into criminality at the behest of people smugglers and trafficking gangs. We are working with the NCA, with police forces and with immigration enforcement to bear down on those gangs. One element of that is the work we are now doing to significantly increase the amount of immigration enforcement activity occurring in the UK, including raids on illegal employers such as construction sites, car washes and care homes, so that we can find the illegal employers, issue them with penalties and deter them from taking this kind of activity.”
“I am not sure what the hon. Lady is suggesting. If we did not use these hotels, which have a range of security and support staff available to them, is she suggesting that we put them in hotels with adults? [ Interruption. ] She says, from a sedentary position, regular hotels—”
“No one would want to do that. The only alternative to using these settings is for young people to go into good quality, permanent local authority support, and I have already said that we have made available substantial financial incentives for local authorities to do that. The best thing that we can do is to encourage our own local authorities to take part in the national transfer scheme and ensure that there is a better solution.”
“My hon. Friend is correct. We recently published a report from the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee on scientific methods to assess the age of asylum seekers and resolve age disputes. These practices are widely used across Europe, including in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We are considering that report and we will set out further details in due course, because we need to address this challenge.”
“As the hon. Member may recall, one of my first priorities was to ensure that the Home Office engaged better with local authorities, and although there is always room for improvement, the level of engagement is now enhanced from where it was at the end of last year. I continue to push officials to do more and to give local authorities more notice, either of new hotels opening up or of changes to the hotels. I have also recently met the providers and told them that we expect these hotels to be run professionally and appropriately with decent standards of accommodation and food, and that we will be making unannounced visits to the hotels to ensure that those standards are upheld. If the hon. Member has any matters he wants to bring to my attention, he should please do so.”
“I have met representatives of local authorities, London Councils and the Local Government Association to raise this issue. They made the points that many Members across the House have made about the lack of general capacity in this area and the cost of providing this care. We worked with DLUHC in providing the package that has just been made available, and we will learn the lessons from that and make any changes that we need to, so that there is a fair package of support for those authorities that support the national transfer scheme.”
“I share the hon. Lady’s concern and I have already set out the steps that we have taken so far to ensure that the hotels have significant support attached to them, and the work that we are doing to ensure that local authorities can make more placements available in the future. I can assure her that we are working with all those Government Departments and with the police to ensure that any young person who goes missing is tracked as far as we can, and certainly to the same standard we would expect for any of our own children.”
“We take all those things into account, which is why we want to ensure that young people get into local authority care, where they can access education. If the hon. Gentleman has any suggestions from his own experience, I would be pleased to read about them and to take action accordingly.”
“We do care for these young people, and we take our responsibilities to them very seriously. I have set out the safeguarding procedures we have in place, and we are always keen to learn how we can improve them. The key task ahead of us is to reduce the number of people crossing the channel. I hope that the hon. Lady will support the measures we take in the years ahead, because an attitude of open borders and unlimited migration will only lead to more young people being placed in these difficult settings.”
“We are putting in place a comprehensive plan to reduce the backlog of cases, and good progress is already being made. With regard to safe and legal routes, this country is a world leader on resettlement schemes. More people entered the United Kingdom last year for humanitarian purposes than in any year since the second world war—people from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Syria and Afghanistan. It is simply untrue to say that we do not take those responsibilities seriously. We think it is naive to believe that a safe and legal route would stop people crossing the channel, as no evidence supports that. We want a position based on deterrence, such as our proposed Rwanda scheme, which will come forward as soon as possible.”
“I respect the hon. Lady’s long experience in local government. I appreciate the challenges faced by local councils, which is why we brought forward this enhanced financial package. We will learn from whether it is having the desired effect, and I am very happy to speak to her about the experience in her constituency.”
“The settled position is for a young person to move into local authority care, and for that local authority to accept responsibility for them in the usual way. While a young person is in a bridging hotel, the legal position is that the local authority has responsibility, but we appreciate that a great burden is being placed on a small number of local authorities. For that reason, the Home Office steps up and provides all the support required in and around the hotels.”
“The hon. Lady makes an important point, and of course I will do that. The evidence from the ICIBI’s report of October 2022 is that the young people it spoke to said that their needs were being catered for and that they felt they were happy, safe and treated with respect. Of course, I will do everything I can to satisfy myself that the arrangements are appropriate.”
“To clarify, I did not say that we expect the local authorities that host these hotels to provide such services. I said that while individuals are in bridging hotels, there may be a technical and legal position, but the Home Office appreciates the pressure on those local authorities due to having a hotel, which we do not want to be a permanent fixture. That is why we are putting in place all this support to meet the needs of individuals and the local authority’s associated costs. I met the NCA only last week. This is now one of its most significant priorities, and a very large number of its personnel are engaged in tackling organised immigration crime, including people trafficking and modern slavery.”
“Those are the hon. Gentleman’s words, not mine. We want to distinguish between people who come to this country fearing persecution or fleeing war or human rights abuses, and those who come here for economic purposes. Conservative Members are capable of making that important distinction. Where people are coming here on small boats with no genuine right to asylum and gaming the system, it is absolutely right that we take a robust line. It is also appropriate that we bear down on illegal employers, using a range of measures through our compliant environment, because those are the very people who are perpetuating this evil trade by giving work to these individuals in car washes and care homes and on construction sites.”
“The hon. Lady may know the recent history of this issue, which is that previously young people were primarily placed in Kent and it took legal responsibility. The numbers arriving in Kent were sufficiently high that Kent chose to walk away from that responsibility, and we understand the reasons behind that. Since then, where children are not placed immediately within a local authority, we have had no choice but to stand up these hotels. As I said in answer to an earlier question, that means that the Home Office provides all the support services that are required. We are considering the proposal made by a number of organisations about acting as corporate legal guardians of the young people and we will make a decision on that in due course.”
“Under-18s do receive access to education. Clearly, that is best provided when they are able to be in a local authority setting, which is why we want to get young people out of the hotels as quickly as possible. We work with local authorities and provide them with the support that is required so that they can provide education until these individuals’ cases are decided.”
“Eligibility will be limited to accompanied 10 and 11-year-olds of eligible nationality at the three participating ports only for a 14-day period. At other ports, the lower age limit will remain, as currently set, at 12. In summary, the draft order enacts the most modest of changes to its parent legislation, but allows for a significant next step to be taken in developing a secure and smooth border that demonstrates to the rest of the world that the UK is open for business, as well as making the lives of families that little bit easier. I commend the draft order to the Committee.”
“We at the Home Office take seriously our statutory duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. We will use the live trial to consider whether there are any unintended consequences for the welfare of younger passengers, such as any anxiety if separated temporarily from parents at the e-gates. To be clear, no permanent decision on whether to extend e-gate eligibility to younger passengers will be made until we have considered such issues. The amendment will enable us in law to allow eligible passengers younger than 12 to use an e-gate, but it does not confer a right on those passengers to do so. It does not mean that passengers aged 10 and 11 must be able to use an e-gate at any UK port with that facility.”