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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“Because we are all blessed to live in one United Kingdom. There is no material difference: Scotland’s unemployment rate was 3.3% and its economic inactivity rate was 21% in recent figures, compared with the UK average of 3.5% and 21%, respectively. It is more important that we work together as one UK. Those are exactly the terms on which my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has just concluded this very important agreement.”
“I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. The extension was reviewed by the Government and, on the basis of the representations made to us by the industry, we extended it to April 2023. If he has heard other representations, I would be pleased to hear about them.”
“We want to exit hotels as soon as possible, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and move to simple but decent accommodation that does not provide an additional pull factor to the UK. The challenge is considerable, however, as 40,000 people are making that perilous crossing every year, which places immense pressure on our asylum system and prevents us from providing the kind of humane and compassionate response that we want to provide to people coming here in genuine peril.”
“and learned Friend the Home Secretary and I are establishing to do that has a number of fronts. One will be ensuring fairer dispersal across the country, so that cities and larger towns do not bear a disproportionate impact of the asylum seeker issue. Secondly, it will involve looking for other sites, away from hotels, that provide better value for money for the taxpayer, which might mean more simple forms of accommodation; we hope to say more on that soon. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we will accelerate the processing of asylum claims altogether, so that those individuals whose claims are rejected can be removed from the country swiftly and those whose claims are upheld can start working, create a new life in the UK and make an economic and broader contribution to the country.”
“He referenced the situation in Calais. The way this country accommodates asylum seekers vastly outweighs the way some neighbouring countries choose to do so, and I am afraid that creates an additional pull factor to the UK. Deterrence needs to be suffused throughout our entire approach. We can be decent and humane, but we also need to apply hard-headed common sense. Once we have stabilised the present situation, and applied those criteria and better engagement methods, the third strand of our strategy is to exit from hotels altogether. Accommodating thousands of individuals in hotels costs the UK over £2 billion a year. In a time of fiscal constraints, that is an unconscionable sum of money and we need to ensure we move away from that as swiftly as we can. The strategy that my right hon.”
“Those criteria might mean ensuring that towns such as Ipswich can continue to carry out their day-to-day business, and ensuring that tourists can be accommodated and that business and leisure travellers can find hotel accommodation in the centre. They will include ensuring that we take into account safeguarding concerns, for example by not choosing hotels that are next to children’s homes, schools or places where young people congregate. The criteria will certainly include taking into account community cohesion and the likelihood for disruption, and they should, obviously, include value for money for the taxpayer. On that point, I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend that we should be choosing decent but not luxurious accommodation. People coming here seeking refuge should be accommodated in simple but humane accommodation.”
“The number of people being accommodated there is now back down to the level for which it was designed. That leads to the second priority, which is to stabilise the situation more broadly, and ensure that we procure hotels in a sensible, common-sense way. The case that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich raises prompts some important questions. First, when we choose hotels, other than in emergency situations such as the one we have been in with Manston, we need to ensure there is proper engagement with local Members of Parliament and local authorities, so that we choose hotels that might not be desirable but are none the less broadly suitable and can command a degree of public support. In some cases, we have seen hotels chosen that simply do not meet that barrier. We need to ensure hotels are chosen against sensible, objective criteria.”
“and learned Friend the Home Secretary has been to resolve the very urgent situation that we found in Manston in Kent, where a large number of migrants who crossed the channel illegally in small boats were being accommodated in a temporary processing facility that was meant for a smaller number of individuals. That was not within the control of the Government. It was the result of thousands of people choosing to make that perilous journey—over 40,000 this year alone, and rising. We had to ensure that the site was operating legally and decently. As a result, we had to procure further hotels and other types of accommodation across the country at some pace. I am pleased to say that that hard work is bearing fruit, and the situation at Manston has significantly improved.”
“Friend for the first time when he was standing for Parliament there, when we toured Ipswich and visited the harbour, where the hotel is. I have seen the good work that he is doing with the council and others on the town deal board to regenerate Ipswich and help it achieve its potential. It is concerning to hear that the actions of the Home Office might, in a small way, be damaging his and the community’s wider efforts to boost opportunities and prosperity in Ipswich. Since we came into office, the initial task for me and my right hon.”
“I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Given your duties as Chair you will not be able to say so, but I know that you also feel strongly about the issue, which affects your constituents in Kettering. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for raising the matter, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) for supporting him. The issue clearly concerns many Members across the House and millions of people across the country. Resolving it is a first-order priority for the Government. The ongoing legal action means it is difficult for me to comment on the specific case of the hotel in Ipswich, but I will speak about it in more general terms, and about the wider issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich. I know Ipswich well, and met my hon.”
“The Home Secretary and I are looking at that issue in some detail to see whether we can make changes to the way we manage the process and the criteria we adopt, not so that we become a country that is unwelcoming or ungenerous—that is not the British way—but so that we do not create an additional pull factor to the UK over and above other countries that are signatories to exactly the same conventions and treaties to which the UK is party.”
“Friend was right to say that his constituents in Ipswich, like millions of people across the country, broadly support that approach and have played an important role in recent months, for example by taking in refugees under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. We do not want people to be encouraged by people smugglers to cross the channel illegally and then find refuge in the UK. The second point that my hon. Friend raises, which is equally perceptive, is that the UK’s asylum system grants asylum to a higher proportion of applicants than those of some comparable countries, such as France and Germany.”
“My hon. Friend raises two important points. First, we are very concerned that a large number of individuals, certainly all those coming across in small boats, have transited through multiple safe countries before choosing to make the crossing to the UK. We do not want to be a country that attracts asylum shoppers. We want people to be seeking asylum in the first safe country that they enter. That may necessitate further changes to the law. We want to have a legal framework that is broadly based on individuals who are fleeing genuine persecution, such as war or serious human rights abuses, finding refuge in the UK through safe and legal routes, such as the highly effective resettlement schemes that we have established in recent years for, for example, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Hong Kong. My hon.”
“It will require tougher action by the security services to address the criminal gangs and gain greater intelligence on their work overseas. It will include tougher action at home on employers who illegally employ migrants who do not have the right to work here. On all those fronts, the Home Secretary and I are absolutely committed to tackling this issue. I know it is extremely important to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich, who is one of the leading voices in Parliament on it, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough. They are both simply representing the strong views of their constituents, who, like millions of people across the country, want secure borders and a fair and robust immigration and asylum system. That is exactly what the Home Secretary and I intend to deliver. Question put and agreed to.”
“Friend the Member for Ipswich is correct that a significant element of that will be to make further legal changes to our framework. Another element will be ensuring that deterrence is suffused through our approach so that we do not become a magnet for illegal migrants. We need the UK to be a country that supports those in genuine need, but we must not create a framework that is significantly more attractive than those of our EU neighbours. That will also require work on the diplomatic front. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has just returned from Sharm el-Sheikh, where he had further positive conversations with President Macron and other world leaders who are dealing with the symptoms of a global migration crisis.”
“That is a first-order priority for the Home Secretary and I to address, because it cannot be right that the UK provides safety and support for those individuals—mostly young men who are healthy and sufficiently prosperous to pay people traffickers, and who come from a country as safe as Albania. We need to change that. We have already returned 1,000 Albanians under the return agreement signed by the previous Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). The present Home Secretary and I want to take that significantly further. The longer-term trajectory obviously has to be moving away from tackling merely the symptoms of the problem—the processing of applications and the accommodation of individuals in expensive hotels—to tackling the root cause itself. My hon.”
“I do not want to get into a detailed conversation about our exact treaty obligations and the legal framework, but the issue is that any individual can claim asylum regardless of the means by which they came to the UK, regardless of whether they have transited through safe countries, and even regardless of whether they came from a safe country in the first place. That balance is not currently right, so we need to look carefully at how we can change it. The most striking issue is the individuals coming from demonstrably safe countries. Today, about 30% of the individuals crossing the channel have come from Albania.”
“The lobby groups that raised that issue, although they were perfectly at liberty to do so, were wrong. That was not the route to solve the problem. The long-term solution was to make the industry more attractive to domestic workers, to retain more HGV drivers and to help to put the sector on a more sustainable footing.”
“We must also be alive to the fact that some of the industry bodies and lobbyists who approach the Government, perfectly understandably to represent their members, occasionally overstate the value of migrant workers and their availability in the international labour market. The former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham, will remember some of those instances. I am thinking, for example, of HGV drivers: there was a concerted campaign—one that ostensibly seemed valid—to create a specific route to bring more HGV drivers into the country to meet the significant issues we had at one stage. We responded to that call and only a tiny number of foreign HGV drivers ultimately applied for the visa, met our requirements and came here.”
“We really need to encourage businesses to play their part by investing in and developing the UK’s domestic labour force, rather than relying on immigration policy as an alternative, especially given the 5 million economically inactive people in our economy. That does not mean we should not think carefully about the sectors that face particular challenges. We are alive to those issues and want to adopt a pragmatic approach, but that approach has to be a two-way street. As the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said, it involves businesses themselves working hard to recruit and retain domestic workers and thinking about improving their productivity, rather than immigration being the long-term solution for those sectors.”
“I want to stress that some of the businesses we have been talking about, particularly in hospitality and tourism, although undoubtedly they have been through an extremely difficult period during the pandemic and our recovery from it, have benefitted from substantial Government support, whether through the business support scheme or furlough. Those schemes amounted to hundreds of billions of pounds. I do not diminish the challenges that businesses face, but it is worth reminding ourselves of the scale of support we have given. We are, of course, living in the long shadow of the pandemic and the fiscal challenges it has brought upon us all.”
“I have certainly encountered that in my constituency, which has a good deal of employers in the food processing and agricultural sectors. Another reason is that we want to encourage the British economy to be more productive. Employers should ensure, where possible—it is not appropriate in every sector—that we are better at automation and have a more innovative economy, not one that is simply hooked on the drug of relatively low-paid and low-skilled migrant workers. I appreciate that in sectors such as care, and perhaps hospitality and tourism, talk of automation and innovation is not as relevant. I will come to some of the work that we have been doing in those sectors in a moment.”
“It could be a choice for this country to welcome workers to that type of role, and other parties may make different choices from us, but it is important not only that we are guided by the Migration Advisory Committee’s recommendations, but that we think carefully about the skill and salary thresholds of people coming into this country. That is for a number of reasons. One reason is so that we can ensure that people who are looking for work in this country are encouraged into those jobs. As Members of Parliament, I am sure that we have all come across employers in our constituencies who in the past have reached too easily for international workers rather than trying to recruit, retain and skill up British workers.”
“We should encourage them into paid employment for many reasons, not least so that we can help them to make fruitful lives here and ensure that they are not living in hotel accommodation, which too many still are. That has been the subject of other debates elsewhere in Parliament this week. Many of the sectors that have called for a recovery visa, some of which have been discussed today, including hospitality, haulage and construction—all sectors for which I have sympathy; I have been involved in some of them in recent years as a Minister—have long-standing recruitment challenges, stretching back many years. Some of them are essentially calling for a general immigration route, allowing recruitment at or near the minimum wage for roles that have only relatively short work-based training requirements.”
“It supports UK businesses to recruit workers with the skills that they need from around the world, and it is broader than the previous immigration system, with many more jobs now eligible, stretching across all the key sectors of the British economy, thanks to the good work that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham did during her time in office. We have a large and growing domestic labour force, which includes UK workers, the millions of people who applied successfully under the EU settlement scheme, and visa-holders with general work rights. It is important to stress that, over the course of the last year or so, we have also had tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Afghan citizens. In fact, well over 100,000 are now living in the United Kingdom, a good deal of whom want to work.”
“We have to set today’s debate, and the important and valid points that have been raised, within that context. As a country, we are welcoming very significant numbers of people to work and live here as a result of our visa system. Of course, there can be a legitimate debate about who we are inviting in, and whether we address specific concerns, but it is not correct to suggest that we have a highly restrictive system, or that that has been a consequence of leaving the European Union. In general, I do not think that a temporary recovery visa is the right approach. The points-based system is the right way forward.”
“It is important to say at the outset that an impression has been given during the debate that the visa system is highly restrictive, enabling few people to come into the country, and that essentially migrant labour has been cut off as a result of policy decisions. That really is not true. We have a comparatively flexible work visa system, and the Home Office granted over 330,000 work-related visas in the year ending June 2022, including—I will come to this in more detail in a moment—just over 96,000 health and care worker visas to support the NHS. We have more than doubled the number of eligible occupations for skilled worker visas so that more than 60% of jobs in the UK economy are now eligible. Over 48,000 employers are now on the sponsor register, and we encourage others to join.”
“I will begin by addressing the specific question of a temporary recovery visa, and then broaden out. We have had a wider debate about how we handle labour market shortages, the balance between migration and our domestic labour market and how we train people here in the country to meet those challenges. That includes how to balance bringing people into the country versus the significant issue of more than 5 million economically inactive people, and how we can help those individuals back into the labour market, whether they be older people who left the labour market during the pandemic, or younger people who need to get back or into work for the first time.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for calling the debate. As others have said, he represents one of the most beautiful parts of the country and one of my favourite destinations. Any help we can give him to ensure that his hospitality and tourism sector continues to thrive is a priority for me. I am grateful for comments and speeches from other right hon. and hon. Members, and will try to answer as many as I can in the time available. I am particularly pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) make her debut in Westminster Hall after many years. I know from my new colleagues at the Home Office how much she is missed. I was pleased to hear her thoughts today.”
“No, that was not the issue. Without going off on a tangent, the root cause of the issue was the aging population of HGV drivers. Many were coming up for retirement and the industry had had poor pay and working conditions for a long time. There was also a global shortage of HGV drivers, so it was not unique to the UK. We saw it all over Europe.”
“The UK is viewed as a more attractive location to come to for work and access to public services because of the way in which we treat those individuals versus other European countries. I do not think it would be sensible for us to add a further pull factor to the many we already have. Deterrence has to be suffused through our approach to tackling illegal immigration. If we undermine that further, we will only find larger numbers of individuals crossing the channel. With that, I draw my remarks to a close. I look forward to meeting the hon. Member for Strangford to discuss fishing. If the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale ever wishes to take up these matters with me, I would be happy to meet with him to discuss them further.”
“With respect to European countries, we are open to that debate. The EU is currently seeking an agreement across the whole European Union, rather than on a state-by-state basis; although that does not preclude us from entering into it, it clearly means a longer and more complex negotiation than if we were able to negotiate with individual states. Several Members raised the question of asylum seekers having the right to work in the UK. I appreciate that there are good arguments on both sides of this debate, which I have considered at length. On balance, I do not agree with doing it because it would add a further pull factor to the UK. The UK already sees a very large number of individuals making the dangerous crossing across the channel. There are a number of reasons for that.”
“One way in which we are trying to ensure that skills training more adequately meets the needs of particular communities in England, at least, is through devolution. We now routinely devolve the skills budget for adults to local authorities and Mayors. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has a new devolution deal in his area; if that progresses to a mayoral deal, I suspect he will see a devolution of skills budgets and training to Cumbria, which may be helpful to him. A number of colleagues raised the question of youth mobility schemes, which I fully support and would like to see more of. Most recently, we have progressed that idea through the Australia and New Zealand free trade agreements, while negotiations are ongoing with other countries. We are open to more agreements, which clearly must be reciprocal.”
“That is not the long-term answer—we want to train more people domestically, and I am alive to arguments made for lifting the cap on medical school places—but in the meantime it is important to bring in those who want to come here to work. That visa is also applicable for care workers, although I appreciate that there are some legitimate concerns about the salary threshold and so on that make it more challenging than we would like it to be. In opening the debate, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale talked about the broader labour market challenges and how we respond to them—a valid point also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham. We need to take that up across Government so that we have a far more joined-up approach to these challenges.”
“In the time I have available, let me address some of the specific points raised. I am looking forward to meeting the hon. Member for Strangford and representatives from the fishing industry. He has made a number of good points today and I hope we can explore them in more detail when we meet. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made valid points, particularly on health and social care. As a former Health Minister, I hear what she said. The issues she raised are the reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham created the health and social care visa, which has been very successful, and we now see tens of thousands of doctors and nurses coming to the UK.”
“I thank my Border Force officers, members of the armed forces, our contractors and Home Office staff, who have worked tirelessly to help achieve that reduction. Before the high number of arrivals in September, Manston had proven to be a streamlined and efficient asylum processing centre, where biographic and biometric details are taken and assessed against our databases, asylum claims registered and the vulnerable assessed. We are determined to ensure that Manston is back to that position as soon as possible, and I am encouraged by the progress now being made. We must not be complacent. We remain absolutely focused on addressing these complex issues so that we can deliver a fair and effective asylum system that works in the interests of the British people.”
“Some 40,000 people have crossed the channel on small boats so far this year, and the Government continue to have a statutory responsibility to provide safe and secure accommodation for asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute. To meet that responsibility, we have had to keep people for longer than we would have liked at our processing facility at Manston, but we have been sourcing more bed spaces with local authorities and in contingency accommodation such as hotels. I can tell the House that, as of 8 o’clock this morning, the population at the Manston facility was back below 1,600. That is a significant reduction from this point last week, with over 2,300 people having been placed in onward accommodation.”
“We have set out on multiple occasions that the global migration crisis is placing unprecedented strain on our asylum system. Despite what they may have been told by many, migrants who travel through safe countries should not put their lives at risk by making the dangerous and illegal journey to the United Kingdom. We are steadfast in our determination to tackle those gaming the system and will use every tool at our disposal to deter illegal migration and disrupt the business model of people smugglers. So far this year, our French colleagues have prevented over 29,000 crossings and destroyed over 1,000 boats. Furthermore, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be speaking with President Macron this week about how, together, we can achieve our shared ambition to prevent further crossings.”
“I do not think that is possible right now, because the prudent thing is to ensure that we maintain the level of infrastructure that we have in case there is a significant increase in the number of migrants arriving in the weeks ahead, but it is certainly not my intention, or the Home Secretary’s intention, that Manston is turned into a permanent site for housing immigrants.”
“We are doing just that, and we are ensuring that there is now further accommodation so that we can build up a sufficient buffer, so that those arriving at Manston stay there for the legal period of 24 hours or thereabouts, and are then swiftly moved to better and more appropriate accommodation elsewhere in the country. I support my right hon. Friend’s view that Manston should always be a processing centre, not a permanent home for migrants arriving in the UK. I have taken note of his comment that he would like the temporary facilities there to be dismantled.”
“First, may I praise my right hon. Friend, who is an exemplary Member of Parliament? It has been my privilege to work alongside him over the past 10 days. He has consistently raised concerns expressed by his constituents, and also our joint desire that Manston should operate as a humane and decent facility that provides compassionate care to those who arrive at the United Kingdom’s borders. The population is now back at an acceptable level, which is a considerable achievement. It is essential that it remains so, and he is right to say that the challenge is far from over. Last year, for various reasons, November proved to be the largest month of the year for arrivals in the UK, so we have to be aware of that and plan appropriately.”
“and learned Friend the Home Secretary has consistently approved hotel accommodation. More than 30 hotels have been brought on line in the time for which my right hon. and learned Friend has been in office, which has ensured that thousands of asylum seekers have been able to move on from the Manston site and into better and more sustainable accommodation. And look at her record over the course of the last week! The population at Manston has fallen from 4,000 to 1,600 in a matter of seven days. That is a very considerable achievement on the part of the Home Secretary and her officials in the Home Office, and I am proud of it.”
“For a few moments I thought that the hon. Gentleman was going to approach this in an intelligent and constructive manner, but sadly that was the triumph of optimism over experience. In fact, the Labour party is trying to politicise this, and we can of course say the same. The Labour party has no plan to tackle illegal immigration. It does not want to tackle illegal immigration. The Labour party left a system in ruins in 2010, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) would attest, as he had to help to pick up the pieces. We believe in a system of secure borders and a fair and robust asylum system in which all members of the public can have confidence. The hon. Gentleman asked about the Home Secretary’s conduct. Let me tell him that my right hon.”
“It is not sustainable for the country to be spending billions of pounds a year on hotels. We now need to move rapidly to a point at which individuals are processed swiftly so that the backlog in cases falls and we disperse people fairly around the UK to local authority and private rented sector accommodation where appropriate. We also need to look into whether other, larger sites that provide decent but not luxurious accommodation might be available, so that we do not create a further pull factor for people to come to the UK.”
“My hon. Friend and I were in contact about this issue over the weekend, and I know how strongly he feels. My first duty has been to ensure that Manston can operate in a legal and decent manner, and we are well on the way to achieving that. The second task is ensuring that the Home Office and its contractors procure accommodation—whether it be hotels, spot bookings or other forms of accommodation—in a sensible manner, taking into account many of the factors that my hon. Friend has just described, such as safeguarding, the impact on the local community and the likelihood of disorder, whether there is already significant pressure on that community, and whether it is a tourist hotspot. Those criteria need to be followed carefully. My third priority, beyond that, is our exit from this hotel strategy altogether.”
“The way to do that is to encourage more local authorities throughout the United Kingdom to accept those individuals and to help them into private or state foster parenting arrangements. We have put in place a significant financial package of about £52,000 a year per foster carer per child to ensure that can happen, plus a £6,000 up-front payment to the local authority to help to accommodate that. The financing is available, so I want to ensure that more local authorities step up. If he can encourage those run by his SNP colleagues in Scotland to do so, I would be happy to support him.”
“The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that the UK Government pressurise any individual to falsely identify as a child. It is the people smugglers who do that; we are doing everything we can to clamp down on it. I have been to Western Jet Foil at Dover to meet the Border Force staff who try to make those assessments. At times, up to 20% of the adult males who arrive at Western Jet Foil claim to be under 18, when clearly the number is substantially less than that. We have already changed the law, which I think the SNP voted against, to change the way in which those tests are administered, and if we need to make further legal changes, we will. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is wrong that many children, in particular unaccompanied children, are in hotel accommodation. I want to change that.”
“It cannot be right that we are seeing thousands of Albanians making this crossing and essentially taking advantage of the welcome and hospitality afforded to them here in the UK.”
“My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. We want our asylum system to be available to those who truly need it—those who are fleeing persecution, war and human rights abuses around the world. We should not be a harbour for those who are essentially economic migrants coming from safe countries such as Albania. We need to change that. We have now negotiated a return agreement with Albania and 1,000 Albanians have already been returned home under that. I now want to see—I know my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary shares my view—a fast track whereby Albanians who do not meet our asylum criteria have their cases processed quickly and are swiftly returned home.”
“That is why the Home Secretary has balanced her duties and taken the required steps to procure more hotel accommodation as swiftly as we can. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) can see the work that we have already done. In answer to the first part of the right hon. Lady’s question, the conditions at Manston were poor because there were too many people there, but a wide range of facilities are provided: individuals are clothed, they are fed three times a day, and there is an excellent medical facility. I have seen those things with my own eyes, and I hope that she sees them as well. We need to keep a sense of proportion about the state of Manston.”