Borders and Asylum

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The French pilot scheme involves allowing people who apply lawfully and go through proper security checks to come to the UK on a one-for-one basis, as we return those who have arrived on dangerous small boats in the hands of criminal gangs. I also set out in my statement our intention to have a permanent framework under which refugee students can come to the UK, rather than our taking an ad hoc approach, as we currently do to Gaza students. There needs to be a more systematic approach, as well as capped and controlled approaches to other refugee work programmes. That has to come alongside better controls and management of the existing system, which has become chaotic, with long delays and the undermining of our border security by criminal gangs. We have to do these things together, in a way that pulls our country together, rather than seeing division and tension continue.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Reform announced in the summer that it would house all asylum seekers on former RAF bases. In my constituency, RAF Linton-on-Ouse was ruled out, on the grounds that its location in a small village made that inappropriate. Will the Home Secretary confirm that she has no plans to reverse the decision to rule out such inappropriate RAF bases?

[Yvette Cooper]

Obviously, we do not want asylum accommodation in inappropriate places. We must reduce the overall size of the asylum system, while ensuring that we can move people, when possible, from hotels to alternative and better sites. Any arrangement that is aimed simply at expanding the asylum system, as happens if there is a freeze on asylum decisions—and some of the policies that Reform is unfortunately pursuing risk increasing the number of people stuck in the asylum system, because Reform has no plans for practical returns—will make the problem worse. We need practical changes to bring the numbers down.