Chris Murray
Main Page: Chris Murray (Labour - Edinburgh East and Musselburgh)Department Debates - View all Chris Murray's debates with the Home Office
(1 week, 3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Joy Morrissey
Indeed, and my hon. Friend makes that point very eloquently. It is very important that we stand up for our local communities to protect them from illegal migrant men.
I have mentioned just a few of the horrific crimes committed by illegal migrant men—men who should have been deported before they could roam our streets and forever change the lives of young women and girls, and who will pay no notice to a gently worded leaflet that encourages them to understand our cultural values. These men do not care about our values. They are here to take advantage of our welcoming culture.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
The proposal from the Government is to open large sites far from town centres, where there can be resources, such as Home Office officials, and where the police can be informed. Before I was elected, I worked in asylum accommodation. The hon. Lady’s Government would open hotels in city centres without telling local authorities, and without even telling the police. Why is she proposing that her system is safer for local communities than this alternative?
Joy Morrissey
I encourage the hon. Gentleman to come to Piddington to see that there is a very small village right up against what is going to be a very large asylum camp, which has no additional police protection and no additional provision. The men will be allowed to roam free through the village. It will create a safeguarding issue for young children, for girls, and there is no reason why this community should have to suffer just like communities in York and across the country. They are suffering because we are not deporting illegal migrants, and that is why we need to leave the ECHR.
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Anna Turley)
I thank the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) for calling this debate. I place on record my thanks to all hon. Members in this House who have engaged with me in the few weeks since I took on this role about asylum accommodation in their constituency. It is really important that we continue that powerful dialogue, including with you, Madam Deputy Speaker; you have engaged with me often on this issue, and I appreciate that engagement.
I particularly thank the shadow Minister because I really do welcome this opportunity to update Members on the Government’s work to fix our country’s broken asylum system. The system was in a state of absolute chaos and disarray when we took office two years ago. We are dealing with the legacy left by the hon. Lady and her team today. I will shortly come on to the action that we are taking to restore fairness, order and control, but it is really important to put any debate on asylum in its proper context, and that means recognising the situation that we inherited. It was this Government who picked up the pieces after the general election, following years of inaction and ineptitude. There has been mud-slinging, finger pointing and blaming from the Opposition today, but we are getting on with fixing the mess, and fixing the flow that the Conservatives allowed. The hon. Lady referred to their 14 years and our two years; I look forward to setting out in my speech the difference between those 14 years and the last two years.
In 2018, about 300 people arrived here by small boat. In the years that followed, an entire criminal industry built up along our borders, on the Conservatives’ watch. Ruthless smugglers sent people on dangerous, unnecessary and—far too often—fatal journeys, making a fortune in the process. The consequences of all this are well known in the House, but they bear repeating. Between January 2021 and June 2024, 110,000 people came here by small boat. Meanwhile, the asylum system ground to a halt. Decision making collapsed, leaving thousands in limbo for years at the taxpayers’ expense, and so did the return of those with no right to be in the UK, while a further 175,000 people claimed asylum by other routes. As the numbers rose, so did the cost to the taxpayer. In just a single year, spending on asylum support under the Conservative party was £4.7 billion. That is an incredible cost to the taxpayer—money that we could and should be spending on the other priorities we debate in this place.
Chris Murray
Over the last two years, we on the Home Affairs Committee have looked into the cost of this to the taxpayer. Does the Minister share my outrage that huge amounts of public money have gone to private companies, some of whose owners entered The Sunday Times rich list while our communities suffered? Does she also agree that the author and signer of those contracts was the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman), on the Reform Benches?
Anna Turley
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Under the last Government, £9 million a day was spent housing people in 400 asylum hotels. That was costly and inefficient. The evidence has shown that it was part of the draw that people knew they could come here and be put in a nice hotel. It was one of the pull factors that we are trying to deal with and tackle today. As we have heard, all we had in response to this people smuggling on an industrial scale was the farce of the Rwanda scheme, in which £700 million was spent on sending four volunteers to Rwanda.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
It is good that we are having this debate in the House of Commons today, because this is an issue the public care about profoundly and they want to see substantive action to address their concerns. To understand how to do that, we have to understand how we got here.
I do not propose to relitigate the disastrous asylum system that this Government inherited, under which huge numbers of asylum seekers were housed in hotels across the country. That was terrible for local communities, where hotels were opened in town centres with no support and often without even telling the police or local authorities. It was terrible for genuine asylum seekers and it was terrible for the taxpayer. The only ones it worked for were the private companies, which extracted massive profits. The Prime Minister has talked about the scandal of outsourcing and privatisation in modern Britain. The most glaring example of that is the asylum accommodation sector. The public are right: we cannot tolerate that and we must fix it, so it is good to see the Government putting in the hard yards to achieve that.
There are three components that we have to tackle as a country. First, we have to drive down the number of asylum seekers coming into the system. That is why it is good to see small boat crossings down by 40% and the French preventing 48,000 crossings. Obviously, more must be done. We need to prevent people from coming in, but secondly, we also have to increase the number coming out of the system. There has been a big increase in decisions and an increase in removals of more than 80,000. Again, there is more to be done, but it is good to see the hard yards starting to be put in.
Fred Thomas (Plymouth Moor View) (Lab)
My hon. Friend speaks about how it is important to deter people from coming to this country illegally. Does he share my concern at the Reform party’s notion, put forward by its chairman, that Royal Marines commandos could be encouraged to use “lethal force” against unarmed civilians? As a Royal Marines commander, I can say that that is completely unacceptable across the military. There are real concerns about that in Plymouth and across the wider military. Does my hon. Friend share those concerns?
Chris Murray
My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. Whenever I have spoken to law enforcement or the military, that is exactly the issue they raise. Moreover, making gestures that we know are never realistic is what the traffickers want us to do, because it encourages them to encourage people to come here.
The third component of what we must tackle is that of dealing with people while they are in the asylum system. That means we have to drive down the costs, deliver the economies of scale required, mitigate the impacts that infuriate communities and increase safeguarding for communities. We need to do that if we want to close the hotels, and we cannot close the hotels without dealing with people in the system.
Let me make a defence of large sites in the asylum system. In 15 years working on immigration and during two years on the Home Affairs Committee, I must have visited more asylum accommodation than anyone else in the House of Commons. Large sites have an important role to play, particularly in alleviating the issues that local communities find challenging. First, on cost, they are much cheaper than hotels. On efficiency—
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Murray
I will get to the end of my point and then I will give way. Secondly, on efficiency, having people in one place, where Home Office officials and the relevant people can be brought in, can speed asylum seekers through the process and get them out of it faster. Thirdly, on community engagement, yes, asylum seekers are free to come and go, but short of imprisoning them, such sites are as much as we can contain them in British society.
Chris Murray
Let me make some points and then I will take interventions.
Charities and groups can go to large sites, which are far away from town centres, unlike hotels and HMOs, and the authorities, by providing things such as transport, can practically organise when people will be in one place, stopping the issues of hotels and people hanging around town centres late at night.
Finally, on safeguarding, one of the issues with hotels is that the police were not informed. At larger sites, we can have trained professionals who can spot depression, isolation, re-traumatisation or worrying behaviours, understand the dynamics in groups, and find opportunities to observe, supervise and intervene. Engaging with police and social services is how we tackle those risks.
Let me share what persuaded me about that. I was sceptical of large sites until I went to Wethersfield, which opened under the previous Government—I think it was opened by the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham and Waterlooville (Suella Braverman). There, they told me that the work they can do around mitigation and safeguarding is far more effective at a large site than a small site.
Chris Murray
I will take an intervention from the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) and then I will come back to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan).
Calum Miller
The hon. Gentleman led his arguments in favour of large sites on cost grounds. I am sure that he is aware that the Home Affairs Committee looked at that matter and identified that, bed by bed, large sites were more expensive than hotels. Will he acknowledge that, because the site that we are talking about today has never had residential accommodation, the cost and capital terms of setting it up and building a village will greatly outstrip the cost of any alternative provision?
Chris Murray
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument at all. My argument to the Minister would be that large sites vary. Wethersfield did not work until it was reformed; Northeye did not work.
I am going to do something unusual and say something positive about the Scottish Government for a second—I know the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) is going to have a heart attack over there. [Laughter.] When the Scottish Government opened large sites for asylum seekers from Ukraine on two cruise ships, they were very cost effective compared with the Bibby Stockholm. The argument is not about the principle, but about whether the Home Office can orchestrate it and achieve it through public procurement.
Chris Murray
I absolutely understand why people say that; it is a perfectly reasonable response to risk. However, the role of Government is to mitigate risk. The role of Government is to intervene through public policy and deploy public resources and capacities. That is the best way to mitigate risk. That is normal across policing and all kinds of Home Office security, but in this case it is quite right. The Government of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle placed asylum seekers in hotels without telling anybody in the local community—without social workers, the police or anybody else knowing. The local women had no clue. Most of the cases quoted by the shadow Minister came from that system. He cannot say to the women in Piddington that will leave the ECHR and it will solve everything. That is not realistic and it is not treating them with respect. Far better to say we will try to solve this problem, mitigate the risk and do the stuff required to actually deal with it.
I should have expected to hear what we have heard from the Tories and Reform in this Opposition day debate. These are the people who broke the system and let it spiral, yet they are somehow arguing that leaving the ECHR can happen tomorrow and will solve any issues in Piddington and Bicester—that is for the birds. But I am particularly disappointed in the Liberal Democrats and their amendment. They say that they oppose asylum hotels and they want a better public debate on immigration, but whether it is in Cameron barracks, in Crowborough or now in Bicester, they oppose every large site. They say we should welcome asylum seekers and have a humane system, but it is “not in my back yard” the minute there is one near them. Are they really saying that is for the working-class communities of Britain to tolerate asylum seekers in hotels and in HMOs, but not their constituencies in secure, well-resourced, large public sites? I think that is wrong. The public are fed up of posturing, point scoring, pointless gesturing and nimbyism on this. They want the issue solved, they want it gripped, and if the Government can get large sites to solve the problem, that could be a big part of solving this country’s asylum accommodation challenges.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We have had so many interventions that I am going to have to drop the time limit on Back-Bench speeches to five minutes.
Suella Braverman (Fareham and Waterlooville) (Reform)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I was honoured to visit Piddington a few weeks ago, with my hon. Friend the Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), representing my party, Reform, as one of the first female MPs to respond to the women of Piddington when they wrote to all female MPs in this House. It is interesting that there are no female Labour Back Benchers sitting in on this debate. That is how seriously the party in government takes this issue.
When I met the women of Piddington, I was staggered. They are scared, they are angry and they feel like no one in government is listening to them. The people there are not far-right thugs. Many of the women—and, indeed, the men—that I met are elderly pensioners. Some of them are widowed and living alone. Many are parents speaking on behalf of their children. This small rural village is right now fighting against the British state right in order to protect itself. It is a scandal that no one in this Government is willing to listen to the women and girls of Piddington.
Unfortunately, this is not confined to Piddington; it also involves the people of Waterlooville. Last year I led a campaign with 10,000 local people to fight the Home Office and the Labour-Lib Dem plans to house asylum seekers there. We were successful on that occasion. Now I am supporting people in Gosport and in Portsmouth who are taking to the streets in peaceful protest against illegal migrants arriving on their shores.
Suella Braverman
I will not, because I want to respect the direction given by Madam Deputy Speaker.
This issue is extending across our country, and it is out of control. The Government say it is getting better, but the boats are getting bigger, the people are coming in higher numbers, and British people are more scared than ever. And they are right to be scared, because the facts are that Afghan and Eritrean migrant men are 22 times more likely to be convicted of sex crimes than Brits, and 40% of sexual assaults in London over the last five years were committed by foreign-born men. I am not making that up. That is data. These are not irrational fears, but they are being treated with contempt.
The tragedy of all this is that it is caused by the ECHR. People come here on the boats illegally. They claim to be victims of persecution and to have family rights here—all gaming human rights laws against us. I saw this as Home Secretary, as Attorney General and previously as a barrister working in the field. I wrote a paper about it last year, which was dismissed by the Conservative party. The truth is—we have got to be honest about this—that we might not even have had to be here talking about Piddington or Gosport or Fort Blockhouse or Waterlooville. This problem could have been fixed.
The tragedy is that the last Conservative Government utterly refused to do the right thing—[Interruption.] I will come to that. I was the first Conservative Minister who said publicly that to fix this crisis we needed to leave the ECHR. I said it as Attorney General and as Home Secretary. What happened? The Leader of the Opposition said that I was having a nervous breakdown. The Conservatives said that I had mental health problems. They demonised me, isolated me and blocked me from doing the right thing. I have asked them to apologise today. They have refused to apologise to the nation for causing this crisis and I will not let them off the hook. I have just published a book setting out the painful battles I had with my Conservative party colleagues to fix this, so I will not take any lectures from anyone in the Conservative party about their promises to leave the ECHR. Do not believe them.
What do we need to stop this invasion and fix this national security emergency that my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) has been talking about for years? We need to leave the ECHR, with credible leadership. We need to suspend our asylum system now, void all those grants of asylum, deport all those people who are applying for asylum—deport 90,000 people—and, yes, deploy the Royal Navy into the channel to ensure that we properly secure our borders. This Labour Government will not do it. The last Conservative Government did not do it. This Conservative party cannot be trusted. Only Reform will stop the invasion and stop these boats.