Chris Murray
Main Page: Chris Murray (Labour - Edinburgh East and Musselburgh)Department Debates - View all Chris Murray's debates with the Home Office
(1 day, 15 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Alex Norris
What an optimistic effort by the hon. Gentleman! He invites us to believe that he and his colleagues have worked out in 14 months how to fix a system that they broke over a period of 14 years. The British public saw through that in July 2024, and I suspect that they will see through it again.
The hon. Gentleman talks about removals. Of course, removals are up—over 35,000 since we took office. When it comes to the question of why we have hotels in the first place, what was the original sin? It was that Conservative colleagues stopped assessing claims. That is why we have hotels, and it is why we have made the efforts to shift the backlog.
The reality is that the system is broken. It is a very simple equation—it is a complicated issue, but a simple equation. We are a very popular country and people want to come here. Of course we are popular—we are the greatest country in the world, with brilliant institutions—but that popularity is also due to the fact that people are sold a dream that they will be able to come here, live in a hotel and work illegally. Until and unless we attack those two fundamental factors, nothing will change. We know that the Conservatives do not oppose the plans we are debating today, because after all, they used two military sites themselves.
Chris Murray (Edinburgh East and Musselburgh) (Lab)
The Home Affairs Committee this week released a report into asylum accommodation and it is utterly damning. In 2019, the Conservative Government bound the country into asylum contracts that have been disastrous for local communities, disastrous for asylum seekers themselves and disastrous for the taxpayer, but they have been brilliant for private providers who have made tens of millions of pounds of profits. It is right that the Government are looking at alternative ways to house asylum seekers that will be better for communities, asylum seekers and the taxpayer. Scotland is a welcoming, tolerant country, and we are willing to play our part, but will the Minister give us assurances that he will learn from the mistakes of the previous Government and work with local communities, local authorities and devolved Administrations to make sure that this works and solves the problems we have seen?
Alex Norris
I have studied that report closely. There have been more than a thousand lessons learned from the previous Government’s attempts to solve this issue. We are taking those in hand to make sure we do it right. My hon. Friend talks about the cost. I am pleased that in our time in office we have reduced the cost to the taxpayer of the asylum system by £1 billion, including £500 million across the hotel estate, but it is clear, including from his Committee’s reports, that we have to go further, and that is what we are doing. We are, within the parameters of the contracts we inherited, sweating things. Where there is money to be recouped, we will recoup that for the taxpayer, but it comes back to the fundamental question that if we want to spend less money on this type of activity, we have to have fewer people in the estate. That starts with breaking the attraction that they have to come to this country.