Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department Debates - View all Lindsay Hoyle's debates with the Home Office
(5 days, 17 hours ago)
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Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for representing his constituents and their very real problems. We are taking legislative action to tackle farm theft. We know that this scourge has been on the rise for some time, so we are ensuring that we can tackle it. Alongside that, we are introducing new powers and statutory guidance for local authorities on fly-tipping, and we are putting 13,000 more officers on our streets, in our communities and in my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
Rural communities fear that mega-police forces will suck resources into cities, and police officer numbers are already down by 1,318 under this Government. How does the Minister expect police forces to protect rural communities when the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has confirmed that it is facing a £500 million funding shortfall this year?
Jess Phillips
I give credit to the stalking victims and stalking organisations that took out a super-complaint against the previous Government, I think, on the many different areas where stalking legislation needed to change. This Government are acting on every single one of those recommendations. The violence against women and girls strategy had more than £1 billion of investment, of which £550 million will go into victim services. I can assure the hon. Member that as a victim of stalking myself, I take the issue very seriously.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
When the violence against women and girls strategy was announced, I asked the Safeguarding Minister whether she had considered the impact that mass migration is having on the safety of women and girls and why it was not mentioned. I was not sure from her response then what the answer is. Can she please explain whether the Government will address that issue specifically as the strategy is implemented? If not, why not?
Shabana Mahmood
I can give my hon. Friend that reassurance. Illegal working undermines honest employers, undercuts local wages and fuels organised immigration crime, and this Government will not stand for it. Since we came to power, enforcement action has increased nationwide, with an 83% rise in the number of illegal-working arrests, and we will be stepping up that action even further in the year ahead.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
One of the main reasons behind the false narrative that Britain is broken is people’s sense of despair that neither this Government nor the previous one could deal with illegal migrants. It is simply driving our people mad. Let me give this advice to the Government, if the Home Secretary will forgive me: they are not going to solve this problem by getting rid of the Prime Minister or anything like that; what they need to do is finally deal with the pull factor. The only thing that will work is to arrest, detain and deport anybody who arrives illegally in this country, and to have a temporary derogation from any convention that prevents us from doing so. If they do that, the nation will be so much more confident, the Prime Minister will be more popular and people will not drown any more.
Shabana Mahmood
I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that I am always willing to listen to advice, wherever it may come from, but I point out that in 14 years under his party in government, we did not see any such action. It is very easy to say from the sidelines, “Just deport everybody.” If it was so easy to derogate from international obligations, I am pretty sure the previous Administration would have done so. The fact that they are only now saying that from the sidelines says a lot about them and their attitude to government.
There is no one silver bullet in dealing with the problems of illegal migration, and that is why I am taking action across every potential forum. We are changing our human rights laws, passing legislation later this year on the application of article 8, dealing with our appeals processes, talking about reform of the European convention on human rights, and getting the number of illegal working raids up. Those are all important steps to try to get the system under control. I am determined that we will deal with the problem of illegal migration, but there is no one silver bullet. That is why I am taking action across all fronts.
Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)
Last week, The Times reported that companies and company directors who have previously abused the work visa system have been allowed to continue sponsoring visas, despite the Government’s promise of a clampdown. One social care business has been able to sponsor 116 visas, despite being caught hiring illegally. As the Home Secretary just said herself, being able to work here illegally is one of the greatest pull factors, so what message does she think this sends to companies that break the rules?
Shabana Mahmood
What the shadow Minister should have done first is apologise for being part of an Administration who opened the social care route, which was open to such horrifying levels of abuse. That route was closed by this Government, which was the right action to take. Since we have been in government, 1,000 sponsor licences have been revoked, and we will continue to take action. We are already following up on the newspaper investigation that the hon. Lady refers to, and we will keep revoking licences, so that only legitimate businesses with proper jobs are able to sponsor workers to come to our country.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
British people have watched in horror over the past weeks as President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement squads have murdered, kidnapped and oppressed people. Even infants and children have not escaped this rough treatment. The Conservatives have suggested that they would like to introduce a removals force styled on ICE, and we can only guess what the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) would do if he was in charge, even if he concedes that ICE has “gone too far” on occasion. Will the Home Secretary condemn Trump’s ICE squads, and will she reassure us that we will not see ICE squads on the streets of Britain?
Dan Jarvis
We are taking more steps. The new high streets taskforce will look at whether the current data sharing between agencies in supporting enforcement teams is appropriate in order to maximise our response to be as effective as possible. The Government will also publish a new anti-money laundering and asset recovery strategy this summer, which will set out further ambitious measures to strengthen our fight against money laundering, including through better sharing and exploitation of financial information across the system.
Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
Organised criminality is behind much of the money laundering that we see on our high streets, which is why my Committee last week launched an inquiry looking at organised criminality and the role it plays in the crime we see in neighbourhoods up and down the country. Will the Minister set out the support the Home Office is giving to the National Crime Agency on this issue and how he envisages the NCA working with the 12 mega-forces and the national police force envisaged in the White Paper?
The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Alex Norris)
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his community. He has raised the issue of these hotels with me on multiple occasions and I know that he will continue to do so until they are closed. He is exactly right; for the reasons he mentions, hotels are a very bad place to accommodate those seeking asylum. He will have heard the commitment from myself and the Home Secretary: we will get them closed, and we will do so within this parliamentary term.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Deng Majek from Sudan is an illegal small boat migrant who was sentenced last week to 29 years in prison for the brutal murder of Rhiannon Whyte. He stabbed Rhiannon 23 times as she desperately tried to defend herself. Given timing of Majek’s arrival, in the summer of 2024, he would have been eligible for deportation to Rwanda, but Labour cancelled the Rwanda plan and instead accommodated this illegal immigrant in a hotel at taxpayers’ expense. Does the Home Secretary now accept that it was a huge mistake to cancel, just before it started, the Rwanda plan, which would have seen Majek deported, thereby preventing Rhiannon’s murder?
Shabana Mahmood
The shadow Home Secretary has only picked up this new policy of leaving the ECHR in opposition; it is not one that the Conservatives took up when they were in government. [Interruption.] I am afraid he is now just carping from the sidelines, to which he has been condemned by the British people for failing to control our borders. It is this Government who are sorting out the abject mess in our migration system left by the Conservatives—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Mr Philp, please can you calm down? It does not look good on TV for anybody to be shouting somebody else down.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
We are putting more money into policing. We are introducing respect orders. We are bringing back the rule that any theft of items whose value is under £200 must be investigated by the police. We are putting thousands more officers into our town centres. We are working with retailers to use new technology to tackle crime. We are introducing live facial recognition to get these nasty criminals locked up where they belong. I am very much looking forward to working with my hon. Friend, and perhaps even visiting her constituency at some point.
Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)
In recent weeks, those warning that a rapid dip in net migration could harm public services and the economy span left and right, including commentators such as Fraser Nelson, not known for his softness on this sort of thing. It is no secret that the Government are struggling to deliver growth after their two damaging Budgets and stubborn refusal to join a customs union with the EU. Is the Home Secretary totally certain that her plans on immigration will not further harm the economy and public services like our precious NHS?