Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadia Whittome and Shabana Mahmood

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

2. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of implementing asylum policies similar to Denmark on asylum seekers and refugees.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Shabana Mahmood)]

I will later today be sharing the full details of my plans for far-reaching reforms to the UK asylum system to restore order and control to our borders. We have learned lessons from our international partners, including Denmark; fundamental reform to its system has seen asylum claims at a 40-year low. The impact of this Government’s plans will be to restore order and control to the border, so we can be the open, tolerant and generous country that we know ourselves to be.

[Nadia Whittome]

The Denmark-style policies briefed in the last couple of days are dystopian. It is shameful that a Labour Government are ripping up the rights and protections of people who have endured unimaginable trauma. Is this how we would want to be treated if we were fleeing for our lives? Of course not. How can we be adopting such obviously cruel policies? Is the Home Secretary proud that the Government have sunk to such depths that they are now being praised by Tommy Robinson?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am disappointed at the nature of my hon. Friend’s question. I hope she will look at the detail of the reforms. As I have already said on these matters, we have a proper problem and it is our moral duty to fix it. Our asylum system is broken. The breaking of that asylum system is causing huge division across our whole country, and it is a moral mission for me to resolve that division across our country. I know that the reforms I will be setting out later today can fix the system and, in doing so, unite what is today a divided country.

Asylum Policy

Debate between Nadia Whittome and Shabana Mahmood

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

Let me assure the hon. Member that I am making changes that I will ensure will work. I make no apology for disincentivising routes into this country that basically make people smugglers very, very rich men and fuel other disgusting crimes across Europe and in this country. It is right that we reserve a privileged status for those who get into work and education, as refugees on core protection will be able to do, as well as those who come via safe and legal routes. That should be the proper way that people come into this country and it has better integration outcomes as well.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Earlier the Home Secretary advised that I wait for the detail of the reforms before criticising them. Now the detail is out, and I am afraid it does not reassure me in the slightest. It is hard to know where to begin when so much of what has been announced flies in the face of decency and compassion, but I will focus on family reunion. Limiting access to family reunion for refugees will force children and spouses into the hands of the very people smugglers that the Home Secretary is seeking to smash. It will push them into unsafe dinghies, risking their lives. Would she be comfortable with this?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I urge my hon. Friend to look at the proposals on protection work and study and on safe and legal routes. It is right that we try to pivot to a more humane system that privileges those who come not via paying people smugglers a lot of money. On family reunification, British citizens at the moment have to meet thresholds and various qualifying tests before they can apply for family reunion. I think it is right that we bring the position in relation to refugees through the protection work and study route to the same level.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadia Whittome and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary for the announcement she made today and the Government for listening to bereaved families and surviving victims. It is only right that the inquiry is statutory to ensure that it has the power to compel witnesses and hold those responsible for failings to account. What assurances can she give that the inquiry will be conducted in a timely manner and that the lessons it uncovers will be implemented swiftly to help ensure that similar attacks do not take place?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments, for her support and for assiduously representing the needs of her constituents. As I said, the inquiry will be chaired by Her Honour Deborah Taylor, who is an experienced, senior retired judge. I have every confidence in her. She is already meeting the families of the victims and the survivors, and she has undertaken to ensure that the inquiry works at pace and makes its findings as quickly as possible.

Sentencing Council Guidelines

Debate between Nadia Whittome and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

On diversity in the judiciary, there has been consensus in this House on that point. A lot of effort has gone into encouraging applications from people who may want to consider leaving private practice and becoming judges, which has started to have an effect. Having institutions that are more representative of the country that they represent is an important principle. I hope that there is cross-party consensus that it is important for Parliament to look, at least a little bit, like the people that it seeks to represent. However, I am not sure whether an increase in the diversity of judges is necessarily going to be the fix for the disparity issues that we see in the criminal justice system. That is why I have asked for a review of what the current data is telling us, to tease out whether there is a relationship between those two things. If there is not, then we will need to think more carefully about the other policy levers that might be needed. I think those are proper matters for this House to discuss.

On the hon. Lady’s broader point about the Sentencing Council, I used a power that has never been used before, in the 15 years of the Sentencing Council’s existence, to ask it to think again. I have done everything the proper way: I asked it to think again and I engaged with the Sentencing Council. At the end of last week, it told me that it was going to stick with and publish the guideline, and that it would come into force today, 1 April, which is why I said I would legislate. I brought forward a Bill, which has been published today, and thankfully the Sentencing Council has chosen to pause the guideline until Parliament has had its say. I have done everything exactly as I should have done, instead of rushing to rhetoric, which I do not believe solves anything.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

Pregnant women and new mothers are at high risk in custody. They are seven times more likely to experience a stillbirth and at least two baby deaths have taken place in recent years. Among other important measures, the Sentencing Council has issued guidance on the use of prison sentences for pregnant women and new mothers, which were supposed to come into effect today. Any delay to that risks causing untold, preventable harm. I am relieved that the Lord Chancellor has committed to protecting that guidance, but how quickly will it be implemented, because women cannot wait any longer?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I can offer my hon. Friend immediate reassurance. The Bill that we have published today is a very targeted Bill on the ability of the Sentencing Council to bring forward guidelines relating only to pre-sentence reports and personal characteristics. It is a very tightly focused Bill and nothing in that Bill affects any Court of Appeal precedent, and there is already strong Court of Appeal precedent on the desirability of a court obtaining pre-sentence reports before it passes sentence in cases involving pregnant women and women who have recently given birth.

More widely, on the issues of policy relating to women in the criminal justice system, I hope my hon. Friend will welcome the fact that I have set up the women’s justice board specifically to look at the needs of female offenders across the whole criminal justice system. I am determined—it is a position of policy for this Government—that we will send fewer women to prison and ultimately have fewer women’s prisons. That is properly a matter for policy. I am sure it will be contested in this House, but that is the realm of politics, Parliament and ultimately the ballot box.