Migration: Settlement Pathway Debate

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Department: Home Office

Migration: Settlement Pathway

Warinder Juss Excerpts
Thursday 20th November 2025

(1 day, 5 hours ago)

Commons Chamber
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Judith Cummins Portrait Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
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Order. Members will notice that we have two debates after this business. I am going to finish this statement in around 10 minutes, so I ask remaining Members please to keep their questions short and the Minister to keep her answers short.

Warinder Juss Portrait Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)
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I ask, as someone who was not born in this country, whether the Home Secretary agrees that we should not stop talking about the benefits of immigration while managing migration. As she has already acknowledged, will she confirm that we will always offer sanctuary to those truly fleeing peril? Does she accept that for those people, we should be making settlement and integration into British society quicker and easier, not more difficult?

Shabana Mahmood Portrait Shabana Mahmood
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I hope my hon. Friend will reflect on how I opened my statement today and how I closed it. I see the benefits of migration. I would not be here if this country had not welcomed my parents. It is literally the story of my life and how I have managed to get from there to this Dispatch Box today, so I very much feel those benefits personally. I will always speak up for them—as I have done today, as I did on Monday and as I will always do—as I make the case out there in the country for the need for these reforms. I hope that he and others will always support me on that—I know they will. I have also made clear that we will always offer sanctuary. I want us to be a country that offers sanctuary to those who are in need. That is why it is so crucial that we get order and control back into our asylum system and open up new safe and legal routes. It is important that today I have confirmed that those safe and legal routes will have the earlier 10-year path to settlement. That is what will enable the integration we all want to see.