The speech made by Tom Hunt, the Conservative MP for Ipswich, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.
You caught me slightly off-guard, Mr Deputy Speaker—I do not think that I have ever been called so early. It was quite dramatic, but one will have to do what one can. Bearing in mind that I have spoken quite fluently on many of these issues recently, it should not be too much of a challenge.
I note that I did not have an answer to my question, when I made an intervention on the shadow Home Secretary, about quite where these individuals should be based. She has opposed former Army barracks being used. She has opposed costly hotels being used. We do not know what the answer is.
I have slightly lost track—I do not know whether the approach of the Opposition is to go through every single mechanism for debating the same issue over and over again— but I think we have had an urgent question; maybe we have had a statement and had it raised at Prime Minister’s questions; and now we are having an Opposition day debate. It seems ever so slightly extraordinary. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) has had nine emails on it. Perhaps we should not use our phones in here but sometimes we do to communicate with our staff on important matters, so I did say to my team, “How many emails have we received?” The answer was, actually, zero, so we will have to confirm that that is the case. But what I have had emails about is the small boats crisis. What I have had emails about is the use of a hotel in the town centre in Ipswich by 200 of these individuals and the impact that that could have on the local area. That is what they have raised. That is what they would much rather we discussed in this Opposition day debate.
Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but perhaps we are ever so slightly at risk of certain colleagues on the Government side of the House occasionally straying into topics that are slightly beyond the strict remit of this debate. But that is because it is incredibly difficult to debate something that we have already debated about eight times. What is there to say about it? Ultimately, it is difficult, when we are dealing with what is quite clearly a highly personalised political campaign against the Home Secretary, not to talk about the wider issues.
Why is it that those on the Opposition Benches dislike the Home Secretary so much? Actually, I took part in an interesting debate yesterday with a Labour shadow Minister who said that the reason why the Home Secretary was in place was that there was some sort of shabby deal with the extreme far right. I thought that it was interesting that the mask slipped there, because the Home Secretary’s views on immigration are actually, I think, shared by tens of millions of people up and down the country. The fact that there are shadow Front-Bench Members who think that many of their constituents’ views are actually the views of the far right is shocking. That tells us everything that we need to know about the Labour party’s approach to immigration—where there is an approach. It suits the Labour party to talk to death this issue about emails, because it has absolutely nothing to say when it comes to tackling the small boats crisis. Labour Members do not know where they would accommodate the individuals in question. They talk vaguely about speeding up the process for dealing with the applications, because we know what their approach to speeding up the applications would be: to grant everyone immediate refugee status, whether they are or not. So admittedly, there would be no queue, but we would also have huge numbers of people staying here indefinitely who quite probably are not refugees. I do not think that is the appropriate approach.
You have allowed me to discuss some of these issues, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I think that is necessary, because we are dealing with a highly personalised campaign against a Home Secretary who Labour Members do not like because they do not like her views. But the news is that those views—a belief in controlling our borders, a belief in controlled immigration, and a belief in distinguishing between genuine refugees and those who illegally, by choice, enter our country from another safe European country—are shared by, I believe, the majority of the country.
My political advice to the Labour party is that its current approach of ignoring the debate is not sustainable in the long term. We would like to know what its approach is. What we do know is that it opposed the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and opposed the Rwanda scheme, but I assume we will be back here soon discussing the same issue about emails.
I think I have concluded what I have to say—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]—much to the enjoyment of the Opposition. In my Westminster Hall debate earlier today, I spoke at length about my concerns about the Novotel situation in Ipswich. I have also made lots of interventions in statements from the Home Secretary in which I have made my support for her clear.
Ultimately, I take issue with the fact that so much parliamentary time is being spent on doing this issue to death. I have received no emails about it. What my constituents are concerned about is illegal immigration and how we tackle it. If we had spent these two or three hours talking in depth about how we can put rocket boosters under the Rwanda scheme, that would have been much more appropriate.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
Will the hon. Member give way?
Tom Hunt
I am not giving way—I am simply not giving way. I have said my piece and I look forward to the wind-ups.
