Category: Speeches

Bell Ribeiro-Addy – 2022 Question on Quality of Temporary Accommodation in Hotels for Asylum Seekers

The question asked by Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

My constituency hosts some of the hotels that are currently housing refugees and asylum seekers, and I have dealt with a number of cases specifically regarding the conditions there. Earlier, the Minister described such hotels as “luxurious”, and I have to ask whether he has ever been to one and seen what I have seen, which is whole families living in cramped conditions, given food so bad that it makes them sick, and having to deal with infestations of bedbugs and other things that are making them ill. These hotels are dire. They are not secure or safe, and they are certainly not suitable for vulnerable children. Will the Minister admit that the Home Office has received a number of complaints about that, and agree to review and assess conditions in those hotels?

Robert Jenrick

If the hon. Lady has specific allegations, I suggest she brings those to me and I will happily look into them. I have visited hotels, and in general I have been reassured that they meet the right standard of decency. As I said earlier, it is not appropriate that we are putting up asylum seekers in luxurious hotels, and numerous examples in the press of accommodation that is not appropriate have been brought to my attention since I took this role. We have to respect the taxpayer and ensure that we put up asylum seekers in sensible accommodation. Decency is important and will be a watchword for us, but deterrence must also be suffused through our approach. We do not want to create a further pull factor for individuals to make that perilous crossing across the channel, and we must make the UK significantly less attractive to illegal immigration than our EU neighbours.

07/11/2022
Andy Carter – 2022 Question on the Use of Fir Grove Hotel in Grappenhall for Asylum Seekers

The question asked by Andy Carter, the Conservative MP for Warrington South, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

On Thursday, I was notified by the Home Office that the Fir Grove Hotel in Grappenhall would become an asylum centre the following day. There was no discussion with the borough council and no notification to local residents. It is in the middle of a residential area, fewer than 200 yards from a primary school. I am sure that my right hon. Friend would agree that it is simply not acceptable for the Home Office to steamroll ahead with such a decision without the necessary consultation with local residents. I would be grateful if he would meet me to discuss that situation and how we can review and reverse that decision.

Robert Jenrick

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend so we can discuss the issue and he can represent the views of his constituents. I can inform the House that I have agreed with my officials at the Home Office that, as a matter of course, all Members of Parliament should be informed of new facilities being opened in their constituency ahead of time. All local authorities should be informed and proper engagement undertaken with them so that we can better understand the specific issues and provide the support that might be needed. It is not right that MPs and councils find out on social media or third hand and I intend to bring that to an end.

07/11/2022
Jeremy Corbyn – 2022 Question on the Use of “Illegal Asylum Seeker” Phrase

The question asked by Jeremy Corbyn, the Independent MP for Islington North, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

Will the Minister confirm that to seek asylum is a perfectly legal thing within international law and, therefore, UK law and that loose use of the words “illegal asylum seekers” is dangerous for the individuals concerned?

Has the Minister’s attention been drawn to the Council of Europe report on pushbacks across Europe of people seeking a place of safety in a number of countries, including this one? They have been pushed back and left in places of enormous danger. Will he confirm that Britain will not be involved in sea-bound pushbacks towards France that leave people in enormous danger? Instead, will he recognise the humanitarian needs of, frankly, deeply desperate people to whom we should be holding out the hand of friendship, not condemnation?

Robert Jenrick

The UK is not involved in pushbacks at sea; we uphold our international obligations in that respect. It is a right for an individual to claim asylum. We want a system whereby those who are fleeing genuine persecution, war or human rights abuses can find refuge in the United Kingdom. The issue that we are grappling with is the sheer quantity of individuals who are choosing to come here, leaving other safe countries such as France. That places an intolerable strain on our system and means that those individuals to whom we want to offer support find themselves in difficult circumstances.

A fair and robust system would not encourage people to come across the channel illegally in small boats. It would be predominantly based on resettlement schemes such as the ones that we have engineered in recent years for people from Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan. That is the system that I want to build in the years ahead.

07/11/2022
Maggie Throup – 2022 Question on Housing Asylum Seekers in Inappropriate Hotels

The question asked by Maggie Throup, the Conservative MP for Erewash, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

As my right hon. Friend is aware, his Department is housing 400 asylum seekers in two hotels in my constituency, sited 50 metres apart on a busy motorway junction. With no basic amenities nearby or extra resources for local services such as healthcare and policing, their location is wholly unsuitable and I fear could lead to significant safeguarding issues. Ahead of our meeting tomorrow, which I thank him for, will he put together a timetable for their closure and in the meantime ensure that Erewash gets extra support to manage the situation on the ground?

Robert Jenrick

My hon. Friend was swift to raise this matter with me as soon as it was brought to her attention. She has raised the issues she has mentioned on the Floor of the House today with me and my officials, and I look forward to meeting her tomorrow to take that forward. As I said in answer to an earlier question, the hotels are not a sustainable answer. We want to ensure that we exit the hotels as quickly as possible and to do that we will need to disperse individuals to other forms of accommodation. We may need to take some larger sites to provide decent but basic accommodation. Of course, we will need to get through the backlog, so that we can get more people out of the system either by returning them to their home country, or granting them asylum so they can begin to make a contribution to the UK.

07/11/2022
Diane Abbott – 2022 Question on Conditions at Manston

The question asked by Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

The House welcomes the fact that the numbers at Manston have gone down, but the Minister will be aware that the concerns, notably of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Neal, were about not just the numbers but the conditions. When he came to give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, he told us that he thought there was a risk of fire, disorder and infection. Is the Minister confident that those risks no longer exist? On unaccompanied children, how many are there in Manston? What effort is being made to safeguard them? For instance, are they having to sleep next to males they do not know? When it comes to unaccompanied children in hotels, can he tell the House specifically how they are being safeguarded?

Robert Jenrick

There should be no unaccompanied children at Manston. Unaccompanied children are taken directly from Western Jet Foil. In some cases when they immediately arrive at Manston, they are taken to specialist hotels, where they are looked after with a range of support provided for them. As I said in answer to a previous question, that in itself is not a desirable outcome. We want to ensure that those young people are quickly taken to better accommodation, particularly foster carers. That relies on us being able to find more. There is a national shortage of foster carers, which is why we put in place a financial package to try to stimulate the market and encourage more people and councils to step up and provide that service.

The right hon. Lady makes an important point about conditions at the site. Conditions were poor when I last visited, but the primary reason for that was the sheer number of individuals there. The staff I met were providing a very good quality of care in difficult circumstances. The food was acceptable, and the health and medical facility was good. The clothing and other support that was provided was something I thought was acceptable and is certainly far in excess of that which would be provided in other European countries.

We have to remember that the individuals who arrive at Manston have literally been hooked out of the sea. We saved their lives just hours previously and many of them have come from significantly worse accommodation such as, for example, the camp at Dunkirk. I am not saying the UK should compare itself with that—we want to be better—but I think the right hon. Lady will find that the facility at Manston is now in a significantly better state and I would be interested in hearing her reflections when she returns.

07/11/2022
Stella Creasy – 2022 Question on Safeguarding for Asylum Seekers

The question asked by Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

The second half of this urgent question was explicitly about the safeguarding of accompanied minors in the hotels. That matters because there are thousands of children—verified children—in those hotels. Last week, we learned that two of them—one a child under the age of 13—were sexually assaulted in a hotel in Walthamstow, and more cases of sexual assaults on children in these hotels have since come to light. We are all clear that those who committed those crimes must be held responsible. We all have duties to those children, just as we have to any other child under state protection.

When I asked the Home Secretary about this, she made a cheap jibe about hotels. The Minister did not even mention those children in his response. He has not yet given us a straight answer. Surely all of us in the House will be concerned about the sexual assault of children of any background. Will the Minister publish the details of all these cases, including how many incidents of violence or sexual assault against children in these hotels have occurred in the past year, what action has been taken, and crucially, what safeguarding the private companies that run these hotels must undertake? If he will not publish those details, that tells us what he thinks about those children and the responsibility that we all have to them.

Robert Jenrick

It is a pity the hon. Lady takes that approach because I take my responsibilities to children, whether accompanied or otherwise, very seriously. We have put in place a wide range of support mechanisms. I mentioned earlier the work we are doing for unaccompanied children. The hotels, most of which are in Kent, have extremely sophisticated support. It is costing the taxpayer up to £500 a night for that accommodation, which gives her a sense of the degree of the support we are making available. The best thing she could do is to support her local authority and encourage others to take more unaccompanied children and families into good-quality local authority accommodation, or to find them foster care in the community. That is the task because we need to disperse these individuals as fast as we can across the country. She may shake her head, but I am afraid that suggests she does not understand that the way to resolve this issue is to help the children out of hotels and into the community as fast as we can.

07/11/2022
Lee Anderson – 2022 Question on Why ‘Illegal Immigrants’ Getting Priority on Housing over UK Residents

The question asked by Lee Anderson, the Conservative MP for Ashfield, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

Now then. When I hear talk of sourcing housing and getting extra hotel spaces for illegal immigrants, it leaves a bitter taste in my throat. Five thousand people in Ashfield want to secure council housing but cannot get it, yet we are debating this nonsense once again. When are we going to stop blaming the French, the European convention on human rights and the lefty lawyers? The blame lies in this place right now. When are we going to grow a backbone and do the right thing by sending them straight back the same day?

Robert Jenrick

My hon. Friend is right that in sourcing accommodation for migrants, we should be guided both by our common desire for decency, because those are our values, and by hard-headed common sense. It is not right that migrants are put up in three or four-star hotels at exorbitant cost to the United Kingdom taxpayer, or that migrants who come here illegally are given preference of any sort over British citizens. That is the kind of approach that we will take going forward.

We will now work closely with our allies in France to ensure that more crossings are stopped in northern France. The Prime Minister will speak with President Macron this week while they are in Egypt, and we hope to take forward that partnership productively and constructively in the months ahead.

07/11/2022
Diana Johnson – 2022 Question on Legality of Holding Asylum Seekers for Over 24 Hours

The question asked by Diana Johnson, the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) on securing this urgent question. Tomorrow, the Home Affairs Committee will visit Manston on its second visit, as we first visited in June. Alongside looking at the overcrowding, the safety issues and the lack of basic facilities, there is a concern about the legality of the Home Secretary’s actions in authorising individuals to be detained at Manston for more than 24 hours. Weekend media reports suggested that she was repeatedly provided with the advice that detaining individuals at Manston for more than 24 hours was illegal. The Sunday Times reported that she had received papers on 4 October stating that the Home Office had no power to detain people solely for welfare reasons or for arranging onward accommodation. Can the Minister explain to the House the legal basis for detaining individuals at Manston for longer than 24 hours?

Robert Jenrick

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady, who chairs the Select Committee, for that question. The law is clear that we should not detain individuals at sites such as Manston for longer than 24 hours, and that is exactly the position that we want to return to as fast as we can.

There are competing legal duties on Ministers. Another legal duty that we need to pay heed to is our duty not to leave individuals destitute. It would be wrong for the Home Office to allow individuals who had only recently arrived in the United Kingdom—the vast majority of those at Manston had been saved at sea by Border Force, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Royal Navy—and who had been brought to the site in a condition of some destitution, to be released on to the rural lanes of Kent without great care. That is why the Home Secretary has balanced her duties and taken the required steps to procure more hotel accommodation as swiftly as we can. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) can see the work that we have already done.

In answer to the first part of the right hon. Lady’s question, the conditions at Manston were poor because there were too many people there, but a wide range of facilities are provided: individuals are clothed, they are fed three times a day, and there is an excellent medical facility. I have seen those things with my own eyes, and I hope that she sees them as well. We need to keep a sense of proportion about the state of Manston.

07/11/2022
James Daly – 2022 Question on Hotels for Albanians

The question asked by James Daly, the Conservative MP for Bury North, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

The question for my right hon. Friend is not how many hotels we can book, but how we can stop the increasing number of migrants coming across the channel this year. We have seen more than 10,000 adult males from Albania aged 18 to 40—that is between 1% and 2% of the population—coming to the United Kingdom. We will not have enough hotels in the country if they continue at that rate. What is his view on the agreement that was entered into on 18 November 2002 between the German and Albanian Governments, which allowed Germany to deport Albanians who did not arrive in the country with a valid residence permit? That would allow us to take quick action to take people out of the country who should not be here.

Robert Jenrick

My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. We want our asylum system to be available to those who truly need it—those who are fleeing persecution, war and human rights abuses around the world. We should not be a harbour for those who are essentially economic migrants coming from safe countries such as Albania. We need to change that. We have now negotiated a return agreement with Albania and 1,000 Albanians have already been returned home under that. I now want to see—I know my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary shares my view—a fast track whereby Albanians who do not meet our asylum criteria have their cases processed quickly and are swiftly returned home. It cannot be right that we are seeing thousands of Albanians making this crossing and essentially taking advantage of the welcome and hospitality afforded to them here in the UK.

07/11/2022
Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP Spokesperson on Immigration and the MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) on securing this urgent question and on his persistent scrutiny of these issues. Surely we have now reached the point where the Home Office can no longer be left responsible for the safety of those children. Hundreds are missing and thousands more are stuck in hotels outside the child protection system. Children are reportedly pressurised to claim to be adults and are increasingly misidentified as adults. There have been harrowing accounts of assault and rape; there is general evidence of fear and depression; and adults are not even being properly disclosure checked. Can we have a cross-Government taskforce, headed by the Prime Minister, to get children into local authority care instead of into more hotels?

Progress in moving people out of Manston is welcome, but it massively begs the question why that was not possible last month. To help the Minister to free up accommodation, will he prioritise the outstanding claims of the 15,000 or so Syrians and Afghans, who should be comparatively easy to identify as refugees and to award their status? Will he suspend the pointless process that saw staff identify just 83 inadmissible claims out of 16,000 cases? For goodness’ sake, instead of wasting their time on that, they should be looking at asylum claims and the backlog.

Robert Jenrick

The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that the UK Government pressurise any individual to falsely identify as a child. It is the people smugglers who do that; we are doing everything we can to clamp down on it. I have been to Western Jet Foil at Dover to meet the Border Force staff who try to make those assessments. At times, up to 20% of the adult males who arrive at Western Jet Foil claim to be under 18, when clearly the number is substantially less than that. We have already changed the law, which I think the SNP voted against, to change the way in which those tests are administered, and if we need to make further legal changes, we will.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is wrong that many children, in particular unaccompanied children, are in hotel accommodation. I want to change that. The way to do that is to encourage more local authorities throughout the United Kingdom to accept those individuals and to help them into private or state foster parenting arrangements. We have put in place a significant financial package of about £52,000 a year per foster carer per child to ensure that can happen, plus a £6,000 up-front payment to the local authority to help to accommodate that. The financing is available, so I want to ensure that more local authorities step up. If he can encourage those run by his SNP colleagues in Scotland to do so, I would be happy to support him.

07/11/2022