The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 28 July 2022.
The UK and Ghana has a deep and long-standing relationship, and we are powerful allies when confronting the scourge of organised criminal gangs that operate across our borders.
Ghana is the beacon of freedom and democracy in West Africa and through our joint work we are tackling global threats and cracking down on the threats to our mutual security.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 20 July 2022.
Today will see the publication of two documents supporting the Home Office’s strategy for the future border: “An Independent review of Border Force” (CP 700) and the “New Plan for Immigration: Legal Migration and Border Control” strategy statement (CP 706). These documents have been laid before both Houses today and will be made available on gov.uk.
The strategy statement sets out our ambition for transformational change for everyone using our systems and crossing the UK border. We will deliver a fully end-to-end digital customer experience which will bring benefits to all.
This is an ambitious plan in which we will continue to deliver a world-leading legal migration and border system. The plans we have set out in this strategy statement are essential for a streamlined, digital system which responds to customer needs and enhances the security of the UK. Our flagship permission to travel scheme will mean that it is easier for our friends to come to and contribute to the UK, but harder for those not using legal means to come here. We will be more easily able to tackle problems upstream and know more about those who use the system to come here.
I would like to thank Alexander Downer for his work in conducting the BF review and all those who have been involved. The recommendations in this report are our commitment to a package of reforms for Border Force so it can continue to respond to emerging threats, keep our border secure, and ease the passage of legitimate travellers and goods across our border in a world that is very different from when Border Force was formed a decade ago.
The publication of the strategy and report on the BF review is a pivotal step in achieving the vision for the future of the border which will increase public confidence that we are improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the UK border and making it more secure to tackle future challenges.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 19 July 2022.
The Senior Salaries Review Body published its report today. The SSRB considered the pay and allowances for Police and Crime Commissioners and Police, Fire and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales. The Government value the independent and expert advice of the SSRB. We thank the Chair and members for their thoughtful commentary and observations.
The SSRB’s report recommends:
PCCs should move to three pay groups, in line with the proposals for chief constables.
With effect from 1 May 2022, PCC pay should be increased to:
Group 1: £108,800
Group 2: £94,300
Group 3: £83,200
PCC pay increases in future years in line with the SSRB-recommended annual pay increase for chief police officers between formal SSRB reviews in line with the electoral cycle.
A pay supplement of 7.5% for PCCs taking on the additional responsibility for fire and rescue governance.
A loss-of-office payment for PCCs in line with that available to Members of Parliament.
That home security for PCCs is treated as a business expense and not a personal benefit.
PCCs and PFCCs play an important role in reducing crime and protecting the public, providing their communities with the opportunity to have a direct say in policing in their area through their locally elected and accountable PCC or PFCC.
It would be inappropriate for me to make significant or structural changes to PCC remuneration. I believe these issues should be considered when the future structure of chief police officer pay is settled. Therefore, we have chosen not to accept in full the SSRB’s recommendations.
The Government have decided that with effect from 1 May 2022, the current PCC salary pay bands will be increased by £1,900, in line with the award for all police officers.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 19 July 2022.
The eighth report of the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) was published today. The body considered the pay and allowances for police officers up to and including the chief officer ranks in England and Wales. The Government value the independent and expert advice of the PRRB. We thank the Chair and members for their thoughtful commentary and observations.
Our police officers play a vital role in this country, fighting crime and keeping us safe. They do an extraordinary job under increasingly extraordinary circumstances, and it is right that they are fairly rewarded.
The review body recommends a consolidated increase of £1,900 to all police officer pay points for all ranks from 1 September 2022, equivalent to 5% overall. It is targeted at those on the lowest pay points to provide an uplift of up to 8.8%, and between 0.6% and 1.8% for those on the highest pay points. The Government recognise that increases in the cost of living are having a significant impact on the lower paid. It is within this context and after careful consideration that we have chosen to accept this recommendation in full. As at March 2022 there are 142,526 police officers who will receive this consolidated increase.
The PRRB also recommends that the Police Constable Degree Apprentice minimum starting salary—currently £19,164—should be raised to pay point 0—£23,556 with effect from 1 September 2022. This recommendation is accepted in full.
The review body further recommends an increase to London weighting and the dog handlers’ allowance of 5%; and that parties should review the requirement and appropriate level for the dog handlers’ allowance. These recommendations are also accepted in full.
To support this, the Home Office will, from within its existing budgets, provide forces with additional funding for pay over the spending review period of at least £70 million in 2022-23, £140 million in 2023-24 and £140 million in 2024-25.
Pay awards this year strike a careful balance between recognising the vital importance of public sector workers, while delivering value for the taxpayer, not increasing the country’s debt further, and being careful not to drive even higher prices in the future. Sustained higher levels of inflation would have a far bigger impact on people’s real incomes in the long run than the proportionate and balanced pay increases recommended by the independent pay review bodies now. These awards should be viewed in parallel with the Government’s £37 billion package of wider support for the cost of living, which is targeted towards those most in need.
Most overall pay awards in the public sector are similar to those in the private sector. Survey data suggests the median private sector pay settlement, which is the metric most comparable to these pay review body decisions, was 4% in the three months to May. Median full-time salaries are higher in the public sector, and public sector workers also benefit from some of the most generous pensions available.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 11 July 2022.
I am pleased to announce that Her Majesty the Queen has approved the appointment of Sir Mark Rowley QPM as the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, following my recommendation after a highly competitive recruitment process. I also had regard to the views of the Mayor of London, as occupant of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime.
The Metropolitan Police Service faces major challenges, having been moved to the engage phase by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS), and needs to demonstrate sustained improvements in order to regain public trust in London and nationally. It is vital that the right person is in place to take on the biggest leadership role in policing in this country. I expect the new commissioner to work with HMICFRS’s policing performance oversight group to make the necessary improvements.
Sir Mark brings a wealth of experience with him and I am confident he will be able to exercise the strong and decisive leadership required, in order to deliver the sustained improvements that are so urgently needed. This will be a difficult time for the force as it seeks to regain the public’s trust, but I am confident that Sir Mark is the right person to meet this challenge.
At a time when the Government are investing record sums into policing—including the recruitment of 20,000 additional police officers across England and Wales—the new commissioner will need to focus on delivering the aims we set out in our Beating Crime Plan: cutting crime, reducing the number of victims and make our capital and country safer. But, reflecting the context in which this recruitment has been made, I also want the new commissioner to focus on getting the basics right, restoring confidence in policing, and ensuring that Londoners and those who visit our capital city get the service they deserve from the Metropolitan police.
Support for police is often based on personal experience, and the public have a set of basic expectations of the criminal justice system. They expect to be able to contact their local police, knowing their names and how to reach them. They want to see police in their neighbourhood confronting crime and making streets safer. They expect crimes to be investigated, offenders caught and punished, and when a case proceeds for justice to be swift and certain. The Beating Crime Plan outlines our approach to this, but to be successful the new commissioner must embed the aims and objectives in wider strategic plans.
While it is the responsibility of the Mayor to hold the commissioner to account for the Metropolitan police’s transformation, I will be closely monitoring progress. I look forward to working with them both to drive real change in the force. The public deserve nothing less.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 8 July 2022.
Sir Mark Rowley is a distinguished and exceptionally experienced police officer, having served the people of the West Midlands and Surrey before guiding the capital through some of its most challenging moments in the wake of the 2017 terror attacks, as the Met’s then head of counter-terrorism.
He now takes on one of the most important and demanding jobs in policing, leading the country’s largest force at a time when public trust in the Metropolitan Police has been severely undermined by a number of significant failings. Rebuilding public trust and delivering on crime reduction must be his priority.
This will be a challenging period, but with a focus on tackling neighbourhood crime and delivering the basics of policing, Sir Mark is committed to tackling the significant challenges confronting the force and to making London’s streets safer by driving down crime and bringing more criminals to justice.
As the largest police force in the country, we have supported the Met to recruit 2,599 extra police officers and increased their annual policing budget to £3.24 billion in 2022 to 2023. I look forward to working closely with Sir Mark to ensure this investment drives essential change to ensure the force delivers for the people of London.
The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 4 July 2022.
It is an important development that the UK and Nigeria have signed an agreement to co-operate on migration issues, to tackle illegal migration and the significant threat it poses to both nations.
The deal will mean that operational teams in both countries will share their expertise to take the fight to criminal people smugglers who are responsible for a wider range of criminality and put profit before people while undermining the security of our two countries. This landmark agreement will increase the deportation of dangerous foreign criminals to make our streets and country safer.
This is our New Plan for Immigration being put into action.
The statement made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on 15 June 2022.
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the Government’s world-leading migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda.
The British people have repeatedly voted for controlled immigration and the right to secure borders. This is a Government who act and hear that message clearly, and we are determined to deliver that. Last night we aimed to relocate the first people from our country who arrived here through dangerous and illegal means, including by small boat. Over the course of this week, many and various claims to prevent relocation have been brought forward. I welcomed the decisions of our domestic courts—the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court—to uphold our right to send the flight. However, following a decision by an out-of-hours judge in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, minutes before our flight’s departure, the final individuals remaining on the flight had their removal directions paused while their claims were considered.
I want to make something absolutely clear: the European Court of Human Rights did not rule that the policy or relocations were unlawful, but it prohibited the removal of three of those on last night’s flight. Those prohibitions last for different time periods but are not an absolute bar on their transfer to Rwanda. Anyone who has been ordered to be released by the court will be tagged while we continue to progress their relocation. While this decision by the Strasbourg court to intervene was disappointing and surprising given the repeated and considered judgments to the contrary in our domestic courts, we remain committed to this policy. These repeated legal barriers are very similar to those that we experience with all other removal flights. We believe that we are fully compliant with our domestic and international obligations, and preparations for our future flights and the next flights have already begun. Our domestic courts were of the view that the flight could go ahead.
The case for our partnership with Rwanda bears repeating. We are a generous and welcoming country, as has been shown time and time again. Over 200,000 people have used safe and legal routes to come to the UK since 2015, and most recently Britons have opened their hearts and their homes to Afghan nationals and Ukrainian nationals. But our capacity to help those in need is severely compromised by those who come here illegally and, as we have discussed in this House many, many times, seek to jump the queue because they can afford to pay the people smugglers.
It is illegal, and it is not necessary, because they are coming from other safe countries. It is not fair, either on those who play by the rules or on the British taxpayers who have to foot this bill. We cannot keep on spending nearly £5 million a day on accommodation, including hotels. We cannot accept this intolerable pressure on public services and local communities. It makes us less safe as nation, because those who come here illegally do not have the regularised checks or even the regularised status and because evil people-smuggling gangs use the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains to fund other appalling crimes that undermine the security of our country. It is also lethally dangerous for those who are smuggled. People have drowned at sea, suffocated in lorries and perished crossing territories.
The humane, decent and moral response to all this is simply not to stand by and let people drown or be sold into slavery or smuggled, but to stop it. With that, inaction is not an option—or at least, not a morally responsible one. This is, as I have said repeatedly, a complex, long-standing problem. The global asylum system is broken and between 80 million and 100 million people are now displaced, and others are on the move seeking better economic opportunities. An international problem requires international solutions.
The UK and Rwanda have shown the way forward by working together, and this partnership sends a clear message that illegal entry will not be tolerated, while offering a practical, humane way forward for those who arrive to the UK via illegal routes. It has saddened me to see Rwanda so terribly misrepresented and traduced in recent weeks. It is another example of how all too often, critics not only do not know what they are speaking about, but seek to vilify another country that has a good track record when it comes to refugees and stepping up to international responsibilities.
Rwanda is a safe and secure country with an outstanding track record of supporting refugees and asylum seekers. Indeed, we are proud that we are working together, proud that the UK is investing in Rwanda and helping that great country to thrive, and proud that those who are relocated to Rwanda will have an opportunity to thrive as well. They will be given generous support, including language skills, vocational training and help with starting their own businesses or finding employment, but I am afraid that the usual suspects, with the blessings of Opposition Members, have set out to thwart and even campaign against these efforts and, with that, the will of the British people.
It would be wrong to issue a running commentary on ongoing cases, but I would like to say this: this Government will not be deterred from doing the right thing, we will not be put off by the inevitable last-minute legal challenges, and nor will we allow mobs to block removals. We will not stand idly by and let organised crime gangs, who are despicable in their nature and their conduct—evil people—treat human beings as cargo. We will not accept that we have no right to control our borders. We will do everything necessary to keep this country safe, and we will continue our long and proud tradition of helping those in genuine need.
Many of us have met refugees, both abroad and on British soil, and listened to the stories that are frankly chilling and heartbreaking. It suits Opposition Members to pretend that those on this side of the House do not care, but as you referred to in the earlier point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, on this side of the House such accusations are a grotesque slur. What is truly chilling is listening to opponents going on about how awful this policy is while offering no practical solutions while lives are being lost.
Helping to develop safe and legal routes to this country for those who really need them is at the heart of this Government’s work. Having overseen efforts to bring to the UK thousands of people in absolute need, including from Hong Kong, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, I am the first to say that controlled immigration, including by refugees, is good and outstanding for our country, but we simply have to focus on supporting those who need it most, and not those who have picked the UK as a destination over a safe country such as France. It is no use pretending that those people are fleeing persecution when they are travelling from a safe country.
Our capacity to help is not infinite, and public support for the asylum system will be fatally undermined if we do not act. The critics of the migration and economic development partnership have no alternative proposal to deal with uncontrolled immigration. As on so many other issues, the Labour party and the SNP are on the wrong side of the argument. With their arguments, we would see public trust in the system only being corroded. That is irresponsible and utterly indifferent to those who we seek to help and support.
I have always said that I will look at all proposals to reduce illegal migration and illegal entry to our country, even those that Opposition Members might put forward, although we are still waiting for them. [Interruption.] Fundamentally, the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) and others do not think there is a problem, which is why they do not have a solution. They still stand for open borders—pure and simple. Meanwhile, this Government want to get on with not just delivering what the British people want, but reforming our systems so that they are firm and fair for those who pay for them and those who need our help and support.
The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 7 June 2022.
This country will not be held to ransom by so-called activists unconcerned about putting the lives of others in danger.
These death traps don’t just put lives at risk, they divert precious police resources away from where they are needed most.
These measures will give our police the powers they need to crack down on this lawlessness and continue to make our streets safer.
The comments made by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, on 1 June 2022.
Our world-leading partnership with Rwanda is a key part of our strategy to overhaul the broken asylum system and break the evil people smugglers’ business model.
Today’s announcement is another critical step towards delivering that partnership and, while we know attempts will now be made to frustrate the process and delay removals, I will not be deterred and remain fully committed to delivering what the British public expect.