Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
13 July 2026
10 contributions
Topical Questions
I am slightly saddened by the hon. Gentleman’s question. He and I had a very good conversation about the nature of the supported population in his constituency, and he knows that we work very closely, under the policy of successive Governments, for full dispersal so that the challenge of supporting …
I would stress that, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said, no decision has been taken in respect of that site, and suitability assessments continue. We are engaging with the relevant local authorities, health partners, police forces and other partners to minimise the impact on local s…
+8 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
13 July 2026
4 contributions
Ukrainian Refugees
The Government remain grateful to the British public for the generosity shown to Ukrainians who sought sanctuary in the UK. The Ukrainian scheme provides a substantial offer of support and demonstrates our commitment to the Ukrainian people. The Government have been clear from the outset that the of…
I am sad to hear about that case. The hon. Lady partially answers the question for me in the sense that the Government have ensured that Artem will be eligible for a 24-month extension period. That gives greater certainty not just to individuals about their future, but to employers and course leader…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
8 July 2026
European Entry and Exit System
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his important question. The entry-exit system is an EU scheme and its implementation is the responsibility of the European Commission and participating member states. This Government have been working closely with the EU, member states and industry to understand …
Commons
Proceedings
6 July 2026
19 contributions
Rochdale Grooming Gang: Offender Deportation
I will start where any discussion of this nature must always start: with the victims. Over the years, they were subjected to unspeakable crimes, exploited and abused by vile predators and woefully let down by the agencies charged with protecting them. I know that the House will join me in saying tha…
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question and subsequent follow-up. I share her anger, and I share her concern at the anger of the British people, who rightly expect that, when foreign offenders break our laws, they should be removed from our country. That is why we have made removals to the degree…
+17 more contributions in this session
Commons
Proceedings
29 June 2026
Asylum Accommodation
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on asylum accommodation.
It is important to remind the House of the wider context, and in particular the events that have brought us here today. In the years before the general election, the number of people arriving in the United Kingdom illegal…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
8 June 2026
4 contributions
Topical Questions
I assure my hon. Friend and colleagues across the House that we are closing hotels, not opening them.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point. We know that those hotels across the country are providing a focal point for people to do things that they absolutely should not do, and we condemn that behaviour in the fullest terms. Our No. 1 goal is to shut the hotels—that is …
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
8 June 2026
3 contributions
Migration: Safe and Legal Routes
The Government committed to new safe and legal routes in the “Restoring Order and Control” statement, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced that the student refugee route will open this autumn, with arrivals in autumn 2027. We are working with partners to design new routes to ensure …
And I thought the hon. Member was my hon. Friend, Mr Speaker! But what he says speaks to the innate goodness of the Cornish people—it is the same in my own community and across the country. Whether it has been the Syrian scheme, the Afghan scheme, Hong Kong British nationals overseas or Homes for Uk…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
8 June 2026
4 contributions
Illegal Migration
This Government are taking decisive action to restore order and control at our borders. We have removed nearly 70,000 people who have no right to be here, we are overhauling our asylum system to reduce pull factors and we have funded more officers to disrupt organised immigration crime, with interve…
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. When I visited her community, I heard in no uncertain terms on the doorstep how important this issue is to people, as it is for my community and the rest of the country. That is why we are stepping up the international action we have taken, including…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
23 March 2026
5 contributions
Topical Questions
The hon. Gentleman knows that we work very closely with our European counterparts, especially France, our nearest neighbour. He mentions the important work that we do together, which has prevented 40,000 crossings since we took office; we want that work to continue. We are having those conversations…
The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say that under this Government, removals have now reached 60,000. That is up by 31% on our predecessors, so I cannot accept the argument that we are not removing people at pace and at scale. The routes by which people come generally depend on which country they …
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
23 March 2026
6 contributions
Asylum Seekers: Accommodation
Home Office quarterly statistics show that there were 103,426 individuals in asylum accommodation on 30 December 2025, compared with 108,085 on 30 September 2025 and 96,642 on 30 June 2024. Of course, these time periods are not like-for-like comparisons, but for reference colleagues will be interest…
I wish that the previous Government—I suspect that the hon. Gentleman would say the same—had used their time to build some houses, because that is the root of our housing crisis. However, it is undoubtedly true that the estate is running hot, which is why he will be pleased to hear of the figures fa…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 March 2026
4 contributions
Immigration Reforms
That’s me!
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer; I shall certainly follow that direction. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for securing this debate, on a topic he clearly feels very passionate about. He spoke with great power, while also pro…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
9 March 2026
48 contributions
Immigration Policy
The British public expect and deserve an immigration system with order and control. In November, the Home Secretary announced the most sweeping reforms to tackle illegal migration since the second world war, and last week the Government took concrete steps to implement those necessary changes. I hea…
It is a challenge to be lectured on the need for apologies from the architects of the Trussonomics that mean my constituents are paying more on their mortgages month on month. However, we have seen more of that mathematics from the right hon. Gentleman, because he says that spending an average of £1…
+46 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
9 February 2026
2 contributions
Topical Questions
My hon. Friend is a doughty champion for his community. He has raised the issue of these hotels with me on multiple occasions and I know that he will continue to do so until they are closed. He is exactly right; for the reasons he mentions, hotels are a very bad place to accommodate those seeking as…
I can report to the House that we have made 4,000 such disruptions of organised immigration crime. We are working with partners on all flows of illicit trafficking of peoples across the world, at every stage. We are of course working closely with our French neighbours, as well as all the way round t…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
9 February 2026
5 contributions
Asylum Seekers: Hotels
We were elected on a commitment to close all asylum hotels, and that is what we will do. In June 2024, there were 29,561 asylum seekers in hotels, which later peaked at 38,054 in the following December, thanks to the awful legacy of the Conservatives. As we started to grip the crisis in asylum accom…
The hon. Gentleman is undertaking an adventure in statistics. He compared one statistic from before the season of crossings with one statistic from the end of that season, so let us compare like for like. In September 2023, the last time that his colleagues were in government, there were more than 5…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
5 January 2026
4 contributions
Topical Questions
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his work in this area and to the Select Committee for its work and its recent visit. My experience of working with France is that it wants to solve the shared challenge. There is no silver bullet, but my hon. Friend has mentioned ways in which it can be solved. Th…
The hon. Member may have heard me say earlier that we have started the process of hotel exit, which means we have reduced the amount of money we are spending on that. We want all British citizens to be adequately housed, which is why we released the homelessness strategy at the end of last year. Bey…
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
5 January 2026
11 contributions
Asylum Hotels
This Government will close every asylum hotel. We are making progress with spend in this area reduced by a third. We are restoring order and control to the system, speeding up case working, maximising the use of our estate, including ex-military sites, and continuing to increase returns.
The hon. Gentleman knows—I am sure he remembers with a degree of pain from the general election—the commitment we made to close the hotels. Of course, the vast majority of them were opened by Opposition colleagues. We will close those hotels within this Parliament. Colleagues will always want specif…
+9 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
17 December 2025
5 contributions
Asylum Reforms: Protected Characteristics
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) for securing this debate, which has been very interesting. Colleagues have spoken with real passion and purpose, which reflects how strongly they and their constituents feel about th…
I will take an intervention from my right hon. Friend before I go off on a tangent.
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
19 November 2025
16 contributions
Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 37.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has returned to this House in good order. A number of amendments were made in the other place, with all but one made by the Government. Throughout the passage of the Bill to date, the strength of feeling about the importance of a properly functioning …
+14 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
17 November 2025
9 contributions
Topical Questions
I am grateful for that clarification, Mr Speaker.
We are totally clear that those who commit crimes should not get settlement or citizenship in this country; they should be removed. That is why removals have reached their highest level for a decade. We can do much more in this space, which is why t…
I am slightly reluctant to enter into the Brexit theory of everything with the hon. Gentleman. The reality is that we have the settlement we have. The British people rightly want to understand why asylum numbers are falling across Europe but increasing in the UK, and that is why we are taking the ac…
+7 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
17 November 2025
3 contributions
Immigration Removal Centre Contracts
The Home Office has a procurement policy of competition by default, actively engaging with suppliers via the Government “find a tender” service to generate interest and promote competition for immigration removal centre contracts. Bids are evaluated on both technical and price aspects to ensure the …
“Real need” is a very important phrase. The reality is that over this Government’s time in office, we have deported over 50,000 people who have no right to be here—the best period of time in 10 years in this regard. We do need that detention capacity. Things are moving at Campsfield, so perhaps I sh…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Proceedings
29 October 2025
22 contributions
Asylum Seekers: MOD Housing
The use of hotels to house asylum seekers is a disgrace. As Members on both sides of the House know, it is a practice that became widespread long before this Government entered office, and it is one of the clearest indicators of the shambles that we inherited last summer. People across the country a…
I am grateful for those questions, and recognise the anger that the hon. Gentleman has conveyed. I am sorry that he heard in the way he did, and of course I will have that meeting with him. It can be difficult to sequence these things correctly; as all colleagues know, we live in an age of misinform…
+20 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
20 October 2025
5 contributions
Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir John. I assure hon. Members that I will leave more than just a moment of the time remaining.
I want to start by thanking my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for introducing the debate. I have said this be…
The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that these journeys take a very long time, so those are lagging indicators. He also knows that the number of people in hotels currently sits at 32,000, compared with 56,000 in September ’23. The journey is in the right direction. Of course, there are bobbles …
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
15 September 2025
4 contributions
Topical Questions
The hon. Gentleman heard the Home Secretary’s point on the convention, but it is clear that gimmicks such as Rwanda do not work—£700 million for merely four volunteers to go. What works is effective processing, quick decisions and quick removals. That is what we will get under this Government, and i…
In the view of the Home Office, the most important safeguard is the right-to-work checks. That is why we will strengthen them under the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill that is making its way through Parliament, but that will have to be underpinned with rigorous enforcement. That is why …
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Westminster Hall
8 September 2025
9 contributions
Indefinite Leave to Remain
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I express my sincere gratitude for all the kind words from colleagues on this, my first day in the Home Office. What a welcoming party they have proffered me. I greatly enjoyed it.
I also express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for S…
It was quite interesting that the Chamber was so full at the beginning of the debate; indeed, we had the very unlikely spectacle of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) crossing the floor. People can see who has shown an interest in this debate, and they may well dra…
+7 more contributions in this session