Angela Eagle MP: speeches

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Speeches

6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source
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It is my first chance to congratulate the right hon. Lady on her election as Chair of the Select Committee. I look forward to coming before her Committee whenever she wishes to talk to me. The Department certainly wishes to keep her informed about what is going on. There has been a significant shift in international co-operation, what with the G7 collaboration on smuggling and the dialogues of the European Political Community, of which there is a meeting tomorrow, at which we hope there will be some announcements. The Government have also been working on bilateral memorandums of understanding and action plans across Europe to achieve a step change in cross-border co-operation, which is the key to beginning to tackle the awful criminal smuggling activity.
6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source
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Yes, my hon. Friend’s constituents can be assured that a great deal of work is going on and more resources are being applied. A lot more intelligence is being gathered, much of which cannot be discussed publicly. We are on it.
6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source
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I could not have put it better myself.
6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source
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The border security command is not focused only on channel crossings; it is much more about using our intelligence capabilities and our operational arm to co-operate across borders, with other jurisdictions and in real time, to ensure that organised criminal gangs can be tracked, apprehended and dismantled. We have given £150 million extra to the border security command to start to do that work. The command on the channel is about saving lives and co-operating with the French once people have reached the beaches. It is far too late once people have reached the beaches; we need to go far back to the origin countries, and do a lot more work there.
21 Oct 2024 · Safe Countries for Removal: LGBT Rights · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and bringing her concerns—concerns that I share—to the attention of the House. We regularly monitor and review the situation in countries of origin, working closely with the Foreign Office, and our resulting country policy and information notes are published on the gov.uk website. Should we assess that the troubling new law to which my hon. Friend refers, or any other changes, fundamentally affect the justification for Georgia’s designation, we will seek to remove it from the list, using the correct parliamentary process.
21 Oct 2024 · Safe Countries for Removal: LGBT Rights · Hansard source
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Addressing such issues is more of a Foreign Office responsibility, which is why we liaise closely with the Foreign Office when considering the production of information notes. If laws that are passed and put into effect in other countries lead to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution for individuals, that is one of the contexts we use to make a decision. That includes LGBT rights, but also other rights.
21 Oct 2024 · Safe Countries for Removal: LGBT Rights · Hansard source
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Mr Speaker, I suspect I might be coughing almost as much as you, but for a completely different reason. We constantly update our assessment of LGBT rights and other factors affecting the safety of different countries, working closely with the Foreign Office and informed by regular independent reports from the chief inspector of borders and immigration. The latest update for Georgia was published last month and is available on the gov.uk website.
21 Oct 2024 · St Helena: UK Immigration · Hansard source
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Why didn’t they go there, then?
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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At this stage, eight or nine weeks into the job, I would not want to rule out any such thing, but tests would have to be applied to it. It would certainly have to be in keeping with international law, and we would have to ensure that it provides value for money and has a reasonable chance of working. I do not want to come here at this stage of the Government’s life and rule anything out, but we would have to think about certain issues—such as schemes according with international law and being good value for money—which would apply to any such potential scheme. However, the Government’s key priority at the moment is to deal with the channel crossings in small boats. That is why we are focusing on creating the border security command, which will help us to get a grip on this difficult but important issue. Border Force maintains 100% checks for scheduled passengers arriving into the UK and facilitated 129 million passenger arrivals last year. The UK is recognised as a global leader in the use of automation at the border, embracing innovation to simplify processes for legitimate travellers, including families, alongside improving the UK’s security and biosecurity. As part of the ongoing development of the entire system, we will extend the use of automation, such as passport gates and e-gates at the UK border. However, we also need to stop those who come here in an irregular manner. Border security command will bring together our intelligence and enforcement agencies, with hundreds of new cross-border police, investigators and prosecutors. It will be equipped with new powers to disrupt and dismantle criminal networks upstream and to prevent the boats from reaching the French coast in the first place. That will be led by a new border security commander, who will provide cross-system strategic leadership and direction across several agencies. That includes the National Crime Agency, Border Force, policing, our intelligence community, immigration enforcement and the Crown Prosecution Service. Work is advancing on the planned border security, asylum and immigration Bill, which will be introduced to this House at the earliest opportunity—I am sure I will see some hon. Members here taking part in the Bill Committee and other processes as the Bill makes its way through this place. The Sandhurst agreement, signed by the last Government, is important, and we have always supported it, but it does not go far enough. It focuses on the French beaches, but we should be stopping the gangs and the boats long before they get that far. This issue is a threat to our security, and that should be reflected in our approach. Our co-operation with key international partners must be as robust as it is for terrorism and other security threats. We will therefore be looking for closer partnerships, with different and better ways of making these criminals pay. We have already spoken to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, and to interior Ministers in Italy, Germany and Turkey, about how to strengthen operations against criminal gangs. We have begun supplying other European countries with more intelligence gathered by the UK on people-smuggling into their countries. We also support Italy in its Rome process, and irregular arrivals to Italy decreased by 17% in the year ending June 2024 compared with the previous year. But we lack important information and are seeking much stronger data-sharing agreements with partner countries. That is how we can actually ensure that the intelligence we share deals with some of the cross-border threats. Those with no right to be here must be removed. The Government have established a new returns and enforcement programme to ensure that asylum and immigration rules are properly respected and enforced. By the end of the year, more of those with no right to be here—including foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers—will have been removed than in any other six-month period over the past five years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal said, we have also had 13 bespoke return flights, which have been chartered since 5 July, returning individuals to a range of countries, including Albania, Poland, Romania, Vietnam and Timor-Leste.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I am unsure what sort of third-country agreements the hon. Gentleman is talking about. There are various agreements that might be relevant, such as the return agreement with Albania, and hopefully work we are doing with Vietnam to return people. Returns for failed asylum seekers and those who have no right to be here are an important part of ensuring the system works properly. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is going down another path, so I will give way if he wants to come in again.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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Well, it is difficult—a difficult thing to do. I think that part of what we need to do in our relations with France is do things in co-operation. It is quite difficult to try to work across the border if you alienate the people that you are working with, so any such things have got to be done operationally with agreement. The co-operation from that point of view is crucial, as is, obviously, saving life at sea. If there is any danger with respect to towing boats, it is very, very difficult to intervene in what is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, in a context where the boats that are being put to sea at the moment are extremely flimsy and are actually falling apart in the water and often, as we saw tragically last week, contain people with no effective lifejacket and no way of staying afloat. So we have to be very, very careful. We have to work with our colleagues in France and co-operate operationally on where we take those in the water; many are returned to France, as it happens, when rescues happen in French territorial waters. It is a balance. I will certainly keep it under review, and I am happy to keep the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston in touch with thinking as it develops. I was on my peroration when I was interrupted very politely by the hon. Gentleman. I congratulate him once again on securing this debate, and congratulate and thank all Members who have contributed to it. I know this is an issue to which we will return.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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We certainly have the ambition to do so. If we have a look, returns plummeted during the period when the last Government were in office. In 2023, 3,225 returns were made; in 2010, we returned 7,157, and of course, in the meantime, levels of illegal immigration have grown exponentially, so we certainly have the view that we want to return to those kinds of levels and do much, much more to ensure that if someone gets to the end of the asylum system and they have failed, there will be consequences and they will be returned. We have also, at the same time, been taking some time to invest in intensive immigration enforcement operations. Over the last few weeks, we have targeted rogue businesses suspected of employing illegal workers. More than 275 premises have been targeted, with 135 receiving civil penalty referral notices for employing illegal workers; 85 illegal migrant workers were detained for removal. We are rapidly expanding this kind of work and certainly have the ambition to continue to do so. We also have voluntary return schemes, which we will continue to use. In order to reduce the foreign national offender prison population and support the Ministry of Justice in alleviating current prison capacity issues, we are also focusing on those who are serving custodial sentences and on maximising returns directly from prison. We are taking rigorous action against foreign national offenders living in the community by actively monitoring and managing cases and resolving barriers to removal. So it is our intention, I emphasise again, to make certain that we can do a lot better than the previous Government did in removing foreign national offenders, which is why immigration removal centres, which can play a vital role in controlling our borders, need to be strengthened and we are increasing our estate capacity to ensure that we have enough detention space for swift, firm and fair returns. The Government are working at pace to optimise the use of the current immigration return estate in the immediate term, and expect to deliver an extra 200 male beds by the end of September. A further 78 beds are expected to be delivered by March 2025. Alongside that uplift, we are increasing vital ancillary provision such as healthcare, legal services and welfare facilities, so that we can expedite returns. I think this is probably the first of many such debates we will have. Actually, I think there is quite a lot we can agree about in terms of the requirement to secure our borders. I can see the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston leaping up and down, so I am happy to give way.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) on securing the debate—he made it here with 30 seconds to go, after taking part in several very important votes. We were wondering whether the debate would be able to start on time, but he managed to make it, although somewhat out of breath. Listening to the debate—I am sure it will be the first of many we will have in this place and other places—it struck me that there are some things we agree on across all parties. First, we have to stop irregular immigration and deal with the appalling gangs behind the small boat crossings. Those gangs care only about the profits they make, which fuel other criminal activity, and are careless, to say the least, of the lives they put at risk in these dangerous crossings. In the recent past these gangs have grown increasingly violent; they have attacked the police and those on the beaches in France whom they have promised to transport to safety. It is therefore vital that we dismantle the gangs and strengthen our border security—I think all of us can agree on that. The crossings have increased hugely in recent years, and the boats are becoming more and more crowded, unseaworthy and dangerous—a point made by several hon. Members.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I agree with my hon. Friend’s observations. Rather than clutching on to something that was clearly very expensive and has not worked, the important thing is to get down to doing the day job. While the Rwanda scheme was being developed, the Home Office stopped doing a lot of other things that it should have been doing. Returns completely plummeted: the Illegal Migration Act 2023 made it impossible to process a range of people, so they were literally sitting in hotels, costing £8 million a day. There are no easy answers—I am not the first Minister for illegal immigration and asylum to say that there are no easy fixes, and I will not be the last—but we have to be able to administer the system, deal with returns and do all the things we have to do to make asylum system outcomes meaningful. If a person’s asylum application fails and their country is safe, they should be returned; there should be a consequence to the asylum decision. The Government have a duty to speed up the asylum system and make it fair, but there must be a consequence if the outcome is not what the asylum seeker wants.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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We have to do what we can to disrupt this trade. We have already seen that the boats are becoming more unseaworthy and that more people are getting on them. Just because that is happening, it does not mean we should do nothing to get in the way of the supply of boats and engines that criminals use to facilitate this trade. Even though they have not agreed on the wherewithal, all Members in the debate have agreed that we should be doing our best to stop this trade. No Government would not want to be in control of their external borders—I think we all agree on that. It is therefore important that we take a much more sophisticated and integrated approach to dealing with these increasingly integrated cross-border gangs. We must not leave the gangs to flourish or organise, reaching even deeper back into places such as Vietnam, but instead harass and disrupt them and their financing. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover and Deal (Mike Tapp) was spot on to say that this has been done before in different contexts, particularly drugs and international crime, and it can certainly be done with this trade. We should try to be a bit more optimistic about the potential for concerted, cross-border action among states to deal with the issue. A different approach must be workable. We believe it must respect international law, which is why the Government scrapped the partnership with Rwanda. The Opposition, and particularly their Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), have been acting as if the Rwanda deal was somehow a deterrent, but from the day it was agreed to to the day it was scrapped, more than 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats. That does not sound like a deterrent. Since it was scrapped, the number of small boat arrivals has gone down 24% compared to the same period last year, and down 40% compared to the same period in 2022. If it was a deterrent, it worked in an extremely odd way.
10 Sept 2024 · Illegal Immigration · Hansard source
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I have not seen the letter to the hon. Gentleman, but I am happy to write to him if he wants a further explanation. We must remember that in its three years in existence, the Rwanda scheme cost hundreds of millions of pounds. We were going to pay £150,000 per person deported to Rwanda; that was part of the agreement. In those three years, only four people were sent to Kigali, and they went voluntarily, so I do not think the Conservatives’ view that the Rwanda scheme was an answer to all their problems and prayers was borne out by the experience of it. Scrapping it has not made a blind bit of difference to some people’s desire to get into this country.
30 Jul 2024 · Budget Responsibility Bill · Hansard source
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Shame!
29 Jul 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I would be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman.
29 Jul 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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The site was purchased by the former Government. I understand the uncertainty that has been caused by this, especially in the local community, and they will want to know the Home Office plans for the site. A decision will be made on the use of the Northeye site at the earliest opportunity and I will keep the hon. Member informed.
29 Jul 2024 · Asylum Claims Backlog · Hansard source
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The Government are aware of the need for a smooth transition between asylum accommodation and other accommodation for those asylum seekers who are granted leave to remain. We understand this issue, and we are considering it.
29 Jul 2024 · Asylum Claims Backlog · Hansard source
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No, the answer is to speed up the asylum system so that we can get proper results much faster, and swiftly remove those who do not have a right to be here, while ensuring that those who do can be integrated and begin to work.
29 Jul 2024 · Asylum Claims Backlog · Hansard source
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After 14 years of Conservative chaos, we inherited an asylum system that not only does not work but costs billions of pounds. We are determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly. Additional caseworkers will be used to clear the backlog of claims and appeals while properly enforcing the rules and ensuring that those with no right to be here are swiftly removed.
29 Jul 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Government Support · Hansard source
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The last Government lost control of the asylum system, which has meant sky-high asylum accommodation costs but also too many cases in which people have fallen through the net and ended up destitute. That has added to the already heavy burden that local authorities have to deal with. This Government will get a grip. We have already set out plans to process asylum claims that have been stuck in record high backlogs, and have given assurances to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government that we will take action to reset the relationship between the Home Office and local authorities.
29 Jul 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Government Support · Hansard source
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No, the best way to deal with the issue of destitution, in my view, is to decide asylum claims quickly and accurately so that those who are entitled to work can do so and can have such recourse, and those who are not can be swiftly removed.
23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source
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I agree with my hon. Friend. The work of the taskforce on child poverty is beginning. All aspects of the mess the Conservatives left us with, including that disgraceful clause, will be looked at.

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