Speeches by Eagle.

“We are looking at the current model of provision of both accommodation and services that we have inherited. For the future, we are looking to see whether we can pilot different approaches. Some of that may be localised with wraparound services. Some of it may be local authorities just providing accommodation or other o…”

“Clearly, scientific age assessment and/or photographic age verification is a very important part of what we are trying to develop, so that we can have more of an assurance particularly on the cusp of child and adult when people come to us with no ID and claim that they are children. There are safeguarding issues either…”

“They can go to the accommodation provider and say, “I am a child”, and if they do that then the accommodation provider for safeguarding reasons would contact the local authority.”

“There are obligations with respect to this. Clearly, if there is a child who turns up mistakenly in adult accommodation and they claim they are a child when they get there, the local authority must be contacted, and the local authority will do what is known as a Merton assessment. We do not knowingly disperse children …”

“We became aware of problems in relation to Stay Belvedere Hotels Ltd at the beginning of this year, and we became aware of performance issues—non-performance-related issues, I should say—with that chain. They provided 51 hotels to the portfolio that Clearsprings had, and we made it clear, following information that we …”

“Yes, higher than when it was first set, for understandable reasons.”

“From end-to-end, it is £300 million and something.”

“In future?”

“You might think that in a procurement, but if you have a contract with an organisation with KPIs and performance matrices and mechanisms, you have to put that contract into effect. We are working within the context of the contracts that were signed in 2019.”

“The 2019 contract lasts 10 years with break clauses coming up in 2026. We inherited those contracts. We are spending time focusing much more on performance and all the indicators that colleagues have talked about in more detail before you today. We will always bear in mind the performance that we get from our contracto…”

“When? Do you mean in 2019?”

“Which part of the contract are you referring to and when?”

“It hasn’t gone down. That is the cost to date, and there is still three and a half years more to run on the contract. The NAO got slightly the wrong end of the stick on that one. We are expecting the value of the contract to be higher.”

“I have come across varying views of Migrant Help when I have been out and about.”

“You are being slightly harsh, but—”

“That is what I think of when I see this. I do not want to make it look like I do not appreciate and support some of the really good work that Migrant Help have been able to do in this area, but they are not perfect.”

“I would ask a more philosophical question than that, almost, which is: is a centralised system that runs like that the model?”

“In general, they do a good job in difficult circumstances. When I have talked to service users, I get that impression. However, if somebody has had a difficult time trying to contact them, they will have a different view. Trying to get through to the helpline, particularly for more complex assistance, has always been m…”

“They are, but they have been changed to be more realistic.”

“The KPIs were set at a time when it was envisaged to be different. The KPIs have been changed to make them a bit more realistic. All this happened before I got here, but I wanted to give you a flavour of how the landscape in which they have to operate has changed from the beginning of the contract.”