Speeches by Eagle.

“Hard, tough cross-border policing takes time. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may laugh, but on a recent joint action day led by German and Belgian authorities, 500 German officers arrested targets and seized dozens of boats and engines, including some in warehouses targeted by the National Crime Agency. On a join…”

“We wish Mr Speaker all the best on his extremely important visit to our parliamentary colleagues in Ukraine. Following the fall of the Assad regime, the Home Office withdrew the country policy and information note and guidance on Syria and temporarily paused interviews and decisions on Syrian asylum claims. This was, a…”

“I understand the heightened anxiety among Syrian asylum seekers, but the Home Office relies on the country information in order to make decisions on whether particular people need protection, and that information is currently in the middle of quite profound change. When we are in a position to make decisions against ne…”

“As I said earlier, we are keeping under close review the pause in Syrian asylum applications. We cannot decide asylum applications against a country policy that is no longer relevant because of the rapid change in that country. We will resume those decisions as soon as we can.”

“We do not comment on where hotels are, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there are 216 hotels across the whole country. We will be getting those numbers down as quickly as we can.”

“Some 84,000 people crossed the channel from the day the Rwandan deal was signed to the day it was scrapped. The Conservatives failed to deter a single boat or deport a single person. Instead, they spent £700 million and sent four people—four failed asylum seekers—to start a new life in Kigali with free housing, free pr…”

“The Government are today playing host to law enforcement counterparts from across the globe to discuss our joint response to organised immigration crime. The UK is not only hosting that summit but leading the way in its response to this appalling, evil trade, including through new powers introduced in the Border Securi…”

“The summit is dealing with source countries. We are looking at how we can co-operate with countries all the way along the routes used by smuggling gangs to ensure that the right messages, rather than very slick organised immigration gang advertising, are conveyed.”

“We have a duty to ensure that those arriving on our shores who claim asylum are properly processed. The Conservatives prevented themselves from doing that by becoming obsessed with the Rwanda scheme and they left us with a huge backlog. We will speed up immigration processing so that we can deal with those people, prot…”

“We are doing all that we can with the existing contracts to drive value for money, and we are also looking to pilot some other potential alternatives to supply.”

“I do not apologise for deporting people who have no right to be here or who have been through the system and are discovered neither to be asylum seekers nor to have any right to stay in the country. I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the desperate situation that people are in. They could claim asylum in th…”

“Asylum seekers who wait longer than a year are allowed to work, so long as that wait has not been caused by them—that is, a wait through no fault of their own. We have that system now, and I am not considering shortening the length of time that must elapse before work is allowed.”

“Our aim is to close asylum hotels and get out of what we feel is an unsustainable situation as quickly as practicable.”

“We do not believe that it is sustainable to keep hotel use indefinitely, and we are working to close hotels.”

“No.”

“That certainly should not be happening. If my hon. Friend wants to talk to me about it, I will try to see what happened in that instance.”

“I will write to the hon. Gentleman.”

“I believe that people need to think about the language they use and the impressions of human beings they give when they talk about this very emotive issue. It raises huge concern, I know. As a Government, we have certainly got to do all we can to try to reassure people that we can get this system back under control, af…”

“I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman raises that issue with the Chancellor.”

“It is clearly important that overseas development moneys are used to try to prevent the flows of people that have been the result of collapses in various countries. We in the Home Office will do all we can to minimise the spend that we currently take from the overseas development aid budget.”