Speeches by Lowe.

“My questions are these. Where are they now? What is the Minister doing to detain them? Where did they come from? What are their convictions? How has this been allowed to happen?”

“I do agree with the hon. Member’s helpful intervention. Unvetted and unknown men—sex pests, misogynists, and even far worse—are in our communities, on our streets and near our schools, in the thousands and thousands. This is a national security emergency and must be treated as such. The evidence is undeniable. I have s…”

“I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, and I will come to that point in a minute, but I completely concur. To recap, I asked the Home Office “what information the Department holds on the number of irregular migrants defined as absconders.” A Minister replied: “The requested data is not readily accessible from p…”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention.”

“I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and I completely agree with what she has said. The girl was then pushed to her knees before being brutally raped. Another—one of too many. Last year, a 35-year-old old Iranian small-boat migrant raped a 15-year-old girl in an alleyway. He was known to police in Germany, whe…”

“The scale of illegal immigration and its impact on our country is simply not understood in this Parliament, and nor do most Members even care. British people are genuinely scared—women are frightened to go into their towns alone, and parents are terrified to let their children walk to school. It is getting worse and wo…”

“As the Minister may know, we have been running our own independent inquiry into the rape gang scandal, funded by over 20,000 concerned people. Our hearings are taking place in early February next year. We have made immense progress to date, with more to come. Will the Home Secretary meet me to discuss how our work migh…”

“The Chancellor has embarked on a Fabian programme of brutal tax-and-spend economics that might please the dwindling number of Labour voters, but is hollowing out the nation’s productive base. Those who take risks, invest long term and create high-quality jobs are increasingly voting with their feet. Record numbers of t…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I feel sitting on the Government side of the Chamber, but I could not find a spare seat anywhere else, which is a testament to the fact that this subject is contested extremely passionately and that arguably it needs to b…”

“You say zero to £60 million. It cannot be zero.”

“I just had one question in response to the answer on advance payments. One of my colleagues was going to ask a question, but they are not here.”

“In 2023-24, I think I am right in saying that £934 million in UC advances was recovered. You have not published how much was actually lost in UC advances. Will you commit to publishing that? It might be quite useful.”

“People who work within the DWP are telling me that it is a big problem. You are telling us that it is not a big problem. The people who work on the frontline think it is a huge problem.”

“As a matter of interest—you know this better than I do—is there a problem with the advance payments within universal credit? As a matter of interest, the advance payments seem to be the source of a lot of abuse. Would greater sanctions for those abusing the system, such as removal from any welfare payments if they abus…”

“There was a Bulgarian whistleblower, according to the media.”

“That is how they reported it.”

“Having read all this material, it seems to me that official DWP calculation errors are causing nearly as much loss as claimant errors. Why does the Department persist in framing the problem as primarily the claimant, rather than acknowledging serious failings within the DWP? That seemed to me to be a question. After 37…”

“Listening to your answers, which have been very enlightening, I think I am right in saying that the DWP is ramping up surveillance of claimants and issuing sanctions at record levels now. How does that explain the Department simultaneously losing £7.4 billion to fraud in 2023-24? Does that not play to serious issues wi…”

“Yes.”

“Geoffrey, this is quite important because it does not go just to a staffing issue that Clive was raising. You have missed an opportunity to use tagging far more extensively. We can go on to talk about Serco in a minute, but I would like to know why it is that there has been no progress on rolling out tagging.”