Speeches by Cooper.

“My hon. Friend is right that those attitudes towards teenage girls—towards children—and treating them as adults still persist. Baroness Casey quotes a serious case review of a case involving a teenager online. She was just 12 or 13 years old, and was being drawn into the most explicit and abusive chatrooms and pornogra…”

“May I welcome my hon. Friend’s points that she makes about the anger in her community and the anger across British Muslim communities towards the grooming gangs, towards the rape of children and towards these appalling crimes? She has long called for work, including stronger action from the police to be able to go afte…”

“Ten days ago, and this is Baroness Casey’s independent report. Anybody who suggests that she would change her views and reports for anyone has not met her.”

“I do thank my former honourable Friend Ann Cryer, because she did speak out and stand up for children who were being abused. It is because of that that I recognise, as part of the response I made to the 2022 child abuse inquiry and again today, that this has been a historic failure over very many decades. Just as I rec…”

“With permission, I will update the House on the audit the Government commissioned from Baroness Casey on child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, and on the action we are taking to tackle this vile crime—to put perpetrators behind bars and to provide the innocent victims of those crimes with support and justice. T…”

“I do not think the Leader of the Opposition can have read the report and seen the seriousness of its conclusions, because it sets out a timeline of failure from 2009 to 2025. Repeated reports and recommendations were not acted on: on child protection, on police investigations, on ethnicity data, on data sharing and on …”

“That will vary from occupation to occupation. Clearly, if you have something where the training takes a long time, that will be different from something where there may be some additional needs for training, but to be honest, you could do the training in two months. There will be a difference in the approach taken to d…”

“The net migration figures are for people coming to the UK for more than 12 months. There are obviously already a series of different temporary visas and arrangements for businesses—for example, for people who want to come for business meetings in the UK as part of international trade. It is really important that you ca…”

“You are right that people often link the different things, but actually I think people have different attitudes to different aspects of legal and illegal migration. I think people’s strongest concerns are about illegal migration and the dangerous small boat crossings that undermine border security and put lives at risk…”

“I do not have those figures in front of me. I do not know whether we have them—”

“We will have to write to you with that. Obviously, we have set up a system for those who come to the UK on a care worker visa, but then it turns out that the sponsorship of that care worker has had to be revoked because the sponsor was not meeting the proper standards—they did not have proper checks in place, or someti…”

“For a transition period, employers will continue to be able to recruit international care workers who are here already on an alternative legal route. Those who are here legally already, with permission to work, will be able to get care worker jobs and to transition to a care worker visa. We will continue to do that for…”

“We think that the care industry will be able to recruit from those who are here lawfully, whether UK residents or people who are already here lawfully from overseas. We think they will be able to do that and meet the recruitment pressures that they face, but we are working with the Health Department on this. As we intr…”

“Yes, we are continuing to do that. I think it is particularly important that that academic timetable for young people is taken into account. I am very conscious of that and of ensuring that we recognise that as part of our continuing support for the Ukraine scheme.”

“I think there is a series of factors behind what has happened. We have seen this big increase in small boat crossings over the last few years; if you go back to 2018, it was barely a handful. Since then, an entire criminal industry has taken hold along our borders, with networks, including supply chains, that spread ri…”

“In terms of strengthening international co-operation, we have always said that we would like to see a replacement for the Dublin scheme, and we recognise the impact of that. There is evidence of that impact, with people who arrive in the UK raising that as being a factor for them.”

“Nobody should be making these dangerous boat crossings; they undermine border security and they put lives at risk. The numbers that we saw on Saturday were completely unacceptable, as is the continuing nature of the problem. The central focus of the co-operation that we are building at the moment, particularly with Fra…”

“We have always said that we would like to see those sorts of arrangements, and a replacement for that kind of arrangement. We obviously need to make sure that we have a system in place that is workable. You also referred to the impact in terms of the gangs. Information will be released later this afternoon about an add…”

“We inherited these contracts.”

“I am concerned about the level of money that has gone into these contracts. There is also the scale of the backlog that we inherited. We need to end asylum hotels altogether. Some of that is about bringing the whole backlog down and being able to clear the decision making.”