Speeches by Cooper.

“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…”

“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…”

“The approach is that the skills threshold is being raised, so the skilled worker visa will apply to graduate level jobs. Below graduate level jobs will be able to go on the temporary shortage list only if they are in, effectively, the critical areas—for example, those that are critical to the industrial strategy or som…”

“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…”

“We may find it in our notes and be able to tell you the expected reduction in the number of occupations on the list. We will be reducing that number of occupations, but then the list has to be linked to the workforce strategies for the future. Part of what the Migration Advisory Committee will do when they are assessin…”

“As part of the immigration White Paper, we have already identified a series of occupations that will be taken off what used to be the immigration salary list, which we are abolishing and replacing with the temporary shortage list. The number of occupations on the temporary shortage list will be significantly lower than…”

“Construction is a really good example. Construction will continue to be on the new temporary shortage list. But the difference between the temporary shortage list and the previous lists that the Government have had, with discounts and so on, is that the whole approach should be, first, a temporary arrangement, and seco…”

“One of the things we highlighted as part of the immigration White Paper is the importance of increasing domestic skills, which improves our productivity. In the period in which we saw net migration quadruple—the biggest driver was an increase in overseas recruitment and an increase in work visas during that period—we a…”

“I think there is a particular issue about confidence in the immigration system—and, frankly, quite understandably, given the way in which those numbers shot up in such a short period of time. I have said that I think that really was a free market experiment in which, effectively, employers were encouraged to recruit fr…”

“The starting point is that we have a history in this area of confidence understandably plummeting. A lot of promises were made to people across the country about what would happen to net migration under the previous Conservative Government. A lot of promises were made about what the impact of the new Brexit agreements …”

“There are two issues: there is the actual prevalence of violence against women and girls, and then there is the reporting of it. We want more victims of crime to be confident to report their case to the police, to be able to get the support they need. We know that sexual assaults and sexual crimes have been under-repor…”

“Digital technology has moved on a very long way since then. Again, this is from an immigration perspective, but for example, we are looking at ways in which the technology we have around whether people are in the country or not—depending on not just their visas but the check-ins and outs through the border, using the m…”

“Our clear focus is around being able to ensure that we have proper rules being respected and enforced in the immigration system and the asylum system and to ensure that if people are not here lawfully or are not working lawfully, we can get that information and take much stronger action to prevent that kind of abuse of…”

“As you rightly say, DSIT is already developing digital ID. What we are particularly looking at is how we have digital ID for everyone coming to the UK, whatever visa or system they arrive in the UK through. We set out in the White Paper our next steps on this. We want, for example, to have a digital service linked to e…”

“We have to take action on this. The law has changed, but there are people who have been convicted of crimes who were the victims of the most horrendous exploitation as children. Although the prostitution laws have now changed, the idea of treating somebody as a prostitute when they were the victim of the most horrendou…”

“The first thing I would say is that they have to be independent inquiries. They cannot be done by local authorities, and it is only independent inquiries that we will provide funding for—that is what happened with the Telford inquiry. Although it was initiated by the local authority and local organisations, it was then…”

“What we found from the experience of the Telford inquiry, as well as the two initial Rotherham reviews that took place about 10 years ago—one by Alexis Jay and the other by Baroness Louise Casey—is that they can come in different forms. Three different kinds of review have taken place: the Alexis Jay inquiry, the Louis…”

“We have identified funding to ensure that there is additional funding for local inquiries, which is clearly important. Once the Casey audit has reported back to us, we will set out the next steps about how we will expect local inquiries to be taken forward and the funding support that we will give. Obviously, we want a…”

“I know that the Safeguarding Minister has met you, and I thank you for the information and evidence that you provided. This is a truly vile crime, and there are really disturbing, lifelong consequences for the children and teenagers—very often teenage girls—who have been raped, abused and subjected to the most horrendo…”

“Yes. The counter-extremism role is probably a more wide-ranging role, focused outwards across the country. The independent Prevent reviewer is about this particular programme that is crucial to our public safety and about making sure that there is proper oversight of it, in order to ensure that it meets the highest sta…”