Speeches by Cooper.

“The hon. Member makes an important point. Alongside pursuing perpetrators—which must always be the greatest priority because it is about protecting victims and ensuring that those who commit vile crimes face justice—there must be a responsibility on people for their public roles, whether in policing, local councils or …”

“My hon. Friend is right to recognise the seriousness of these crimes. The experiences in Rochdale include not just the issues around the Pakistani-heritage gang networks that he talks about, but issues in care homes and others that have been investigated over the years, and the terrible experiences of victims and survi…”

“Appalling crimes have taken place against children in Bradford, Keighley and across the country—truly appalling crimes. All of us have to face up to the fact that child sexual abuse and exploitation continues. This is not just about historical crimes, but continuing crimes and abuse of hundreds of thousands of children…”

“I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to her constituent, and to the more than 7,000 victims and survivors who gave evidence to the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and exploitation. The inquiry took seven years—many years of people bravely speaking out about some of the most difficult and traumatic things…”

“Child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most vile and horrific of crimes, involving rape, violence, coercive control, intimidation, manipulation and deep long-term harm. The information from the crime survey should be chilling to all of us. It estimates that half a million children every year experience some form o…”

“I welcome the points that the hon. Member makes. Historically, there has been a lot of consensus across the House about the importance of this work, but often there has been very slow progress; we have to change that. She rightly says that this is not just a matter for the Home Office, or even police forces, local coun…”

“My hon. Friend has worked immensely hard to champion the victims and survivors of terrible crimes. She raises important points about the prevalence of these appalling crimes, the need to be vigilant, wherever this abuse is to be found—in any kind of institution, across communities and across the country—and the importa…”

“The hon. Lady rightly raises an important point that was first raised as part of the Jay inquiry, more than 10 years ago, and then by the Casey inquiry, and she is right that we need to see action. Despite those issues having been raised over a decade ago, in many areas—not just grooming gangs and exploitation, but oth…”

“My hon. Friend is right that we need action, and we need to see progress and change. Further areas will need investigations and inquiries. For example, I welcome the Select Committee inquiry she mentioned, particularly the investigation into online abuse and exploitation. As well as the expansion of online abuse, I am …”

“This is an issue on which I worked with Government Ministers when I was shadow Home Secretary and when I was Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and there has been cross-party consensus on the need to tackle these serious and vile crimes. These are the most appalling crimes against children: repeated multiple brutal r…”

“The very reason why I and many of us called for an independent inquiry many years ago was because of the deep concern about the scale of the hidden abuse and about the total failure of institutions to respond. There were concerns about information being hidden, and about authorities not taking the action that was neede…”

“My hon. Friend is right that this has to be about showing respect for victims and survivors; it cannot be about perpetuating misinformation online for the sake of clicks and audiences. We have a responsibility to make practical changes, and I hope we can stick to this House’s core tradition of sitting opposite each oth…”

“I have been very impressed by the dedication and determination of the civil servants right across the Home Office, the incredible hard work, and the commitment that so many people have to the core purpose of the Home Office, which is fundamentally about keeping people safe, whether that is about security of our borders…”

“Yes, we want to stop using asylum hotels. It is inappropriate and extremely costly. The cost of hotel accommodation hit a peak of, I think, £8.8 million a day last year. It is an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money, spending money on that kind accommodation which was expensive but necessary because the asylum backlog h…”

“We have a programme of work looking at the appeals, both trying to speed up appeals and also trying to make sure that we can increase the quality of decision making. Part of the problem, of course, is that some of the cases that are going through appeals are about decisions that were taken a long time ago. The faster t…”

“There you go. The move-on officers will work with local authorities on how, when asylum is granted, to work at pace to help people to get jobs, find private rented accommodation that they can fund, and so on.”

“First, the progress with the backlog—we have just served closure notices on another seven hotels and they should be closing in the new year as a result of bringing the backlog down. We are determined to make progress on that work. Andrea Eagle is taking forward work on setting up new arrangements with local authorities…”

“We need to do two things. The first and most important issue is to get the backlog right down because the backlog that we inherited is extremely costly. The second thing is to be able to get out of the very costly hotel arrangements and the contracts. Bear in mind that many of contracts were signed in a rush in the sum…”

“Immediately after the election, we moved up to 1,000 staff into the returns and enforcement work more widely, looking at direct returns. We have had 13,500 returns since the election. That includes 33 charter flights and I think four of the biggest return charter flights that the Home Office has ever operated and a 25%…”

“I think we already have different forms of safe routes, that will always need to be part of the UK system. That is one of the things that we did with the family reunion for Afghanistan and that will always need to be part of the system. All countries will always need to do their bit but I think it is just not an altern…”