Speeches by Cooper.

“The right hon. Member will know that the Home Office has the power to deny entry to those who are not conducive to the public good. Those are important powers that we continue to support. He will know that we also have other security powers and measures that we can use where there are individuals who pose a threat to t…”

“My hon. Friend is right that the previous record year was 2022 and that in the first half of this year, when the previous Government were still in office, the arrivals were higher for that season—we all know that arrivals are affected by the season—than they were in 2022. Since the election, those arrivals have been si…”

“We need to clear the backlog and the chaos in the asylum system that we have inherited. There is already a detention system as part of both the immigration and asylum systems. However, the core issue over a long period of time has been around the lack of proper enforcement and a proper system to ensure that the rules i…”

“My hon. Friend is right. We inherited a situation where the Conservatives let the entire system get way out of control. They let criminal gangs take hold along the channel and left us with total chaos in the asylum system and extortionate costs, as she rightly pointed out, with nearly £9 million a day being spent this …”

“We are obviously reviewing the situation as swiftly as possible. We have withdrawn the previous Syria country guidance, because it would not have been appropriate to take decisions on that basis, and we are monitoring the situation closely to look at how and when new country guidance can be drawn up. My hon. Friend wil…”

“My hon. Friend has considerable experience in these issues, and I thank him for all his work on this. He is right to say that, with something as basic as the right kind of information and intelligence sharing, if the systems are removed and no new systems are put in place, basic operational actions simply do not happen…”

“The hon. Member raised asylum claims from Syria. This is something we discussed in the Calais group, and all five countries are taking the same approach of recognising that we cannot currently take decisions. We clearly want to be able to do so as swiftly as possible, but we need to monitor the situation in Syria in th…”

“I gently point out to the shadow Home Secretary that his party left us with the highest ever level of small boat crossings in the first half of a year—the highest level on record. If we had carried on with small boat crossings at the same level as in the first half of the year, when he was in the Home Office, we would …”

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on the new border security agreements we have reached with Germany and with the Calais group of Interior Ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, which met in London yesterday with Europol, Frontex and the European Commission to discuss st…”

“The agreement that we reached and signed with the Iraqi Government explicitly commits to support for international law, international humanitarian law and human rights, and this was one of the issues that we discussed as part of the meetings. The hon. Gentleman will also know that every decision in the asylum system is…”

“Enforced returns for those with no right to be here were up 19% this summer, and voluntary returns are up 14%. We think that those should increase. On the overall immigration system, we will be setting out in a White Paper new proposals to better link the Migration Advisory Committee, the skills bodies across the UK an…”

“The previous Conservative Government made a decision in 2021 to launch what was in effect a free market approach to immigration. They made it much easier to recruit from abroad and they incentivised employers to recruit from abroad by introducing a 20% wage discount at the same time that they were cutting training and …”

“My hon. Friend makes important points, because countries do need to work together and to look far more at some of the causes of migration. That is why we set out at the European Political Community summit an additional £80 million fund to look at earlier prevention work and how we address some of the causes of migratio…”

“I know that the Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), has already answered some of the questions that the right hon. Gentleman has raised. He is right to express concern about asylum hotels. There are now 220 asylum hotels in use. He will know that his Government opened 400 a…”

“My hon. Friend is right. The former Immigration Minister and now shadow Justice Secretary also said that the net migration figures were “a day of shame for the Conservative Party.” They might need a little bit more shame on the Opposition Front Benches.”

“All I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that there are some deep and fundamental problems in the UK labour market that we have inherited. He is talking about workforce shortages when net migration has quadrupled and when overseas recruitment for work has quadrupled. I think that shows that there is a much bigger chall…”

“Clearly the Rwanda scheme failed, and the Leader of the Opposition knows that it failed. That is why she does not want to reinstate it, contrary to the views of the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), who seems to want to spend another £700 million over another two years to sen…”

“Obviously, each individual case needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. It has been agreed through the courts that, for example, some people could be safely returned to Iraq, but the process, or the bureaucracy, is extremely slow. Many people are currently in the immigration enforcement system. The previous system…”

“What we have found in our discussions with both the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan regional authority is that they want to tackle organised immigration crime in their country. They are concerned about not just people trafficking and people smuggling, but drug trafficking, to which the same gangs are sometimes linke…”

“My hon. Friend is right to say that in 14 years the previous Government did deep damage not just to our public services but to our economy, and they have to take responsibility for that. We have a history going back through generations of people who have come to the UK to work, study, and get protection from persecutio…”