Speeches by Eagle.

“Non-performance-related issues.”

“Thank you very much. I am Angela Eagle. I am the Member of Parliament for Wallasey, and I am the Minister for asylum and border security.”

“It is important to get the context. The position is that we are not anticipating a different approach to sharing of rooms. We are where we are on that one. What we are trying to do as a Government is to get out of hotels as quickly as possible because of the extra costs. There are certain circumstances where people are…”

“This is the second audit, Mr Davies, of these contracts. There was one in 2021, I understand.”

“Yes.”

“Colleagues might want to talk about how the performance data works at the moment. My general way of working on this, which is not through contracting systems—that is more technical—is to try to do it in a more open, different, locally focused way than the way we have introduced. I do not know whether colleagues might w…”

“Let me have a look at the specific parliamentary question you asked and write to you about the context and tell you what we can provide you with.”

“I did not say that, but if one were going to say that no rooms had to be shared at all, you would double or treble the number of hotel rooms required overnight. What we are trying to do is get down the inordinate cost of the system we have at the moment. You do not do that by doubling the cost with one decision overnig…”

“There are many ways of dealing with a backlog, and starting at the bottom and working back is not always the most efficient one.”

“I see it regularly.”

“No.”

“It will go back to where it belongs, and they will decide what to do with it.”

“I tend to get a report on that weekly.”

“Inspections have doubled as well. There is much more focus on these day-to-day elements of running contracts.”

“No, not in public, I am afraid, at the moment. Sorry to be so opaque.”

“It would be the vast majority.”

“That is very much my view. Trying to have an asset at the end of this that could be used for temporary accommodation if such needs arise again would be a better use of public money.”

“First, can I apologise for not writing to you? I will take that up with my office when I get back from here. That should have happened, so my apologies for that. Secondly, when these contracts were let by our processors, they were very overarching contracts, and we contract with the prime suppliers. You also have to re…”

“These hotels and these contracts—[Interruption.] Shall I save that until after the vote?”

“I was about to comment on how much the landscape changed from when these contracts were first let out, because they did not involve hotels at all. Certainly, talking to colleagues in the Home Office after the hotels reached their peak in 2023, the Home Office was then in this kind of 10-point plan frenzy of trying to m…”