Speeches by Eagle.

“I will not take any lessons from the shadow Minister. In his last three months as Immigration Minister, nearly 10,000 people crossed the channel in small boats, but he is complaining about half that level of crossings happening in the past three months. Neither will I take any lessons from someone who served in a Gover…”

“As the right hon. Member is aware, the Home Office discharges its statutory duty to provide accommodation and to support destitute asylum seekers through seven asylum accommodation and support services contracts. Those contracts were entered into by the previous Government, commencing in 2019, and are split between thr…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I was trying to help the shadow Minister, because I thought he might be trying to talk about accommodation generally. If that is the case, we already have the powers we need to enter when and where we wish. This power is much broader, and we would not like to see it put into effect,…”

“New clause 37 would give the Secretary of State regulation-making powers to set out arrangements for asylum seekers to receive loans towards their maintenance and accommodation—but, as we have discussed in this Committee during scrutiny of the Bill, the costs of accommodating and supporting asylum seekers has grown sig…”

“We inherited a system that was very siloed, where work was not really cross-departmental at all. One example that occurs to me is that the system dealing with all the legacy applications, which the previous Government embarked on dealing with at first-tier tribunal in 2023 and then boasted about having achieved. Howeve…”

“The hon. Lady will have noticed that I have not dismissed the idea completely, but I do not think the idea is anywhere near a position where one could talk about how it might be practicable, and certainly it is not at a stage where one could consider putting it into primary legislation.”

“New clause 41 would require the revocation of protection status or leave, or discontinuation of asylum claims, where an applicant returns to their country of origin. The Government are in absolute agreement on the principle behind the new clause. Although we are committed to providing protection to those who genuinely …”

“I compliment the Father of the House on his ingenious approach to the slightly different signals, as the hon. Lady set out, that the international conventions, with their judge-made law, have left us with over the years. The new clause would create a duty to remove people who are not protected by the refugee convention…”

“It is at this occasion, traditionally, that those who have shouldered the burdens under your expert guidance of the Committee, Dr Murrison, thank all the officials—both the House officials and my own—for their sterling work. I thank all members of the Committee for their contributions, all of which have come from posit…”

“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Murrison—I suspect that you will be bookending our proceedings, if we make reasonable progress today. Does the shadow Minister acknowledge that increases in appeal backlogs are a result of the legacy process that his Government undertook, because people whose claims were not…”

“Not that many!”

“I have to compliment the hon. Member for Stockton West on his tie, since he raised it, and the hon. Member for Weald of Kent seems to have good taste in the colour of her jackets. I promise that that is the last fashion statement that I will make in our proceedings today. On new clause 24, we agree that accountability …”

“I will deal with some of the broader points in my response, but we do age assessments. We do not simply accept—just as his Government did not—asylum seekers’ claims about their age as if they were the truth. I would not like the shadow Minister to give the Committee the impression that that is happening—that we are acc…”

“I start by endorsing what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said about Dolores, Thomas Roberts’s mum, whom I met last night. She has gone through a searingly awful life experience. It is difficult even to think about that, let alone to offer any comfort. Unfortunately, I do not think that her experience wo…”

“We are making a scientific assessment of how accurate and effective the methods are that could be used to make age assessments, and I hope to have some results from that work soon. What I do not want is to have a clause in primary legislation telling me that I have to do that by a set time. I am trying to reassure the …”

“The hon. Gentleman is being a bit mischievous. We are in the middle of an assessment of whether scientific age assessments work and at what level of capacity and detail we can trust them. I expect reports fairly soon, and once I have them I can make a decision on how we go ahead with them. I will let Parliament know in…”

“Did the hon. Gentleman really mean “swarm” in that context? That is quite emotive language.”

“I do not know what the hon. Gentleman had for lunch, but perhaps we should find out and get some of it ourselves. We can then all compete with the poet laureate and the virtuoso performance that we have just heard. I am going to talk about the new clause, however, which is in respect of the Nationality and Borders Act …”

“I am not sure how much of the debate we could have heard, Dr Murrison, had you made that observation at the beginning of it. I do not think this Government wish to join Belarus and Russia among those who are not signed up to the European Court of Human Rights. The Government are fully committed to the protection of hum…”

“I would respectfully say that the hon. Gentleman’s party had many, many years to think of a solution, and most of the cases that Opposition Members have raised today had their genesis in the years that they were in power. Close to the very end, as they became more and more frustrated, they started coming up with more a…”