Speeches by Eagle.

“Yes, my hon. Friend’s constituents can be assured that a great deal of work is going on and more resources are being applied. A lot more intelligence is being gathered, much of which cannot be discussed publicly. We are on it.”

“For too long, smuggling gangs have been undermining our border security and putting lives at risk, which is why the new Government have made it a top priority to address the crisis we inherited. Let us be clear about what that crisis entailed: small boat crossings in the first half of the year at their highest point on…”

“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman —the shadow Home Secretary—to his new Front-Bench position. What a pleasure it is to be opposite him; I am going to look forward to jousting with him over the years. On the Rwanda scheme, during the period from when it began to when we scrapped it, 83,500 people crossed in small boats…”

“Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. The issue here is dealing with cross-border organised immigration crime. To do that, we have to talk to our international allies and co-operate with them across borders. That is exactly what the creation of the border security command will do, both operationally and politically, and we will…”

“The hon. Lady is exactly right. This is not about gimmicks, or having a parallel immigration policy that is unconnected with any of the treaties we have signed or international law; it is about doing the day job, and making sure not to leave an inheritor Government a 200,000-person backlog by not doing the day job. The…”

“The shadow Home Secretary’s record in office is a matter that we may well keep coming back to. I agree with the observations that my hon. Friend makes.”

“It is my first chance to congratulate the right hon. Lady on her election as Chair of the Select Committee. I look forward to coming before her Committee whenever she wishes to talk to me. The Department certainly wishes to keep her informed about what is going on. There has been a significant shift in international co…”

“Yes, I agree profoundly with my hon. Friend, which is why the new Government have changed tack in this area. I am sure that we will see the results in due course.”

“First, the border security command is operationally completely different from the command on the channel, which is deliberately there to try to save life and find out what is going on on the water. Operationally, the border security command will co-operate across borders in a very different way. If I were the right hon…”

“Yes; the point of the increase in operational co-operation across borders is that if we cannot bring people to justice in our jurisdiction, we can ensure that information is swapped in real time, so that they can be brought to justice in other jurisdictions. There will be a step change in that kind of international co-…”

“The border security command is not focused only on channel crossings; it is much more about using our intelligence capabilities and our operational arm to co-operate across borders, with other jurisdictions and in real time, to ensure that organised criminal gangs can be tracked, apprehended and dismantled. We have giv…”

“I absolutely agree with the points my hon. Friend made.”

“In the end, any work that we can do upstream, whether in respect of development or aid, will deal with some of the causes, some of which the hon. Lady rightly points out. We have to stay within the bounds set by the Budget, but I assure her that I regard prevention as much better than cure.”

“I assure my hon. Friend that we will do exactly that. It is why we have seen a step change in returns since this Government took office. There have been 9,400 in that period, which includes a 19% increase in enforced returns and a 14% increase in returns of foreign national offenders. We will ensure that our immigratio…”

“I agree that the first six months of this year were the worst on record. There were then a quiet three months, and now there has been a huge increase, not least because of benign weather conditions. I do not want to get into monthly figures. We need to bear down on the organised criminality that is perpetrating the tra…”

“Addressing such issues is more of a Foreign Office responsibility, which is why we liaise closely with the Foreign Office when considering the production of information notes. If laws that are passed and put into effect in other countries lead to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution for individuals, that i…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and bringing her concerns—concerns that I share—to the attention of the House. We regularly monitor and review the situation in countries of origin, working closely with the Foreign Office, and our resulting country policy and information notes are published on th…”

“Mr Speaker, I suspect I might be coughing almost as much as you, but for a completely different reason. We constantly update our assessment of LGBT rights and other factors affecting the safety of different countries, working closely with the Foreign Office and informed by regular independent reports from the chief ins…”

“Why didn’t they go there, then?”

“We certainly have the ambition to do so. If we have a look, returns plummeted during the period when the last Government were in office. In 2023, 3,225 returns were made; in 2010, we returned 7,157, and of course, in the meantime, levels of illegal immigration have grown exponentially, so we certainly have the view tha…”