Speeches by Murray.

“The Home Affairs Committee heard evidence last week from the new Border Security Commander, Martin Hewitt, who told us that he was working to bring together different parts of Government to focus on cross-border activity as a kind of organised crime similar to terrorism. When I pushed him specifically on whether that w…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I draw the Chamber’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests and the support that my office receives from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. This is a really important debate, and I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the M…”

“We have heard about the joint upstream working group with the French. I was a home affairs attaché at the Paris embassy for four years; this does not sound new to me. Is this just what we did with the lorries, but replacing “lorry” with “boat”? Is this a new innovation?”

“I promise this is my final question. Are there other groups of countries operating together—I am thinking of the EU, but it could be other ones—that we are not in and that you would like to break into? I am not trying to relitigate Brexit; I am just trying to understand if there are other groups of countries that work …”

“I have one final question, because we are pushing our time. What is the next stage of international agreements here? If you could go to the Foreign Office with a shopping list of the treaties you want them to focus on, what countries are you looking at, what kinds of deals and what areas?”

“That is interesting to hear, but because it is almost international diplomacy we are talking about with the multilateral institutions we had in the EU, do you find that the co-operation you are looking for gets built into a wider quid pro quo diplomatic discussion? When we are talking about other issues, like fisheries…”

“Are you confident that we are back to where we were in law enforcement?”

“Did we, though? That was going to be my next question. We do not have access to some of the databases any more, we are not in Europol and Eurojust in the way that we were, the Dublin system—these are all having to be reopened, no?”

“And it needs to develop further. Are there plans to do that?”

“We have already talked about the international stuff, but I wanted to ask this. The Government have been putting a lot of effort into international agreements and working with upstream partners. First, how important are those to your strategic planning? How much do your plans depend on them working, and what is your as…”

“It sounds like you are saying that you recognise that it is developing.”

“On the analysis of the pull factors, a lot of information is out there now with social media, the diversity of the flows and modern technology, and a lot of analysis is being done in the private sector. How much of that information threat assessment is getting into the Home Office and affecting, in real time, the decis…”

“Is it the case, on that example you used, that if anybody comes over on a small boat who would have been eligible for the legitimate scheme, they invalidate their possibility of staying here and they become eligible to be returned, even though they could have come?”

“I am trying to get the theory behind it, because this has been pitched to Parliament and the public as disrupting and changing the business model of the smugglers, but what you are saying to us is that different streams of migrants from different parts of the world are presenting in Calais. So isn’t it the case that if…”

“What do the French ask of the UK? The Government have made a number of announcements recently, such as ID cards and changing refugees’ family reunification rights. Are the French asking those things of us and saying, “This is a pull factor”? Is that where these ideas come from?”

“So it is having operational outputs?”

“I have a final question on this point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we are no longer in the Dublin system. We have been to meet asylum seekers in asylum accommodation here who tell us that they understood that we are not in the Dublin system and they cannot be returned through it, and that was part of thei…”

“To return to the point about France, you alluded to the French maritime review; how have you contributed to that? There has obviously been a bit of political instability in France recently; how is that affecting the maritime review? If it does not go ahead, what are the implications for your objectives?”

“You said in a previous answer that earlier this year, as the smuggling gangs lost a grip on the supply chain, if you like—the pipeline—that led to an increase in fatalities. Does that mean that as you start to get more of a grip on disrupting the smugglers, we should expect an increase in fatalities?”

“Who wasn’t talking to who before?”