Speeches by Murray.

“Obviously, victims of trafficking form a heterogenous group. There are young and old, male and female, victims of sexual exploitation and of labour exploitation—”

“While we are talking about FROs, we had the Home Secretary before us in December and she said that the NRM system has fundamentally become a bit stuck. What do you think is driving that? We have not updated the list of first responders since the Act came in. Do you think it merits revision? When you are talking about t…”

“To be clear, you are saying that it is the training of existing first-responder officers that is the issue—not that you would like to see more first-responder organisations. You alluded to the health system.”

“I want to ask about the massive increase in decision waiting times in recent years. First, what is your assessment of why those waiting times have got so bad? Secondly, what remediation would you propose? Do we just need more decision makers, or is there a more structural issue in the NRM?”

“What would you do about it? Is it just more decision makers?”

“Emma, you have already mentioned the devolved decision making pilot. Do you think that offers lessons in how we can improve the quality of decisions as well as the speed?”

“Absolutely, and they are in all parts of the country and of all nationalities, including British. I am trying to get a sense of what good support looks like. Can you tell us some key indicators or, even better, give an example of what you think good support would look like within the constraints we have today?”

“The NRM is UK-wide, and there is a UK Act of Parliament, but in Scotland there is the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015. I do not think that the Salvation Army has the contract in Scotland—is that right?”

“Q8. According to the charity Shelter, there are more homeless children in my city of Edinburgh than in the whole of Wales. That is an appalling legacy of 18 years of SNP Government. Does the Prime Minister agree that there should be no homeless children, and will he work with me, the Scottish Parliament and anyone who …”

“I wonder whether there have been any new scientific discoveries in the last seven months for identifying someone’s age that the Home Office would not have been aware of over the last 14 years. Is it not the case that the methodologies used are very imprecise and do not often actually lead us, in the liminal cases, to d…”

“Would the hon. Gentleman at least accept that the Albania returns were largely due to large numbers of foreign national offenders, who are a completely different category of people from those we are talking about in either this clause or this Bill?”

“Looking at the proposals set out in this new clause, how exactly is the hon. Gentleman proposing to calculate the £38,700? Is software available in the Home Office or in His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? What if someone was found to have overpaid taxes after they were found not to meet the amount? Would the Home Offic…”

“I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could just assume that we are familiar with those two cases by now and either not bother citing them or think of some new examples to support his arguments.”

“It was interesting to hear the hon. Member for Weald of Kent setting out her argument articulately, and it was good to hear her say that she recognises that the last Government made a lot of mistakes on immigration, and that the evidence shows that. Sadly, although it is good to have that recognition, it does not seem …”

“Will the hon. Gentleman accept that that number has “ballooned”—or gone up highly—not just in the aggregate but per asylum seeker? The hon. Gentleman wants to try to charge people, but his party let the system get completely out of control. Maybe it was the backlog that let it get out of control, rather than the kind o…”

“T6. Does the Minister agree that community ownership projects will be crucial to achieving our world-leading net zero goals, and will he come to Edinburgh to see some of our fantastic community power projects?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, was first a refugee in the UK, and she said that, in Britain, people would say to refugees, “You’re welcome here…and when are you going home?” whereas, in America, they said, “You’re welcome here…and when …”

“I think that the hon. Gentleman is somewhat overstating the impact of the Albania policy. After the initial agreement was signed, we saw a massive spike in numbers coming from Albania, and the numbers had already started to fall before the communiqué was signed. The correlation and causation arguments that he is making…”

“The hon. Gentleman is talking about Natural England and NHS England, which obviously operate only in England. Is he aware that in another part of the UK, Scotland, we have seen an absolute proliferation of quangos under the SNP? We now have more quangos in Scotland than there are Members of the Scottish Parliament. Doe…”

“Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is the same dynamic as the Rwanda programme? If we are offering only 1% of people safe routes, it is the same as saying to 1% of people that they will be sent back. The impact on those people’s decision making is exactly the same.”