Speeches by Mahmood.

“An application is assessed based on the rules that were in force at the point at which the application is made, not what the rules were when the person came to the country.”

“There has already been lots of digital transformation at the Home Office, with all the attendant traumas and difficulties that that usually entails, but I do not envisage that these changes are going to break the system, as it were. It will be my job to make sure that that is not what is happening. There are some chang…”

“What I have asked for are policy proposals to try to meet the challenge we have. What we set out in the consultation is a new way of thinking about how settlement is earned in this country, how we might reward the behaviours we want to see, and how we add on more time for people if, for example, they end up accessing b…”

“I am not, as you will know, able to see the papers of the previous Government, so, being in the building now, it is difficult for me to see exactly what was happening under the previous Administration. I would say that the publicly available numbers showed a big increase. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I was s…”

“In the consultation, we ask a specific question on transitional arrangements. Obviously, there are going to be knock-on impacts from any of these changes. On the mandatory economic contribution, we are looking at just the threshold for paying national insurance contributions: it is quite low, actually. One of the criti…”

“I know that these contracts have caused quite some consternation among a number of different parliamentarians, and I know that they are of interest to this Committee. Obviously, I inherited these contracts and we are trying to make the best of them. I think that the actual contract management itself has improved, becau…”

“Well, we have taken out of scope of the consultation those who are in care or who have arrived unaccompanied in the country. There were a set of commitments made in the immigration White Paper by my predecessor, Yvette Cooper, on children who have been here for most of their lives and who only at 18 discover that they …”

“Evidence has already been given to the Committee about what was said in front of me on 8 October—”

“I would not say it is deterrence. There is a particular issue where we have seen migration into the country on a very large scale—much more than was expected—and of a very different nature to what we have had before, both in terms of the skills range and the number of dependants. Something like 50% of the care work num…”

“No, I disagree. If you look at our paper on the new proposals for settlement, the intention is to restore the element of contribution at the heart of the system. I think that our country is full of very tolerant and generous people—we are very open—but I think there is a condition to that, which is about contribution. …”

“That is exactly what we are consulting on. We know that we will need to develop careful pathways to deal with the particular issue of children. We will want to look at those who are older versus those who are younger in this new system. Obviously, the policy is still being designed, and we are very open to what the con…”

“Well, I think the proposals are fair. They are trying to meet the scale of the challenge. I know we have to get on to other topics, but I will just repeat the unprecedented nature of the numbers we have seen and the huge scale of abuse that occurred in social care. We have had to revoke something like 1,000 sponsor lic…”

“There is a respect for operational independence that, in the current arrangements, does have to be observed. Once the decision was made, we of course asked West Midlands police, “Is there a way of mitigating the risks you say exist, that we could assist with, that would allow this match to go ahead in the way that we w…”

“Well, we should never have been in the position where we were in the contracts in the first place—”

“Mr Murray’s alarm! [Laughter.]”

“I can, 100%.”

“No, I do not.”

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on police reform. A little less than 200 years ago, speaking at this very Dispatch Box, Sir Robert Peel declared that: “the time is come, when…we may fairly pronounce that the country has outgrown her police institutions”.—[Official Report, 28 February 1828; Vol. 18,…”

“We are very much focused just on policing and we are consulting on those matters as we speak.”

“My hon. Friend makes an incredibly powerful point. I can provide her with that reassurance, and the Policing Minister spoke to her police, fire and crime commissioner today.”