Speeches by Cooper.

“First, the progress with the backlog—we have just served closure notices on another seven hotels and they should be closing in the new year as a result of bringing the backlog down. We are determined to make progress on that work. Andrea Eagle is taking forward work on setting up new arrangements with local authorities…”

“We need to do two things. The first and most important issue is to get the backlog right down because the backlog that we inherited is extremely costly. The second thing is to be able to get out of the very costly hotel arrangements and the contracts. Bear in mind that many of contracts were signed in a rush in the sum…”

“Part of the reason for having the liaison officers in local areas is for them to co-ordinate with local authorities so that when a decision has been made, where somebody has fled persecution, arrangements can be swiftly put in place for them to be able to work, be part of a community and be supported. You can look at r…”

“No. We try to remove people as swiftly as possible. Bear in mind that the whole point is to be able to deliver the returns while respecting and enforcing the rules. You want to use the detention facilities as effectively as possible in order to do that. The focus always has to be on the likelihood of being able to deli…”

“No. The issue is what can you do with each individual case on a case-by-case basis to be able to make decisions as swiftly as possible and to be able to remove people as swiftly as possible.”

“There are still safeguards in the existing system around anything that is disproportionate detention. If you have somebody held in detention and there is no prospect of being able to remove them, you will not be able to keep them in detention. However—and this is the point that Simon Ridley made—if you have a fixed tim…”

“I will ask Matthew or Simon to follow up on this because a lot of the work around the Brook House immigration removal centre took place before the election. Ten areas of concern were raised in the report, and a lot of very serious issues were raised around standards. It was a very troubling report. In any of these issu…”

“If you have cases of voluntary returns that are not being progressed as swiftly as they could be, I and Angela Eagle, the Border Security and Asylum Minister, would be extremely keen to follow it up with you to make sure that we can make progress. In general, the detention centres tend to be used for the enforced retur…”

“One of the first things that the Foreign Office did after the election, as part of the European political community event, was to announce additional investment. From memory, it was over £80 million. I cannot remember now whether it was £84 million or £92 million, but it was additional funds to work alongside other Eur…”

“We need to increase returns because we need to increase the credibility of the system. If there is no proper sense that the rules are respected, that the rules are enforced, people do not have confidence, in the asylum system or the immigration system. Returns are still significantly lower than they were under the last…”

“We obviously already work with the IOM on some of the voluntary returns arrangements. That has been in place for some time. Interesting, while I was in Italy, one of the meetings I had was with the Italian UNHCR and IOM representatives, just talking about the work that they were doing, including around some of the safe…”

“Yes, that is absolutely part of our work because making it easier for voluntary returns is obviously a much simpler, much more effective way to arrange things. Many of the charter flights that have been organised are charter flights for voluntary returns. That is a lot of what has been taking place.”

“We have had previous returns arrangements with Iraq. When I visited, we agreed to strengthen those returns arrangements. There is a lot more work that we still want to do. The numbers of returns to Iraq have still been relatively low. There is a series of things that we still want to do and we discussed doing them in p…”

“Immigration has always been important with people coming to the UK over generations to work in public services, to found businesses and so on. However, it needs to be properly controlled and managed so that the system is fair and effective. In the space of just four years, we have seen net migration quadruple. In parti…”

“We previously had the Small Boats Operational Command. That is a good set of operations led by Duncan Capps that is extremely effective in the work that it does and operates along the Channel. It also does the security check operations at Western Jet Foil. A lot of the work that Duncan does is also directly with immedi…”

“We are investing £150 million over the next 18 months in establishing the command and strengthening resources. That includes some additional resources for the National Crime Agency and their investigators as well. The model that we based this on was the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism that was set up under the…”

“We had a meeting of the Calais Group last week—the UK with the interior Ministers from France, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium. I met with the Italian Interior Minister at the weekend and have further conversations with the French and German Interior Ministers coming forward. We are very much trying to work to strengt…”

“And to you, Chair, thank you very much and happy Christmas to you all.”

“The mayor has described it as the biggest increase for Met Police funding for many years. We know that police forces right across the country have faced very significant financial pressures in recent years, and we recognise that. Overall, this is a 6% increase in the cash funding for police forces, a 3.5% real increase…”

“Yes, I have spoken to him and we have announced, as part of the police settlement that we announced today, a £65 million increase in the national capital city grant. That reflects two things, first the existing grant for the capital cities because they obviously do have lots of national events that will take place in t…”