Speeches by Cooper.

“Seema Malhotra, our Minister for Migration and Citizenship, has spent a lot of time working through the detail on this. I think the intention behind the e-visa system is absolutely the right one. Having a digital approach to borders and visas means that you can have a much more streamlined approach to people travelling…”

“The number does change week by week because of the numbers of people whose permits run out, new ones are granted and so on. Also people leave the country so the numbers are fluid. Overall, however, it is estimated that around 4 million people have biometric permits and need to switch to e-visas. More than 3 million peo…”

“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…”

“We are clearly staying out of the EU and that means that we are out of several of their legal frameworks and have to co-operate on a different basis than the one we had before. We are trying to work to get as much co-operation in place as possible. Law enforcement ought to be an area of shared interest across borders. …”

“The German Interior Minister, Nancy Faeser, would say that the same criminal gang networks that are operating in Germany, are operating in northern France, organising boats across the Channel and stretching across Europe as well. That is causing challenges in Germany. The smuggler networks, for example, are facilitatin…”

“In the conversations that I had in Italy at the weekend, the shared interest was around going after the illicit finance. The Italian Government have been doing a huge amount. They have parallel challenges with boats across the Mediterranean. Interestingly, the work they have done on a combination of law enforcement, bu…”

“The UK will always need to do its bit alongside other countries to help those who have fled persecution, what we have done with the Ukraine programme, with Hong Kong, with Afghanistan, and so on. We made some changes to the Afghanistan arrangements earlier this year to help reunite family members who had been separated…”

“I think we already have different forms of safe routes, that will always need to be part of the UK system. That is one of the things that we did with the family reunion for Afghanistan and that will always need to be part of the system. All countries will always need to do their bit but I think it is just not an altern…”

“Immediately after the election, we moved up to 1,000 staff into the returns and enforcement work more widely, looking at direct returns. We have had 13,500 returns since the election. That includes 33 charter flights and I think four of the biggest return charter flights that the Home Office has ever operated and a 25%…”

“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…”

“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 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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”