Speeches by Cooper.

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“There you go. The move-on officers will work with local authorities on how, when asylum is granted, to work at pace to help people to get jobs, find private rented accommodation that they can fund, and so on.”

“We have a programme of work looking at the appeals, both trying to speed up appeals and also trying to make sure that we can increase the quality of decision making. Part of the problem, of course, is that some of the cases that are going through appeals are about decisions that were taken a long time ago. The faster t…”

“Yes, we want to stop using asylum hotels. It is inappropriate and extremely costly. The cost of hotel accommodation hit a peak of, I think, £8.8 million a day last year. It is an appalling waste of taxpayers’ money, spending money on that kind accommodation which was expensive but necessary because the asylum backlog h…”

“Matthew or Simon will correct me if this is not fully accurate but I understand that it was to do with the implementation of the Illegal Migration Act and, in particular, the retrospective element of the Illegal Migration Act. The way that the Illegal Migration Act was drawn up—it is incomprehensible that it was drawn …”

“That is partly what the move-on officers are designed to do and that is a new development. MCHLG is in the same building as we are and so it has been quite easy to have meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister on exactly these issues and we have been discussing them directly. I have found great willingness across the Ho…”

“Today’s statement sets out the funding for the police forces for the next year, the £1 billion additional funding that I set out at the start of today. That includes increases in the core grant and an additional £100 million for neighbourhood policing. The £100 million is about enough to recruit over 1,000 police offic…”

“A lot of the work on tackling retail crime has been very much linked to the discussions with retailers and with USDAW as one of the main trade unions representing shop workers. USDAW has been heavily involved in the work to get a new offence around assaults on shop workers.”

“Facial recognition technology has significant potential and it is already being used by some forces. There is no clear overarching governance framework for it and that means that some police forces are not really clear about the legal basis and when and where they can use it. We have been working at pace. Dame Diana Jo…”

“I will ask Dame Diana Johnson to update the Committee on the timescale and the work that she has under way. She has had a series of meetings with policing and community organisations.”

“You also asked about productivity issues and over-funding. There is a series of other areas where we think that productivity and efficiency could be improved and savings made. That is why we have set up a commercial efficiencies programme. We think that there is evidence that we can save significant sums of money on pr…”

“The Lord Chancellor is giving evidence in the next room as we speak. I am sure he will be being asked about some of the prison issues. The big focus of neighbourhood policing is around both preventing crime and tackling some crimes around anti-social behaviour, town centre crimes, issues around shoplifting, street thef…”

“As the Permanent Secretary has already said, we do already have significant checks in place to ensure that any facial recognition technology that is used is tested for any bias. Users must actively test for bias, not just take the existing evidence but actively demonstrate that they have tested for bias. The use of ret…”

“We will need to work with police forces on the mix and the way it that develops because it will vary from force to force. For example, I think Norfolk currently does not have any PCSOs at all. Some other forces have focused heavily on PCSOs. We want to see a mix of people in policing teams. Neighbourhood policing teams…”

“I think you are referring to the police accountability reforms after the announcement about the Martyn Blake case. The important issue that we were raising as part of that piece of work was the need to raise public confidence in policing. That is part of our Safer Streets mission and links back to some of the issues ar…”

“Do you mean the areas that the police—”

“I gently point out to the shadow Home Secretary that his party left us with the highest ever level of small boat crossings in the first half of a year—the highest level on record. If we had carried on with small boat crossings at the same level as in the first half of the year, when he was in the Home Office, we would …”