Yvette Cooper

Yvette Cooper

Labour — Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley

Speaking in the House of Commons on 1 September 2025

Debate

Borders and Asylum

Contribution

This Government have managed to get the agreement with France in place—that pilot agreement that we seek to build. France, obviously, is not the country where most of the people passing through started from, so it is effectively a third-country agreement that we have already put in place and are now working to implement on a pilot basis. We are also working with other European countries to explore returns hubs. But what we do not think is the right thing to do is have an incredibly expensive programme that sent just four volunteers and, during the two years-plus that it was in operation, ended up costing £700 million while 84,000 people arrived in the UK.

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