Yvette Cooper

This Government have, since the election, increased the number of returns of those who have no right to be here. There has been a 28% increase in returns of failed asylum seekers. We are strengthening enforcement and bringing in new counter-terrorism powers that allow us to go after the criminal gangs. Incomprehensibly, the hon. Gentleman’s party voted against those counter-terrorism powers. It seems to oppose the action that we need to take to go after the criminal gangs. If he and the Conservatives were to support the new powers, we could bring them in swiftly, in the course of a few months, and give our law enforcement the power to take stronger action against the criminal gangs. I hope that he supports the agreement with France, which provides for the immediate detention of people arriving in the UK, and their return to France. The trouble with his party’s policies is that they sound an awful lot like the previous Conservative Government’s policies, which totally failed. The Conservative Government were chaos; his party seems to be chaos on steroids. His party is not trying to solve the problem. All it is trying to do is exploit it. We need a properly controlled and managed system that goes after the criminal gangs, who should not be able to get away with their vile trade.