Dr Al Pinkerton

Dr Al Pinkerton

Liberal Democrat — Surrey Heath

Speaking in the House of Commons on 21 May 2025

Debate

Immigration

Contribution

No, thank you—I will make progress. We believe that European co-operation is, as I have just indicated, the answer to the small boats crisis. Even the shadow Home Secretary agrees. We all heard him say that the UK’s withdrawal from the Dublin agreement, as part of Boris Johnson’s botched Brexit deal, meant that the UK “can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”. Straight from the horse’s mouth! Let us talk about the backlog. At the end of 2024, about 91,000 asylum seekers were stuck in limbo; most had been waiting over six months just for an initial decision. And while they wait, they are banned from working, banned from rebuilding their lives and forced to depend entirely on the state. That becomes a source of resentment for local communities, whose discontent can be weaponised by the darker fringes of our political spectrum.

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