Anna Turley

I am going to move on. Forgive me. We have driven up removals to the highest level in a decade—an important point to stop and reflect on—because of the progress we are making, with 80,000 individuals returned since the general election, including immigration offenders, people in the country illegally and foreign criminals. We know, too, that the ability to melt into the illegal economy too often lures people here, so we have raised illegal working enforcement to record levels. As we rebuild our shattered asylum system, we are also lightening the burden on local communities. The Government committed to ending the use of asylum hotels within this Parliament and we will do so. Two years in, we have already emptied one in three, reducing the hotel population by 50% in the last year and by 71% since the peak under the previous Government. We have cut asylum costs from hotels by £1 billion. That is £1 billion that we can spend on the other priorities of the British people and I think that that should be recognised. We have made significant progress on the chaos we inherited two years ago, but we know there is more to be done to restore fairness to our asylum system: fairness for genuine refugees, who deserve our sanctuary and wish to contribute to our society; and fairness for British citizens, our constituents, who shoulder the current burden in their taxes and in their communities. That is why we continue to work relentlessly at home and abroad to prevent people from coming here illegally in the first place, dismantle the criminal networks that facilitate dangerous and unnecessary crossings, remove those who break our laws and have no right to be here, and ensure that this country maintains its proud tradition of helping the world’s most vulnerable people where it can, but in a secure and orderly way through new safe and legal routes. That is why we have introduced the new Immigration and Asylum Bill. It will cut the asylum backlog by making decisions faster and fairer, close loopholes so that those with no right to be here can be rapidly removed, and ask those who have benefited from public support to contribute to their costs where they are able. I thank the Members who are currently scrutinising the Bill in Committee. I turn now, as the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) implored, to the issues around MOD Bicester. For too long, the way in which we house asylum seekers has not been fair. Billions of pounds have been spent putting them up in hotels, while communities have seen those hotels, often at the centre of their towns or cities, become a symbol of a broken asylum system. Areas where housing costs were low and that already felt left behind were asked to bear more than their fair share, which has been a source of anger and frustration for many people—and understandably so. As well as reducing the backlog, we are working with local authorities on a fairer distribution of asylum seekers across the country. That means ending the use of costly hotels, and instead, moving asylum seekers into more appropriate accommodation.