Results 1–20 of 2086 for speaker:Stephen Kinnock

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I am very sorry, but would the hon. Member mind repeating that?

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I apologise; I should have said “home country.” I would like to correct the record. It was “home country”. Apologies; I mis-spoke. Labour’s common-sense, pragmatic plan will smash the business model of the criminal gangs, deter dangerous journeys and tackle the backlog. With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will now run through the remaining nine amendments from the other place. We...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: As I have already said—I do not know if the hon. Member was listening—this is about repurposing the vast quantities of taxpayers’ money that are being squandered on the hare-brained Rwanda plan. The re-channelling of that money will fund the clearance of the backlog, sort out returns and smash the criminal gangs. I would first like to focus on Lords amendment 10, tabled by the noble...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: The amendment is about stopping them being sent to Rwanda, but let us be absolutely clear: there are many, many Afghans, identified by the Government under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, who are languishing in Pakistan. We remember the Prime Minister’s memo to Whitehall saying, “By the way everybody, let’s slow peddle on these...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The scope of Lords amendment 10 is specifically for those who served shoulder to shoulder with our armed forces and in our diplomatic and development efforts in Afghanistan. These are people to whom the United Kingdom owes a debt of honour and a debt of gratitude. I am not sure whether honour is a word that we can apply very easily to those on the...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes the case with passion and conviction. I know that he has a number of asylum seekers and refugees in his constituency and he does a huge amount of work on their behalf. He is absolutely right: there are some issues that should really transcend the day-to-day political considerations that we have in this place, because they are issues...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said. What a contrast there is between his intervention and that of the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) from the Conservative Benches. I genuinely believe that when the hon. Member for Rother Valley reflects, he will regret making his intervention and perhaps reflect on what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. We on the...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: If that is the case, why will Ministers not accept the amendment? Those in the other place, who have a great deal more constitutional expertise than I have, are simply seeking reassurance that our democratic conventions and obligations in relation to alignment with the rule of law will be respected. If that is the case, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, surely the amendments should be...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a very clear case. A lot of rhetoric has accompanied the Bill around the European convention on human rights and the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law. The implications of that for the Good Friday agreement are truly chilling. The way in which Government Members are prepared to sabre-rattle, and to use rhetoric in a way that...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If the amount of time and energy that has been wasted on this madcap Bill, which is also a constitutional outrage, unaffordable, unlawful and unworkable, had been put into addressing some of the challenges that we face in a pragmatic way, just think where we could have got to by today. Finally, Lords amendment 6, in the name of the noble Baroness...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I rise to speak in favour of all 10 of the Lords amendments that are before us today. They each serve to make this shambolic mess of a Bill marginally less absurd and, as I will come to in a second, they would serve only to put in statute what Ministers have promised from the Dispatch Box. Not one of the amendments is designed to prevent the departure of flights to Rwanda, as the Prime...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: We will eradicate the activity of the criminal smuggler gangs by having a proper security partnership with our European partners and allies. I remind the hon. Gentleman that his party has spent the last eight years trashing and destroying our relationships with our European partners and allies. What we would have with a Labour Government is a basis of trust to get the results that we need to...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the Supreme Court—the highest court of our land —has ruled unanimously and in no uncertain terms that Rwanda is not a safe country to which to send asylum seekers. I know that he is very taken with parliamentary sovereignty, and that is very important, but parliamentary sovereignty must be based on having due regard to the findings of our judiciary....

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I will give way one more time.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but at the end of the day, we cannot legislate to turn dogs into cats. We cannot legislate for the sky to be green and the grass to be blue. That is a basic tenet of the respect with which our institutions should be treated, and putting this kind of absurd legislation before us is frankly turning our institutions into a laughing stock. I...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the smoke and mirrors that have been used about clearing the backlog—lots of administrative withdrawals and other ways of just getting people out of the backlog—are being combined with shortening the eviction period, which is leading to a staggering increase in homelessness among those who have been granted asylum. What is happening is frankly a...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. Sometimes the mask slips in the Government’s response to amendments. Perhaps they have decided, very disrespectfully, to refuse to engage on any of the Lords amendments because, exactly as he says, they worry that lifting the lid on this box might show a total failure inside.

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: I agree with every word my hon. Friend says. Just imagine if the amount of time, money, resource, energy and political capital burned on this hare-brained Rwanda scheme had been used to do things that might actually deliver, and just imagine if the Government had listened to Labour’s plan for delivering the change we need to see. We might have made some progress and seen things working. By...

Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill: Clause 1 - Introduction (18 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: My hon. Friend has done his maths on the £2 million. I particularly enjoyed his analogy with the Virgin Galactic spacecraft, which shows that the Rwanda plan is a galactically wasteful policy. He is right that so much of this is about choices and priorities, and the Government’s choices and priorities are simply wrong in wasting valuable taxpayers’ money that would be much better focused...

Written Answers — Home Office: Detention Centres: Crimes of Violence and Harassment (15 Mar 2024)

Stephen Kinnock: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many allegations of (a) sexual assault, (b) physical assault and (c) harassment by staff have been made by detainees in detention centres in each of the last five years.


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