HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

I thank the right hon. Lady and the Home Affairs Committee for the work that went into the report. I do not agree with it all—some of it does not go far enough for me—but I agree with many of the Committee’s findings. In particular, I agree with its call for the Government to prioritise fixing the current system that people are living in now. They broke it; they need to fix it instead of lashing out at those who are languishing in it.

I question the emphasis in the report on deterring people from coming here. We all want to deter people from coming here unsafely, but we rank pretty badly among other equivalent European nations in terms of our responsibility to people exercising their legal right to claim international protection. I would have liked to have seen more emphasis on expanding and increasing the safe and legal routes, to which the right hon. Lady referred, to enable to people come here safely. Given the fact that there is evidence that that would reduce the number of dangerous crossings, does the right hon. Lady see scope for a future piece of work looking specifically at how we could develop more and better safe and legal routes?