House of Commons
26 October 2026
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House of Commons
Follow its sittings00:15 - 00:20
Speaker 3
Order, order. We start with the questions to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Greg Smith.
00:20 - 00:22
Speaker 2
Question one, sir.
00:22 - 00:23
Secretary, Home Secretary.
00:23 - 00:45
Speaker 4
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Small boat returns under this government are at a record high and our Immigration and Asylum Bill will help us remove people faster than ever before. Under this government, we are dealing with the small boats crisis left by the previous government. Small boat crossings are down and removals are at record highs.
00:45 - 01:29
Speaker 6
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. If small boat crossings were down by enough, the government would not have to be standing up asylum camps at places like MOD Bicester Site A just over the Oxfordshire border from my own constituency. With 85,000 small boat crossings since the general election, this is at a crisis point. And MOD Bicester Site A doesn't even offer value to the taxpayer with new modelling showing that over three years, it would come in at 385 pounds per person per night, nearly double that of the equivalent asylum hotels. So will the Home Secretary actually get on and deport those that have come to our country illegally rather than using sites like MOD Bicester Site A?
01:29 - 01:45
Speaker 4
Mr. Speaker, it is under this government that small boat returns have increased. And this is a crisis that began on the Conservative government's watch. It got worse under the Conservative Party and it is this government that is fixing the mess that they left behind.
01:45 - 01:46
Alistair Strathern.
01:46 - 02:12
Speaker 8
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We inherited a situation where gangs were profiting off our out-of-control borders and hotel operators were ripping us off, making the most of the backlog that had built up far too high. We've made some welcome steps, but it's clear more needs to be done and returning people with no right to be here is a crucial part of it. So how can we make sure we're stepping up the processing of cases and forming closer links with other countries so that we've got strong returns agreements in place and finally getting the cost of this out-of-control system down?
02:12 - 02:33
Speaker 4
Well, my honourable friend is right that we need to maximise the numbers that we are returning from this country. He will know that returns, asylum-related returns are at their highest level since 2010. This government has made excellent progress on getting returns up and back to levels seen in previous years and we will make more progress, Mr. Speaker.
02:33 - 02:35
Speaker 1
Father of the House, Edward Leigh.