Keir Starmer backpedals on two-child benefit cap as home secretary reveals Rwanda scheme cost taxpayer £700m – live

Labour have already worsened the issue of small boats crossings in their two and half weeks in Government, the shadow home secretary James Cleverly has said.

Mr Cleverly told MPs: “The reality is everybody knows, including the people smugglers, that the small boat problem is going to get worse, indeed has already got worse under Labour because they have no deterrent.

“People are being sold a lie when they’re being smuggled into this country across the busiest shipping lanes. And we do need to stop them. Too many lives have already been lost. Sadly, six more have been lost in the Channel in the last few weeks and our hearts go out to them and their loved ones.

“We disagree on many things, but we can agree that we need to put an end to this evil trade but sadly, the initial decisions that her (Home Secretary Yvette Cooper) Government has made has made this problem worse and not better.”

Mr Cleverly earlier criticised the Government’s scrapping of the Rwanda scheme stating: “The fact there is now no safe third country to return people to who cannot be returned home means that we ask, where is she going to send the people who come here from countries like Afghanistan or Iraq, in Syria?

“Has she started negotiations on returns agreements with the Taliban, or the ayatollahs of Iran, or Assad in Syria? And if she’s not going to send those that arrived here on small boats to Rwanda, which local authorities will she be sending people to? We were closing hotels, when I was in Government and I wonder which local authorities will be receiving those asylum seekers if not Rwanda, will it be Rochdale or Romford or Richmond?”

Yvette Cooper said the cost of the “indefinitely rising” asylum backlog in hotel and accommodation support bills is “astronomical”, telling MPs: “The potential costs of asylum support over the next four years, if we continue down this track, could be an eye-watering £30 billion to £40 billion – that is double the annual police budget for England and Wales.”

The Home Secretary said ending the migration and economic development partnership (MEDP) with Rwanda would save £220 million on further direct payments over the next few years, adding: “We will immediately save up to £750 million that had been put aside by the previous government to cover the MEDP this year.”

Ms Cooper said some of the money saved would be invested into a new border security command, adding a “serious returns and enforcement programme” would replace the Rwanda MEDP.

Home Office staff are being redeployed away from the Rwanda scheme and “into returns and enforcement to reverse the collapse in removals that has taken place since 2010”, Ms Cooper said before noting she has tasked the immigration enforcement team with “intensifying enforcement activity this summer targeting illegal working across high-risk sectors”.

Ms Cooper went on: “We will end the asylum chaos and start taking asylum decisions again so we can clear the backlog and end asylum hotels.”

She said she is laying a statutory instrument which ends the “retrospective nature” of the Illegal Migration Act provisions to ensure that the Home Office can “immediately start clearing cases from after March 2023”, adding: “Making this one simple change will save the taxpayer an estimated £7 billion over the next 10 years.”

Yvette Cooper accused the previous Conservative government of creating an “asylum Hotel California” in which people arrived in the system but never leave.

The Home Secretary raised concerns over “legal contradictions” in the Illegal Migration Act and said “no decision” can be taken on an individual’s case if they arrived in the UK after March 2023 and meet key conditions in the legislation.

She said: “They just stay in the asylum system. Even if they’ve come here unlawfully for economic reasons and should be returned to their home country, they won’t be because the law doesn’t work.

“Only a small minority might ever have been sent to Rwanda and everyone else stays indefinitely in taxpayer-funded accommodation and support. Now the Home Office estimates that around 40% of asylum cases since March 2023 should be covered by these Illegal Migration Act conditions, the remaining 60% under the previous government’s policy should still have been processed and cleared in the normal way.

“However, even though previous ministers introduced this new law 12 months ago they didn’t ever introduce an effective operational way for the Home Office to distinguish between the cases covered by the Illegal Migration Act and the other cases where decisions should continue between the 40% and the 60% – as a result decisions can’t be taken on any of them.”

Ms Cooper said she had been “shocked to discover that the Home Office has effectively stopped making the majority of asylum decisions”, adding: “It is the most extraordinary policy that I’ve ever seen. We have inherited asylum Hotel California – people arrive in the asylum system and they never leave. The previous government’s policy was effectively an amnesty and that is the wrong thing to do.”

New Attorney General Richard Hermer has taken his seat in the House of Lords after being appointed to Labour’s top team.

The leading barrister received a peerage to enable him to join Sir Keir Starmer’s front bench as the Government’s chief legal adviser.

The 55-year-old took on the role held in opposition by Emily Thornberry, who has said she was “sorry and surprised” not to have been appointed to a senior ministerial post in the new Labour administration.

The Prime Minister has insisted Ms Thornberry has a “big part to play” in Labour’s future despite not being offered a ministerial job.

Also taking his place on the red benches was business chief James Timpson, who will serve as the new minister of state for prisons, parole and probation.

The 52-year-old was the long-time boss of the shoe repair company Timpson, which trains and employs former prisoners.

The rehabilitation campaigner, who also served as chair of the Prison Reform Trust, said in an interview earlier this year that the state was “addicted to punishment” and many in jail should not be there.

Lord Hermer wore the traditional scarlet robes for the short introduction ceremony in the upper chamber, where he swore allegiance to the King.

He was supported by fellow top lawyers Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws and former Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury.

Yvette Cooper has revealed the Conservative government “had planned to spend over £10 billion” on the Rwanda scheme.

The Home Secretary told the Commons: “I can report it has already cost the British taxpayer £700 million in order to send just four volunteers. Those costs include £290 million payments to Rwanda, chartering flights that never took off, detaining hundreds of people and then releasing them and paying for more than 1000 civil servants to work on the scheme.

“A scheme to send four people. It is the most shocking waste of taxpayers’ money I have ever seen.”

She added: “Looking forward, the costs are set to get worse. Even if the scheme had ever got going, it’s clear it would only cover a minority of arrivals, yet a substantial proportion of future costs were fixed costs.

“And most shocking of all, over the six years of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership forecast, the previous government had planned to spend over £10 billion of taxpayers’ money on the scheme.”

Home secretary Yvette Cooper is now on her feet delivering a statement to the House of Commons on illegal migration.

She told the Commons: “Criminal gangs have been allowed to take hold, along our border, and they are making huge profit from undermining our border security, and putting lives at risk, they should not be able to get away with it.”

She added: “Crossings in the first half of 2024 are up by 10 per cent on last year. Numbers going up instead of coming down and at the same time, the asylum backlog is getting worse as decision making in the Home Office has dropped, and Home Office spending on asylum support has increased sevenfold in the space of just three years.”

Sir Keir Starmer has said that negotiations on EU-UK trading arrangements will not involve re-joining the EU or freedom of movement.

Labour MP for York Central Rachael Maskell asked: “Working together and collaborating is important, not least in an unstable world that we’re in. Could he set out for the House what discussions he had about the EU-UK Trade and cooperation agreement in the light of its renegotiation deadlines next year?”

Sir Keir replied: “I’m pleased to have appointed a minister who will take responsibility for that important work. It does not involve re-joining the EU, it does involve resetting and improving the relationship we have with our EU allies.”

In response to an earlier question on EU-UK trade Sir Keir said: “The reset with our European allies was well received and there was clearly an appetite to work in a different and better way with the UK and I think that will stand us in good stead as we go forward.

“We did have discussions about a closer relationship with our EU allies, but I made it very clear from the outset, as I have done in opposition, that does not mean re-joining the EU, that does not mean going back into the structures of the EU, and it does not mean freedom of movement. And I took the early opportunity to make that clear to our European allies so we can move forward progressively, but with the right framework in mind.”