• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I didn't mean that. I meant the process. You said we have to pursue some issues. How are we going to do that?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

So is that going to happen and in what form will we be able to see such an assessment or such a procedure?

• Question by: Lynne Featherstone
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I wanted to ask whether you are satisfied that appropriate working practices are actually in place for joint arrest by police officers and immigration officers, after the death of the failed asylum seeker in Streatham recently.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

It's obviously going to cost us a lot more to actually take the failed asylum seekers across London and to use the exclusive facility you are talking about. Have those costs been fully explored and is the Home Secretary prepared to pay them?

• Question by: Eric Ollerenshaw
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

The cost of using policemen can't actually be met because they are being drawn away from normal duties aren't they? So the sheer fact is your government's failure over five years now to deal with this problem at port of entry means that we're picking up the tab and policemen are now having to be used who should be used for their original job in preventing crime on the streets. And, on top of that, your government's failure to deal with the French, who set up this great camp at Sangatte so people can wait for the nearest bus or...

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

It seems to me that the more that we can separate the asylum process from, as it were, the criminal process, the better both for the police and also for asylum seekers. I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what you think or what you are likely to want to say to the Home Secretary in discussion on these questions when you talk to him about it. What would be the process of moving towards a single, dedicated detention centre? How would that actually happen?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

You may not have these figures, but do you know how many failed asylum seekers are being detained on a weekly basis at the moment? Has it increased beyond the ten that was the average until recently?

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

I'm just wondering if these new proposed reforms regarding asylum seekers are actually going to have much of an impact. There is talk now of different holding facilities and that could have an impact on whether or not we actually need the centralised, exclusive facility that's been discussed.

• Question by: Trevor Phillips
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

You referred to it in passing Toby, but I wonder if you could say a little bit more about the current situation and the practice of referring failed asylum seekers to the nearest police station, about the costs of that, or disadvantages of that, to the MPS.

• Question by: Jenny Jones
• Meeting date: 12 December 2001

It's obviously going to cost us a lot more to actually take the failed asylum seekers across London and to use the exclusive facility you are talking about. Have those costs been fully explored and is the Home Secretary prepared to pay them?