Labour: Govt’s migrant plans ‘gimmicks and headlines’
Labour’s Nick Thomas-Symonds says that using the Bibby Stockholm barge to house migrants is “all a consequence of Conservative failure to manage our asylum system properly”. Mr Thomas -Symonds outlines what his party would do to tackle the asylum backlog, with a “systematic, pragmatic approach” and “not the gimmicks and headlines we see from the government.” Report by Rowlandi. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 use of the barge, the use of hotels, the use of bases is all a consequence of conservative failure
00:10 to manage our asylum system properly. What Labour would do is get on top of the asylum backlog,
00:17 it's currently at 173,000 people. We would get on top of that backlog and then what we would do is
00:27 have a situation where we are using the long-standing asylum accommodation that's been
00:33 used for many, many years and not end up with having to use the barge, the hotels or indeed
00:40 the bases. Their use is a consequence of conservative government failure to manage
00:45 our asylum system. Labour would get on top of the backlog firstly rather than spending the 140
00:52 million pounds on the unethical, unworkable Rwanda scheme and so far it's sent more Home
00:58 Secretaries to Rwanda than it has people. We would be using that money to invest in a new cross-border
01:06 policing unit that would tackle the criminal gangs that operate across Europe to try to reduce the
01:13 number of people who end up in those small boats on that perilous crossing across the English
01:18 Channel. Secondly, getting grip of the asylum system itself, the decision-making process,
01:24 so where there are agreements in place for returns to safe countries like Albania, we would fast-track
01:31 those cases through the system. And third, we would actually get more returns agreements in
01:38 place so that when people are found to have no right to be here they can then be safely returned
01:44 and that's the kind of systematic, pragmatic approach that we actually need to deal with
01:48 this issue, not the gimmicks and headlines we see from the government.