Shadow Crime and Policing Minister Matt Vickers has accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of resorting to a migration "smokescreen", as the Labour Government unveiled its latest crackdown on migration.Announcing the latest White Paper to the nation, Starmer declared that the "one nation experiment" on "open borders" is "over".FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Let's have a look at what the government is going to set out today, their
00:03proposal to tackle net migration, including closing ECHR loopholes, a
00:07ten-year wait for citizenship and a higher standard of English for
00:11migrants. Surely this is something you are really going to welcome?
00:15Well, we saw lots of progress on that front but today is a smokescreen.
00:20When you are involved in politics, you sometimes get a little bit cynical
00:23about the way the world works. And today is one of those days. This
00:26afternoon we are going to be voting on the borders bill in there. So
00:29there is a bit of an announcement this morning, but it is a bit of a
00:31smokescreen. It covers what is going on in there this afternoon and seems to
00:35blow the press off the scent because actually the bill that is going through
00:38there this afternoon is going to allow illegal immigrants to become British
00:42citizens. It is going to remove our ability to force illegal migrants to
00:47undergo age verification. Yes, we are going to end up with 30-year-olds in
00:50classrooms with 13-year-olds. But actually as part of the passage of that
00:53bill, we had Labour MPs vote. We forced them to vote on the idea that if you
00:58come to this country and you commit a crime, you should be removed. Not
01:01have to wait for you to get a sentence for 12 months, but be removed by
01:04virtue of the fact you are a criminal. We also said in there that we were
01:07going to disapply entirely the Human Rights Act when it comes to cases
01:11involving immigration and deportation. No more chicken nugget gate. No more
01:15people saying they can't be deported because they will face hostility for
01:17being a paedophile in their own country. They should face it here. They should be
01:21sent back. This is a smoke screen. It is a cover story that blows the press
01:25off the scent and stops them holding the government to account for what it
01:28is they are actually doing to this country's laws today. So whatever
01:32they are saying about migration, you don't think they will get a handle on
01:37this at all? You look at Keir Starmer. This is a man who in the last couple of
01:42years has voted against every single measure brought forward to toughen up our
01:47immigration system. This is a man who campaigned to see foreign criminals left in
01:52this country and prevent them being deported. We were sending people away on
01:55planes and he was out there campaigning against it. Madness to think this is the
01:58man who is going to sort out the immigration system in the UK. But you
02:01couldn't sort it out either, could you? You had a Rwanda scheme that quite
02:03literally didn't get off the ground. You had net migration figures that are
02:06almost a million under the Tories. Do you know what, this is a very good point. I
02:13didn't sort it out because I wasn't in the office. But the reality is that
02:18Kemi has said previous governments let the side down. Immigration was way too
02:23high. Kemi wasn't the leader. I wasn't a minister in that government. We put
02:27forward a proper plan that says about deporting foreign criminals, says about
02:30disciplining that Human Rights Act. That means these things get caught up in the
02:33courts for years, well, weeks, months, years. We put forward a plan, we put
02:39forward a proposal. We are in there arguing the toss as these bills go
02:42forwards. The reality is that towards the end of the last government, the
02:46number of people coming in across the channel was going down. The number of
02:49people staying in hotels was going down. We were deporting more people who were
02:53arriving by a small boat. Actually, if you look at what's happened since this
02:56government came to office, the number of people arriving in this country illegally is up
03:0041%. The number of staying in hotels, it was going down before this government
03:05came to office. It's now gone up by 28%. Thousands more people staying in these
03:11hotels. Thousands more people, in fact, record numbers now arriving in the
03:15country. And of those arriving illegally, less of them are being removed.
03:19And of those being removed.