‘The shadow Home Secretary just wants to pretend that the last eight years never happened.’
Yet again, shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp needed reminding of the Tories’ abysmal record on immigration. Yesterday, it was the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper who delivered that lesson.
In a statement to the House, the Home Secretary set out the government’s new “one in, one out” small boats deal with France.
In response, Philp tried to attack the deal again, claiming it is a “gimmick”, only to be reminded that he had wanted to strike such an agreement back when he was immigration minister, but failed to do so.
Philp said that small boat crossings are now at their “worst ever”, and asked her to apologise for her presiding over the highest number of small boat crossings and for making the “terrible mistake” of cancelling the Tories’ failed Rwanda plan.
In response, The Home Secretary said: “The shadow Home Secretary just wants to pretend that the last eight years never happened.”
She reminded Philp that 128,000 people crossed the channel over the last eight years under the Tories and that zero were returned to France.
Cooper also asked Philp: “How many were sent to Rwanda? He said himself it was zero, because he did not even want to count the four volunteers.”
Cooper also reminded Philp he had wanted to develop a returns agreement with France when he was immigration minister.
She said: “ As for the agreement with France, which he does not seem to want to talk about very much, I asked him about exactly that back in 2020”.
In 2020, Cooper asked Philp about the chances of the then Tory government coming to a bilateral agreement with France over returning migrants.
She told MPs: “He said—this was five years ago—that that was what he was working on. Indeed, he told the [Home Affairs] Committee:
‘One of our priorities will be to reach those agreements and…it is, I think, strongly in the French national interest to agree such a returns agreement… That gives me significant cause for optimism.’
“Well, it turns out that he should have been optimistic—about the return of a Labour Government, reaching an agreement where he had failed.”
She added: “That was five years ago, and he did not change a thing.”
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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