The home secretary was on the election trail in Crawley today (June 13) door-knocking in the Northgate area and supporting Crawley Conservative candidate Zack Ali
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00:00Mr Kedley, can I just ask you, what's the biggest issue you've found on the doorstep
00:04that people are bringing up with you?
00:06Well, I think a number of things. The cost of living has been really hard.
00:11That's why we've focused so relentlessly on bringing down inflation,
00:14so that people don't see the rises in food and bills that they've seen
00:20over the last couple of years. That's meant that we're being able to address that concern.
00:25Obviously, because I'm the Home Secretary, people bring up
00:28things like border control. They bring up policing and crime.
00:33That's, again, why we've committed to, in addition to the 20,000 officers that
00:37we've already recruited, an additional 8,000 neighbourhood-based officers.
00:44And, yeah, high streets. People want to feel safe on the high streets,
00:47which is why Katie, which is why Zach and I, we've been talking to people
00:52about making sure that we've got police officers embedded in the local community.
00:55Retail crime action plan, cracking down on shoplifting and antisocial behaviour.
00:59Those are the kind of things that people bring up.
01:02Yeah. How concerned do you think people are about immigration and stopping the boats?
01:07It's a big issue. People want to know that everyone's playing by the rules.
01:12And that's what this is really about. They want to know people are playing by the rules,
01:16and they don't want immigration policy defined by people smugglers.
01:22They want the government to get a grip of that.
01:23That's why we've committed to stopping the boats. That's why we're
01:27investing time and effort and money working on both sides of the channel
01:31and also with international law enforcement agencies.
01:35And one of the things I find really disappointing is that, for example, our Rwanda plan,
01:40which is an important deterrent against people smuggling,
01:43Labour have voted against that over 130 times.
01:48They are not serious about border control.
01:51And a vote for anyone other than Conservatives,
01:53whether it's Lib Dems or Reform or Green or anyone else,
01:56will hold the door open to our borders.
02:00And that's just not good enough.
02:02Thank you.