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.
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