WATCH: Mel Stride unleashes furious rant at  Labour for 'record high' channel crossings - video Dailymotion

GB News

Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has launched a scathing attack on Labour's approach to tackling migration, claiming the government has failed to stem the flow of small boat crossings.Speaking to GB News, Stride highlighted that 12,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year, which he described as "a record this year, under a government that said it was going to reverse those numbers."READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Transcript

00:00Let's cross to Westminster and speak to the Shadow Chancellor, Mel Stride.

00:03Good morning to you. 0.7% not to be sniffed at.

00:11So, look, any growth, Stephen, is welcome, particularly from a government that's been so hopeless at delivering it.

00:18But let me just make a few points on this.

00:20The first one is if you look at the monthly breakdown of that quarterly figure,

00:24in fact, growth was half the level in March as it was in February.

00:28So, it could be that there's an issue there.

00:31The second thing is that the national insurance increases on employers that's slowing down business.

00:36The increase in business rates has not yet, well, has kicked in now, but is not captured by those numbers directly.

00:44And, of course, we've got the employment legislation coming down the line that the Treasury suggests is going to cost £5 billion to businesses.

00:51And you've still got all these forecasters, the IMF, the Bank of England, the OBR, downgrading growth forecasts for our country.

00:59And in the case of the OBR, halving their forecast recently for growth this year.

01:05So, whilst, of course, any increase in growth is welcome, we should not be popping the champagne corks yet, I'm afraid.

01:13Do you welcome this meeting today between Sakhir Starmer and Albania's Prime Minister?

01:18They're talking about these returns hubs, which could see failed asylum seekers be returned to the Western Balkans.

01:25I mean, it sounds as though, I mean, being backed by the UN, it's not going to be wrapped up in the courts, as we saw with the Rwanda deal.

01:33This sounds like this could be a really good thing for Britain.

01:35I think this is going to be far less substantial than Labour are making out, I'm afraid.

01:42Look, at the core of any policy that's going to work to stop illegal migrants coming across here has got to be significant deterrence.

01:49And we had that in the form of Rwanda, which meant if you came here illegally, you would have been removed to Rwanda promptly.

01:57And we had flights ready to go, actually, at the end of July last year, just after the general election.

02:04What you're looking at here in the case of Albania is something different.

02:07Those are asylum claims that have been processed and offshoring those people further on down the line.

02:13That's very different from removing them promptly and taking them somewhere else to actually assess those claims,

02:19as we would have had with Rwanda.

02:21Now, Labour chose to cancel that programme.

02:23We know it would have worked.

02:24We already saw the effect that it was having.

02:26Just the fact we had the flights lined up on illegal migrants going from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland.

02:32We saw migrants stopping coming across the Channel and waiting for a Labour government to scrap Rwanda before they came.

02:38Deterrence works.

02:39But I'm afraid what this government is doing does not amount to that.

02:44We're very keen to talk about Brexit benefits.

02:46We did it all with the Trump tariff deal and all the rest of it.

02:49Everyone's going on about whether it's a Brexit benefit that we're doing better than the EU.

02:53Is the situation we're in now a Brexit deficit?

02:57I mean, if we still have the Dublin Accords, we could send people back, couldn't we?

03:03I mean, is the situation we're in now as a direct result of Brexit?

03:08Well, of course, Dublin 3, which we were a part of when we were members of the European Union,

03:17allowed those effects to happen between us sending people to other countries,

03:23but other countries indeed being able to send migrants to us in turn.

03:28The reality is we've left the European Union.

03:30But the keys to controlling migration are on the legal migration side, as I say, is to have a clear deterrent.

03:36Rwanda would have delivered that.

03:38Labour scrapped it, wasted all the money and the effort that was put in to put that into place.

03:43And we're now seeing record numbers, 12,000 illegal migrants coming across the Channel this year.

03:49That's a record this year under this government that said it was going to be reversing that.

03:53And on net migration, we need to see the government go much further.

03:57We put in place this week some amendments to legislation that Labour voted down

04:03that would have given Parliament control of setting a clear cap on migration

04:07as an important part of controlling that aspect as well.

04:12Can I ask you about the Justice Secretary announcing plans yesterday?

04:16Jail time for recalled offenders to be limited.

04:19So if you are recalled to prison for breaching your licence conditions,

04:24you would go back to prison for just 28 days.

04:28And that is because we are, of course, seeing a shortage of prison spaces in this country.

04:32We're all aware of that.

04:34Talk of there being no spaces left by November.

04:37So something has to be done.

04:38Is this something that you welcome?

04:43No, I'm very concerned about it.

04:45Look, there's a very clear solution which this government's failed to grasp

04:49in terms of freeing up places in prison.

04:53That is, we have 10,000 foreign offenders in our jails

04:58and what we should be doing is removing them and deporting them back to their countries.

05:04And that would free up a lot of space.

05:06And we actually tabled an amendment to some legislation on Monday

05:10which would have said that we would have exempted in deportation cases

05:14the Human Rights Act and the provisions that it brings into UK law

05:20through the ECHR around Article 8 and Article 3,

05:23which would have made that process so much easier.

05:26That's what this government should have been doing,

05:28is freeing up those places and getting foreign national criminals in our prisons,

05:33out of our prisons, but out of our country as well.

05:35Is it legal to do that though?

05:37I mean, the problem we seem to have when trying to deport anyone

05:41is getting wrapped up in all this red tape.

05:44I mean, is that quite a simple legal thing to do?

05:50Well, the change that we put forward that I referred to,

05:53this amendment around taking the Human Rights Act

05:57out of the process of deporting somebody, is absolutely critical.

06:01We had an example recently where somebody couldn't be deported back to Albania

06:08because the court determined that under the auspices of the ECHR

06:12and the Human Rights Act, that person's child would be disadvantaged

06:17because the kind of chicken nuggets that were available there

06:20would not be appropriate for them.

06:22I mean, this is where it ends up when you have that kind of,

06:26those kind of loopholes in the process.

06:27They need to be closed.

06:29I mean, gave the government the opportunity to do that on Monday

06:31and they turned it down.

06:34Look, talking about the prisons crisis,

06:35I'm sure you've seen and heard these very alarming reports this week

06:40of a number of prison officers who have been injured in separate attacks.

06:44One officer slashed with an improvised weapon in one of those attacks.

06:48Another officer suffering a broken arm in a separate assault.

06:53I mean, action needs to be taken, doesn't it,

06:55to protect our prison officers before there's a fatality.

07:00Yeah, absolutely.

07:01The government's got to get a grip.

07:02I mean, how do you have a situation where people who are capable of being

07:06that violent have access to boiling water and implements to attack

07:12police officers, sorry, prison officers,

07:14and that's why these situations actually occur.

07:18So this needs to be absolutely dealt with promptly and effectively.

07:22But look, the underlying cause of overcrowding in prisons,

07:25which we recognise, as I say,

07:28is part of a contributing factor to those kind of problems.

07:31And the government really needs to get a grip of this,

07:33particularly around foreign national offenders

07:36and removing them from our prisons

07:37and sending them back to the countries that they've come from.

07:40OK. Mel Stride, appreciate your time this morning.

07:43Thanks very much indeed.

07:46I mean,

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WATCH: Mel Stride unleashes furious rant at Labour for 'record high' channel crossings

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