LABOUR ACCUSED OF ‘REINVENTING THE WHEEL’ BY SUPPORTING OFFSHORE MIGRANT PROCESSING IN ALBANIA

Former Cabinet minister Michelle Donelan has accused the Prime Minister of “hypocrisy” over his support for an offshore processing centre for migrants after the party cancelled the Rwanda scheme.
Speaking on GB News Michelle Donelan said:
“So far, all we’ve seen is taglines and pomp and ceremony and lines like ‘smashing the gangs’ still, but no actual substance.
“And this is the biggest issue, let’s face it, that the British public really care about: we saw that in the general election.
“And it’s almost like Keir Starmer has woken up to the fact that he needs to get on with actually governing and tackling the issue, but we’re still at the listing stage and absorbing what another country is doing.
“It’s also the hypocrisy that this strikes because there are similarities. It’s not the same as the Rwanda scheme. This is about processing offshore, but it is very similar. And a lot of people that objected to Rwanda objected on the principle of sending them off our shores.
“And Labour cancelled that policy, in my mind, just because it was a Conservative idea, and now they are reinventing the wheel. They’re going to have to spend a fortune if they pursue the same policy as Italy has, to get it off the ground.
“I actually think the idea is a good one and it worked in places like Australia before.
“But it does seem very hypocritical, and I don’t think it will be the panacea that some people think it will.
“As we’ve always seen, you need a multitude of different things to tackle this issue.
“The bulk of the people coming over are not [refugees], they’re economic migrants. We saw 800 [migrants] at the weekend.
“And the sheer volume, the volume is completely untenable now, and the British public have said, quite frankly, we’ve had enough and we can’t withstand it.
“And I said that I think it is a good idea as part of a suite of other measures. The proof will be in the pudding if this is actually done. Ao far, all we’ve heard from this government is a load of words, no actual action.
“[Migration] is one of the key reasons why we were booted out and we paid the price. We did have Rwanda ready to get up and running. We’d gone through all the legal processes. It was the Labour party that had stopped us at every turn.
“I’m not saying that that would have cured everything. It wouldn’t, but it would have really helped. So it wasn’t for lack of trying, and this is a difficult problem.
“There are many people that were gobsmacked and confused about the date of that election, including myself. So you’d have to ask Rishi Sunak why he called it then, and rather than myself.
“Because you’re quite right that if he had delayed it, then we could have got that first plane off the ground. Would we have solved the problem? No, but we would have put a big dent in it.
“But what we do need is this government to actually act now, because it’s getting worse. That’s the issue.”