WIDDECOMBE: UK HAS A LONG TERM PROBLEM OF DEPORTING FAILED ASYLUM SEEKERS

Reform spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe has said she proposed an idea of a deportation agency when she was shadow home secretary in 1999.
Speaking to GB News, Ann Widdecombe said:
“I think the idea is a good one. Going right back to 1999 when I was shadow home secretary, I actually proposed a variation on this theme.

“I proposed the creation of a deportations agency with specific targets and performance related pay in order to try and ring fence the deportations so that they didn’t just get lost in the general immigration issues of the Home Office.

“So I think this is a variation on that theme. It’s more direct, because you’ll have a minister in charge. And I think that Nigel is right, you need to ring fence this issue now.

“We’re going to have a load of people coming in off the boats. You can simply say to them, as Reform will, as soon as they come on the shore, if they get as far as the shore, under Reform, we will simply say you have no case for asylum. You’ve come from a safe country.

“But then, of course, you’ve got to move them either back to France or to their country of origin, and that is where the system so often fails.

“It’s ring fence, so he’s concentrating on virtually nothing else. Now, no minister ever has just one single brief; it isn’t practical in a big department like the Home Office but that would be his or her principal brief.

“Nigel has always warned that it’s not possible just to do mass deportations like that. But if you’re to be effective with them, then you need to have an ring fence and you need a one minister answering for that.

“The Home Secretary, what does he do? He’s got a million and a half jobs at Home Office, just about everything in government.

“This was something I came up with in 1999 when nobody had heard of Rupert Lowe and
when Reform wasn’t even born, the Brexit Party wasn’t even born.

“Why did I come up with it? Because even back in those days, there was a huge failure to deport people who had been refused permission to stay.

“The first thing you just come out of ECHR. I don’t think you’re going to be able to make any progress unless you actually seriously commit to doing that.

“Then, if our own national law is being used against us, well, what is parliament for? It is to make law. It is to change law. It is to repeal law. We will do all those things to make it possible to deport people.

“But that doesn’t mean that our first and foremost emphasis is on stopping the boats in the first place. The problem with deportations is the illegal immigrants have already arrived.

“What we need to do is to stop those arrivals in the first place. Nothing that we’re doing now in terms of this minister and special responsibilities negates that priority.”