LABOUR’S ASYLUM PLAN WILL ‘ACT AS A GIGANTIC PULL FACTOR’ FOR MIGRANTS, WARNS MARK FRANCOIS
THE Government’s plan to speed up the asylum system will act as a will “act as a gigantic pull factor” for people looking to enter the UK illegally, according to Shadow Defence Minister Mark Francois MP.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “We’ve now hit 25,000 and we’re only in early August. I watched the Alex Ballinger interview. The fascinating thing was what he didn’t say, and he didn’t mention that the government have announced this weekend they’re going to try and massively speed up the process of asylum claims.
“The problem with that is it will act as a gigantic pull factor. At the moment, about half of all asylum claims are granted. So if you let the word get round, you know, all those camps in northern France, ‘oh, the British government are going to process asylum claims quotes within weeks’, more and more people will attempt the journey if they think they’ve got a 50% chance of getting asylum, if they can get across the Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. So, this is not thought through.
“They said they would smash the gangs. They palpably haven’t, this ridiculous scheme of 17 in and 1 out that was announced a few weeks ago is a total gimmick.
“Labour have no plan whatsoever to stop the boats, and that’s a tragedy because the boats will keep coming. We’ll need more asylum hotels, and there will be more and more social unrest as a result.
“This is all tinkering. The truth is, they haven’t got a clue what they’re doing, and the boats will keep coming, and people will get angrier and angrier about it.”
Asked why any politician should be trusted on immigration, he said: “If you remember, we had the Rwanda plan. Now some people liked it, and some people didn’t, but there’s one more plan Labour have got, and it was beginning to work.
“How do we know that? Because you had a period when the government of the Republic of Ireland were beginning to complain bitterly about the number of cross-Channel migrants that were coming from Northern Ireland into the Republic because they were frightened of being sent to Rwanda.”
He added: “It was always meant to be a deterrent…should we have done it quicker? Yes. Should we have made further progress on it? Yes. And then there was an election, and we ran out of time and Labour junked it, I think, in a fit of pique but without any replacement…
“Labour have no plan at all and saying they’re going to speed up the processing of asylum claims will actually make it worse, because it will encourage more migrants to chance their arm and come.”
