GOVERNMENT’S NEW IMMIGRATION PLAN IS A ‘SMOKESCREEN’, TORIES CLAIM

THE government’s new plan to reduce immigration is a “smokescreen” to distract from proposals that would give British citizenship to illegal migrants, according to shadow policing minister Matt Vickers.

He told GB News: “There’s a bit of a smoke screen. It covers what’s going on in there [Parliament] this afternoon, and seems to blow the press off the scent, because actually the bill that’s going through there this afternoon is going to allow illegal immigrants to become British citizens.

“It’s going to remove our ability to force illegal migrants to undergo age verification. We’re going to end up with 30-year-olds in classrooms with 13-year-olds.

“But actually, as part of the passage of that bill, we had Labour MPs vote. We forced them to vote on the idea that if you come to this country and you commit a crime, you should be removed…by virtue of the fact you’re a criminal.

“We also said in there that we were going to disapply entirely the Human Rights Act when it comes to cases involving immigration and deportation. No more chicken nugget-gate, no more people saying they can’t be deported because they’ll face hostility for being a paedophile in their own country…

“This is a smoke screen. It’s a cover story that blows the press off the scent and stops them holding the government to account for what it is they’re actually doing to this country’s laws today.”

He added: “You look at Keir Starmer. This is a man who in the last couple of years has voted against every single measure brought forward to toughen up our immigration system.

“This is a man who campaigned to see foreign criminals left in this country and prevent them being deported. We were sending people away on planes and he was out there campaigning against it.

“It’s madness to think this is the man who’s going to sort out the immigration system in the UK.”

Asked about the failure of the previous Conservative government to control immigration, he said: “The reality is that towards the end of the last government, the number of people coming in across the channel was going down. The number of people staying in hotels was going down.

“We were deporting more people who were arriving by small boats. Actually, if you look at what’s happened since this government came to office, the number of people arriving in this country illegally is up 41%, the numbers staying in hotels, it was going down before this government came to office.

“It’s now gone up by 28%, thousands more people staying in these hotels…record numbers now arriving in the country and of those arriving illegally, less of them are being removed.”