SHADOW MINISTER SAYS UK WILL ‘PROBABLY’ HAVE TO LEAVE ECHR TO DELIVER MIGRATION POLICY

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Front bench Conservative MP Neil O’Brien has said the announcement from Kemi Badenoch on indefinite leave to remain is the first in a line of policy statements from the party on immigration.

Speaking on GB News, Neil O’Brien said:

“It’s clear we are now under totally new management. Kemi Badenoch was totally right to apologise for the last government’s record on migration, where immigration was massively too high.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to continue to be massively too high under Keir Starmer as well.

“Kemi talked about this at our party conference. You saw our announcement about it about a month ago, and now you’re seeing the first of the specific announcements, taking away this automatic drift towards people being able to be here forever, even if they’re claiming benefits, even if they’ve committed quite serious crimes.

“This is something that a lot of other European countries don’t do. We’ve had far too liberal an attitude to this in the UK, and it’s good that Kemi Badenoch is now shaping the agenda. She’s putting this obvious point on the agenda for the first time, which no one else has done.

“I’m in favour of us cutting through all of these different human rights conventions and doing whatever we need to do to get dangerous people out of this country.

“But in this case, this is even a step before that. Other countries that are in the ECHR, be it Denmark, be it other places around Europe are able to have a small, sensible approach than we have had on this.

“In Denmark, if you’ve committed quite a serious crime, you don’t get to go on to become a citizen after that but in this country, you can.

“And you can move to getting benefits in this country after just five years of being here, you don’t have to have paid in and you don’t have to be a net contributor.

“Now, with the suggestions that Kemi’s been making, you would have to be a net contributor. You’d have to start paying it if you want to take something out and I think that is basic fairness.

“It’s what a lot of other European countries are already doing and it’s just common sense.

“You don’t even have to be particularly sceptical about migration to think that immigration has been far too high and the last government did not deliver the promises that were made during Brexit.

“We need to start delivering that promise, and this is a step towards that, because it means that people who are coming here who are not being net contributors, not playing by the rules, they will have to leave. They won’t be able to just drift on and get indefinite leave to remain and then citizenship.

“Instead, if you are not a net contributor, you’re going to have to go. You’re not going to be able to keep staying here.

“I think there’s a very, very strong argument for leaving the ECHR, and indeed, other human rights texts that get in the way of us deporting dangerous people.

“Kemi Badenoch has said that we will probably have to leave that as part of this policy process.

“I think policy is going in the right direction on that, but this is more entry level than that. Before we even get to those questions about the ECHR.

“This is stuff the countries that are in the ECHR are managing to do. They have basic rules that if you commit a crime, you don’t get to become a citizen, you don’t get to get indefinite leave to remain in the country.

“I’m in favour of getting out of ECHR, but we don’t even need to do that to achieve these things. It’s just common sense.

“In this country, we have just had this absurdly liberal approach where we just turn the other cheek.

“Kemi first said that she was going to produce work on this back in November and this has been planned for quite a long time. We talked about it about a month ago, when she was talking about migration then.

“But absolutely yes, she can and will be setting out more detail on everything to do with immigration policy and integration policy. But ultimately, this is about what is right for the country, rather than politics. I can promise you that nobody is angrier than I am the way that immigration policy went totally in the wrong direction under the last government.

“I wrote about this even three years ago in 2022. You could see that the new system was not doing what it was promised it would do, and that is outrageous.

“People are right to be angry about it, but we’ve got to fix this. And I would say, this is not about party politics. This is about doing the right thing for the country.

“And having had a period of such high immigration, we now need a period of very, very low immigration.

“There are certain people who have got unique skills in the world, be you a brain surgeon, be you rocket scientist, fine. But we’ve just had far, far too many people coming here and even working at the very bottom of the labour market on minimum wage jobs or not even working at all and not contributing.

“That has got to change, because people are rightly very, very angry about that.”

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