Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle refused to set a date for when we will see a reduction in small boat crossings – as the Home Office touts more migrant removals since Labour was elected than in any other six-month period over the past five years.
Sunday 15 December 2024 10:45, UK
The home secretary has given an interview this morning, and as the Tories continue to attack Labour for scrapping the Rwanda scheme, she was asked if some other form of third country asylum processing could take place.
Yvette Cooper referenced an agreement where Albania will process claims for Italy, and told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: “So we will look at whatever works. Clearly everything has to meet proper international standards, clearly it has to be effective and has to deliver results.”
The “interesting thing” about the deal Italy has struck with Albania is that it has a measure to “effectively fast-track cases from predominantly safe countries”.
“We are interested in doing that in the UK, to fast-track decisions for people arriving from countries that are predominantly safe, where we should be able to take those decisions swiftly and be able to return people swiftly,” she said.
“That hasn’t happened in the past. So we are interested to develop that in the UK, we think that’s an important principle.”
Pushed again on third-country processing, the home secretary added: “We will look at whatever works.
“I think the key thing is to just be really practical and that’s why we’ve been focusing on the law enforcement, on being able to take out some of the criminal gangs but also being able to fast-track those decisions and returns.”
Reform UK could replace the Conservatives as the second largest party at the next election, Baroness Harman has predicted.
The Labour peer and former deputy leader said Nigel Farage’s party “seem to have an argument and they seem to know what it is”.
Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harman said that while she often believed that talk of party splits and decline were exaggerated, she did think this was the case with regard to Reform.
“I feel quite conflicted about this because I don’t want to talk up Reform,” she said.
“But I actually think that Reform are going to replace the Conservatives at the next election because they seem to have an argument and they seem to know what that argument is.”
Her words highlight the increasingly bitter battle between the Tories and Reform following the general election, which saw Mr Farage elected to parliament for the first time.
Ms Harman acknowledged that Reform also posed a threat to her party, but said Labour was aided by the fact it was now in government “and we can do things”.
At the election Reform came second in 98 seats, 89 of which are held by Labour.
“When you’re in opposition you can only talk about them and at the moment [Reform] are talking a good talk and Kemi is not talking at all,” she said.
“So I think it’s in the opposition position that the changeover will happen.
“Yes, we have to actually deliver for the people who otherwise will turn to Reform because they feel that democracy is not meeting their needs and the government is not meeting their needs.
“But actually – and I don’t like making this prediction – I actually think the Conservatives are going to be finished and Reform is going to take over.”
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Thank you for joining us for today’s edition of Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips.
We heard from:
And on Trevor’s panel were:
Scroll down to read what they told us on a range of topics – from border security, to China, to digital ID cards, and the electoral future of Reform UK.
Stay with us here in the Politics Hub for the very latest political news.
The next guest on this morning’s edition of Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips is journalist and author Anne Applebaum.
With the intelligence efforts of both Russia and China, Trevor starts by asking if we are heading towards a new Cold War, with the associated “skulduggery”.
She replies: “I don’t think it’s exactly like the Cold War, because what we’re facing isn’t a single adversary with a single ideology.”
She explains that there is “a network of autocratic states – nationalist Russia, communist China, theocratic Iran, Venezuela, Belarus, until a few days ago, Syria”.
They have “very different ideologies”, but have “begun to work together opportunistically”.
“They’ve begun to do so because they all have a common enemy, and that enemy is us,” she says. “So the enemy is the liberal democratic world – the language that we use, the language of rights, of the rule of law.”
With Russia and China specifically forming relationships around the world, we ask if they are winning, but Ms Applebaum cautions that “winning is a hard word to use”, noting that “some of them are very fragile states”, pointing to Syria for example.
“But they are changing their tactics all of the time,” she explains. “And they’re looking to shape and influence our internal politics in a way that I think we aren’t used to, and we’re not really prepared for.”
But the fall of the Assad regime in Syria is “a blow” to this network of autocratic states, she says. And if other countries being propped up by Russia and China fall, then it “reflects badly” on them.
We are hearing from our panel on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips about the UK’s relationship with China.
It comes after a Chinese businessman – described as a “close confidant” of Prince Andrew, and who also met two former prime ministers – was barred from entering the UK over national security risks.
Baroness Harriet Harman, former acting Labour leader and co-host of Sky’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast, says the government, parliamentarians, the royal family and society more widely need to “up our game” in spotting the potential threats in relation to China.
She tells us: “We seem to have a bit of a sort of ignorant spot in relation to China, both what the opportunities are and what the threats might be.”
She adds: “We need to up our game on… and be more understanding of what’s going on in China and what their objectives might be, and what that might mean for us, for good or ill.”
Gillian Keegan, former education secretary, tells us that we should “always be vigilant”, and it is “surprising that people are surprised” by China’s activities because security advice has been given to people visiting China going back 30 years.
She says: “They are the biggest strategic threat we have. They’re a much bigger strategic threat than Russia.”
Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times, says it is “clear once again that Prince Andrew doesn’t pick his friends very well”.
On the issue more broadly, she says at her son’s university graduation in Edinburgh recently, around 80% of the students were Chinese, showing that they are making “a lot of effort” to “understand a lot about us”, while “we don’t understand anything about them”.
Finally, with the shadow home secretary, we ask about rumours that local Conservative associations are looking at making unofficial pacts with local Reform branches ahead of next year’s local elections.
We ask if he is in favour of that, and he replies: “No, we’re up for fighting every single seat.
“We’ve been winning council by-elections up and down the country since the general election. We’ve been winning far more seats than Reform.”
He goes on to say that the Conservatives are the official opposition, with 121 MPs to their five MPs.
“We’re the ones holding the government to account day in, day out. And, Trevor, as we saw in the general election, if you vote Reform, you get Labour.”
We ask if the Conservative Party’s headquarters will be sending out instructions to their local branches not to make any pacts.
He replies: “I’m not the memo guy, but I do know that we’re going to be looking to fight every single seat that we possibly can.”
Pushed on the question, he says: “It’s not my area of responsibility.”
But eventually he says in a message to local Tories: “Fight every single seat and aim to win every single seat.”
That, he says, “implies no deals” of any kind.
We’re now moving onto illegal migration.
Labour says more migrants have been removed from the UK since it was elected in July than in any other six-month period over the past five years.
The Home Office announced that almost 13,460 people had been removed since Sir Keir Starmer’s victory.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp acknowledges this achievement but says what “concerns” him is the increase in the number of illegal crossings compared with this time last year.
More than 20,000 people have arrived illegally on the UK’s shores since Labour took power, up on 17,020 during the same period last year.
“That’s a significant increase,” Mr Philp says.
“And the reason those illegal and dangerous small boat crossings have gone up under Labour is they scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it had even started.”
Asked by Trevor Phillips how the Tory’s Rwanda asylum plan could have acted as a deterrent when flights never managed to get off the tarmac, Mr Philp cited the National Crime Agency.
“They have told us you need a deterrent to stop the boats, law enforcement alone is not enough and that’s why it was so foolish for Labour to scrap that Rwanda deterrent before it even started,” he said.
“Had it started by now, it would have been having an effect and falling, and we would not have been seeing increases in numbers.”
The shadow home secretary is now speaking about Chinese attempts to influence political life in the UK, which he describes as “systemic”.
This week a Chinese businessman – described as a “close confidant” of Prince Andrew, and who also met two former prime ministers – was barred from entering the UK over national security risks.
Speaking to Trevor Phillips, Chris Philp said Beijing has been engaging in “organised and systemic attempts to influence political life” in the UK for “many years”, calling it “deeply concerning”.
“There was a Labour MP who received money from a declared Chinese agent,” he says.
“We’ve seen them infiltrating universities to get hold of cutting edge technologies that have been developed in our universities, and we’ve seen straightforward espionage activity as well.
“It’s something the Chinese state, the Chinese Communist Party, have been doing on a systemic basis for many, many years.”
On the Chinese businessmen barred from the UK, Mr Philip says everybody in public life and those involved in business and academia “needs to think very carefully about people who might be connected to the Chinese state”.
The UK is one of the only developed economies not using a form of national ID card, research has shown.
Research for Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips found that of the 38 OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, just six – all predominantly English-speaking – do not have an ID scheme: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United States and the UK.
We ask border security minister Dame Angela Eagle if such a scheme is under consideration as a way of cracking down on illegal migration.
She replies: “No, it wasn’t in our manifesto.”
She goes on to say that, in order to get a job legally, potential employees have to show their documentation proving they have the right to be in the UK.
“That’s the enforcement we’re doing in the labour market with the increasing number of arrests,” she adds.
We ask border security minister Dame Angela Eagle if the government knows how many illegal migrants are in the UK right now.
She replies: “It’s not possible to know how many undocumented migrants there are.
“We only know the ones that we’ve come across. There are currently 107,000 people in our asylum system. That’s the backlog that we inherited, which we’re dealing with.
“But if somebody is here completely illegally, and they got here illegally, and we’ve never come across them, we don’t know who or where they are.”
She goes on to say that around “70% of the people that are here illegally came here legally in the first place”, but have overstayed.
Pushed on if the government know a rough number of people here in the UK illegally, the minister says: “We publish more and more detailed statistics on migration in the UK than any other country.”
But she says there is no way to know if someone has sneaked in.
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