Andrew Marr: Sunak's migrant crackdown faces huge practical difficulties - and voters won't forgive if the policy fails
7 March 2023, 18:06 | Updated: 7 March 2023, 18:38
Andrew Marr has said Rishi Sunak's new law to tackle illegal immigration faces huge practical difficulties, and voters won't forgive the Tories if the policy fails.
Speaking on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter acknowledged that the current number of migrants crossing the Channel to the UK is unsustainable, but questioned whether Government plans to arrest asylum seekers who have arrived illegally and remove them to where they came from or a safe third country can really work in practice.
It comes as Home Secretary Suella Braverman told MPs on that the Illegal Migration Bill will "stop the boats" which are bringing "tens of thousands" of people to the UK.
Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, she said "there are 100 million people" who would qualify for asylum under the current law, adding: "Let's be clear - they are coming here.
"This is the crucial point of this Bill. They will not stop coming here until the world knows that if you enter Britain illegally you will be detained and swiftly removed."
But Marr said that given the huge number of people seeking asylum in the UK, the Government's crackdown may not be workable.
"I think I've just invented my own homemade BS or claptrap detector," he said. "Every time a politician uses the phrase "the British people" be very careful. if they use it again and again, run in the opposite direction holding your nose.
"In today's debate about new laws against illegal immigration the Home Secretary Suella Braverman was very keen to tell us what the British people were like and what the British people wanted and that they the British people were being taken for a ride; while her opposite number Yvette Cooper was equally keen to tell us that Britain, so I guess the British people were better than, well, Suella Braverman. Horse manure all round says the detector.
"The proposed new law would oblige the Government to arrest every asylum seeker who arrived in the UK illegally and keep them for 28 days without bail or judicial review until they could be removed - either to to a safe third country such as Rwanda, or to where they came from.
Andrew Marr's reaction to new Illegal Migration Bill
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"No illegal migrant would have the right to stay here. As for legal migrants, or refugees, there will be a cap on the number Britain takes each year, decided by Parliament.
"It’s been pointed out since that excluding Ukrainians, fewer than a million people applied for asylum right across Europe last year - so that’s a big number, Home Secretary.
"Meanwhile, there are huge practical difficulties. This is going to require enormous and completely secure new detention camps.
"And then there's the question of how you actually return fleeing people to, for instance, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, war-ravaged Syria or Yemen or Somalia, which are both in the throes of civil wars.
"Even if the flights to Rwanda take off, it’s taking only a modest number, so that question remains: what do you actually do with returnees to despotic or violent places? Chuck them out of helicopters?
"Force them over the border with pitchforks? I don't know. I've spent quite a bit of the day talking to Conservatives, including quite senior ones; and the word that recurs again and again when they're talking about this is performative.
"That’s rather a bland word but it's really very rude: it means they think Tory ministers are doing this only for effect, dancing around in front of the voters; and that it won't work. It’s not serious. And that is pretty much what Yvette Cooper, in her best serious voice, was saying too:
"After that Braverman went full throttle against the Labour Party and lefty hypocrisy in general, which might be at least part of the point of all this in the first place.
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"It's hard to be sure how the politics of this are going to play out. On the one hand the current situation - 45,000 illegal migrants over the channel last year - is clearly unsustainable and Braverman’s right: In a world ravaged by climate change and war and dictatorship, there are almost endless places from which new migrants could come in the years ahead.
"Is Labour's policy of doing more to tackle the gangs really a big enough response? If voters conclude not, Labour will pay a very high price.
"On the other hand this isn’t risk free for the Tories either. They've tried a law like this before. It failed. Now they’re promising big again.
"If this doesn't work - if they build big new camps in Kent and then can't get people back to where they came from - voters will not forgive them.
"For what it’s worth, I think a much more significant move would be a new deal with the French, to close their coast to people smugglers.
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"Now, Rishi Sunak’s taking key members of his cabinet to France to meet President Macron and his team on Friday. That's where I'd expect the real deal. What would Macron want in return… because it would certainly be something?
"Perhaps a new agreement on fishing rights – Macron's having lots of problems with coastal communities in Normandy and Brittany.
"Anyway, what happens in France on Friday will be much more important than the overexcited scenes in Westminster today."
