Attacking the causes and not the symptoms will be key to solving the issue of small boats, Labour’s General Election candidate for Lichfield has said.
Immigration has been a key battleground nationally for the main parties – and is likely to be among the topics at a hustings event on Friday (28th June) at Lichfield Cathedral.
Dave Robertson, who will represent Labour in the Lichfield constituency on 4th July, said the area had supported those arriving for other countries, but recognised that action was needed on criminals putting lives at risk by bringing people on small boats across the Channel.
He said:
“Britain is a tolerant and compassionate country, and we have a proud tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution – I think of this every time I walk past the flower bed at the Friary donated by Ukrainian refugees thanking the city for its hospitality.
“But the small boats crisis, fuelled by dangerous criminal smuggler gangs, is undermining our security and costing lives. It has to stop.
“The Conservatives have offered nothing but desperate gimmicks. Their flagship policy – to fly a tiny number of asylum seekers to Rwanda – has already cost the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.
“Even if it gets off the ground, this scheme can only address fewer than one per cent of the asylum seekers arriving. It cannot work.
“And once in the UK, asylum seekers are kept in hotels – again at taxpayers’ expense – and left in limbo for months and years by a processing backlog that’s a deliberate tactic from the Conservatives.
“It’s unfair on those who are seeking persecution and it’s unfair on the taxpayer who is paying for a broken system. It has to stop.”
Dave Robertson
Labour say they will target criminal gangs and take steps to tackle the backlog of asylum claims.
The party’s Lichfield candidate said:
“Labour’s manifesto says that the next Labour government will set up a new returns and enforcement unit with additional staff to fast-track removals to safe countries for people who do not have the right to stay here.
“It also promises to create a new Border Security Command with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers. This will be funded by ending the wasteful Migration and Economic Development partnership with Rwanda.
“I fully support those proposals, and I back its plan to stop the small boats crisis and end the scandal of paying taxpayer billions to house asylum seekers in hotels or fly a token few to Rwanda.”
Dave Robertson
