A LABOUR government would continue with the reactionary Tory policy of incarcerating refugees aboard barges moored offshore, according to shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock yesterday.
More than 50 human rights organisations and campaign groups, including the Refugee Council, Refugee Action, and Asylum Matters have called the government’s refugee plans ‘cruel and inhumane’.
But Kinnock said: ‘We will be forced to use these contingency measures because of the mess the government has made.’
Meanwhile, Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman yesterday issued a vituperative and threatening attack on lawyers who represent asylum seekers in the pages of the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
Braverman wrote: ‘These so-called immigration lawyers, who have been very powerfully exposed as being criminals and conmen, coaching migrants on how to lie to get through our system, how to game our system, how to play our rules – they are cheating the British people.
‘We’ve got a racket, we’ve got an industry of people who are purporting to be professional, purporting to be legitimate, but actually under the surface are lying or cheating and breaking the law, and we need to crack down on them.
‘We have the laws in place already which can be used whereby if you are facilitating a migrant illegally, you can be potentially jailed for life.
‘I worked as a barrister myself before I was an MP, defending the Home Office in immigration cases, and I know what we’re dealing with here in terms of the problem.
‘It’s very simple. They really need to be jailed.’
Her colleague, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, appeared on GB News yesterday to pursue the same reactionary theme.
Jenrick said: ‘The first barge will be operational within the coming days and that’s an important step forward …
‘Just this week we’ve seen an allegation that a Labour councillor in Newcastle, who is also a legal representative, was on TikTok apparently soliciting illegal migrants to come to her and she would help them to stay in the UK.
‘Now I think that would be news to her residents in Newcastle who probably want like I do, secure borders and to control migration.
‘But it is an example of what the Labour Party really thinks and as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing has been said or done with respect to that lady.’
