Former Conservative MP Tom Pursglove has said the Home Secretary ‘talks tough’ but won’t take the steps needed to stop small boat crossings.
Speaking on GB News Tom Pursglove said:
“Of course it should be performance related. I think the Home Secretary is right to be pressing for that approach, particularly given where we are and what we’ve seen on this government’s watch is a surge in crossing numbers.
“But the problem that they’ve got is that their whole strategy is one dimensional, because without a deterrent, you’re simply not going to crack this.
“They are too reliant on French interception. Now that has a role to play; anything we can do to stop people getting in the boats in the first place and making the crossing is welcome.
“But what we’ve seen is a drop off in performance. About 50% of embarkations used to be prevented, that’s now down to a third. That’s got to be improved if there’s going to be any semblance of value for money for the taxpayer.
“But I would argue that if you really want to stop this, what you’ve actually got to do is be willing, as a government, to detain and relocate every last individual who arrives in a small boat.
“The problem is the Home Secretary talks tough, she’s just not willing to take the steps that we need to take.
“I think that public opinion on this issue has shifted enormously over the course of the last three or four years. In the early days of this, I think it was right to try different things to see if it would live up to the challenge of stopping the votes.
“But it hasn’t and you have to deal with the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be. And often there was a lot of talk from the French about the sorts of tactics that they would deploy.
“I remember seeing on television, and there’s footage of them slashing one of these boats, but I’ve never seen a repetition of that. We only saw that one occasion where they actually cut one of those boats, which deflated it and stopped people being able to make the crossing.
“Look it had a place. This had a place, and it helped to stop a number of those crossings from taking place. But as a solution, it just isn’t going to get you there.
“But the problem we’ve got is that the political appetite of ministers in this government does not match that of the British public. The British public has had enough.
“Government needs to listen to that and be and be sincere and genuine in addressing the law and dealing with the ECHR and all of those legal barriers that we see to removals happening, but also not having daft schemes like the one in, one out scheme, which was never going to live up to the scale of the challenge.
“Rather, like the EU are waking up and realising that you need a Rwanda type scheme, this government, to much fanfare and triumph and self-congratulation on the first day in office made their number one priority cancelling the Rwanda scheme.
“If you take what the European Union is doing at the moment, that looks rather daft, doesn’t it?”