PRITI: WE’LL END ASYLUM CHAOS
Vow to beat traffickers and stand up to ‘Leftie lawyers’
PRITI Patel yesterday pledged a major shake-up of Britain’s asylum laws and to stand firm against her Labour critics, ‘do-gooders’ and ‘Leftie lawyers’.
The Home Secretary described her determination to take ‘every necessary step’ to fix the ‘fundamentally broken’ system – even if it risked unpopularity and personal insults.
In her keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference, Miss Patel vowed to undermine the ‘despicable’ human traffickers’ criminal trade, while making it easier for genuine asylum seekers to come to Britain.
Channel migrants and others who come here by illegal routes will have claims ruled inadmissible, while schemes for legitimate claimants will be expanded, she said, effectively creating a new two-tier system.
She also outlined her determination to spurn detractors such as former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who last month mocked her accent.
‘After decades of inaction by successive governments, we will address the moral,
‘Gangs laugh in faces of British people’
legal and practical problems with the asylum system,’ Miss Patel said.
‘I will introduce a new system that is firm and fair. Fair and compassionate towards those who need our help.
‘Fair by welcoming people through safe and legal routes. But firm because we will stop the abuse of the system.’
The Home Secretary said it is unacceptable that Channel migrants receive the same treatment as asylum seekers who apply for refugee protection through formal routes.
‘It is disregarding the most vulnerable, elbowing women and children in need to the side, trampling over the weak.
‘That cannot be right. All while the criminal gangs laugh in the face of the British people. Well, I will not be complicit in that.
‘A fair asylum system should provide safe haven to those fleeing persecution, oppression or tyranny. But ours doesn’t, because our asylum system is fundamentally broken.’
She said she would introduce legislation early next year that would be ‘the biggest overhaul of our asylum system in decades’.
The Home Office will stop asylum seekers making ‘endless legal claims’ and speed up processes to remove failed applicants, she added.
It is understood a policy paper will be published within weeks.
Miss Patel referred to her parents’ history as refugees from Idi Amin’s Uganda in the 1960s as she highlighted Labour’s attempts to undermine the Conservatives’ record on asylum.
‘Do not let them peddle a false narrative that Conservatives do not have a proud history of providing a safe haven to those most in need,’ she said.
‘Under Conservative leadership, the United Kingdom has and always will provide sanctuary when the lights are being switched off on people’s liberties.’
She added: ‘As for those defending the broken system – the traffickers, the do-gooders, the Leftie lawyers, the Labour Party – they are defending the indefensible.
‘And that is something I will never do. If at times it means being unpopular on Twitter, I will bear it. If at times it means Tony Blair’s spin doctor mocking my accent, so be it.’
Last month Mr Campbell, who was Tony Blair’s spokesman from 1994 to 2003, was branded a snob after tweeting: ‘I don’t want a Home Secretary who can’t pronounce a G at the end of a word.’
Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas- Symonds said: ‘ The
Tories talk about a broken immigration system, but they have been in power for a decade and are the political party that broke it.
‘Recent experience suggests they have not learned any lessons at all, with unconscionable, absurd proposals about floating walls and creating waves in the english Channel to push back boats and sending people thousands of miles away to process claims.’
Kate Allen, UK director of human rights charity Amnesty, accused Miss Patel of ‘delivering precisely the same rhetoric and intention that has for years done so much harm to so many women, men and children’.
‘It is shameless and nonsensical for her to claim to be fixing the asylum system while making it even less effective in providing the sanctuary that is its purpose,’ she said.