MIGRATION A ‘STATE FAILURE’
Voters will desert party if you don’t get a grip on crisis, Tories warn Boris
TORY backbenchers warned Boris Johnson last night that his Government’s inability to control the migrant crisis ‘looks like state failure’ to voters.
Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP for south Thanet in Kent, said the Channel crossings could cost the Tories at the polls.
He urged the Prime Minister to send British troops and police to France.
Almost 25,000 people have used small boats to make the perilous journey so far this year, despite ministers signing a £54million deal with Paris to double police patrols on the French coast.
Mr Mackinlay said the issue was ‘the one that is of most concern to people across my constituency certainly and in door knocking i’ve done elsewhere’.
‘This is very much on people’s lips because it just looks like state failure,’ he told the BBC. ‘There has to be a solution, we haven’t found it yet, and we are trying to find the holy grail.’
Mr Mackinlay suggested ministers should return ‘straight back to France those who have made it to British shores’ and also offer UK troops, police and Border Force officials to help patrol the French coast.
But government sources suggested the French had turned down previous offers of British help.
Mr Johnson was also urged to ‘get behind’ Home secretary Priti Patel and make the crisis a priority.
Former Tory party leader sir iain Duncan smith said: ‘Downing street has got to get behind their Home secretary and start understanding that migration matters.
‘it’s not something to be embarrassed about. it’s something that first-time Labour voters voted for: take back control of your borders.
‘it was a priority and Downing street has got to say it is a priority, and instead of sneering at the Home secretary as they were reported as doing a few weeks ago, they should be backing her and pushing her and giving her the support and saying let’s go and do this.’
Miss Patel’s relations with her own department have deteriorated after she privately described the Home Office as ‘not fit for purpose’ over officials’ failure to tackle the migrant boat crisis, The Mail on sunday reported.
Meanwhile, her civil servants described her management style as ‘moronic’, according to the paper.
Labour said that at the current rate, more migrants will be travelling to Britain via the Channel than there are voters in the Home secretary’s constituency if the Government does not act. shadow Home secretary Nick Thomassymonds accused Miss Patel of ‘comprehensively failing’.
Health secretary sajid Javid questioned yesterday whether all the arrivals on British shores were ‘genuine’ asylum seekers.
‘We do have to ask ourselves, if people are trying to get into the UK from safe countries like France are they genuine asylum seekers or not?’ he told sky News.
‘And it is right to ask that and it is right to change the rules to take that into account, and that is what the Home secretary is doing.’
Despite Mr Johnson calling on the ‘entire government machinery’ to be thrown at the problem, observers believe another 300 people crossed on saturday.
A newborn baby was seen clutched to its mother’s chest as the dinghy landed in Kent before paramedics rushed them both to hospital. They were on one of three boats each packed with 65 people seen coming ashore near Dungeness, where Border Force officials were waiting.
Witnesses described seeing around ten ‘little lads’ among them, as well as another toddler in a snowsuit.
French officials said 243 people in difficulty were brought to safety at the ports of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dunkirk and Calais. The wind was too strong for crossings yesterday.
The Home Office continued to claim they had not counted figures from last Tuesday – after officials admitted it was at least 1,000 and observers believe it set a new record. The Home Office was contacted for comment.
Last night, the Guardian reported that dozens of asylum seekers are being bussed almost 500 miles to scotland to be processed almost immediately after crossing the Channel.
Around 50 were reportedly taken on the eight-hour journey to the immigration centre Dungavel in strathaven, south Lanarkshire, over the past few weeks.
‘Take back control of your borders’