Kentish Express Ashford & District
Leadership hopeful’s immigration concerns
Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham said government cuts to the Border Force need to be reversed to help stem the surge of migrants trying to enter the UK.
Mr Burnham made the comments during a visit to Ashford yesterday (Wednesday), meeting party activists and students.
The night before his visit three suspected illegal immigrants were arrested in the town.
Speaking at the Ashford International Hotel in Simone Weil Avenue, he said the scenes in Calais were both frightening and unacceptable.
“It seems to be a failure of the French authorities particularly. One of the things I would be doing would be to pick up the phone to the French president because these were unacceptable scenes. More broadly, we have seen cuts to the UK Border Force and the government is wrong when there is public concern about immigration, you need a strong border. Right now, the government should stop the cuts to Border Force staff. My worry is that more cuts are to come in the next spending round.”
He said a Europe-wide approach was needed to address the issue of migrants fleeing their homes and ending up in Calais.
“Italy is bearing the brunt to be fair. This is a situation where we have a number of countries where there is serious instability – Eritrea, Syria, Somalia – where traffickers are exploiting those people.”
He denied Labour had been in denial about the views of voters on immigration at the 2015 election, a claim he had made in 2010.
“We had a much stronger policy. I called for a clear policy on entitlement to benefits and we had that, a two-year period when we said people could not claim.”
He added: “I don’t think the public has a problem with migrants coming here to work. The problem arises if people feel they are coming to take out before they have contributed. Our policy was an improvement.”
The MP also spelled out his policy on housing, saying he wanted a “rent-to-own” scheme under which affordable starter homes would be built on council or government-owned land.
“Kent has a housing crisis; we need to revive the dream of home ownership,” he said.
He was less forthcoming about universty tuition fees, however, as local students said having to pay back as much as £40,000 on loans made it even harder to buy their own homes.