Limogate: We can’t take too many more refugees, moans McDonnell
JOHN McDonnell was yesterday dragged into the row over the migrants ferried to Manchester from his London constituency in a £50,000 stretch limo.
The Shadow Chancellor said too many asylum seekers had been sent to his area and he had demanded a meeting with Home Secretary Theresa May’s office to do something about it.
Mr McDonnell accused the Home Office of breaking a promise to ‘even out’ refugees and asylum seekers across Britain – and not send too many to one area like his.
His intervention prompted claims of double standards from Tories who said it was in stark contrast to attacks by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on the Government for being too tough on immigration.
The asylum seekers were taken in a Hummer car from Longford, a village near Heathrow in Mr McDonnell’s Hayes and Harlington constituency, after residents claimed too many had been sent to their neighbourhood.
And yesterday, he said he agreed with them and had asked Mrs May’s officials to ensure fewer asylum seekers were sent to the village.
His action emerged after he was asked about the 16-seat Hummer used to take seven African migrants from a hotel in Longford, where they had been staying, to new homes in Manchester. The chauffeur said the Home Office was picking up the tab.
Residents had said they were ‘overwhelmed’ with migrants who had turned their village into a transit camp. Mr McDonnell said he had been ‘in dialogue’ with the locals and had contacted the Home Secretary over the number of immigrants com- ing into the village. He told LBC radio: ‘People are happy to do what they can to assist people but the numbers are too large in this particular area.’
He accused the Home Office of ‘sending more and more’ asylum seekers into the area for temporary accommodation. ‘The residents have been saying: “We don’t have a problem with a few asylum seekers… but it’s only a small village and if you’re sending hundreds, no matter where they were coming from, it would be problematic”.’
Mr McDonnell claimed the Home Office and UK Borders Agency had failed to deliver on an agreement on how many asylum seekers and refugees would be sent to Longford and the local area.
Tory MP Stuart Andrew seized on the Shadow Chancellor’s words. He said: ‘John McDonnell has just exposed Labour’s disgraceful double standards over immigration. Namely, they demonise the Government for realising we need tighter controls but then complain that there are too many immigrants in their own backyard. If this was a Tory MP raising local constituents’ valid concerns, he or she would be condemned by Labour as cruel and heartless.’
The row came just days after the Shadow Chancellor admitted in the Commons that his U-turn over Tory plans to run a budget surplus was ‘embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing,
embarrassing!’