Kemi Badenoch’s spokesman for home affairs and immigration has condemned the Tory government’s record as “catastrophic” in a major new confession. Speaking to the Division Bell podcast today, Chris Philp set out his party’s new pledges to drastically bring down numbers while criticising the current Labour government for already making a number of serious failings on border control.
Speaking to the Daily Express and Daily Mirror, Mr Philp blasted Boris Johnson’s immigration record and refused to say whether the party would accept an attempted comeback by the former premier. Mr Philp said: “It is true to say that the numbers coming in in those two or three years after Covid were catastrophically too high, and that was a mistake.” “Kemi has honestly acknowledged that, as have I two or three times in this interview.”
He argued that while steps were taken in the dying days of Rishi Sunak’s administration to bring down numbers, including raising salary thresholds and limiting the number of dependents care workers and foreign students could bring in, these changes were “too little too late.”
This week the Conservatives put down a number of amendments to the government’s Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which would disapply the Human Rights Act – and therefore the ECHR – on all immigration matters.
This would mean judges would no longer be able to apply foreign treaties when deciding on cases of deportation.
The amendments would also allow parliament to vote on an annual immigration cap, which if reached would ban the Home Office from issuing any more visas that year.
However the top Tory refused to set out what that number should be, insisting the party is slowly developing the policy specifics.
The third amendment would raise the salary threshold beyond the increase introduced by Rishi Sunak’s government, up to £38,000 a year, which he argued would “make sure that where people are coming to this country to work, they’re doing so in higher paid jobs where they’re going to make a tax contribution”.
He explained: “Recent analysis showed that migrants coming here on lower wages actually cost the taxpayer money because they consume more in services than they pay in tax.”
Finally the Tories are demanding a change in the law so that any foreigner in Britain given a prison sentence would be deported. The current law says only those in receipt of a sentence of over 12 months are eligible for deportation.
Asked how the Conservatives can regain credibility on migration after 14 years of broken promises, Mr Philp said his party has to be “honest about the mistakes we made”.
“I said voluntarily that successive governments have made mistakes, serious mistakes on immigration, including the last Conservative government.
“Those numbers were far, far too high. Honesty about mistakes is the first step.
“Secondly, over time, we have to demonstrate that we’re serious about fixing this, by coming up with credible specific ideas.”
He took a swipe at Reform, whom he accused of failing to do “detailed thinking” on policy beyond coming up with tough-sounding slogans.
Mr Philp quipped: “Reform, who might say tough things, haven’t done the detailed thinking. Not least because they’re too busy fighting each other these days.”
The Division Bell podcast is available on all podcast streaming platforms and YouTube.
