Labour MP Mike Tapp was grilled on GB News on the Government’s latest attempt to tackle illegal migration, as host Ellie Costello asked: “Is that all you’ve got?”
Speaking to the People’s Channel, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship assured Britons the Government is making “sweeping changes” to the immigration system.
Admitting he is “baffled” by the announcement, host Ben Leo told Mr Tapp: “It surprised me, this new announcement about the new sweeping powers, excuse me for thinking we didn’t have this in place already.
“It baffles me that this is being blown up as some massive new sweeping thing when it’s something so simple. Why didn’t we have these powers in the first place to search migrants for phones?”
Mr Tapp responded: “It’s fair that you feel like that – the fact is, that’s what we inherited, and over the last 18 months, we’ve been making a lot of changes.
“This was contained in the Borders Bill that we put to Parliament around ten months ago. Today, it comes into power. Now, that means that anyone travelling into the UK on a small boat illegally means they can have their devices seized, their SIM card seized, and that helps with the intelligence picture.”
He added: “Now, I’ve worked against criminal gangs in the past, but also in the counter-terror role, and this is bringing counter-terror powers forward to take on the smuggling gangs.
“It means that we’ll have more information, more intelligence, so we can go after more of the vile smugglers to reduce those small boat crossings.”
Mike Tapp is grilled by GB News hosts Ellie Costello and Ben Leo on Labour’s latest attempt to tackle illegal migration
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GB NEWS
Quizzing the Labour MP further, Ellie then stressed: “But these people who are crossing the Channel, we’ve seen the footage of them throwing their phones overboard, throwing their passports overboard – you can’t retrieve phones and SIM cards from the bottom of the Channel.
“So is this really the best that you’ve got? It’s not a silver bullet, is it? Many people would be listening to you this morning saying this is tinkering around the edges yet again?”
Mr Tapp told GB News: “We’re not claiming this is a silver bullet, and you’re right that some might ditch their phones, but let’s not let perfect get in the way of the good here. This means that we are enabled to seize phones, but it’s not the only thing we’re doing.
“We’ve seen sweeping changes to the immigration system, making it easier to remove and deport people, ensuring that it’s less attractive to come here to reduce that asylum shopping, introducing and looking at safe and legal routes, but also these counter-terror powers, which ensures we have more powers to get to the smuggling gangs to reduce the small boat crossings.”
From today, Border Force, immigration officials and police have new powers to seize migrants’ mobile phones
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GETTYHe continued: “There’s a lot going on and there’s also increased deportations and removals, that’s up over 20 per cent to over 50,000.
“Now, we’re also moving people out of hotels and into military-style accommodation. There’s a lot going on here, it’s a big package, and I’m confident that over time it will have the impact that we that we hope it will.”
Pressed by Ben on whether he believes there is “more to do” by the Government on tackling the issue, Mr Tapp said: “We’ve seen our immigration enforcement visits and raids and arrests at the highest they’ve ever been in British history, so that serves the British people, but it also takes away one of those pull factors.
“But I’m not stood here telling you that this is all fixed, this is all just a part of the solution, and we’ll keep working hard, doing whatever it takes to secure the borders and create an immigration system that functions. And we inherited a mess, we inherited a system that had completely ground to a halt and open borders.”
Mr Tapp told GB News that Labour inherited a system from the Tories that was a ‘mess’
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GB NEWS
Questioned by Ellie on the Government’s inability to “deport foreign criminals from Britain” amid the surging crisis, Mr Tapp told GB News: “Well, we are deporting and removing at record highs, and a part of what we saw before Christmas from the Home Secretary is ensuring that we streamline the legal system so that there’s not those loopholes, so that people aren’t at the last minute claiming that they’re victims of modern slavery.
“But of course, it takes time to get that into rule changes and legislation. We’ve got a lot of effort going in from the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence to move people out of hotels and into military-style bases, so hotels will be closing. I can give you that absolute certainty, there’s more to come on that.”
He concluded: “The main effort at the moment is to ensure that we’re opening military-style bases so that we can move people out of hotels, and we will see that happening in the coming months, and we’re working hard to deliver that.
“At this point, it’s halved from the peak of 400 to just under 200 hotels, so the main effort of this Government and of the Home Office is to move people into military bases or military-style bases and out of hotels.”