UN's Refugee Convention needs rethink over those who claim asylum, says Philp
Home Office minister Chris Philp argued that the UN’s Refugee Convention needs a rethink because people are using it to claim asylum on the basis of persecution they do not face.
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00:00 We've seen a number of countries around the world, like the USA where she's speaking,
00:04 witnessing enormous amounts of illegal immigration. I think this month alone, something like 140,000
00:10 people have illegally crossed the US's southern border. The European Union have had, I think,
00:16 somewhere in the region of 200,000 illegal arrivals this year as well. So people using
00:22 asylum claims as a basis for what is essentially economic migration is not sustainable. We've
00:27 tried to take action domestically by saying that if someone comes across the English Channel
00:32 on a rubber dinghy from France, because France is an obviously safe country and you don't
00:37 need to leave France to flee persecution, it's safe, then you can't claim asylum here
00:40 in the UK. And actually as a result of that, arrivals by small boat in the UK have gone
00:46 down by about something like 23% so far this year compared to last year, whereas in the
00:52 European Union they've gone up.