Rob Bailey sits down South Thanet MP Craig Mackinlay, with questions on Manston, Ramsgate Port and the General Election.
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Welcome to this Kent Politics Show special.
00:21 In this series of programmes,
00:22 we'll be talking to some of the most influential
00:24 and powerful politicians in Kent.
00:26 And our guest tonight is the South Fannins MP,
00:29 Craig McKinley, welcome.
00:30 - Nice to be here, Rob.
00:31 - And of course, I should actually welcome you
00:32 in a sense home, because we're sitting here today
00:35 in the River Ward of Medway.
00:37 And this is where your political rebirth
00:38 as a Conservative happened, isn't it?
00:40 - It certainly did.
00:41 I represented this area for eight years,
00:43 and it had addresses in both Chatham,
00:45 Gillingham and Rochester in one ward.
00:47 So it was quite peculiar.
00:49 - Political rebirths are a theme we might come back to
00:51 towards the end of this.
00:52 But I wanted to start talking about Fannet
00:55 and particularly the issue where Fannet
00:56 has really been centre stage,
00:58 which is the issue of small boats.
01:00 In January, Rishi Sunak pledged to stop the boats.
01:03 And since that pledge has been made,
01:05 25,000 people have made a crossing
01:07 and landed, many of them here in Kent.
01:09 Has that policy been a failure, do you think?
01:11 - I think politicians should be very careful
01:13 using the word pledge,
01:16 'cause pledge is a powerful word.
01:18 And the ability to stop this crossing
01:22 is not really in the hands of the UK government.
01:25 It's in the hands of the, you know,
01:27 ability of the French officials
01:29 to actually stop the launches.
01:30 We must not forget every single one of those
01:33 that have landed in Kent have started on a Kent coast.
01:36 What do we do about it?
01:37 We've got the Rwanda plan.
01:40 Is that a loan to stop this trafficking,
01:44 this activity of very high value by,
01:46 you know, really nasty criminals?
01:48 The whole idea of that,
01:49 not that we're ever gonna be able
01:51 to send everyone to Rwanda,
01:52 it's meant to be a deterrent effect.
01:54 - You've made your own suggestion on this, haven't you?
01:56 - I have made my suggestion.
01:57 I wanted to expand on that.
01:58 - Your suggestion was to use Chinook helicopters
02:01 to fly people back to France.
02:03 If that happened the other way round,
02:05 I think the first thing you'd see
02:06 is a headline in the Daily Mail
02:07 saying France are invading England.
02:08 - Well, I don't, the difference,
02:10 if it was the other way around,
02:11 we would be actually fulfilling
02:13 our international commitments to stop the launchings.
02:16 Plan Chinook.
02:17 We've got 55 operational Chinook helicopters
02:20 as an RNLI boat lands on the coast of France.
02:23 We load the people onto a Chinook
02:25 and we take them back to France.
02:26 - Well, you'd understand that the people would see that
02:28 as being very provocative,
02:30 if not even slightly aggressive
02:31 as a solution to the problem.
02:33 - Well, France should be doing this for us.
02:35 This is almost in the realms of international law
02:38 that they shouldn't be allowing their borders
02:40 to be this leaky.
02:41 But the reality of this issue,
02:42 I doubt that the numbers we're seeing now
02:46 are actually any higher
02:47 than we saw in the old back of the lorry route.
02:50 What we're seeing now, it's very visible.
02:53 And I think to the public,
02:54 it looks like failure.
02:56 - And visibility is the important thing here in Kent,
02:58 isn't it?
02:59 Because it's not just the boats arriving,
03:00 it's then the use of hotels
03:02 and other facilities around Kent
03:04 as temporary shelters for people
03:05 while they await their asylum.
03:07 You made a request earlier
03:09 for the Glenwood Hotel to not be used.
03:11 Have you had a response on that?
03:12 - No, I've been in some contact
03:14 with Robert Jenrick Spad.
03:16 There was a verbal deal
03:18 because East Kens has got the Madison Processing Centre
03:23 and we've got Dover.
03:24 And the agreement was that we're doing our bit
03:28 and you will not have any more hotels.
03:31 So the thought of this 21-bed hotel being used for this,
03:35 I'm somewhat annoyed about.
03:36 But at the moment, it hasn't been stood up.
03:38 - Labour have said that they'd be prepared
03:40 to work even closer with France and Germany.
03:42 What do you make of that?
03:43 As someone who, obviously,
03:44 we used to be a UKIP politician,
03:45 you're very much on the Leave side of the debate.
03:48 Do you regard that as a betrayal?
03:50 - I find it a very, very bizarre policy
03:52 because it would then mean,
03:53 if you're into some sort of EU sharing out policy,
03:58 you're then reliant on the external border of the EU
04:01 really being the external border of the UK.
04:04 If that failure has happened on an external EU border,
04:07 we could end up with a lot more
04:09 and having no say in the matter whatsoever.
04:12 - Let's leave that issue there.
04:12 And it's been quite an exciting time at the moment
04:15 in Thanet for transport issues.
04:17 One of the ones that you've been very heavily involved in
04:19 was the Thanet Parkway station opening in July.
04:23 How important is that to the economy of Thanet?
04:25 - I think having this type of new infrastructure
04:27 is always welcomed.
04:29 Discovery Park, which is that great centre
04:32 on the old Pfizer site, Pfizer is still there,
04:34 but there's lots of new high-tech, innovative companies.
04:37 They are very excited about that
04:39 because the connectivity to London becomes very easy.
04:42 Most, actually, residents there,
04:45 they like it and they want it.
04:46 There's a few who don't
04:47 because many people who live in that Cliffsend area
04:50 realise that having a station nearby
04:52 is a very good asset in terms of selling your house.
04:56 - One of the interesting things that we've noticed
04:58 covering politics over the last few months in Kent
05:00 is a growing concern about this infrastructure first thing
05:03 because infrastructure first followed by houses.
05:06 You're on the record being against high-density housing,
05:09 particularly in the kind of very rural areas
05:11 to the west of Ramsgate, where this station is.
05:13 The housing target for Thanet, 17,140 homes,
05:18 about 8,000 of those have been allocated so far.
05:21 That leaves another 9,000-odd homes by 2031.
05:25 You're against high-density housing,
05:26 but the government hasn't given Thanet
05:28 an awful lot of choice, has it?
05:29 - Well, it has.
05:30 The levelling-up bill is actually adding
05:34 some more flexibilities,
05:35 but I've never been fearful of these numbers
05:38 because I just know they won't be built.
05:40 So it's pie-in-the-sky numbers.
05:42 The developer will not develop
05:44 unless he's got a guaranteed chance to sell them.
05:47 We will not have 17,000 houses developed in Thanet
05:51 between here and 2030.
05:52 It will not happen.
05:54 - It's interesting you use the phrase pie-in-the-sky
05:56 because there's been a little bit of a war of words
05:57 between you and the leader of Thanet Council
05:59 in the pages of a local newspaper
06:01 over your use of that phrase to describe
06:03 the chances of ferries returning to Ramsgate.
06:05 Do you regret those words now that the leader
06:07 of the council says that might undermine
06:08 the tendering process, which is due to begin very soon?
06:11 - Not at all.
06:12 I'm a practical sort of person.
06:14 I'm pretty outspoken.
06:15 We've got this port.
06:17 It's a pretty big site, 30-odd acres,
06:19 and it does nothing.
06:21 It costs the council 1.5 million thereabouts
06:25 to actually just keep it in this moribund state.
06:27 That is approaching 10% of the entirety
06:31 of Thanet taxpayers' budget.
06:33 But the reality is ferries have changed.
06:36 Those smaller ferries don't exist anymore,
06:40 and they are the ship that can go into Ramsgate.
06:43 I mean, I'm willing to give the council
06:45 a little bit more time, of course,
06:47 but I'm really struggling to say,
06:48 "Come on, isn't it time we accept
06:51 that this really isn't gonna happen?
06:53 Use that site for mixed development,
06:55 for a bit of housing, for some light engineering,
06:58 for educational purposes, and the Green Hub is part of that.
07:02 And let's have some imagination on this,
07:04 not just keep harking back to something
07:06 that I just don't realistically think is gonna happen."
07:09 - Another thread that goes through all of those,
07:11 of course, has been Manston. - Manston, yeah.
07:13 - And the future of Manston,
07:15 which was basically what did for the UKIP council
07:17 when it was running Thanet.
07:19 The latest legal challenge has failed,
07:22 which opens the way again.
07:24 How important is that?
07:25 - East Kent has, obviously,
07:27 it's a beautiful part of the world.
07:28 It's got great beaches.
07:30 It's got all that, but it hasn't got a big employer.
07:33 But you're blessed with various assets.
07:35 The one asset we're blessed with is an airport.
07:38 I just see that an airport,
07:40 wherever you have an airport, anywhere in this country,
07:42 actually anywhere in the world,
07:43 you have zero unemployment
07:44 because you get logistics companies,
07:46 you get warehousing, you get some better added value jobs.
07:50 - There have been attempts to have an airport there before.
07:52 The market has already decided that that doesn't work.
07:55 Wouldn't a mixed use development be better for the site?
07:58 - The big, well, what RSP are trying to do
08:00 is for it to be freight logistics hub.
08:02 - Yeah, with passenger flights
08:04 potentially following that afterwards.
08:05 - Well, I think it always happens.
08:05 You end up, if you've got an airport,
08:07 you will end up with passenger flights
08:08 because you've got slots available
08:10 that are probably just not available in the existing airports.
08:13 So the idea is to actually attract more cargo into that site,
08:18 which could actually free up some passenger slots
08:20 in our already very busy airports
08:22 around the rest of the Southeast.
08:24 And so it would grow.
08:26 - You mentioned the green hub earlier,
08:28 which obviously is part of the Ramsgate port
08:30 levelling up grant.
08:33 The government's put out a new approach to net zero.
08:36 There are a lot of people now involved in business
08:38 who are saying that the message might be off-putting
08:40 to new investors, to businesses coming in,
08:42 to projects like the green hub in Ramsgate.
08:44 Do you think there might be a risk there?
08:46 - No, I don't, because the net zero target
08:48 is still there, the 2050.
08:49 It's just that we've actually aligned
08:51 some of these ambitions more with international partners.
08:54 We are not upskilling enough.
08:56 I mean, this is one of my concerns.
08:59 They're still very well having this ambition.
09:00 We just do not have enough people
09:02 skilling up for these new technologies.
09:05 And so this is what I think that green hub can be.
09:08 My ideal energy policy is we go for domestic gas use.
09:12 - Well, that would include fracking?
09:13 - Absolutely fracking.
09:14 Without fracked gas in the US,
09:16 the lights would have gone off last winter.
09:18 It's that important.
09:20 You've got it available.
09:21 We can source it domestically.
09:23 And then as we move towards nuclear
09:26 is the better solution in my view.
09:28 - Where we are now. - Domestic nuclear.
09:29 - It would take 10 years to start producing fracking
09:32 in any, fracked gas in any kind of quantity
09:35 that would actually help us power our homes.
09:38 10 years.
09:39 - I don't know where you get that from
09:40 'cause I speak to the fracking companies regularly
09:43 and it's not 10 years.
09:45 - It's not instant though, is it?
09:46 - No, it's not instant.
09:47 No, you've got to drill the thing
09:48 and make the connections and everything else.
09:50 But we have a number of oil fields
09:52 and I was very critical, I still am, of the windfall tax.
09:56 If you want more of something,
09:58 you don't tax it excessively.
10:01 We're now taxing it at 75%.
10:03 It will reduce the amount of investment in the North Sea
10:07 to get this stuff out that we need
10:09 and we'll simply be buying more from Qatar.
10:12 - It's an interesting one, as you said earlier,
10:14 that Thanes is very changeable.
10:15 It's one of those bellwether seats.
10:16 It went Labour in the local elections,
10:19 9.8% swing, I believe there.
10:22 The calculation is that if Labour wanted to take your seat,
10:25 it would be a 10.7% swing that they would need.
10:27 So they're not far off.
10:29 I mean, are you worried about that for the next election?
10:31 - Well, I know it's a seat that is tougher
10:33 than some.
10:34 I know in 2005, in my seat,
10:38 Labour only crept over the line by about 400 or 500.
10:41 So they're not embedded Labour seats.
10:43 So yeah, it's all to play for, obviously.
10:46 But I think the local elections,
10:47 we were at a pretty low ebb as a party.
10:51 - Can Rishi Sunak win the next general election?
10:53 - I think it's possible.
10:54 I have to be honest, it's going to be difficult from here.
10:58 But I always take great comfort from the MEP,
11:01 the European elections, the MEP elections
11:03 that we had in 2019.
11:05 The Conservatives got 9% and we went on to win the election
11:09 with 44% of the vote, 80 seat majority,
11:13 just five or six months later.
11:15 - How would you feel if Nigel Farage
11:16 put his hat in the ring again?
11:18 He's chosen South Thanat a few times, hasn't he?
11:20 Would you like to face him?
11:22 - Well, what was the point?
11:23 I don't know why he'd face me in 2015, frankly.
11:25 He's become a very powerful influencer,
11:28 arguably more powerful as an influencer
11:30 than being sat on the back benches
11:32 and waiting for the speaker to ask you once in a blue moon.
11:35 I'd be surprised if he comes to South Thanat.
11:37 - My future for you as a television presenter then?
11:39 - Well, move over.
11:40 (laughing)
11:42 - Greg McKinley, thank you so much for joining us.
11:44 Thank you very much.
11:45 - All right, thank you.
11:46 (upbeat music)
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11:56 (whooshing)