• 9 months ago
Labour's Annelise Dodds has dismissed the Conservatives' Rwanda scheme as unworkable as she says it would be cheaper to put the 1 per cent of migrants being sent to the African country up in the Paris Ritz hotel for four years. Report by Etemadil. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 We believe there does need to be very strong cooperation between Britain and France.
00:05 We've said that needs to apply, for example, with a new returns agreement,
00:09 with a cross-border police unit which is focused on the criminal gangs
00:13 that are driving this in the first place.
00:15 But of course rules do need to be held to in terms of the approach towards these individuals.
00:20 Now as I said, ultimately we've got to make sure people are not in that unsafe position.
00:26 That means going after the criminal gangs who sponsor this
00:29 and then it needs to also include making sure that our rules and regulations and processes
00:34 are fit for the current situation.
00:36 We would argue under the Conservatives, I'm afraid they're not.
00:39 Even if we do see those flights taking off,
00:42 the government's approach would only cover 1% of asylum seekers.
00:47 And if you look at the overall cost of this, an eye-watering cost of £500 million,
00:53 it would actually be cheaper to send all of those people to France
00:57 and put them in the Paris Ritz for four years.
01:01 That's how expensive this scheme is.
01:04 We should not have that scheme because it will not work.
01:06 Labour instead has set out a workable plan to deal with this,
01:10 with those returns agreements, with 1,000 more caseworkers to get the backlog down,
01:15 with those, as I said, that better cooperation with other countries to smash those criminal gangs,
01:20 and also with action on those humanitarian emergencies which are pushing migration in the first place.

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