Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has argued that migration deals similar to those in Italy will not be effective as a deterrent. His comments follow official figures showing that over 800 migrants crossed the English Channel in the past week. Philp acknowledged that prevention deals could be a “constructive step,” but insisted they would not succeed without a proper deterrent, while defending the previous government's Rwanda deportation plan. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00We'll support any constructive step to stop the channel crossings but I'm concerned that these
00:05proposals on their own are not going to stop the boats because the National Crime Agency,
00:10the government's own border czar Martin Hewitt and others have said that to stop the boats
00:14you need a deterrent. Now we had a deterrent, the Rwanda scheme, people would have arrived and been
00:18sent to Rwanda but the Labour government cancelled that before it even started. It was due to start
00:24in late July and without that deterrent scheme I'm concerned the government won't stop the boats
00:29and that is why small boat numbers have gone up under this Labour government and it's why they're
00:34frantically procuring more hotels at enormous expense despite the fact the government promised
00:40they would end the use of asylum hotels. They're breaking their promises once again. Well last year
00:45we saw small boat crossings actually come down thanks to the work of the previous government
00:50and had the Rwanda scheme started as planned in late July then I think it would have come down
00:55even more and that's not and in fact I think it would have stopped and that's not speculation.
00:59We've seen it work that kind of approach in Australia. They had a problem similar to ours
01:03with boats crossing about 10 years ago and they used a thing called Operation Sovereign Borders
01:08which included removing illegal arrivals to an island in the Pacific and that approach was
01:14successful in completely stopping Australians illegal maritime arrivals and had the Rwanda
01:19scheme been allowed to go ahead instead of being cancelled by the Labour government it would have
01:24had a similar effect here and these illegal and dangerous and unnecessary crossings would have
01:30been stopped so it's on the Labour government that they cancelled the Rwanda scheme and it
01:34is their fault that numbers are now going up whereas last year they went down.