LABOUR’S Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury has confirmed that the Rwanda deportation scheme for illegal migrants would be scrapped if the party wins the next general election.

James Murray MP told GB News: “What’s really clear in terms of the Government’s policy, whether it’s the Rwanda scheme or so many other policies they’ve announced, is that they don’t have a serious plan to actually tackle this issue.

“They’ve had 13 years and the problem has got worse and they haven’t got an actual plan that would help stop these illegal border crossings and what we’ve set out is how we would do that differently, how we would use the money rather than wasting it on their Rwanda scheme.

“We will spend that money on a cross-border police force to make sure we could go after the criminal gangs who are responsible for these illegal boat crossings and stop them happening in the first place.”

Asked about NHS strikes in a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he said: “When it comes to the question of strikes that we’ve seen in the NHS and also in many other parts of the economy, many other sectors in the country, one of the real failings of this Government has been their failure to sit down and try and strike a deal to avoid industrial action going ahead.

“I think the Health Secretary hasn’t met with representatives in the NHS since a long time when he should have sat down with them trying to hammer out a solution and that’s really the issue that we face.

“This is about negotiation. This is about sitting down with the employees and their representatives to try and strike a deal to avoid strikes going ahead.”

He added: “What’s really crucial about our plans for the NHS and indeed all of our plans we set out, is that any commitments we make are fully costed and fully funded. We explain exactly where the money would come from.

“So when we talk about extra appointments in the NHS, we explain how we will close the non-dom tax loophole and use some of that money to fund those extra appointments.”