Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has said the Conservatives should not have called the election before the Rwanda deterrent had a chance to start and said he is supporting councils to take legal action over migrant hotels.

Speaking on GB News Chris Philp said:

“It wasn’t a personal decision [to use the Bell Hotel as a holding centre] but we also closed it down when we realised it wasn’t the right place; the Conservative government closed that hotel.

“We also managed to reduce the number of hotels by about 200 in our last nine months in office and had that trend continued, by now, there wouldn’t be any asylum hotels at all.

“Unfortunately, what has happened since the general election is that in the first nine months after that election, the number of people in asylum hotels, far from continuing to go down, in fact went up by around 10% from 29,000 to 32,000 because Labour has lost control of our borders.

“The number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel has surged under Labour; it’s gone up by 47% since the general election. This year so far has been the worst ever, and because of Labour’s border crisis, we’re seeing people still being accommodated in these hotels.

“But now councils are fighting back, led by Conservative run Epping, and we’re now calling on other Conservative councils to look at legal challenges and many are doing so, including Broxbourne next door.

“The first point is they shouldn’t be getting to the UK in the first place. I mean, the reason people are in hotels is that illegal immigrants are crossing the English Channel in record numbers under this government. That needs to stop.

“How is that going to stop? Well, we need a deterrent where 100% of people arriving illegally get immediately removed, either back to their country of origin, if possible, or to a safe third country, if not.

“Now, if everybody gets removed immediately on arrival, pretty soon, people are going to stop bothering to try in the first place, common sense tells you that. A similar approach worked in Australia about 12 years ago. They called it operation sovereign borders.

“Now, when we put that plan to a vote in Parliament just a few weeks ago, which included repealing the Human Rights Act for immigration matters to make it work legally, what did Labour do? They voted against it.

“And because they’re being so weak on borders, we’ve got the worst ever year for illegal crossings. So that is how you really fix it. You stop the problem at source by stopping the illegal immigration in the first place, which is completely unacceptable and it’s unnecessary, because no one’s fleeing war in France.

“The small boat crossing started around about that time, but we took, in government, pretty decisive action. We halved the number of hotels in our last nine months. In our last full year in office, 2023, we got the boat numbers down by 30%.

“And had the Rwanda plan started as intended in July of last year, I think we would have got those numbers down to zero.

“I think that was a mistake [to call a summer election.] I think the election should have been called later to enable the Rwanda scheme to start. But what was also a mistake was the fact that Labour cancelled that Rwanda scheme just days before it was due to start in July last year with no replacement plan in place.

“That is why numbers this year have surged crossing the Channel, and this year has been the worst ever. It’s been well over 25,000 so far this year. That is the worst year in history for illegal migrants crossing the Channel because Labour cancelled the Rwanda deterrent before it started with no replacement plan.

“The crisis today is the worst it has ever been in history. There was a plan which they cancelled. We tabled, another plan just a few weeks ago that would have fixed it, but again, Labour voted against it.

“Epping Forest, a Conservative led Council, has started this with their successful challenge, and many other Conservative councils are now looking at doing the same, including Broxbourne next door, Hillingdon, Reigate and many others.

“They are sick and tired, rightly and understandably, of these asylum hotels, housing mainly young men, pretty much all of whom cross the channel illegally and unnecessarily.

“And of course, we’ve seen reporting some of the crimes being committed. Hundreds and hundreds of migrants in these hotels have been charged with criminal offences, including the sexual assault of young girls.

“So people are understandably angry, and that is why other Conservative led councils will be, I think, mounting legal challenges as well, supported by us, nationally, by me and by Kemi.

“I wrote to Yvette Cooper just yesterday asking for her assurance that people being moved out of the Epping hotel, about 150 people I believe, should not be moved into flats or into HMOs.

“There are young people here in this country struggling to get onto the housing ladder, struggling to find affordable accommodation, and it would be deeply, deeply unfair if apartments and rooms British young people might rent, get instead given to illegal immigrants for free.

“There are other accommodation options. We had a barge in the past. You can put up pre fabricated, temporary accommodation on empty sites – all kinds of options the government should be pursuing.

“They should not be moving people into apartments and HMOs and I will be tracking the data very carefully to make sure they don’t do that.

“I am very suspicious that what the government plan to do is move people out of hotels and into those flats, but that would be completely wrong, because there are lots of young people here who need those apartments.

“But let’s not forget the reason this is a problem is that Labour has lost control of our borders and the numbers crossing the Channel are the worst in history. That is the root cause of this because the government is too weak to take the action needed to fix this.”