THE government has “no sensible proposal” to deal with immigration and has been massaging the figures, according to Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
He said on GB News: “We will secure Britain’s borders, in his [Starmer’s] most Churchillian tone, Churchill in a nasal voice. But the facts show otherwise, that over 100,000 people came to this country to claim asylum in the year ending in December, which was to be fair to him, is 4% lower than the previous year, but those coming on small boats was 13% higher than in 2024.
“The number of asylum seekers housed in hotels has fallen. To be fair to him, he said he wanted to get the number in hotels down, with only 30,657 in hotels in December, 19% down, but the numbers have gone up. They’re just not in hotels.
“They’ve been put in barracks and they’ve been put into homes of multiple occupation, so the figures get massaged rather than the problem being dealt with.
“And yes, the backlog, and they’re very proud of this, the government thinks it’s marvellous, they’ve got the backlog down. It’s fallen to 64,426. That’s easy to do if you give them all asylum, because the statistics in the year ending June 2025 show that 51,997 people were granted refugee protection or another form of leave to remain in the UK.
“This is so easy. You say yes, and the numbers come down. What the Conservatives were trying to do was to stop them coming in the first place. So what has happened is that by coming in and abolishing the Rwanda scheme, the government’s got rid of any disincentive for people to get on a small boat to try to come over, the gangs have not been smashed.
“And actually, that’s always a futile policy, that’s the way crime operates, criminals will fill the gap. You arrest one criminal, another comes through if the crime is possible. We’ve seen the same with drug enforcement over decades. Everyone wants to stop it and crack down on the criminals, but the profit is there to encourage the criminals, and the disincentive is to stop people staying.
“When the Conservatives left office, there was a great row, because lots of asylum seekers were going to the Republic of Ireland because they thought Rwanda would mean that they would be removed. That was great, because as long as they don’t come to the UK, I don’t mind where they go. It’s not my business if they go to the Republic of Ireland.
“As soon as Labour came in, they started coming back from the Republic of Ireland, because, frankly, people want to be in the UK, not in southern Ireland. So you get a government that’s whole approach to immigration is to sound tough, a sound and fury that signifies nothing whilst the numbers get worse and worse.
“And look at the claim to be dealing with the backlog. It’s the most bogus approach to dealing with it. It’s easy to get the numbers down by giving everybody the right to remain. You could do that with crime. If you got rid of the police, you’d have no crime recorded. You could say we were a safe country, but it simply wouldn’t be true.
“I’m afraid this government thinks the British people are stupid and that they will believe massaged figures rather than the self-evident truth that is in front of them. The problem is out of hand. It’s getting worse, and there is no sensible proposal to deal with it.”