‘Labour has a credible plan to cut immigration – starting with negotiating returns agreement with EU’ – Bill Rammell

There has long been a Tory attack strategy with regard to the Labour Party. Make a claim long enough, regardless of the facts, however implausible and eventually people will believe you.

And so it is with immigration. “Labour won’t stop the boats. Labour is soft on immigration. Labour will let the numbers rip.”

This from a Tory Party which in Government lost control of our borders, oversaw a huge increase in illegal channel boat crossings, failed to educate and train British workers and pay them decently so we became over-reliant on foreign workers, and ended 14 years of chaos and division with net migration three times higher than when they came to power in 2010.

And they have the audacity to attack the Labour Party!

However, our new Labour Government’s first two weeks in power have demonstrated an effective rebuttal to the Tory attack strategy.

It does have a plan to tackle immigration, and it can and will work.

One of the first acts of our new Government was to scrap the Rwanda gimmick which was colossally expensive, and absolutely no deterrent to illegal migrants who, even if the scheme worked as the Tories intended, only faced a one per cent chance of being sent to Rwanda.

The staff and resources saved from scrapping the Rwanda scheme are already being redeployed to practical measures which will tackle immigration.

The Government has also set to work to establish the Border Security Force with 100 officers from the National Crime Agency deployed with counter-terrorism type powers to really take on the criminal gangs which drive the small boat crossings.

The Government is also this week announcing that it is processing the claims of more than 100,000 small boat arrivals prioritizing migrants from safe countries like India, Albania and Vietnam so those rejected can be returned.

The Government has also already allocated 200 officials to a Rapid Returns Unit, with a further 800 planned by the year-end.

All to clear the backlog of claims which is one of the “pull factors” which makes the UK attractive to asylum seekers.

Where people know their claims will not be dealt with for years, and they can disappear into the underground economy.

All designed as well to dramatically reduce the £3billion a year we are spending on keeping asylum seekers in hotels.

The Government made its determination to reset our relationship with the EU clear last week. So we can negotiate a returns agreement with the EU.

And practically re-enter the Dublin and Convention framework so asylum seekers can be returned to the first European country they entered.

Adopting the EU fingerprinting scheme, so we get instant intelligence on those arriving here to help us better remove them.

The numbers returned to the first country entered are not huge but such a capability to return them acts as a deterrent and helps reduce the numbers of people who come through the EU to the UK.

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And on legal migration, the Government is embarking on a skills strategy with the creation of Skills England to focus on equipping people with the skills needed in jobs currently undertaken by foreign workers.

And committing to a real living wage as the Minimum Wage to make work pay for British workers.

The new Labour Government does have a credible plan to reduce immigration and it can and will work. Unlike the dreadful mess inherited from the last Tory Government.

Net migration was three times lower under the last Labour Government. We can with our new Government at the very least get back to that, and lower.