Channel crossings are 'insignificant' to the amount overstaying UK visas, Haigh tells GB News

Welcome back. 11.43. You're with Ben and Nana on Bristol's Newsroom on GB News

Now, in some shocking government news, or I guess not so shocking, given Labour's track record this past year

it has been revealed that the Home Office are unaware of how many migrants might have overstayed their skilled worker visas

Oh, very good, yeah. Not a clue where they are. Human rights lawyer David Hay joins us now for this

David, good morning. Does this surprise you? Good morning to you both. I mean, you can probably tell from the smile on my face, not at all

I mean, it should surprise everyone, but it doesn't. They've got absolutely no grip on who is in the country

and haven't had for a long time. And that's a really big problem

I mean, obviously, we see more people coming across the channel today. That's insignificant compared to the number of people

that are overstaying not just work visas, tourist visas and student visas and their families

And we've got no clue who they are. You take a class action against the Home Office and sue them for failure because it absolutely disgusting Great idea Well can we not Because these people they should A they should be on performance pay that what I think

but they're not doing the job that they're meant to be doing. Can this country, can we, as citizens, sue them

I think that it would be difficult. We've fought with difficulties now. I think a lot of people probably would too

but I think, you know, we need to actually improve what they're doing. And, you know, one of the small things I've said time and time again is that many, you know, when we travel, other countries check your passport when you come in and check your passport when you go out

We don't do that. We rely on this advanced passenger information, which clearly is lacking because the Home Office isn't even looking at it in this case

This is a massive problem. And, you know, you saw Keir Starmer talking in this infamous speech about an island of strangers

This is more like the island of the unknown because we just don't know who is here

Yeah, David, you've obviously lived abroad, Dubai infamously. Are you aware of any other country that behaves like this I mean I travelled wildly both around the football club as well and to be honest only this one You know of the kind of the major countries around the world the Western countries

and the, you know, countries like, even countries like the Middle East, all of them check you when you go in

and when you go out. And obviously, if you look at the UAE, Dubai, for example, as a city

a lot of expats there, we know a lot of British people go there, you're checked when you go in

you're checked when you go out. And if you overstay, you'll find, and if you can keep doing it

you're in very big trouble and they don't let you back. But we don't have that system

And it's not just, like I said, it's not just skilled workers, students, tourists

That's the easy way for people to get in. If they can come in that way and want to overstay

they don't need to worry about coming across the channel. I know, it's absolutely absurd, really

I don't know what to do about it. I mean, do you think that perhaps, and this is just my thoughts are

that the Home Office, people who work there, should be on performance-related pay? I think there needs to be a better system than there is at the moment

I mean, how you do that, whether it's performance related. But you know we need to they need to keep a track of if someone giving there needs to be responsibility So if someone is giving permits to people someone needs to have the responsibility to make sure that person is left at the end of the permit so why isn that part of the process you know if you looking at treatment of a you know

if you look at a doctor and there's a treatment of something you follow that process through that's not being done you know they just assume people have left and of course as we know they're

not leaving but you know even after this study nothing will be done there'll be no changes because

this is something you know i trained in law you know a long time ago and i trained in a seat in

in immigration in the city of London law firm. Even then, there was immigration scams

particularly with private universities doing so-called English courses, bringing a lot of people in from South London

It was a scam then, and it's only got worse. But some people might blame this on a lot of human rights lawyers as well

who seem to be defending these people if they do eventually get caught and asked to leave

I mean, you're right to say there are some very dodgy lawyers that are doing things that they shouldn't be doing

But equally, if the law says that you can do these things, then it's for the government and the Home Office to change those laws and enforce them