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Chris Philp says Labour must 'repeal the Human Rights Act' in order to tackle migrant crisis
Jul 3, 2025
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has declared a "public safety crisis" as new migrant data has revealed illegal entrants into Britain are "24 times more likely" to go to prison than Britons.The analysis by the Tories suggests the rate is much higher for the nationalities who make up the largest small boat arrivals, with the most common including Somalians, Afghans, Iraqis, Albanians and Iranians.FULL STORY HERE.
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0:00
And let's be honest, these numbers are simply mind-boggling
0:03
Tell us, how did you reach them? Well, Martin, we put these figures together by compiling three different data sources
0:09
We looked at the nationalities crossing the English Channel, first of all. Yes. And you mentioned a moment ago what those are primarily
0:16
Then we looked at the offending rate of those nationalities in the UK, in particular, how many people from those nationalities are in UK prisons
0:24
We compared that, just keep with me, to the number of people in the UK holding those passports
0:30
to work out the percentage of each nationality that wound up in prison
0:34
and then applied those percentages to the numbers crossing the channel. That showed us that just over 3%, 3.5% of channel crossers
0:43
are likely to end up in prison, assuming those nationalities are just as likely
0:48
as their fellow citizens of Somalia or Afghanistan or anywhere else to wind up in prison
0:54
And then you apply that 3.5% to the numbers that have crossed this year
0:58
And you find that almost a thousand people who have crossed the channel so far this year
1:02
will end up in prison. So the Labour government has let in what is likely to become a thousand criminals And that tells us this isn just a border security crisis it a public safety crisis as well
1:14
It's worth pointing out that these figures are, that they're a workaround
1:18
and I'm not criticising them because we do that often on the channel. You have to, because the original official data does not exist
1:24
We don't know, for example, how many people in prison specifically did come over on dinghies
1:30
but we can apply the fact they are more likely to come over on dinghies and they're in jail, therefore QED, the propensity is there
1:38
So we're assuming that the percentage of, for example, Afghans who wind up in prison
1:42
having crossed by a small boat is the same as the percentage of any other Afghan
1:47
to wind up in prison. So it's the best we can do with the data available, but it does show they are far, far more likely to wind up in prison
1:54
24 times more likely than the average British citizen, just going to show that the British public are being exposed to criminality
2:02
by the enormous numbers crossing the channel. And Chris Foote, when you look further into the data
2:06
as we've done in the past, it's like 24 times likely to be a sex offender
2:10
if you're an Afghani. I think it like 512 times more likely to be in prison for drug offences if you Albanian OK Mr Phil we have a league table of if you like worst offenders The propensity to be jailed
2:24
Would it not be sensible on the basis of this to use that list of nationalities
2:28
to say, well, I'll tell you what, let's have a points-based system
2:32
Let's have less people coming into the country from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq
2:38
Albania or Iran, or make it a lot harder to get in
2:41
to prove you have no criminal background, you're not a wrong one
2:46
So the whole system, based on your data, needs a total overhaul
2:49
Yes, you're now talking obviously about legal migration. When it comes to the boats, by the way, they need to be stopped completely
2:54
Every single person who crosses the Channel by a small boat should be immediately removed to a location outside of Europe
3:00
whether that's Rwanda or somewhere else, and then pretty soon they'll stop coming. So those small boat numbers need to be stopped completely
3:07
Now, on legal migration you're asking about, you're right, the bar needs to be massively increased
3:11
So you've got to have a job offer with a high salary before you can come here in the first place
3:16
A lot of these people in prison now may have come in legally under the Conservative government
3:21
It not to say that all of them in jail came over on dinghy That not true Yes some will have come in legally and that is why we need to massively increase the threshold for legal migration Mistakes were made in the past You absolutely right to say that and I acknowledge that The threshold needs to be
3:35
massively increased for people coming to the country legally. We want people with very high
3:39
levels of skill, you know, research scientists, people working in finance, the top IT jobs
3:45
those kind of things. We don't want people coming here, you know, to work as, you know, to work in
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takeaway restaurants or that kind of thing. That is not what the legal system should be used for
3:54
That needs to be stopped, frankly. And we need to have a very hard cap on legal migration
3:59
voted for by Parliament each year at a very, very low level, just to stop these large numbers, frankly, of any nationality
4:07
But if we said, like, only, you know, scientists, financiers, people working in IT, only those people can come in legally
4:14
I think we'd find these problems with criminality pretty soon disappeared. And by the way, people who are here who are not British citizens and commit a crime, every single one upon conviction and after their prison sentence should be kicked out
4:26
And that's why we need to repeal the Human Rights Act, because it's the Human Rights Act and the ECHR which is stopping the government from deporting all of these foreign criminals
4:35
Lots of them end up staying here
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