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Iain Dale demands answers from MP on Labour's immigration crackdown | LBC
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May 13, 2025
Sir Keir Starmer said the UK risks becoming an "island of strangers" without border controls as he unveiled a crackdown on immigration. The prime minister said on Monday that the government is looking to cut overseas care workers and tighten English language requirements within the leave to remain framework. It is all part of a drive for levels of immigration to have fallen by the end of his term in office although Sir Keir stopped short of setting a numerical target. “Let me put it this way, nations depend on rules, fair rules,” he said. "Sometimes they are written down, often they are not, but either way, they give shape to our values, guide us towards our rights, of course, but also our responsibilities, the obligations we owe to each other. "I celebrate that these rules become even more important without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together." As the nation grapples with the announcement, Iain Dale holds MP Mike Tapp's feet to the fire. Listen to the full show on Global Player: https://app.af.globalplayer.com/Br0x/LBCYouTubeListenLive #iaindale #labour #immigration #keirstarmer #politics #ukpolitics #news #interview #mp #lbc LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK.
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0:00
20 past 7 on LBC, Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal, joins me in the studio
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Mike, thanks for coming over from the debate in the House of Commons. Now, earlier today you tweeted this
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The Tories oversaw net migration of one million. No control. Chaos. Labour will bring control in line with British values, fairness, with firmness, strength and decency
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putting British workers first. The kind of language in a text that Donald Trump would use
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Oh, not at all. I've been talking about controlling the border, be it through net migration or illegal migration and standing up for British values and that decency and firmness, but also putting British workers first for years
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It was what I talked about during my campaign and it's what I continue to talk about now. And fortunately, the government are delivering on that
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Just remind us what Keir Starmer said about illegal migration. well look the aim here is to bring illegal migration by targeting the gangs who didn't
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mention it exploiting not once in his speech but bear in mind the white paper was predominantly
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talking about uh legal and net migration and that over-reliance on the foreign workforces and
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what's going on right now uh in parliament is the remaining stages of the borders immigration
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and asylum bill that that brings in counter-terror powers uh so that we can deter and disrupt those
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operations quite like we see with the security services mi5 they don't wait for an attack to
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happen they use those extra powers to get to the you accept that um the number of people coming
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over the channel has actually increased quite a lot over the last few months compared to what
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happened in the previous year well look we had 400 cross in 2018 over 150 000 since and we did say
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throughout the campaign and i certainly said it to my constituents that there is no magic wand this
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doesn't get fixed overnight. And the fact that, you know, we're nine, 10 months in and our
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democratic process can be a bit sluggish. That's not Labour's fault. And the legislation that's
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going to enable the National Crime Agency and the Border Security Command to actually act
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isn in legislation yet But I really confident that these measures will have an impact on bringing down those small boat crossings So you criticised the chaos of one million net migration so let break that down a bit Would you have turned away the 250 Ukrainians who came here fleeing war
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Well, this is where having a controlled immigration system is really important
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because what we've seen up to now is pledge after pledge from the Conservatives that they were going to bring it down
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But actually, you have to do the hard work behind the scenes to make that work, and that's why this is a cross-department effort
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So, you know, we're looking at ensuring upskilled British workers... I'm sorry, but that's not answering the questions
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Would you have turned away the 250,000? Absolutely not. Okay, so we're down to 750,000
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And when it comes to emergencies... Would you have blocked the over 200,000 Hong Kongers
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who came here under the British National Overseas Scheme, a policy your party supported
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Well, if there's, you know, crisis like Putin's aggressive invasion of Ukraine
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of course we're going to help those people. But what we're talking about here, actually, is net migration and relying or over-reliance on a foreign workforce
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And by the way, I have to add that it is valued. The work that these people do within our care sector and the NHS is one of the true value
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No, they're creating an island for strangers, weren't you? Listening to your own Prime Minister. That was a different point
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And that's been, I think, unreasonably spun. What we're talking about there is ensuring that we can talk to our neighbours
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Because that's how you form those close community relationships and integration. It's through talking the same language
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So you wouldn't have turned the Hong Kongers away. Would you have come back on health and social care visas
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when the NHS and care systems are already short-staffed? Well, what we're saying is that we're going to make sure
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we fill that with British workers. And like I said earlier... Where are they going to come from? Well, we've got... There's plenty of workers out there
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And this is where... Trained nurses that for some reason aren't coming forward. One in eight young people are out of education, work or training
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and that's got to change. And we're seeing changes around the benefit system to help get people back into work
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We also ensure that our apprenticeships are linked with this. So we said in our manifesto we'll link the jobs market with the immigration market
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which is why, by the way, we're often told or asked, can you put a cap on it
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Well actually no because it is an elastic band isn it It all very well saying we want to reduce immigration Most people in the country would probably agree with that But just saying we want to reduce it and then you telling me well we don want fewer Ukrainians
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we wouldn't want fewer people from Hong Kong, we wouldn't want fewer nurses and people who are social care workers
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although the Prime Minister today did say we don't want any more social care workers
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which I thought was astonishing. And I didn't say that we want more. What we need is British workers filling these jobs
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so it's British workers first. They're not there. That's what's expected from the Labour Party. They're not there. If they were there, they would be recruited
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Well, like I said, one in eight people are currently out of work training or education
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How long does it take to train a nurse? Oh, it takes a few years. And that's why we've got to make sure..
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That's why we have to keep importing them from overseas, because we haven't got the trained nurses here
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And that reliance on overseas work has to end, and that's what we're aiming to do. Would you have slashed international student numbers
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when universities rely on the money they bring in and many go home after their courses
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Most of them go home after their courses. It's a complex demographic because actually you get a lot of families coming over as well
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There's also a lot of universities that don't even exist who are applying for these visas
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So we do need to crack down on that and make sure that it is genuine students who are studying
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What I'm trying to get at is when you say chaos, who exactly shouldn't have been allowed in
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Oh, there's an over-reliance. Look, we've got engineers having to come into the country
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while apprenticeships in that field were being reduced. That's not right. We should be providing these jobs from the British workforce
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We've got the skill, we've got the talent, so let's use it. Well, I come back to you
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Who shouldn't be allowed in that has come in? These million people, you won't give a target to bring it down to 300,000, 200,000, whatever
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but you've got to tell us who you wouldn't have allowed in had you been in government
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What we're saying is... You keep saying what we're saying is, I don't want what you're saying is, I want an answer to the question
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And the answer to the question is, we're going to bring in or allow those to come into the country who are highly skilled
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But who of the current people that are coming in would you not allow in? And we've made that clear
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Well you clearly haven otherwise I wouldn be answering these questions The over on low workforce needs to end and we need to use British workers and provide those jobs to British people What I saying is you can do that overnight You can suddenly for example in the social care sector say to somebody
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we've got an article on LBC Views on the app today from a man who runs two care homes
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who's saying, we can't recruit people, they want to stop this, I think, by November
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We can't possibly replace our foreign workers by November. How on earth is he expected to do that
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Well, we're not saying that they have to replace those that are already here. Well, you are. No, we're not
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What we're saying is that we've got to end that reliance. And we do that through education, skills and training
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And it's a cross-department effort to deliver that. That's what we said we'd do in the manifesto
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And that's a part of what we're seeing today. Are you not
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I mean, I'm sure you've been talking about this to your Labour MP colleagues today
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and a lot of them I know are really concerned not necessarily about the content of the speech
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but the rhetoric used in it. I mean, people are likening it to
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it's a sort of sub-Enoch Powell type of language, this island of strangers
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You say, well, it's not the way it's spun. But if you use a phrase like that
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you must be aware of the consequences of how people are going to interpret it
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I think the point that Keir Starmer was making there was that for social integration
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for people that are already here and for people that arrive here
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it's important to have a decent understanding of the language. Now, that's for those people arriving here too
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so they can have a better quality of life, so that we can talk to our neighbours, form those communities
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and have that British spirit, you know. But that's already been done. Not talking to each other is not going to help at all
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David Blunkett's citizenship test was part of that, and you do have to show that you either know the language
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or you're learning it before you can come here already. So how is this different
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The point we're making is that the English language needs to be at a level that's higher
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so that we can communicate with each other. I think that's sensible. That's common sense, in my view
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Okay. Well, Mike, thank you for coming in. Pleasure. It's been an interesting exchange
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We'll see what our listeners think of it in just a moment. Thank you very much indeed. That's Mike Taub, Labour MP for Dover and Deal
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