Kemi Badenoch has suggested migrants should be homed in ‘camps’ as an alternative to hotels.
Some communities feel unsafe as a result of migrant hotels, the Conservative leader said yesterday during a visit to Essex.
It is expected that official figures will today show more than 50,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since Labour came to power.
Speaking yesterday in Epping – which has been the centre of anti-asylum seeker hotel protests – Mrs Badenoch said: ‘Is it possible for us to set up camps and police that, rather than bringing all of this hassle into communities?’
She added: ‘As a party, we need to also hear from the community about what you think the solutions are. We don’t have all the answers; it’s important that we make sure that the community is part of the problem solved.’
During her visit, Mrs Badenoch warned that some communities ‘don’t feel safe’. Speaking about the possibility of putting asylum seekers in camps, she said: ‘We need to make sure that communities like Epping are safe.
‘What a lot of the parents – the mothers and even some of the children – have said to me is that they don’t feel safe.
‘It is unfair to impose this burden on communities… lots of people here have been talking about being harassed by a lot of people in the hotels.’
Kemi Badenoch has suggested migrants should be homed in ‘camps’ as an alternative to hotels
Her trip to Essex followed weeks of protests at the Bell Hotel, which hosts migrants, after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl.
Mrs Badenoch said yesterday: ‘Not everyone here is a genuine asylum seeker. People are arriving in our country illegally.
‘That is why we have a plan to make sure that people who arrive here illegally are deported immediately.
‘We need to close down that pathway to citizenship that means that lots of people get here not making any contributions, claiming welfare, claiming benefits. We also need a deterrent.’
The Labour Government has previously set out its intention to close asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament. But Mrs Badenoch warned that things were likely to get worse as Labour tried to move people out of hotels and into private accommodation.
Mrs Badenoch also rounded on Keir Starmer’s pledge to deport foreign criminals, pointing out that he tried to stop flights when the Tories were in power.
She questioned Labour’s plans to remove foreign offenders from the UK, saying the Prime Minister had previously condemned the practice.
Labour has announced plans to deport foreign criminals as soon as they are sentenced, and before they can appeal, to free up much-needed space in prisons.
Her trip to Essex followed weeks of protests at the Bell Hotel, which hosts migrants, after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl
She said: ‘When we were deporting criminals, Keir Starmer was writing letters trying to stop our deportations, so I’ll believe it when I see it. This is the sort of stuff they should have been doing on day one. The fact that they tried to stop deportations before means I don’t really believe it.
‘The Government has released 26,000 prisoners since they came to power, released them early, there are now more criminals on our streets, that’s what I’m really worried about.’
In 2020, Sir Keir, then a shadow minister, wrote to then prime minister Boris Johnson calling for charter flights from the UK to Jamaica to be suspended.
He co-signed the letter saying he had ‘grave concern’ over the Home Office plans to deport 50 people to Jamaica by charter flight on February 11, 2020.
