Small boats crisis won’t be solved without a clampdown on lefty lawyers, says Priti Patel
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel has demanded that the Government has “a clampdown on lefty lawyers” who are gaming the system to prevent Britain from tackling the small boats crisis across the Channel.
Ms Patel, who was Boris Johnson’s Home Secretary, has already run into problems from leftwing activist lawyers who prevented her Rwanda deportation plan from being implemented with the first plane on the runway ready to take illegal migrants out of the country.
She made her call for action in an interview with Camilla Tominey on GB News where her frustrations over tackling the illegal immigration crisis came to the fore.
While some have blamed Ms Patel for not putting an end to the small boats crisis quickly enough she warned her successor Suella Braverman that “the clock is ticking” on her alternative plan before next year’s election.
A new Illegal Immigration Bill has just been passed by Parliament despite massive opposition in the Lords led by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
Ms Patel said: “All fair people want to stop the evil people traffickers and the terrible exploitation.
“There are so many things needed [to stop the crisis]. Lefty lawyers are one aspect of this.”
She went on: “You know the Government needs to clampdown – that’s the attorney general that’s the Lord Chancellor – on the way some of these legal firms behave.
“That’s been going on for years and all Governments have not done enough on that.”
She also defended her plan for tackling the crisis before Boris Johnson was removed by a coup of Tory MPs.
Priti Patel worked hard to tackle the immigration crisis
Ms Patel said: “The new plan for immigration as we had outlined said we need that we had detention centres. That acted as a deterrent in itself.”
She said it would have made it easier to process applications for asylum and then deport people when they failed.
Speaking about the current plans, she said: “The problem is that the story is all about accommodation – it’s about buying tents.”
And she warned: “The clock is ticking on this.”
Ms Patel is supporting objections to using RAF Wethersfield in Essex near her constituency as a detention centre for migrants claiming the plans have already had an impact on public health.
The problem in the English Channel does not seem to be reducing with 12,119 recorded crossings as of July 9.
Article by David Maddox in the Daily Express, 30th July 2023