Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood took a grilling this morning by MPs in the Home Affairs Committee over small boats crossings. She admitted there is no guarantee they will come down, even by next year…
Pressed by LibDem MP Ben Maguire on whether she expected the numbers to fall by this time next year, Mahmood said:
“Those numbers are obviously not where I want to be either. These are unacceptable and the numbers need to come down. What I would say is this is a fiendishly difficult problem to resolve. I would love to be in that position. I can’t guarantee I’m going to be in that position.”
Meanwhile, there was a 13% increase in crossings last year. Mahmood discovering the job is a little trickier than a few slogans and glitzy press releases…
Shadow national security minister Alicia Kearns told Times Radio she would have put a precondition on a China trip if she were PM:
“I would have put a precondition that I was not going to go if I was prime minister, unless Jimmy Lai was coming home with me. I would also put a precondition in the six months leading up to the visit that I wanted a reduction in hostile acts against our country. But that’s not what we saw. And actually, in contrast, what we saw was clearly the Chinese Communist Party did put a precondition, which was that the new embassy in London had to be signed off. So why is it okay for China to set preconditions and to make very clear red lines about what they require for a visit, but we go without having put any ourselves?”