Former football manager Harry Redknapp has praised a GB News panel discussion on asylum seekers, describing their views as "fantastic".
Speaking on the channel, Redknapp said: "I think your panel just now were fantastic talking about asylum seekers."
He added: "I thought their views were fantastic. It's a pity people don't come out and speak like that more."
The panel had expressed strong concerns about the UK's asylum system and individuals who return to countries they claimed to have fled.
Harry Redknapp praised the panel's views
GB NEWS / PA
Daily Express columnist Carole Malone was among the panellists, arguing that "a vast number of people coming here are economic migrants, not asylum seekers".
She described the situation as "a slap in the face" that is "taking British people for mugs".
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Malone called for immediate deportation of certain asylum seekers.
"If you can go home for your holidays, you should be able to stay there forever," she stated.
A former Conservative Party chairman also participated, claiming the asylum system "is being played".
"It is absolutely absurd," he said. "The Home Secretary has the power to do something about this, do it."
Harry Redknapp joined Patrick Christys on GB News
GB NEWS
The panel's concerns follow whistleblower claims that three teenage Iranian asylum seekers returned to their home country for holidays despite claiming persecution.
Two former housing workers told the Express that Kurdish-Iranian asylum seekers from accommodation in Derbyshire made separate trips back to Iran last year.
The trips reportedly included watersports and Eid celebrations.
The whistleblowers claimed their concerns about these young men, who had all arrived in Britain by small boat, were "brushed aside" by housing provider Framework.
Housing officer Darren Jennings, 50, said he was "made to feel like a racist" after whistleblowing on the holidays.
"If you're saying you've left the country because it's unsafe and then you're choosing to travel back there it doesn't make sense," he told the Express.
Jennings, who resigned from Framework in July last year, raised concerns about how the trips were funded.
"These were people who were skint, on benefits but were saying 'we've got the money' from some mysterious individual willing to pay for it," he added.
He considered this a serious safeguarding issue.
Reform UK's Lee Anderson responded to the Express's findings by calling for deportation of asylum seekers who holiday in countries they fled from.
"Phoney asylum seekers are endemic in Britain," he said.
Anderson criticised the current government's approach to asylum accommodation.
He claimed Labour is "bending over backwards to provide them with five-star hotel accommodation and benefits – no questions asked".
"If their countries are safe enough to vacation in then we should be deporting them, no ifs, no buts," Anderson added.
