Labour’s Pat McFadden refuses to put numbers on Channel migrants return plan

“They're all staying in hotels and we're spending £2billion a year and the system is completely failing.

“We have no returns agreement like that at all. So the counterfactual to sitting down and talking about some limited specific cases is we don't return anyone.

“We have a growing backlog and a massive cost to the taxpayer. That's the situation, the failing situation right now.”

Asked by Camila Tominey that he must have numbers in mind, he replied: “No, you don't. You don't want to sit down and talk about that kind of thing because you're talking about this as though we were going to take part in an EU aid quota system…

“The other thing that we said that should happen in recent days, is we have to process these claims much more quickly and hire the people to do it.

“It would be money well spent, because not doing that is adding to these costs, as I said, save £2billion a year in hotels as a result of not processing the claims or having any returns agreement to send a proportion of these people back.”

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Asked about people being housed in shipping containers in Ealing in west London, he said: “All of this shows the pressure that the accommodation system is under,.

“A few years ago, probably less than that, there were little or no asylum seekers housed in hotels. Now it's 50,000.

“By the way, the number in hotels has gone up 20 per cent since the Prime Minister said he would stop the boats. That's how successful his plan is right now.”

Mr McFadden also ruled out the imposition of 20 miles per hour zones on urban roads across the country under a Labour Government.

​He said: “That proposal won't be in the manifesto next time.

“Around the country, different councils are taking different decisions, there have been Tory councils that have put in practice 20-mile-an-hour zones as well.

“But it will not be a thing in our manifesto as a national policy.”