Priti Patel cited illegal immigration as 'the biggest challenge we have'
Former Home Secretary Dame Priti Patel has said too many people are coming into the UK and cited illegal immigration as 'the biggest challenge we have.'
Speaking on GB News Priti Patel said: “On migration, there are some strong things that we have done, both on the legal side. We did say that we’d be able to count people in and count people out; digitisation of the borders. All of that’s very important for business and trade.
“That’s legal migration and with a points-based migration system, we know who is coming here and what kind of skills they have.
“We are still bringing too many people over to work in our economy. What does that tell us? It tells us we're not training people enough. We don't have a labour market strategy.
“That's something I have been going on about for five years and I believe the Treasury should be doing that - even today I was raising that in Parliament.
“We need a labour market strategy, because quite frankly, there are sectors in this country, some businesses, some sectors, who automatically go for that sort of default lever of let's just bring the low-cost migrants over to the United Kingdom.
“Business needs to step up on this as well. We've got to have the right incentives in place for businesses to do that.
“Then, on illegal migration, I think that is absolutely the biggest challenge that we have, and it's problematic.
“I’ve got my own views about the Illegal Migration Act and I will you where things have gone wrong; I think I'm in a position to say that is where some of my colleagues aren’t.
“I fundamentally believe the last piece of legislation I brought in was the Nationality and Borders Act. That's where we had differentiation of migrants coming into our system, which meant that we could get them ready to go to Rwanda, we could process their claims faster through the courts.
“We would bring in the one stop shop, we'd have all the age verification and age assessment systems in place.
“I'm afraid by literally having another piece of legislation, the Illegal Migration Act, that moved all that to the left hand side and the government has not implemented it.
“That's a big problem, because you can't keep on stopping and starting and the government has done that. That's a really big problem. They're only now bringing in those measures from the Nationality and Borders Act.
“My own view, and I’m very, very fervent about this with the Prime Minister as well, is that we have to fast track these measures. Because it's only once you start processing claims through the courts in fast time, you can then start to remove people.
“I would not have put forward the Nationality and Borders Act knowing that it would just be a spurious measure and the courts would not act.
“You literally get one chance to put your cases through the courts.
“That is the whole point of differentiation of asylum claims and I’m afraid that change last year, they put that to one side.
“Like Brexit, you can't just say we're going to leave and it's all going to be automatic and things will change overnight. It'll be complex and I think it's important we take the country and the public with us.
“I can tell you now, I would absolutely work to do that.”
