Piddington: Asylum camp 'pushed through' by Angela Rayner

As you are probably aware, your senior colleague Angela Rayner has used emergency powers to permit the so-called Piddington Asylum camp to proceed. The local MP, the Lib Dem Callum Miller, has said the government opened this up to public consultation after I lobbied the Prime Minister to do so. 3,177 people objected. One person supported it. Minister, what is the point of public consultation if your government blithely ignores it in cases such as these? So it's right that we engage with communities around big proposals, especially ones where we know there'll be local interest in it. And this is certainly the case. We've roughly closed half the asylum hotels that we inherited from the last government, but we want to close every single one of them. And to do that, the Ministry of Defence has looked at what are the sites that we have that could be used for temporary accommodation by the Home Office. We already have transferred Crowborough, a barracks in southern England, to the Home Office. And we've allocated... A small part of Bicester to the Home Office as well, and that will help us close asylum hotels faster. Minister, respectfully, you've totally ignored my question. I understand. Understandably, you've justified the actions, but I put it to you again. What is the point of public consultation if 3,177 people object to a proposal, one person supports it, and it proceeds? This is a complete fallacy, the idea that you consult the public. You ignore the public and you go ahead, don't you, Minister? Well, in this case here, I mean, it's pretty obvious that there's a strong sense of feeling from the community around Bicester, especially in Piddington. The Home Office continues to engage with those. The consultation is an opportunity to listen to the concerns of local people and make sure that... Should this proposal proceed, and there's still a few more stages to go here, Nick, so it's not yet fully locked in and delivered, that we can understand where the concerns are so they can be mitigated. And where we use large sites already, such as Wethersfield, where the Home Office operate a similarly sized temporary asylum accommodation, we don't see the same impacts on the community as is being spoken around Piddington. But I recognise that any change for... The people around MOD Bicester will be a concern, and that's why it's so important that the Home Office engages with the community. Now, look, I want to see every asylum hotel closed. To do that, we have to look at what temporary sites can be used to speed that effort up. There will be impacts there, but we don't often speak about the impacts and the concerns of communities around asylum hotels. But if I was on your show, as I think I was two years ago. You were asking me questions about why we aren't closing asylum hotels. Why can't we go faster? This is one of the ways we are going faster to do that. And I hope that we won't have to use these sites for many, many years into the future because we're continuing to bring down the backlog with reducing small boat crossings to the lowest level in six years. But there's clearly more work to do. I know my colleagues in the Home Office will be engaging with the community around Bicester in the days and weeks ahead. So let's bring into the conversation former Conservative MP and former Immigration Minister Kevin Foster. Good to have you on, Mr Foster. Isn't the reality, without wishing to play politics, when the Labour Party decided they wanted to shut all the asylum hotels and that wasn't necessarily the best solution, what they didn't realise is these individuals would have to go somewhere and they're now suddenly reaping their outcome. Good morning to you. Good morning, Nick. I think it's certain the Home Office ministers knew what the reality of moving people out of asylum hotels would be unless you were going to do mass removals out of the country back to places like Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, was that people would be going to one, houses in multiple occupation, that is shared homes in local communities. We've seen a big increase in those, many of which are in towns across the Midlands and the North, Given the cost of accommodation, we can work out why that would be, but it's quite politically toxic and has real issues, and large military sites, despite, of course, when they first entered government, them scrapping previous plans and saying this isn't something they would do. So what is the way out of this? Well, the way the way out of this ultimately is to find a comprehensive solution for stopping those arriving in Dover every morning, which is what fundamentally feeds into this. And that's where you get things like what the US, Greece or Australia. So we talk over, you know, and I know Kemi Badenoch has got some what would seem to be some fairly appealing ideas there. But that doesn't rid us, I don't want to say rid us, doesn't get us out of the problem of twelve hundred and fifty six people who've got to go someplace now. Well, that is what I don't think anyone can divine a solution, can they? Yeah, I know what you're saying, Nick. The ultimate solution is to resolve the issues and you need a bigger... package of measures and perhaps even going further than what any major party is proposing at the moment, if you look at what the US has done in terms of solving the issues at the southern border. But yeah, at the moment, your choices fundamentally, those being accommodated in the UK, your asylum seekers are large properties, hotels or houses in local communities. And the government has decided that it now wants to push ahead with some of the large bases. And it's this procedure they've used is an interesting one, because despite the comments about consultation, Using this process means that on the planning application, there is no public consultation and there's none at all. The submission is made to a government minister. It's deemed to be urgent. There's no consultation. There's not even a view asked from the local council before they make their decision, announce it. And now they seem to want to consult afterwards. That's pretty laughable. Kevin Foster, you were a Conservative MP and you served as immigration minister. Thank you for your input on that. David is in Hampstead. David, the point you want to make. Good morning. Morning, Nick. Great show. Thank you. You know, there's a couple of really important points here. So, Pittington is in a Lib Dem constituency, so this is what they voted for. Refugees are welcome here. No, I'm sorry, Nick. Refugees are welcome here. And actually, the same people... Sorry, excuse me. Please let me... I live in a part of London which comes under one of the Lewisham constituencies, right? I do not vote. I did not vote for this Labour government. No, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. This just isn't... It's just not, it's not fair to say that because they're Lib Dems, they deserve it. No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, is there is documented evidence of the people there going on with a whole refugees are welcome here, et cetera, et cetera. And essentially what they mean by that when they're, well, now what we know they mean by that is refugees are welcome in this country. Good enough for thee, but not for me. And actually, and listen, I actually think what's happening here is. It's a big deflection from the real problem, which is rather than, hold on a second, where should we put these people? The question really is, why are we allowing these people to stay here when they're here illegally, they're broken into our country, Nick? And, you know, it's a Lib Dem constituency, and according to their logic, what's the problem? It's vulnerable women and children. Why can they not stay? I sense from your language you would take a tougher line. Is that right, David? Well, the line is like this. If you allow someone to break into your house and you say, oh, well, you know, you really need a meal, so actually if you keep breaking in, it's fine. Well, they're going to keep breaking in. They'll tell their friends, it's really warm in here. Come in now. These people are mugs. They're going to let you in. But what do we do with these 1,256 individuals? Two things. It's a really simple solution, actually, like what every single other serious country does. You say, hold on a second, you're here illegally. We're now going to detain you because you've broken the law. People get arrested here for tweeting things. So you're going to be arrested now for breaking the law. And then what we're going to do, we're going to deport you. And then some of the... Hold on, hold on, hold on. If they're from a country such as Afghanistan, if they're from a country such as Iraq, or probably Iran, we can't send... Germany are sending them back. So you're saying we renege on the convention, the ECHR? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking. My view on the ECHR is that the ECHR was fit for the time it was written. It was written a long, long time ago. It's not fit for purpose now. We can reform it. And again, the same people who ironically would be Lib Dem voters saying, we should stay in the EU because we can reform it. Like, if you want to reform the EU, why don't you reform the ECHR then? You can solve this problem. Morning. That interview you had with that MP, was it a recent interview? Yes, this morning. Well, how the hell is he going on about he's going to look into concerns of people of Piddington? It's been going on for months. They don't care. They talk about public conversation. So where the hell has he been all this time, this man? What does he do for a living, this MP? He's the Minister for Defence Preparedness and Industry. God help us. God help us. He's got to ask questions about what's going on in Pennington, and he's going to look after me and my family during the defence. Oh, give me a break, Nick. It's not your fault, but I'm just saying another thing I would do, if I were going to give some advice to the people of Pennington, if I lived there, you know what I'd do? I'd boycott every firm that had anything to do with that camp. Boycott everything that had to do with that camp. Bakeries, whatever. I'd just say, right, you're doing that, I'm boycotting you. Well, how are they, let's use the example, how are they going to get their bread? Oh, do you mean the people in the... You've just said the residents of Piddington should boycott any store or any company that's seen... Yes. So when the local baker delivers their... They're dealing with the camps, Nick. Yeah, but how are the folk of Piddington going to get their loaves? Well, from the usual place, isn't it? We just said you're going to boycott it, Terry. No, I didn't. I said the people of Pittington should boycott the firms that are going to get involved with the campsite. So the local baker is serving the campsite. He's selling 1,256 loaves every day that he wasn't selling last week. Where do the people of Pittington now buy their doughnuts and their bread? Well, you got me there, Nick. Sorry, I didn't think of that. That's it. Sorry, mate. All right. Fair enough. All right. Tell you what, Terry, come back to me. I'm sure there is a solution. Thank you for that. And you have yourself a good weekend in Loughton. Morning, Nick. What's up? Well, the problem that you've got is you've got all these people being shoved in one place. Yes. The solution that me and a few of my pals are talking about is that you have lots of cruise ships that get decommissioned every year. And instead of having bases and hotels filled up, why don't we just get hold of the old cruise ships? Get them permission to be of a standard that they can stay on, and then we don't even need to have them on our land. They can stay in an estuary somewhere, on a boat, quite well contained, looked after, and they can stay there indefinitely. Who's going to police them? Well, to be fair, the police can be on a boat to make sure they don't leave. I mean, you have to be brave enough to be a prison officer, but at least they get to walk out in the open air. These people are, I mean, effectively, it's like an old prison hulk. Would you want to be a prison officer on board that boat? Nick, I'm not being funny, but there's been security around every one of those locations at the moment, and they don't have to live there, do they? The security can come and go, but the people that are of risk, to the rest of us can stay on the boat. Let's see what others make of that idea, Jeremy. It is a solution, 1,256 people. I'm sure one of those big ferries could take that and more. And, of course, it was tried, wasn't it, down in, I think it was Weymouth, but it never actually got going. Jeremy, thank you.