Former immigration minister Mark Harper has called on the Labour government to "wake up" over its handling of Channel crossings in an exclusive interview with GB News.Harper criticised Prime Minister Keir Starmer's announcement that the UK is seeking to establish "return hubs" in third countries for failed asylum seekers, just months after scrapping the Conservatives' Rwanda scheme.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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00:00Mark Harper has exclusively told GB News that he thinks the Prime Minister is all talk and no action.
00:06Very clear that Keir Starmer's phrase that he used endlessly before and during the election campaign about smash the gangs was just that, a phrase.
00:15Complete nonsense, hasn't had any impact and they haven't been able to reduce the flow of people coming across the channel.
00:23Let's talk to the political editor of The Spectator, James Heel. Good morning, James.
00:27Of course, the government in response to this is saying, well, talking about these hobs was not on the agenda in Albania,
00:36but we know it was because it was leaked everywhere before the visit actually happened.
00:42Well, this is the interesting thing. I mean, Keir Starmer yesterday was very keen to talk about how he was the first Prime Minister to go out to Albania,
00:47how much he wanted to sort of put in this UK-Albania relationship.
00:50But of course, you know, then beforehand officials were then starting to downplay the prospect and saying he was talking about just general security.
00:56When in fact, as we all know, that illegal migration is very much the top issue when it comes to internal talks between the two sides.
01:02And of course, we had that extraordinary press conference yesterday as well.
01:04So Albania has these deals with Italy, although famously so far, very few migrants and asylum seekers have actually gone to those hobs because the Italians have had...
01:15Or none, I think.
01:15Or none, because the Italians have had exactly the same problem with European rights, judges and the same kind of claims.
01:22But nevertheless, why would Albania refuse to do a similar deal with Britain?
01:28Well, in terms of sort of, I think, domestic political oppression is one reason why.
01:32You know, he was talking there about loyalty to the marriage of Italy, talking about the importance of having that relationship.
01:36I suppose it would be a bit sort of akin to our relationship with Ireland in some respects.
01:40But I think that in terms of why he wouldn't want to do it, I suppose it's obvious that no one particularly wants illegal asylum seekers coming to their country.
01:46And I suppose that's the whole sort of idea about sort of incentives in all of this.
01:50Thus far, the only country we've seen in sort of five years of talks between the Conservatives and Labour governments, the only country that had any interest was Rwanda.
01:57And so we always hear these sort of briefings.
01:59It's a bit like sort of, I have a girlfriend, but she goes to another school.
02:02You know, you don't know her.
02:03It's all these unnamed countries.
02:04We're dealing with the West Balkans, you know, we're dealing with sort of Bosnia, etc.
02:07But until we get over the line, Rwanda remains the only country to have shown any sort of formal public interest in this.
02:12We're dealing with the West Balkans.