Immigration minister Seema Malhotra has dismissed Reform’s plans to tackle immigration numbers as “gimmicks” that have “unravelled on basic facts and figures”.
The MP for Feltham and Heston said that she would not comment on Nigel Farage’s proposed deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban or “individual countries”.
Reform announced on Tuesday a plan to deport 600,000 people from the country, which would be enabled by striking deals with the Taliban and Iran.
But the party appeared later to backtrack on proposals for women and children to be removed under its plans for “mass deportations”.
Speaking in Portsmouth, Ms Malhotra told the PA news agency: “I’m not commenting on individual countries in this way.
“What I will say is that we have a policy of returning people to their countries where they are safe or, as we’ve seen in the agreement with France, to safe third countries.
“What’s also the case is that we’ve seen Reform’s plan unravel after just two days, and if that’s their specialist subject to see their plans unravel on the basic facts and figures, one has to ask the question about what other plans they might have.”
“Whether it’s for our NHS or any other areas of our public services, what we are committed to is taking the serious action that we need and not gimmicks.
“To make sure that we are stepping up the action we’re taking to disrupt the activity of these evil criminal gangs to make sure that we are returning those with no right to be here – over 35,000 since the last election.
“To make sure that we’re bringing in new powers for law enforcement and intelligence sharing with other countries through legislation we’re bringing forward in Parliament that both the Tories and Reform have voted against, and to make sure that we are urgently speeding up the processing of asylum cases, a backlog that the last government left behind in a system that was utterly chaotic.”
She continued: “Through these steps, I think what people will see is that we’re taking the action we need, and that we will see a closure to asylum hotels and to this evil criminal trade.”
When asked if the Government had alternative plans to hotels for housing asylum-seekers, Ms Maholtra said: “What we are doing is making sure that we’re reducing the need for hotels.
“That’s the critical bit of this and we’ve got to do that by working with communities across the country, making sure that what we’re doing is processing asylum cases much more quickly, making sure that we’re returning those with no right to be here, and making sure that we are delivering on our commitment that we made in our manifesto to see a closure to all asylum hotels in this Parliament.
“We’ve already seen a drop from the 400 asylum hotels that we saw open at their peak under the previous Government, and seeing that now almost halved to just over 200, this is really important that we continue the work that we’re doing to make sure that we see a closure of all asylum hotels in line with our manifesto commitment in this Parliament. That’s what we’re determined to do.”
When asked if the Government was reliant on hotels, she said: “Well, we’re also reliant on making sure that we’re clearing the backlog, because the number of people in hotels is as a result of the asylum cases that are open.
“What we need to do is to continue that step change that we’ve seen processing asylum cases much more quickly, making sure that we’re seeing those returns for people who have no right to be here as a result also of the returns agreements that we have been signing, whether that’s with Iraq, whether that’s with France.
“Whether that’s also in relation to the agreements and co-operation agreements we’ve got with other countries like Vietnam.
“When we see the results of all of those actions, when we see the new powers that are going to be coming in as a result of new legislation that we have brought in to parliament to increase intelligence sharing, to make it an offence to even supply criminal gangs, we are going to be doing much more than the previous Government.
“We’re seeing the arrests step up of those involved in criminal gangs, and we’re seeing that this evil criminal trade is disrupted that we are seeing put lives at risk and undermine our border security.”
