Chris Philp is the Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Croydon South
Three weeks ago, I was delighted that Kemi Badenoch asked me to be the Shadow Home Secretary.
Immigration and crime, at the heart of the Home Office’s remit, are likely to be on the political frontline in the coming years. These issues are critical to our national interest. There is no duty more important than the safety and protection of the nation. For me, this starts with strong borders.
Last week, Badenoch and I stood side-by-side and gave speeches that were honest about the mistakes that have been made by successive Governments, including recent Conservative ones. The truth is that immigration has been far, far too high. We have added the equivalent of Wales or eight cities the size of Liverpool to our population since 2010.
The pressure that this places on public services, especially housing, is extreme. 89 per cent of demand for new housing has recently been immigration-related, equating to 120,000 homes per year. Large-scale immigration, especially without integration, puts pressure on the fabric of society. A nation cannot truly succeed and cannot be strong unless its people share a sense of identity and unity.
It is not right that a million people here don’t speak proper English, nor that some nationalities have fewer than 50 per cent of adults in work nor that in one part of east London, 73 per cent of school children don’t speak English as their first language.
We need a dramatic reduction in legal migration. The steps taken late in the lifetime of the last government have begun to reverse the trend, and if allowed to continue by Labour, will get migration a lot further down in the next year or two. But even that this is not enough. We need to go further.
Badenoch and I will develop detailed plans for a hard cap that will see numbers come down dramatically. I only want to see a small and capped number of high-skill people coming here to work in fields like technology, finance, science, engineering, and medicine. We must end the days of mass low-skill migration. Research now shows that this has diluted our national productivity and ends up costing the rest of us more in taxes in the end.
Then there’s illegal migration. This simply has to stop. A nation that cannot control who comes in does not have a future. Labour made a huge mistake when they scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it even started. As a consequence, small boat crossing are up 23 per cent since the election compared to the same period last year and they have added 6,000 illegal immigrants to expensive hotel accommodation.
We will need an effective deterrent, equivalent to Rwanda. If anyone coming here illegally knows that they will be near-immediately removed, then they won’t bother to try in the first place. This approach worked in Australia ten years ago as part of their successful Operation Sovereign Borders, which saw their Illegal Maritime Arrivals (as they called them) drop from 50,000 a year to zero in short order.
Even European Union Commission President Ursula van der Leyen is calling on member states to adopt offshore processing outside EU territory, which has some conceptual similarities to the Rwanda scheme (although likely to be somewhat less effective, as those getting asylum are eventually allowed in under an offshore processing scheme).
And we will need to make sure that the legal architecture is right. People coming here should not be entitled to benefits, including housing, until they have themselves made a meaningful financial contribution to our society. We will also conduct a full review of the operation of the ECHR and Human Rights Act 1998, with all the options firmly on the table. The ability of our democratically elected Government to control our borders and decide who stays here is fundamental, and is not up for debate. We cannot allow supranational obligations to fetter that essential sovereign right.
We know Labour can’t be trusted to control our borders. Besides scrapping Rwanda before it started and putting 6,000 extra illegal immigrants in hotels in a matter of weeks, Starmer himself once said he thinks immigration law is “racist”. He believes in open borders.
This is the same man who – along with scores of Labour MPs – wrote in protest against a deportation flight removing dangerous Jamaican criminals from the country. Starmer and his Labour MPs also voted 134 times in the last Parliament against measures to protect our borders – including voting against longer prison sentences for the very people smuggling gangs he now claims he wants to smash. Starmer has also ruled out a hard cap on legal migration – the only measure we can be sure will work.
Crime and policing is at the heart of what the Home Office does as well. In government, the Conservatives delivered record numbers of police (149,769 by headcount) and overall crime came down over 50 per cent since 2010. This included a reduction in homicides from 620 to 590.
But this is not enough. I want to see police investigate every single crime where there is a lead to follow, including using technology such as AI and live facial recognition to catch more criminals. I want to see bureaucracy and red tape further stripped back (the last Government started some good work here) to ensure that police spend their time catching criminals, not catching up on paperwork.
And the police should never waste time policing rude tweets or offensive speech. They should police real criminal activity. So-called Non-Crime Hate Incidents should only be looked at where real criminality is likely to imminently follow. Children’s playground spats and people debating the trans issue should not occupy a single second of police attention.
I have no truck for anything that smacks of two-tier policing. Instead, I want to see zero tolerance for all actual crimes – we all know how the “broken windows” approach worked in New York in the early 1990s – and intense hotspot patrols of high-crime areas. And, of course, the work to protect women and girls against violence and abuse will be a vital part of what we do in opposition, as it was in government.
The Home Office is also responsible for the fight against terrorism and domestic security. I will fully support the Government and security services in their pursuit of those who mean us harm. And there should be zero tolerance for foreign interference in our national life – whether that is intellectual property theft, interference in elections, spreading disinformation, cyber attacks or worse.
We have a fantastic shadow team to do all this. Matt Vickers and Alicia Kearns, my Shadow Ministers, the latter also a whip, are both thoughtful and effective MPs with real experience. Our junior whip Katie Lam has worked in the Home Office as a special adviser and has already made an impression in Parliament since her election in July. And Sarah Bool, our fantastic PPS and a talented lawyer by background, completes the team.
It is clear that this Labour government is already failing on legal and illegal immigration, and we know that they are soft on crime. Their instincts are always wrong – as we have seen with their huge tax increases in breach of their own manifesto, their raid on farmers and their removal of the winter fuel payment from almost all pensioners.
The Shadow Home Office team I lead will hold Labour relentlessly to account – as we have been doing already – and we will develop detailed policies, developing the principles set out above, to show the British people that we are serious about fixing these problems and that we deserve to be elected.
By 2029, I want the Conservatives to be a credible Government-in-waiting with a credible and detailed plan ready to implement. If we win, I know that Kemi Badenoch will be a truly great Prime Minister.
That is our mission. We will not fail.
Chris Philp is the Shadow Home Secretary and MP for Croydon South
Three weeks ago, I was delighted that Kemi Badenoch asked me to be the Shadow Home Secretary.
Immigration and crime, at the heart of the Home Office’s remit, are likely to be on the political frontline in the coming years. These issues are critical to our national interest. There is no duty more important than the safety and protection of the nation. For me, this starts with strong borders.
Last week, Badenoch and I stood side-by-side and gave speeches that were honest about the mistakes that have been made by successive Governments, including recent Conservative ones. The truth is that immigration has been far, far too high. We have added the equivalent of Wales or eight cities the size of Liverpool to our population since 2010.
The pressure that this places on public services, especially housing, is extreme. 89 per cent of demand for new housing has recently been immigration-related, equating to 120,000 homes per year. Large-scale immigration, especially without integration, puts pressure on the fabric of society. A nation cannot truly succeed and cannot be strong unless its people share a sense of identity and unity.
It is not right that a million people here don’t speak proper English, nor that some nationalities have fewer than 50 per cent of adults in work nor that in one part of east London, 73 per cent of school children don’t speak English as their first language.
We need a dramatic reduction in legal migration. The steps taken late in the lifetime of the last government have begun to reverse the trend, and if allowed to continue by Labour, will get migration a lot further down in the next year or two. But even that this is not enough. We need to go further.
Badenoch and I will develop detailed plans for a hard cap that will see numbers come down dramatically. I only want to see a small and capped number of high-skill people coming here to work in fields like technology, finance, science, engineering, and medicine. We must end the days of mass low-skill migration. Research now shows that this has diluted our national productivity and ends up costing the rest of us more in taxes in the end.
Then there’s illegal migration. This simply has to stop. A nation that cannot control who comes in does not have a future. Labour made a huge mistake when they scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it even started. As a consequence, small boat crossing are up 23 per cent since the election compared to the same period last year and they have added 6,000 illegal immigrants to expensive hotel accommodation.
We will need an effective deterrent, equivalent to Rwanda. If anyone coming here illegally knows that they will be near-immediately removed, then they won’t bother to try in the first place. This approach worked in Australia ten years ago as part of their successful Operation Sovereign Borders, which saw their Illegal Maritime Arrivals (as they called them) drop from 50,000 a year to zero in short order.
Even European Union Commission President Ursula van der Leyen is calling on member states to adopt offshore processing outside EU territory, which has some conceptual similarities to the Rwanda scheme (although likely to be somewhat less effective, as those getting asylum are eventually allowed in under an offshore processing scheme).
And we will need to make sure that the legal architecture is right. People coming here should not be entitled to benefits, including housing, until they have themselves made a meaningful financial contribution to our society. We will also conduct a full review of the operation of the ECHR and Human Rights Act 1998, with all the options firmly on the table. The ability of our democratically elected Government to control our borders and decide who stays here is fundamental, and is not up for debate. We cannot allow supranational obligations to fetter that essential sovereign right.
We know Labour can’t be trusted to control our borders. Besides scrapping Rwanda before it started and putting 6,000 extra illegal immigrants in hotels in a matter of weeks, Starmer himself once said he thinks immigration law is “racist”. He believes in open borders.
This is the same man who – along with scores of Labour MPs – wrote in protest against a deportation flight removing dangerous Jamaican criminals from the country. Starmer and his Labour MPs also voted 134 times in the last Parliament against measures to protect our borders – including voting against longer prison sentences for the very people smuggling gangs he now claims he wants to smash. Starmer has also ruled out a hard cap on legal migration – the only measure we can be sure will work.
Crime and policing is at the heart of what the Home Office does as well. In government, the Conservatives delivered record numbers of police (149,769 by headcount) and overall crime came down over 50 per cent since 2010. This included a reduction in homicides from 620 to 590.
But this is not enough. I want to see police investigate every single crime where there is a lead to follow, including using technology such as AI and live facial recognition to catch more criminals. I want to see bureaucracy and red tape further stripped back (the last Government started some good work here) to ensure that police spend their time catching criminals, not catching up on paperwork.
And the police should never waste time policing rude tweets or offensive speech. They should police real criminal activity. So-called Non-Crime Hate Incidents should only be looked at where real criminality is likely to imminently follow. Children’s playground spats and people debating the trans issue should not occupy a single second of police attention.
I have no truck for anything that smacks of two-tier policing. Instead, I want to see zero tolerance for all actual crimes – we all know how the “broken windows” approach worked in New York in the early 1990s – and intense hotspot patrols of high-crime areas. And, of course, the work to protect women and girls against violence and abuse will be a vital part of what we do in opposition, as it was in government.
The Home Office is also responsible for the fight against terrorism and domestic security. I will fully support the Government and security services in their pursuit of those who mean us harm. And there should be zero tolerance for foreign interference in our national life – whether that is intellectual property theft, interference in elections, spreading disinformation, cyber attacks or worse.
We have a fantastic shadow team to do all this. Matt Vickers and Alicia Kearns, my Shadow Ministers, the latter also a whip, are both thoughtful and effective MPs with real experience. Our junior whip Katie Lam has worked in the Home Office as a special adviser and has already made an impression in Parliament since her election in July. And Sarah Bool, our fantastic PPS and a talented lawyer by background, completes the team.
It is clear that this Labour government is already failing on legal and illegal immigration, and we know that they are soft on crime. Their instincts are always wrong – as we have seen with their huge tax increases in breach of their own manifesto, their raid on farmers and their removal of the winter fuel payment from almost all pensioners.
The Shadow Home Office team I lead will hold Labour relentlessly to account – as we have been doing already – and we will develop detailed policies, developing the principles set out above, to show the British people that we are serious about fixing these problems and that we deserve to be elected.
By 2029, I want the Conservatives to be a credible Government-in-waiting with a credible and detailed plan ready to implement. If we win, I know that Kemi Badenoch will be a truly great Prime Minister.
That is our mission. We will not fail.