Lee Anderson blasts disrespectful Home Office
A senior Tory MP has raised questions over the information the Prime Minister is receiving after a car crash session for Home Office ministers and officials in front of a powerful Commons committee.
Conservative Dudley North MP Marco Longhi pointed to indiscrepencies over figures on returns of illegal Albanian immigrants quoted by Rishi Sunak and the ones presented to the home affairs select committee.
In a quote made by the Prime Minister on December 7 last week about the small boats crisis and used on the Government website, he said that 5,000 Albanians had been returned this year.
But according to figures presented to MPs, only 762 Albanians have been returned since 2020.
Mr Longhi pressed the issue at a fiery meeting of the committee, where new immigration ministers Tom Pursglove and Michael Tomlinson were making their first appearances since being appointed three days ago.
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The row has called into question information used by the Prime Minister from the Home Office to justify his controversial Rwanda Bill to allow deportation flights to take off to the East African country after they were blocked by the Supreme Court.
At a breakfast meeting with potential Tory rebels ahead of the second reading vote yesterday, Mr Sunak had pointed to Home Office modelling to explain why his Bill would work.
Pressed on the issue by Mr Longhi, Home Office director of immigration and borders Dan Hobbs said that the 5,000 referred to the overall number of Albanians who had been deported not only those who had arrived on small boats.
But not satisfied, Mr Longhi pointed out that the Prime Minister had been specifically referring to small boats.
He read out the line from Mr Sunak: “Last year, a third of all those arriving in small boats were Albanian. This year we have returned 5,000 people and cut those arrivals by 90 percent.
“And Albanian arrivals have far more recourse to the courts than anyone under this new legislation. That’s why I’m so confident that this Bill will work.”
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After the committee meeting, Mr Longhi told Express.co.uk: “This appears to be creative accounting. The information the Prime Minister has had from the Home Office appears to be misleading – and that’s putting it politely.
“The fact is that in his quote on the government website is specific to small boats but the home affairs select committee was told when questioned by me that the 5,000 quoted by the Prime Minister of being returned is made up of arrivals from everywhere over an unspecified period of time.”
With the threat of a Tory rebellion in the new year on the Rwanda Bill, he also made it clear that the discrepencies could impact the Prime Minister’s hopes of avoiding a full rebellion which would see it defeated.
He said: “I worry now about the accuracy of the modelling the Prime Minister is receiving on the Rwanda Bill which is based on information from Home Office civil servants. So I must also question the accuracy of information ministers are being briefed with.”
The meeting followed one two weeks ago which saw MPs go into a meltdown when the two most senior civil servants in the Home Office – permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft and his deputy, Simon Ridley – arrived with no facts or figures.
There was anger among MPs that despite promises to provide answers, the top civil servants had not come back with the requested figures.
Labour committee chairwoman Dame Diana Johnson pointed out that she had been forced to write to the department to receive answers.
She was followed by Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson, who blasted the civil servants for being “slippery” and “disrespectful” to the committee.
He was furious that a fortnight after he had put questions to Mr Rycroft and Mr Ridley, answers had still not been produced.
Welcoming the two new ministers to their positions, he warned: “I am not going to hold back.”
Turning to Home Office officials, he said: “We sat here a couple of weeks back with the permanent secretary and his assistant, they were evasive and almost slippery in their replies to this committee, disrespectful to this committee in that they came with no figures.
“Now I think it is a little bit disrespectful that you must have actually watched them in that meeting or looked at some of it, and you saw the questions that were asked, and you’ve been asked the same questions and you still don’t have the answers.”
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