UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has given a speech at the Conservative conference, stating that politicians have been too hesitant to act on immigration and that moving to a richer country has become a “realistic prospect” for billions of people. She also warned that a “hurricane” of migration is headed towards the UK. While her keynote conference speech was heavy on bold rhetoric, Braverman provided little in the way of new policy proposals, except for announcing the government’s intention to soon close asylum hotels. She pledged to do “whatever it takes” to stop small boat crossings and said immigration was “already too high”.
Braverman’s comments drew criticism from two Conservative MPs who said that they were not helpful. Earlier this year, she also sparked controversy when she questioned A United Nations (UN) convention on refugees. She suggested that the 1951 Refugee Convention was not “fit for our modern age” when she spoke at a US think tank. Braverman warned that countries faced an “existential” threat unless they were capable of adequately controlling borders.
Last year, the UK received more than 1.2 million migrants, which included over 81,130 asylum applications and resulted in a net migration figure of 606,000 after 557,000 people emigrated. Former justice secretary Robert Buckland criticised Braverman’s comments, stressing that politicians should be responsible with language and needed to “understand the breadth of the problem” after analysing why mass migration is happening in the first place.
During her speech, Andrew Boff, a Tory member of the London Assembly was expelled from the conference hall after heckling Suella Braverman. He had disagreed with her when she had spoken about “gender ideology”, which he described as “poison”.
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