Alex Chalk says there is a ‘lot of sense’ in the controversial comments made by Lee Anderson to the Daily Express
Yesterday 15 asylum seekers were moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge in Portland, but dozens more who were due to go there had their transfer postponed because of legal action. We don’t know the full details of the legal arguments involved, but the Care4Calais, the refugee charity helping many of the migrants, said people who were disabled, who had survived torture and who had had a traumatic experience of being at sea, were among those objecting to being housed on the barge.
According to a report by Charles Hymas in the Daily Telegraph, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, is threatening to withdraw accommodation from asylum seekers who refuse to move to the barge without a reasonable excuse. He quotes a government source saying:
Anyone refusing to move without a reasonable excuse has 24 hours to reconsider, after which their asylum support will cease and they will have to fend for themselves.
If people were therefore told, ‘Right, if you don’t want to come on the barge, that’s it, the state has discharged its duty to you’. You’re putting to me, would that be an illegal position? Would that be an unlawful stance to take? My position is it’s unlikely that would be unlawful. In other words, I suspect that would be lawful. But that would have to be considered in the normal way.
If they don’t like barges, then they should fuck off back to France …
I think people have just had enough.
Lee Anderson expresses the righteous indignation of the British people. Yeah, he does it in salty terms and that’s his style. But his indignation is well placed.
People are coming from a safe country. France is a signatory to the European convention on human rights, and people should claim asylum in the first country. It shouldn’t be like a sort of open shopping list of where you want to go.
Continue reading…
