Former Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely has called for the UK’s asylum system to be treated as a ‘national emergency’.
The former Conservative MP has questioned whether Britain is ‘getting this the wrong way round’ after Police in riot gear were deployed as protesters gathered at Eastney on Sunday, where more than 150 migrants were brought ashore.
Seely says people are ‘angry for a reason’, although he stressed that protesters must obey the law and demonstrate peacefully.
In a strongly-worded intervention, he said:
“The asylum system is now endangering our safety. This should now be treated as a national emergency.
“People are angry for a reason, even if a small minority express it in a way that they clearly should not.”
Seely wants almost all those entering the country illegally to be returned to their home country, France or a third country, with only a ‘very small number of exceptions’.
He says Britain should instead accept a small number of asylum seekers vetted by the United Nations, adding:
“That’s it. Everyone else goes home.”
Seely also claimed those making illegal crossings have paid organised criminal gangs and warned that some arriving in Britain could pose a danger to women, children and men.
His intervention follows Sunday’s major Channel operation, which saw Bembridge and Yarmouth RNLI lifeboats tasked at around 10:35 to a large migrant vessel roughly halfway between the Isle of Wight and Cherbourg.
More than 150 people were eventually brought ashore at Eastney, where protesters gathered and Police deployed officers with riot helmets and shields.
Isle of Wight East MP Joe Robertson has since said he will demand answers from the Home Office over whether people smugglers are opening up new routes further west in the Channel.
Seely has long pushed for tougher immigration controls. As the Island’s MP, he backed the Conservative Government’s Illegal Migration Bill in 2023 and later introduced his own Immigration and Asylum Bill.
However, the Conservatives themselves struggled to get a grip on Channel crossings and the asylum backlog while in Government. A record 45,755 people crossed the Channel in small boats in 2022, while hotels were increasingly used to house asylum seekers.
His successor in Isle of Wight West, Labour’s Richard Quigley, has taken a different stance, joining Labour MPs in thanking HM Coastguard and RNLI crews while defending the Government’s approach.
They said Labour was ‘cracking down’ on criminal smuggling gangs and claimed summer small boat crossings had fallen to a 6-year low, adding:
“We’re not complacent. We still have an enormous job ahead of us – but it’s one this government is going to tackle head on.”
