Isle of Wight East MP Joe Robertson has made headlines following a fiery on-air exchange on GB News, where he strongly criticised the Labour Government’s decision to pay £500 to a foreign national convicted of a sex offence before deportation.
The clash, which aired during a panel discussion hosted by Gloria De Piero, involved a heated debate between Conservative MP Joe Robertson and Labour’s Oliver Ryan over the handling of the deportation case of Hadush Kebatu.
The case centred on the foreign national who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman in the UK and subsequently offered a £500 payment as part of a voluntary return scheme to facilitate his removal from the country. This comes just days after Kebatu was wrongly released from prison, prompting a major manhunt.
The issue has sparked significant political backlash, with GB News viewers – including a caller named Hazel – offering mixed views on whether the payment was justified to expedite deportation.
Joe Robertson MP firmly rejected the notion that any payment should be offered to a sex offender. During the exchange, he stated:
“One pound paid to a sex offender who shouldn’t have been here in the first place is too much. You cannot have a standard procedure which pays money to sex offenders, who shouldn’t be here and who need to be deported.”
He continued by questioning the precedent being set:
“What does this say to women and girls that we are giving illegal immigrants who are convicted of sex offences £500? What’s the price next time for sexually assaulting a woman or girl? £1,000? £2,000? It’s madness.”
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Robertson also raised concerns about the possibility of deported offenders returning to the UK, saying:
“We kept him here in prison and then sent him home with money. Is he gonna come back again?”
Labour MP Oliver Ryan hit back during the exchange, calling the Conservative stance ‘posturing’ and arguing that the priority should be to get offenders out of the country swiftly to protect the public and avoid long, expensive legal processes.
Since his appearance on television, Joe Robertson has reinforced his position by posting on X:
“The State should not be giving a single penny to a convicted sex offender, let alone £500. He was here illegally, got housing, assaulted a child, served a short sentence – and then the Labour Government gave him a £500 golden goodbye on his way home to Ethiopia”.
The Home Office has defended the use of return payments in some cases as a cost-effective method of ensuring swift deportation and avoiding protracted legal appeals, but the policy continues to divide opinion across the political spectrum.
If it is the legal process that is stopping instant removals from our country, then it is the legal process that needs a major overhaul.
Problem is he could have fought it at a far greater cost and demanded compensation for all the stress caused by the mistakes the Prison Service made. He should have been kicked out the day he landed on our shores.
At the end of the day the Goverment and this includes the previous lot are not protecting it’s citizens. You only have to listen to the news of stabbings, murders , rapes etc. Got enough criminals of our own without importing any more!
The persons who we elect are not looking after our
interests, they themselves are ok, they walk around
with plenty of police presence and protection
whilst Joe public “US TAX PAYERS” who pay MPs and
Police salaries are left in sh*t street.
Do it the american way, once you have enough, fill up an ameriucan forces cargo plane and then drop them abriad, if they do not go voluntarily, drug or taser them, where to , no one cares as long as they are removed, how many illegals or illegals that magically won an immigration tribunal have killed UK residents this week alone, I count three.
bembridge barnie, you need to look up the spelling of words that you do not understand in a dictionary. You obviously do not have a spell checker. Can you explain, “ameriucan” and “abriad”?
What about the others getting a £2000 goodbye for them to come back..its a multi billion pound joke we are being taken for mugs
And the rest. I read in some cases £3,000.00
what’s then stopping them coming back on the next
dinghy to Blighty!
Nice little earner.
I’m sure they give them £2-3k, to pay for the small boat crossing, back to the UK, (which is then probably paid one of Nige’s mates to provide the ferry service.)..
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Farage makes such a fuss about the small boats to act as free advertising for the service, (‘cos he gets a cut from it somewhere along the line)
all of these politicians are corrupt in one way or another… & if they’re shouting very loudly about something, it’s probably ‘cos its earning them money.
For once I support a tory
Well said Joe
Given that the Tories spent £715 million pounds on a scheme to send immigrnts to Rwanda which resulted in no one being set and only two people going voluntarily, £500 to see the back of this individual, whillst irritating, is small beer to see the back of a nasty piece of work. Mr Robertson may mean well but he needs to look at the bigger picture – or is he just indulging in silly, playground politics?
You got to admit that the Rwanda scheme was shut down by Labour and judges before it had the chance to see if it worked. Scrapping it on day one by Labour has seen a big increase in crossings. Labours in discussions about deporting them to other countries while their claims are heard, What’s the difference?
So this article was about £500 being paid to a sex-offender immigrant, to ensure a swift exit,. rather than incur significantly higher costs if he tried to fight it…. our Tory MP though this was unacceptable…
to which Marcus, pointed out that the Tories spent £715 Million on a scheme which ultimately had no effect, to which you counntered that “the Rwanda scheme was shut down by Labour and judges before it had the chance to see if it worked”
However, …Had the policy become operational, the NAO’s estimates suggested that the UK government would have spent around £600 million to send 300 people to Rwanda, equivalent to around £2 million per person;
so the £500 is still a piss-in-the-ocean, compared with theTories’ intended spending….
There are plenty in Parliament on wages far in excess of 500 quid. They are not obliged to disclose some criminal or historic offences.
Robertson needs to understand that there is only ONE person responsible for the mess the UK is in and that is Boris Piffle Johnson.
He was the person who allowed what is now known as “The Boris Wave”, where thousands of illegals were allowed into the UK and are STILL HERE!
They are here illegally. They have BROKEN THE LAW!
Johnson was the person who advocated the UK becoming “The Saudi Arabia of Wind” which led to the UK paying the world’s highest price for energy.
Bloody Tories!
Labour and Starmer the Human rights advocate has always put the rights of illegals over British people. Labour are as bad as the Tory’s, they had a leader in Corbyn who stood up for terrorists in N.Ireland and the middle East, Labours record is abysmal in protecting our country.
“Labours record is abysmal in protecting our country.”
whereas the Tories (and Reform if they get into power) are content to sell everything, of value, off to the highest foreign bidder…
in their ideal world, all that’s left of the UK is an impoverished public, working as slave labour to rich foreign ‘investors’
They are Lavatory’s.