Chris Philp has been grilled by GB News host Camilla Tominey on the Conservative Government’s failure to improve the number of face-to-face benefits assessments after the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking to the People’s Channel, the Shadow Home Secretary assured that “before the last election, there was a plan to reintroduce those checks”.
Hitting back at Mr Philp, Camilla asked: “When did the pandemic end?”
The Tory MP responded: “Well, the pandemic ended and kind of dragged on it, didn’t it? But it was into 2021, and certainly there were scares after.”
Camilla then stated: “And how long were the Tories in power between the pandemic and the last general election? You had three years to bring back face-to-face benefits assessments!”
Mr Philp hit back: “Hang on Camilla, there was an announcement made before the last election to clamp down on benefits, including face-to-face examinations, and Labour cancelled those plans that had been announced by the previous Government.
“The plans we’ve got now go even further and would deliver £23billion of savings. No more claims by foreign citizens, zero benefits for foreign citizens.”
Camilla then reiterated her argument: “You did have three years though, didn’t you? You had three years to try and sort this out.
“In those three years, I’ll tell you what happened, between 2021 and 2024, the Tories let 3.9 million people into the country. We’ve had 27 non-EU workers for every one British young worker employed now.
“For four years of that, it occurred under a Tory Government, so you’ve contributed to this youth unemployment crisis.”
Mr Philp told GB News: “So let me be completely honest, the levels of immigration you just referred to were far too high, far too high and should never have happened. That was a huge mistake. It’s been going on for decades, high levels of immigration, and it’s got to end.
“Mass, low-skilled migration, particularly from the Third World has to end entirely, and that is essentially under new leadership our new policy. Mass immigration has to be completely ended. And instead of that, we need to get some of the 9 million working-age adults who are not in work back into work by making the benefits system a lot tougher.”
The Tory MP argued that the two key issues Camilla has grilled him on and the solution to both “go together”.
He explained: “Instead of importing cheap labour, which the country has done for decades, and that was completely wrong under both Governments, instead we’ll get people off welfare into work by making welfare a lot tougher.
“The youth unemployment problem is partly a consequence of immigration, and it is also because the Labour Government has smacked businesses with massive tax rises, which they claimed they weren’t going to do before the election.
“They said no tax rises, and those big tax rises on business mean companies are simply not able to hire young people, because Labour has punished them with enormous tax rises.”
Pressing Mr Philp on the Tory migration policy, Camilla questioned him on why the party “won’t implement a cap”.
He responded: “We will, we announced that at the last conference. We will have a binding annual cap.”
Camilla interjected: “What will it be?”
Mr Philp admitted: “We haven’t announced the number because we’re three years from an election. I’ll tell you this, it’ll be a lot lower, dramatically lower than any of the numbers we have recently seen.
“It’ll be set low enough that we end up with negative net zero migration, that is to say more people will leave than will arrive.”
He concluded: “And when it comes to low skill mass migration of any kind, mass or otherwise, that needs to be zero.”
