Tory storm erupts on when to bring in safe and legal migrant routes

MPs say they want them brought in tandem with new measure to cut Channel numbers

- Nicholas Cecil

A GROWING row erupted today over establishing new safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to enter Britain at the same time as clamping down on the flow of small boats across the Channel.

Policing minister Chris Philp said his personal view was that these new asylum avenues should only be opened up once the small boats are stopped.

But backbenchers are increasingly hopeful that the Government will ditch this stance and agree to an amendment to the Illegal Migration Bill to set up more safe and legal routes for asylum seekers “in tandem” with the new crackdown.

Simon Hoare MP, chairman of the Commons Northern Ireland Committee, told the Standard: “The Government needs to have more than one club in its golf bag.”

More safe and legal routes would be “another disruptor to the business model of people traffickers,” he added.

The Tory move for more safe and legal routes is being led in the Commons by Tim Loughton, who sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee.

He argued that they “need to be in place before the legislation comes into force” to deal with the small boats.

But Mr Philp told LBC Radio: “This country, the UK, has a lot of safe and legal routes established already.