Tory focus on small boat crossings had role in UK riots, says senior Labour MP

The Conservative government's relentless focus on small boat crossings and delays processing asylum claims played a role in stoking August's riots, the chair of the Commons equalities committee has said.

- Peter Walker

The Labour MP Sarah Owen, whose committee has launched an inquiry into improving community cohesion after the unrest, said Reform UK MPs were also making the task of strengthening communities more urgent.

"With a lot of the Reform MPs, their tone, their rhetoric, the language that they use - they know they're whistling to that particular tune. They know that," she told the Guardian.

Owen said multiple factors had contributed to August's disorder, which sprang up in more than two dozen places across the UK after the killing of three girls at a dance class in Southport, Merseyside. However, she said, it was notable that rioters attacked not just mosques but hotels that housed asylum seekers waiting for their claims to be processed.

A backlog of asylum claims built up as Rishi Sunak's government tried to push through its Rwanda plan, under which anyone arriving in the UK would have been deported without having their claim heard.