Badenoch: Small boats crisis risking community cohesion

THE FAILURE to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats is putting community cohesion at risk, Kemi Badenoch has claimed.

- WILL DURRANT, HARRY TAYLOR and DAVID LYNCH

The Conservative leader also hit out at the deal the UK Government has struck with France to return migrants across the English Channel and insisted the Tories could not be held accountable for continued backlogs in the asylum system.

The “one-in, one out” agreement will see migrants ineligible to stay in the UK sent back to France, in exchange for taking those who have links to Britain.

As she visited a farm in her North West Essex constituency yesterday, Mrs Badenoch was asked whether she believed descriptions of the small boats crisis as a “tinderbox” were an appropriate part of the public debate around migration.

The Conservative leader said: “If you were to speak to the mothers who were protesting outside the hotel in Epping, they will tell you that a crime had been committed and that’s what they’re protesting.”