Reform MP Sarah Pochin said women and girls safety was being placed at risk by UK immigration policy in a fiery Commons debate backed by 700,000 people.
Pochin: We are not a hotel for the world (Image: Getty)
British women and girls safety has been placed at risk because of the UK’s immigration policy, an MP has claimed.
Reform MP Sarah Pochin made the explosive intervention during a Commons debate on illegal immigration, delivering a series of incendiary claims about migrant crime.
Ms Pochin told MPs: “The safety of women and girls in this country is at risk because of our immigration policy.”
She claimed rates of rape by migrants from “certain countries” were far higher than among the general population, and alleged there were “documented examples of illegal immigrants loitering outside of schools, filming children, following girls”.
Ms Pochin said the total cost of housing illegal migrants was “over £8bn and rising”, declaring: “We are not a food bank, or a hotel, for the world.”
In a fiery address, she said: “Illegal immigration is helping to bankrupt this country, our high streets are being overrun by crime, our women and girls are under attack and our culture is under threat.”
She demanded ministers “detain and deport every illegal immigrant that lands on our shores”, put “the navy in the channel” and take Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Her intervention came during a Westminster Hall debate triggered by a petition, signed by more than 700,000 people, calling for offshore detention facilities for those arriving illegally.
The petition was introduced by Conservative MP John Lamont, who told MPs “our asylum system is broken” and that the housing of migrants in hotels had “led to justified public anger”.
The Scottish Conservative said the current system was “poor value for money” and was fuelling an “ongoing cost to already strained local services and the breakdown of community cohesion”.
700,000 signed petition for offshore detention (Image: Getty)
Mr Lamont insisted the proposals were not extreme, telling the Commons: “These policies are not ‘far right’, they are right to be properly considered.”
He added: “The truth of the matter is our immigration system is broken beyond belief, and the British people know it.”
But Labour MP Jonathan Brash warned against inflammatory language, insisting his Hartlepool constituents were “entitled to be angry” but should not be put “at risk” by rhetoric that turned “legitimate concern into racial hostility”.
Mr Brash said he would not make “innocent people pay the price for the failures in the immigration system”, and backed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s efforts to control the border.
He said “progress is being made” under Labour, with net migration having “fallen dramatically” from the peak under the previous Government.