Starmer says Sunak’s plans to tackle small boats are ‘unworkable’ – live

Here are the main lines from Keir Starmer’s LBC phone-in.

• Starmer dismissed Rishi Sunak’s plan to end small boat crossings as “unworkable” and suggested it was an election gimmick. Pointing out that what was being proposed sounded very similar to the Nationality and Borders Act passed last year, Starmer said:

We had a plan last year which was put up in lights, ‘it’s going to be an election winner’. These bits of legislation always seem to come when we’ve got a local election coming up.

It was going to break the gangs – it didn’t. Now we’ve got the next bit of legislation with almost the same billing, I don’t think that putting forward unworkable proposals is going to get us very far.

• He refused to say exactly when he first contacted Sue Gray about her becoming his chief of staff – but said that the approach was “recent”, and after his previous chief of staff left last October. (See 9.18am and 9.47am.) He also dismissed the idea that her Partygate report was part of a Labour plot (an idea promoted by Boris Johnson’s allies) as “nonsense”. He said:

I had absolutely no contact with Sue Gray during the preparation of her report when she was writing or anything like that, so the whole suggestion is a complete and utter nonsense.

• He said the Telegraph revelations from Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages during Covid showed the “chaotic way” the country was being run. Starmer said he had read a lot of the coverage. Asked what he had taken from the stories, he replied:

The chaotic way in which they’re running the government. You’d expect some of these decisions to be in proper meetings, thrashed out, proper decisions recorded, and there’s stuff pinging around on WhatsApp.

The sort of self aggrandisement of Matt Hancock – it’s all about him.

And some of the decisions that were taken appeared to be taken on the basis of quite minor political issues rather than the major issues of the day.

I think most people would look at this and think this was a pretty chaotic way to run the country.

• He defended Labour’s decision to restore the whip to Rupa Huq, who had it removed last year for racism. She described Kwasi Kwarteng as “superficially black”. Starmer said that what she said was “completely wrong”, but he said she had apologised, and that he was “confident” that she had learned from this. Removing the whip for good would not be “proportionate”, he suggested. Asked about Neil Coyle, Starmer said Coyle had “some way to go” before he could get the whip back. That was a matter for the chief whip, he said. But Starmer confirmed that Jeremy Corbyn would not have the whip restored before the general election. He said:

I took the decision after his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission that his failure to even really properly acknowledge the findings [of its inquiry into antisemitism in the party when he was leader] and what he said in the response afterwards was totally incompatible with the change that I was bringing about in the Labour party.

Momentum, the Labour group set up to support Corbyn’s agenda when he was party leader, has accused Starmer of double standards.

Nick Ferrari ended by having one last go at the question about when Keir Starmer first approached Sue Gray about taking a job with him. Was it this year or last year?

Starmer says it was “recent”. It was after his last chief of staff left, in October last year. And it was after he had a period “working through in my own mind what I wanted from a chief of staff”.

Q: What do you think of Boris Johnson nominating his father for a knighthood in his resignation honours?

Starmer replies:

The idea that Boris Johnson is nominating his dad for a knighthood – you only need to say it to realise just how ridiculous it is. It’s classic of a man like Johnson. I think the public would just think this is absolutely outrageous.

He says Stanley Johnson used to be a constituent of his. He has nothing against him personally, he says. But he suggests the appointment beggars belief.

Q: Was Isabel Oakeshott right to leak Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages?

Starmer says it is hard to choose between Hancock and Oakeshott.

He says it was “naive” of Hancock to give the messages to Oakeshott.

But he says he has read a lot of the coverage. It shows “the chaotic way” in which they were running the government. Decisions should have been taken in proper meetings, he says. He says the “self-aggrandisement” of Hancock was striking. And some decisions seem to have been taken for political reasons, he says.

Q: By appointing Sue Gray, you have scored an own goal, and given a boost to Boris Johnson. Johnson’s supporters can now dismiss Partygate as a Labour plot.

Starmer says he does not think many people take seriously the idea that Partygate was a Labour plot. “Just look at the photos.” He says this just shows “how desperate he is”.

He says he is really please that “good people” want to be part of the Labour government.

He says he had no contact with Sue Gray when she was writing her report.

He says Johnson supporters are a “dwindling group”.

He repeats the point about having no contact with “Sue” during that entire period.

Q: When did you first approach Sue Gray?

Starmer says he has known Sue Gray since he was DPP. But she is not a friend.

Q: When did you approach her?

Starmer says he has been on the look out for a chief of staff for a while. He says she will set out the details.

Q: When did you approach her? Your previous chief of staff, Sam White, left in October 2022?

Starmer says Gray will lay that out.

Q: Why won’t you say?

Starmer says there is nothing improper about this.

Q: So why won’t you say?

Starmer says he had been looking for some time, and there is “nothing improper”.

Q: Business appointment rules say people should not accept a job until it has been cleared.

Starmer says he has not agreed anything yet. He wants her for the job. But they have not agreed terms.

Keir Starmer is starting his LBC phone-in. Nick Ferrari is presenting.

Ferrari starts with small boats.

Starmer says: “The problem has got to be dealt with.”

He says the criminal gangs driving this must be dealt with. Labour would get the National Crime Agency to set up a unit to tackle people smugglers.

And it would speed up the processing of applications.

He says the Nationality and Borders Act was meant to “break the business model”. But the number of small boat crossings has risen, he says.

Q: Is what they are proposing doable?

Starmer says he is not sure it is. What if an Afghan arrives in the country, having fled the Taliban, and they had helped the UK military.

Q: Isn’t there a scheme for these people?

Starmer says that scheme was not working.

He says “this isn’t a workable plan”.

Putting forward “unworkable” plans is not going to help, he says.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak started the year with two urgent, intractable problems in his in-tray. Last week he unveiled a solution to the Northern Ireland protocol problem, which has attracted more support, and less opposition, than had been expected. Tomorrow he will unveil his legislation to “stop small boats”.

Sunak announced the key elements of his plan in December. There has been more briefing over the weekend, but nothing that substantially alters what we were told three months ago, and nothing that addresses the claims made by many experts in asylum law who argue that trying to stop small boat crossings by legislating to say that people who arrive in the UK illegally will be banned from claiming asylum here just won’t work. The Nationality and Borders Act passed last year already says migrants arriving in the UK illegally are not eligible to claim asylum, but the small boats keep coming.

In our overnight story Rowena Mason and Rajeev Syal sum up the opposition to the plan here.

So what is going on? I can think of at least four options.

1) Sunak is relying on plans that won’t work because he’s daft. But he is not at all daft – quite the opposite – so we can discount that.

2) The critics are just wrong, and government sources are right when they say they have found a lawful way to process swift, mass removals. That seems unlikely, but you never know.

3) Sunak does not care whether the plans work or not, because he just wants to go into an election being able to blame Labour for the fact the government has not been able to deport asylum seekers en masse. There are probably some in the Conservative party who do favour this strategy, but it is risky. Polls suggest voters don’t blame Labour for asylum policy failing, but the government.

4) There is some new fix not yet announced that would make the policy more plausible. One big problem the government has is that it does not have a returns agreement with France, or any other country in the EU, that would allow asylum seekers to be removed more easily. We don’t know if this will be part of the announcement, but Sunak is much better at striking deals with his EU counterparts than his two immediate predecessors, and he has a meeting with the French president at the end of this week.

Shortly we will hear what Keir Starmer has to say about this. This morning Lucy Moreton, from the Immigation Service Union, argued that the plans could increase the number of small boat crossings in the short term. Asked whether the plans would halt the crossings, she told the Today programme:

Not as things stand at the moment. In fact, it’s actually going to be the converse when these things are published and announced in this way.

What it actually does is fuel the service, if you like, that the criminals provide.

She argued that the people smuggling gangs would tell people “quick, cross now before anything changes”.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9am: Keir Starmer holds a ‘Call Keir’ phone-in on LBC.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12pm: Kate Forbes, the SNP leadership candidate, is on a campaign visit in Kilmarnock. At 2.30pm Hamza Yousaf, another leadership candidate, is campaigning in Lanark.

2.30pm: Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

And at some point today Rishi Sunak is expected to speak to the French president, Emannuel Macron, ahead of the publication of his bill to deal with small boat crossings tomorrow and a meeting between the two leaders scheduled for Friday.

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