Chris Philp: mass immigration is making Britain ‘ungovernable’

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0:37hello and welcome to coffee house i'm james seal and i'm joined today by chris philip who is the shadow home secretary chris welcome first of all we've just had the conservative reshuffle you are now part of this newly billed team with nick timothy the shadow justice minister how's that going to work you two together on law and order nick and i have worked closely together for for quite a while now, both in the previous government and also now in opposition. And we're going to be teaming up to make sure we are holding the government mercilessly to account on their various failures, which include, of course, the absurd early release scheme that will see dangerous criminals let out onto our streets.

1:13It includes the fact that police numbers under Labour are falling and the fact they've got no coherent plan to tackle antisocial behaviour, via shoplifting, phone theft, and so on. But we'll also be working together to build a Conservative programme for government, because the reshuffle in the last couple of days was about moving the party forward and creating a team that is ready not just to win an election, but ready to credibly govern as well. By contrast, I think, to other parties, including Reform, who are certainly not ready to form any kind of coherent or effective government. And I'll be working with Nick Timothy in the criminal justice area to make sure we're in shape.

1:51And the argument put about by people like Alex Burkhart, who's a new deputy leader of the opposition, people like Neil O 'Brien, is that the argument against people like reform coming into office is that they aren't tested and will quickly come apart in the Whitehall system. If you look at successful governments in the past, like Margaret Thatcher's, she and many of her cabinet had been in government before in the Heath experiment in 1774, didn't go so well, but they used that experience to come back into office next time and obviously do the changes which helped Britain in the 1980s. Your argument is, Chris, that you've obviously been in the Home Office before.

2:20You were previously a parliamentary and a secretary of state and a minister of state as well. Tell me what you've learned from those experiences and how that will prepare you for going into the Home Office if you were to become secretary of state. Well, I think that is critical because clearly the last government did make some mistakes, some serious mistakes on issues like immigration. And identifying why those mistakes were made and making sure they never happen again, but we also correct those mistakes, is going to be critical. So there are all kinds of things that I certainly take from the previous government's experience.

2:50One of those is that the legal system is essentially a set of manacles around the risks of government. Ministers, even the prime minister, can't govern in a way they were elected to do because legal structures prevent them from doing that. And no matter how hard they try, no matter how well-intentioned they are, no matter whether they're Labour, Conservative, no matter the colour of the party, the legal system, in my view, essentially prevents proper border control. And that is why, for example, coming out of the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act, coming out of the ECAT Treaty, the Modern Slavery Treaty, all of these things are essential to get back control of our borders, abolishing the Immigration Tribunal, essentially abolishing judicial review for immigration matters.

3:34abolishing immigration legal aid. These are really kind of radical proposals that will be in our next manifesto. The next Conservative government will do those things. And only if those things get done can the radical changes needed then happen. For example, massively reducing inward migration, deporting all foreign criminals, deporting illegal immigrants within a week of arrival. None of those things are possible inside the current legal system. The last government tried, even the current Labour government is trying as well, but is essentially impossible. unless you make those fundamental changes.

4:05Now, other parties like reform, I don't think have performed that diagnosis, partly because they've never been in government. They haven't done the hard work that we have to understand why these problems happened, why they're still happening today. And only once you've understood that and developed carefully thought out incredible solutions, can you actually deliver change. And I think in the next election, one of the dividing lines between us and Labour will be we have the will, the desire to get these problems fixed, illegal and legal immigration, for example. And the dividing line with reform will be that we have done the hard work and have credible plans that will actually work in practice.

4:43Reform are good at headlines. They're good at slogans. I'll give them that. On occasion, they're good at social media as well. But what they don't have is a credible plan that will work in practice. And that'll be, I think, a really big dividing line between us and them. And I think both the media and the public will really see that as the next election comes around. And that's part of the reason for the changes to the team, because we want to be, as I said, a team that is ready for government. Can we think there could well be an election in the next 12 months? You talked there about the legal framework, and obviously one thing that Conservatives recognise is that it's partly about what you have written down and what you have codified and what things are on the statute books.

5:17It's all about culture as well. So I'm curious what the culture in the Home Office was like. There's been lots of reports talking about the activism that is sometimes encountered within the Home Office. What was your experience of the civil servants there and the culture in which they were operating? So very mixed. I certainly don't want to tar all civil servants with the same brush. There were parts of the Home Office where I felt as a minister, I worked very effectively with civil servants. So for example, when I was police and crime minister, I felt like we were all on the same team, working towards the same objectives, which were delivering record ever police numbers, which I did as police minister.

5:48Sadly, under Labour, those numbers are now falling. And the civil servants really worked very constructively to deliver that. We got crime coming down as well, including homicide. We all worked as a team. On the immigration side, there are bits of the system, like immigration enforcement, who really do want to kick out foreign criminals and illegal immigrants, which is what they should be doing and the public demand. And I found that bit of the Home Office was quite constructive. But other parts of the Home Office, for example, in areas like asylum, I mean, you don't join the Home Office and workers in asylum unless you want to be, I'm going to try and put this politely, very accommodating towards people trying to stay here.

6:26And there was quite a genuine culture crash. The last government's Rwanda scheme, which I wasn't personally involved in, but when I was police minister, I could obviously see my colleagues working on it, was definitely opposed philosophically by whole swathes of the official civil service. And I noticed also there was a willingness to listen to special interest groups. And this applies actually to the Home Office, but other departments as well. You often get a special interest group that will campaign very hard on a very narrow topic of interest to them, which may not be in the wider public interest.

6:57And I've noticed the sort of public sector and the civil service, I think, give excessive weighting towards those narrow interest groups and ends up accommodating views that might be in the interest of a very narrow section of society or a very narrow set of political views, like open borders activists or something, but does not reflect the wider national interest. I mean, you need both civil servants and ministers who will very firmly face down and reject narrow special interest lobbying and instead stand up for the wider national interest. So part of that way, obviously, is having ministers who have the strength of character and the resources to stand up to those interests.

7:33What else would you do to try and rebalance the balance of power in this and also enable the sort of ministers and particularly immigration sceptic ministers to stand up against those special interest groups? What have you thought about? Well, I think you probably need senior ministers in any department, but including the Home Office, to be able to appoint more senior leaders into the top of the civil service. I think you need a culture change where the civil service rewards success more rapidly. I mean, by success, I mean delivery. At the moment, the civil service sometimes views success as like not rocking the boat, producing beautifully written submissions, where they count that as success.

8:07I think success is being willing to try new and radical things. It certainly means delivering practical results. And civil servants who are willing to be bold and to do those things should get rapidly promoted and rewarded, including financially. And civil servants who don't do those things should be rapidly removed. I've noticed that almost no one ever gets fired from the civil service, even for like egregious underperformance. That has to change as well. In any healthy organisation, people who don't perform should be removed. At worst, people get moved sideways. They never get removed, very rarely get removed for performance reasons.

8:39That culture has to change as well. So your answer is talking about cabinet office, looking at structures and incentives in the civil service for the officials. And I presume working with people like David Wolfson, your colleague, Shadow Attorney General, on the law as well. What was your experience of the government legal department when you were in office? Well, generally, it was quite risk-averse. It would be very deferential towards the standard judicial interpretation of things like the ECHR. Partly, we need legal advisors who are willing to come up with creative solutions to legal obstacles that the government wants to overcome.

9:11but actually we need to get rid of the legal framework entirely when it comes to immigration especially. And it's got to be radical. I think fine-tuning is not going to work. The whole legal system around illegal immigration needs to be totally dismantled because essentially the courts have seized control of immigration from Parliament, the democratically elected Parliament. They've seized control from the democratically elected government and taken it to themselves. And our immigration policy in this country is to a large extent now determined by the courts because of the power the ECHR gives them.

9:41And that's why the whole thing needs to be completely swept away. ECHR, Human Rights Act, ECAT Treaty, Modern Slavery Legislation, Immigration Tribunal, Judicial Review of Immigration Matters, Immigration Legal Aid, the whole lot need to go because fine-tuning and tinkering doesn't work. We and other governments have tried that in the past and that's why our new policy is so radical. It's informed by painful experience. And it's a very ambitious agenda. What work can be done on the sequencing of this? because I think, as we've found from previous radical governments, you need to get everything in the right order if you are going to start this and not prevent endless judicial review or hold up or institutional inertia as well.

10:18Yeah, so I think one of the lessons, again, I take from observing previous governments is that the more radical you intend to be, the more careful you have to be about the implementation. And we've obviously seen examples of that going wrong in the past. So we will have, come the next election, an extremely detailed implementation plan. So I've talked about some of the principles, some of the policies at a high level, but we'll have the legislation worked out in advance, the operational implementation worked out in advance, and as you say, the sequencing, how those things work together. So unlike, for example, Keir Starmer's government, who arrived with a landslide on July the 5th, 2024, turned up with no plan at all, like Sue Gray, who was supposed to make a plan for government, turned up with literally a blank sheet of paper.

11:02And look what happened to Starmer's government as a result, and to her personally as well. well, we're not going to make that mistake, certainly in the Home Office area, but the other portfolios too. We will arrive in government with a proper implementation plan. And as I say, the more radical your intentions, the more important that detailed work is. And that is a real point of difference between us and reform. It's quite clear they don't have any sort of detailed plan whatsoever. And in terms of your own attitude to office as well, obviously you've been a minister twice in the Home Office. I mean, what will your attitude be if you are appointed Secretary of State coming in?

11:33Obviously, you want to make it clear from the start your intentions. But would you approach things differently from what you've done before? And would you, I presume as well, not just importing civil servants, but would you have more of a bigger team of special advisors as well? Well, when you're in the Home Office, there are, I think, about 50 ,000 civil servants in the Home Office. That includes things like Border Force, all of the asylum case working, UKVI, HMPPO, all of the policy officials and so on, about 50 ,000. And there's a ministerial team of about five, including typically a Lords Minister, so four from the Commons, one from the Lords, and typically four or five special advisors.

12:03So you've got 10, roughly 10 political appointees and about 50 ,000 civil servants. And I don't mean to make it sound like that's adversarial, but it's obviously quite imbalanced. So I think a more significant political team might well make sense. And as I said a minute ago, having a Secretary of State able to exert more influence in senior appointments, including appointments from outside the civil service, which can often be quite impactful in bringing new thinking forward. The main lesson I would take, I think, from a previous time in government is just you've got to be willing to be quite radical, to not accept the status quo, and to not allow yourself to be constrained by the prevailing legal architecture, the prevailing orthodoxy, the way things have been done in the past.

12:49Because certainly when it comes to immigration, that has not worked at all. Legal immigration numbers were far too high. That was a catastrophic mistake. That can never be allowed to happen again. And so a really radically different approach is needed, like very low annual caps on inward migration. So only a very small number of very high skilled people get allowed in. Now that is a departure from where the current government are, and it's a departure from the mistakes of the large numbers after COVID as well. But you need to be prepared to do that to deliver what the public want. And similarly, with illegal immigration, trying to fine tune at the edges, they're returning 1000 people to France or begging the French to be more active on their on their beaches as Shabana Mahmood is doing.

13:29It just doesn't work. It's tinkering at the edges. It's not fixing the underlying problem. The only solution that will work is a radical one, for example, deporting every illegal immigrant within a week of arrival, either back to their country of origin or to a safe third country like Rwanda. If you do that pretty quickly, the crossings will stop. It works in Australia. It'll work here as well. If you tinker around the edges like Shabana Mahmood's doing, you may occasionally get slight improvements in numbers, often linked to the weather. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but you won't fix the problem fundamentally.

13:57And that is one of the big lessons I drew, observing both the previous government, but also observing this current Labour government as well. I mean, there's a huge amount of institutional experience on the Conservative side, and you've also got very helpful reports, just policy exchange did a big report talking about the Home Office, interviewing, I think, every ex-living Home Secretary. What talks and discussions have you done, Chris? You've obviously been talking to kind of stakeholders in the day-to-day, but who have you been talking to in terms of reflecting on updating your thinking and what you could have done differently in terms of officials or former secretaries of state.

14:31Hey, I'm running out to drop off a stack of letters and packages. Need anything shipped while I'm gone? Save the gas. Stamps.com lets you print postage and schedule pickups right from your desk. Sync your contacts into the address book, get detailed accounting insights, and get notified the moment your certified mail is delivered. All from my desk? All from your desk. Join the 4 million businesses using Stamps.com right now with code podcast and get your free welcome gift. Stamps.com code podcast. Taxes and fees apply. Well, I've talked a lot to colleagues who served as ministers in the department over the years.

15:09I talk a lot to various think tanks as well, including the one that you mentioned, all of whom have very good ideas. And the theme that comes back again and again, I think, is you need to be willing to be radical. You need to have a proper plan to implement your radical ideas. And I think you need to make sure ministers are properly empowered to take decisions. And I've mentioned the way that the legal system creates constraints. Endless judicial review creates constraints across the whole of government, not just the Home Office. That's a problem. You know, arm's length bodies taking power, which would ordinarily sit with ministers, I think is a huge problem as well.

15:44endlessly consulting. There are all these different things which effectively take power out of ministers' hands and put it elsewhere, whether it's the courts or the doctrine of operational independence with the police, for example, should absolutely apply to individual decisions, like should James or Chris get arrested. That's obviously for police to decide alone. But questions of policy, like what is the policy towards policing protests, for example? What is the policy towards things like the so-called non-crime hate incidents, where the police are arresting people for mean tweets. That kind of policy, I think, should be a matter properly for ministers rather than for people at the College of Policing.

16:20We need to get that power back into the hands of democratically elected representatives, whether it's police and crime commissioners or Home Office ministers. Because one of the reasons we have a problem in this country, I think, with the public being very disillusioned with politics and consequently being willing to turn to extremes, is that the public elect a government who say they're going to do something and they don't end up delivering it. And that makes people understandably very angry. And one of the reasons things that politicians promise don't get delivered is that in some cases they can't deliver them for the reasons I just mentioned a second ago.

16:52So all of that needs to change. So when a politician of any party stands up and makes a promise, they know they're actually empowered to deliver it in the way that currently very often they're not. So you think the doctrine of operational independence of the police has just gone too far and have been allowed to expand. It's quite a broad definition, which is stopping ministers actually cracking down on these issues. Yeah, it's gone way too far. So operational independence should mean that the way the police conduct their day-to-day duties, decisions about who they arrest or whether they charge a particular crime or how they deploy particular police officers, those are day-to-day on-the-ground decisions that should be made by chief constables and by their subordinates.

17:30Nobody for a minute disputes that. But when it comes to matters of policy. Like, should they be going around arresting people for mean tweets online? How should they approach policing protests? Indeed, should protests be allowed to happen repeatedly, you know, in central London week in, week out at all? Those questions of policy, I think, should sit with primarily democratically elected representatives, not somewhere else. Things like investigating all crimes, for instance, which, you know, that doesn't always happen. There are leads, like geolocation data from a mobile phone, for example, or stolen goods advertised online, or a picture of a suspect that could be run through the facial recognition database.

18:10Those things, in my view, should be mandatory. At the moment, the Home Secretary doesn't really have the power to insist that policing always follows up leads of a crime where it exists, and that, to me, is wrong. And obviously, the downside of having more power is accountability, and maybe some of your predecessors were secretly at points a little bit glad they didn't have anything to sort of curb this police operationality because they didn't want to be held accountable for making some of these decisions. But you're saying you welcome that. I do. Well, I think, first of all, the truth is the Home Secretary is always ultimately accountable for what happens in crime and policing and to try and hide behind those sort of rules.

18:45It never really works anyway. The public don't buy that. And actually, I would much rather have an elected senior elected politician fully accountable, but also fully empowered. I would certainly welcome that. And if someone does a good job, they'll get obviously rewarded electorate, they'll get re-elected or re-appointed. If someone does a bad job, then they'll get either fired or kicked out of the next election. That is how democracy should work. And I would absolutely welcome that. Just to go back to migration, you talk about having the right ministers in place, the right systems, the right incentives.

19:14That works very well within the Home Office. The balance of power, though, always comes back to we have 23 members of Cabinet. 22 of those normally have an incentive to increase migration. And when you have a sort of migration sceptic at the Home Office, what do you do in terms of rebalancing the system whereby the Home Office can actually stand up to all these demands, given how we know that so many of the Treasury calculations, the OBR calculations, very much weight migration much more favourably in the scorecard. Well, that has been a huge problem in the past. The OBR scoring used to treat net migration as a universal economic positive and made no distinction between, I don't know, a brain surgeon coming here from California versus somebody coming from a third world country that could barely speak English.

19:56No distinction was made between that, which is clearly ridiculous. I mean, obviously, one is going to make a massive fiscal contribution. The other is going to be a massive fiscal drag. And that has begun to change. More needs to be done to expose the true fiscal impact of different kinds of migration. Some other countries like Denmark do this very well. They're very clear about what different type of immigration from which source countries make which contribution and which are a huge cost. They look at criminality as well. So I think the data, honest transparency about the data will help that debate.

20:26At the moment, the government, the Labour government, have absurdly gone to court to try and overturn a decision by the Information Commissioner to release data on migrant crime. I mean, that is shocking. I'm trying to get data currently out of the DWP about benefit claims by different categories of migrant. And they're so far refusing to provide that data to me under an FOI request. So we need total transparency. I think secondly, I've spoken to lots of my senior Shadow Cabinet colleagues about this question, including the new Shadow Chancellor, Andrew Griffiths, but actually his predecessor, Mel Stride, had the same view.

21:01And they understand, firstly, that immigration is an existential issue for the country. We can't allow mass third world immigration. It has to end. It has to stop. And they accept that. They also understand that the economic impact of mass low school migration is frankly negative. It's negative economically. It's negative socially. it's negative in terms of crime. So my colleagues completely accept that. But I think finally, we've got a leader, Kemi Badenok, who understands it perfectly as well. And she is completely supportive of a much tougher approach on both legal and illegal migration. And so we've got a team, a complete team from Kemi down, who are all on the same page on this issue.

21:40We also need to make sure that we don't take forecasts on trust. So you remember about five, six years ago, So it was forecast by, I think, DHSC that only 6 ,000 people would come in on the health and social care visa. And in fact, it ended up being something like three quarters of a million. So that can never happen again. And the way you fix that is by having a cap. So what the Home Office should have said then is, well, OK, if you're forecasting 6 ,000, we'll put a cap in at 6 ,000. That's it, no more. Instead of having it uncapped and suddenly it turns out to be 700 and something thousand.

22:09The government, the current government, are about to make the same mistake. They're about to set up an uncapped so-called safe and legal route to allow purported asylum seekers from third world countries to come directly into the UK without, as far as I can see, there's no cap on that. That is another potentially catastrophic mistake. So as Home Secretary, I would certainly never allow that kind of thing to happen again. Yeah. The last interview I did with one of your Shelley cabinet colleagues was with Neil O 'Brien. He said that the immigration that occurred between 2020 and 2024 was the single biggest mistake of the last government.

22:39I just wanted, you've had lots of time to think about this question. You were a minister at different points or the different briefs. I just wanted, I mean, what was the reasons for that? Was it a case of the social care visa was sort of maybe Boris Johnson by commission and then the civil servants by omission not noticing what was going on? Why did the so-called Boris wave happen? So first of all, I completely agree with Neil's analysis. It was the biggest mistake of the last government and it was a catastrophic mistake. And we should be completely honest about acknowledging that. there is a chance to fix it by extending the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain to 10 years and to make sure that people only get ILR if they meet a certain very strict criteria.

23:15And if they don't, they should go home and they should be made to go home if necessary. Lots of those people that arrived are not making a contribution, an economic contribution. And when their visa expires, they should be required to leave. Simple as that. And that's why we're

23:34Announcement she made last year about extending ILR to 10 years. And that was our idea originally. We tabled it as an amendment a year and a half ago. She then adopted the policy. Good. But if she waters it down because she's scared of her left-wing backbenchers, we will expose that. We'll vote against it. But if she sticks to what she said and extends the period and makes the qualifying criteria tougher, and if people don't meet it, they've got to leave the country, we'll obviously support that. Anyone not making a contribution who arrived in that period has to leave. It is that simple. How did it arise, was your question?

24:06I think it was a combination of a couple of things, probably three things. One, excessive weight was given to economic departments and DHSC, who are campaigning for essentially more immigration for misguided reasons of economic growth. That was a mistake. Secondly, the forecasts were all wrong, and it turns out the numbers forecast ended up being massively higher. That's why you need to have a cap. So you're never again exposed to forecasts being inaccurate. And I think finally, the real-time data wasn't there so that when it turned out, when it became clear these numbers were becoming too high, very quick corrective action should have been taken, but it wasn't taken quickly enough.

24:45So those are the three things that should happen differently in the future. But it's not enough, as I say, to stop it happening again. We've got to reverse that catastrophe that happened previously. And there is an opportunity to do that by changing the ILR rules for that cohort, because most of them have not yet got ILR, introducing conditions, and those who aren't contributing must leave. And I'll be pushing that case in Parliament very hard in the coming weeks. So you talk about opposition, you talk about what's happening with the government. it's often said that the way to demonstrate the opposition to ready for government is to show, don't tell.

25:19And I suppose you've talked a lot about some different things. What else are you planning to do over maybe the next few months? We'll see if there's an election or not. But in terms of demonstrating that the party really has changed on this issue, what are you going to be going out there showcasing, talking about? Well, we've already published a very detailed borders plan to end illegal immigration, which explains in detail how we'd go about doing that. We're the only party to have a detailed plan on illegal immigration. We published a similarly detailed plan, Take Back Our Streets, on police and crime a few months ago.

25:4810 ,000 extra police officers, hotspot patrols of high crime areas, tripling stop and search, routine use of live facial recognition and so on to get a grip of crime and disorder, particularly on our high streets. We're going to be publishing similar plans in other areas in the future, but also developing and publishing those detailed implementation plans that we talked about earlier. So by the time we come to an election, even if it's as soon as, you know, six months time, the public will see we are ready for government. And the team Kemi unveiled just a couple of days ago is a team ready for government, a team ready to walk in to departments of state like the Home Office and start governing straight away, start delivering what we promise.

26:29We're certainly the only party on the opposition side of the House that is anything like prepared for that. And you're talking about the ILR changes. There seems to be a huge amount of people who come to the country claiming citizenship in recent years. Do you think, therefore, we need to have a debate also about citizenship, nationality, and potentially tightening what it means to be British, given how many people are now applying for that status and therefore treated like the same as people who've been here 50 years or may have been 25 years and demonstrated a different style or length of contribution?

26:56Well, I think the criteria to get citizenship and indefinite leave to remain should be a lot, lot tougher. It should be longer in duration. So the moment it's five years to get indefinite leave and a further one year for citizenship, that is too short. It should be 10 years before getting ILR for everybody, no exceptions, and a further five years before getting citizenship, making 15 years in total. I think secondly, there should be very tough criteria. You should be earning over a certain amount of money. That amount should be quite high, like£40 ,000, for example, to make clear that only those making a genuine economic contribution can stay here on a permanent basis.

27:31Anyone who claims benefits in that time or becomes dependent on the state should not get ILR or citizenship. They should instead be required to leave. Those people who come here saying they're going to work at a certain salary but who don't should also be required to leave. Any foreign citizen who commits a criminal offence should be deported. Those are the kind of principles that will underpin our approach to immigration. The system at the moment is far, far too soft, far too accommodating. And unless urgent changes are made, it's going to have a very serious impact on the integrity of our society to say nothing of the economic impacts.

28:08And I presume that we're going to be seeing more of that in the Culture and Integration Commission that you're working on as one of the chief spokesmen on that? Yes, that's right. We're looking at a number of issues. Islamist extremism is one of those. Islamist extremism is responsible for 94 % of terrorist murders in the last quarter of a century, yet it only represents 8 % of the Prevent caseload. A lot more needs to be done to fight Islamist extremism. But more widely, we need to have a single sense of national identity and national culture, which people feel a primary allegiance to. People should feel British first and foremost.

28:44And of course, they'll have other identities as well, perhaps religious or based on cultural heritage as well. And that's, of course, fine. We live in a free society. But people do need to feel first and foremost British. and we do need people to sign up to fundamental British values, a belief in democracy, a belief in law and order and the laws passed by Parliament, respect for women's rights, freedom of speech as well. All of these British values we need people to be signed up to and we need people to feel British first and foremost and that is not happening at the moment. There are bits of society that do feel completely separate and that ultimately makes a country ungovernable and actually it fractures society, It undermines and ultimately destroys the foundations upon which a nation state is built, because you can't have a nation state if people think of themselves in a silo, in a sort of in a separate identity that is different to the nation they happen to be living in.

29:40And when that goes to an extreme, and I accept this is an extreme example, but if you have a country like Lebanon, you see where that leads. I mean, Lebanon was a very prosperous united country in the past. It certainly is not now. that is the path, that is the destination you end up at if you allow a fractured society to develop. And I'm concerned that mass immigration, often from third world countries, without integration, without an acceptance of British identity and values, is ultimately leading in that direction. We can't let that happen. No man is an island. And I suppose, you know, do you think that therefore there is a need for more muscular interventionist conservatism than maybe there was 10, 15 years or so ago?

30:16And partly that's because of the level of migration we've seen over the last couple of years. When you say muscular interventionist, what do you mean? Well, I think that we talked about British values under, say, David Cameron, but there was maybe a sense of let people get on with it. But now maybe there may be more of a need for the state to play more of an active role in policing some of these communities, for instance. Yeah, I think that's right. It means being a lot tougher on immigration. So inward immigration needs to dramatically come down. We cannot have mass third world immigration anymore.

30:39It just has to stop. People that have come here recently and who are not citizens, who are not making an economic contribution, should go, as I've said already. people who express extremist views, including racial and religious hatred, including anti-Semitism, who are not citizens, have to go as well. We have to have zero tolerance when it comes to borders and who gets to come here in the first place and who gets to stay here. We need to be a lot tougher on that. We also need to be a lot tougher about basic things like the requirement to speak English. The government and public bodies currently, including local authorities and the NHS, spend I think hundreds of millions of pounds a year on translation services.

31:15People come here, they should speak English. It's as simple as that. You should learn English. There are a million people in this country at the 2021 census, it's probably much more now, who don't speak English either at all or properly. There are some parts of the UK, including an East London borough, where I think one of these boroughs, 73 % of children in primary schools speak English as an additional language. Having a common language, which we expect people to speak, and it's their responsibility to learn it, strikes me as a pretty basic element of our approach. Just two final questions, if I may, Chris, because we're out of time.

31:47First of all, what's it like going up against Shabana Mahmood in the House of Commons? How do you find your relationship with her? Well, I quite enjoy it. I mean, she's got a sense of humour, which is good. I hope I do have two. She's a lot less kind of dour than Yvette Cooper, who I saw off previously. But ultimately, Shabana Mahmood, like Yvette Cooper, is a prisoner of her own left-wing backbenchers. And this ILR debate is a good example of that. She's getting pushed around by left-wing Labour backbenchers who believe in open borders. And although she occasionally, Sharon Mahmoud occasionally says the right thing, she is ultimately unable to deliver it because her own backbenchers won't let her.

32:22And when it comes to things like, you know, the illegal immigrants crossing the small channel, crossing the English Channel, sorry, on small boats, she is not willing or able to take the radical steps needed to fix it, namely deporting all of them as soon as they arrive. She is tinkering at the edges. So, look, I like her personally and I quite like her personal style. But she ultimately, when everything is said and done and when history looks back on her time as Home Secretary, she won't have accomplished what needs to be done because she's a prisoner of the back benches and she's not willing to take the radical steps needed.

32:52And who is your favourite former Home Secretary and why? My favourite former Home Secretary? I would say, that's a very good question. Obviously, Winston Churchill was Home Secretary, so he would, of course, have to probably come top of the list. And he had a bullet through his top hat, of course. There we are. Siege of Sydney Street as well. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah. I mean, the French shot in our direction 17 times, but none of the bullets luckily actually hit my coat or my person. I mean, Robert Peel, who founded the Metropolitan Police, obviously a sort of good example. In modern times, I suppose I would point to Michael Howard, who took a very tough approach on crime and immigration.

33:32and after decades of crime rising, during his time as Home Secretary, saw crime starting to fall for the first time in a long time. So I think I'd probably pick Michael Howard from the modern pantheon of Home Secretaries. Maybe some great Home Secretaries for a great Office of State. Thank you very much, Chris, and thank you for joining us on Coffeehouse. Tune in at the same time next week.

34:31We'll see you next time. your biggest sales days and capture every bit of potential revenue. Go to shipstation.com and use code audio and get 30 days free.