Kelvin MacKenzie has claimed that Labour’s proposed laws to tackle illegal migration and people smuggling gangs will “not be enough” to address the crisis.
Speaking to GB News, the former editor of The Sun expressed support for efforts to stop illegal crossings, but voiced deep scepticism about their effectiveness.
“Anything that is helpful towards stopping this number of people coming to our country, I’m 100 per cent in favour of. Do I think any of this is going to work with the cunning criminality of people literally making around £200,000 per boat? No I don’t,” he said.
MacKenzie pointed to recent Channel crossing figures to support his scepticism. “Look, if anybody gets caught, arrested and does five, ten, 20 years, great. I should point out that in January there was a record January number of boat people coming over the channel,” he told GB News.
Kelvin MacKenzie hit out at Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to tackle people smuggling gangs
GB News
In an exclusive interview with GB News’s Christopher Hope, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper unveiled the Government’s latest plans to tackle migration, claiming that people traffickers have had it their way “for far too long”.
Cooper stated: “The plan for change the Prime Minister set out before Christmas is clear about that it needs to reduce illegal migration. And that means tackling and preventing these dangerous boat crossings.
“So, this new law [Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill] will bring in counter-terror style powers to go after the criminal gangs, because they are undermining our border security. They’re putting lives at risk. And frankly, they have been getting away with it for far too long.”
Reacting to the pledges made by Cooper, MacKenzie suggested Labour’s approach might be counterproductive, claiming: “Thank you Labour, for talking smashing the gangs, but actually sounds as though you’re encouraging the gangs.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper sat down with GB News’s Christopher Hope for an exclusive interview
GB News
The former editor also commented on the Home Secretary’s apparent fatigue: “She looks absolutely exhausted by it already. I imagine she wants to be on the GMB sofa with her husband.”
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MacKenzie drew parallels between migration laws and drug enforcement to illustrate his concerns. “I’m not against us trying to arrest people and put some energy and some money into doing that. But we in our country, we have a massive problem on top of immigration – we have drugs,” he told GB News.
He argued that existing laws have failed to curb drug-related issues, suggesting a similar fate for migration measures. “And we have all kinds of laws, all kinds of this, all kinds of that, and the drug problem in our country is growing. And so it seems to me that just passing laws is not going to be enough, we are going to have to do something dramatic.”
However, commentator Benjamin Butterworth defended Labour’s approach on GB News.
“The suggestion about smashing the gangs shouldn’t be derided, because if it were only as simple as shooting the boats, as some people have suggested, if we just had to pop the boats and then take them away, it’s obviously not that easy,” he said.
MacKenzie told GB News that passing new laws are ‘not enough’ to stop the gangs
GB News
Butterworth emphasised that the issue involves sophisticated criminal networks.
“This is organised crime, it is extremely profitable,” he noted, adding that tackling smuggling gangs was “a left wing thing.”
Butterworth went on to highlight concerns about exploitation of migrants. He explained that many migrants face severe consequences due to smuggling debts. “It costs a lot of money, but some of them don’t have that money – they then exist in slave labour in this country to pay back that money and far more,” he said.
The commentator expressed strong support for the Home Secretary’s strategy. “There is nothing right wing about saying stop the boats. It’s absolutely right what Yvette Cooper is doing,” he concluded.
