Conservative Party deputy chair Lee Anderson has refused to apologise for his claim that asylum-seekers who do not want to live on the government’s Bibby Stockholm barge “should f*** off back to France”.
The Ashfield MP was accused of “stoking division and hate” with his comments to the Daily Express, made after the first 15 migrants boarded the barge in Dorset – described by the local Tory MP as a “quasi-prison” – and legal challenges saw 20 others granted a last-minute reprieve.
Downing Street defended his remark, however, pointing to comments by justice secretary Alex Chalk who suggested on Tuesday morning that Mr Anderson’s anger was well placed” and echoed “the righteous indignation of the British people”.
But as he too doubled down on his four-letter remark, Mr Anderson struck a blow to No 10 as he said there was “no doubt about it” that Rishi Sunak’s government “have failed” in effectively “stopping the boats” – one of the PM’s five key pledges.
Asked by fellow GB News host Nigel Farage whether he felt his remark was “perhaps bad taste”, Mr Anderson said: “No … it’s borne out of frustration. It’s borne out of me being absolutely furious.
“It’s not just me being furious, it’s my constituents and millions of people up and down the country, and I guess including yourself.”
“The nerve of it, Nigel,” he added. “I’ve been to Calais, I’ve seen these migrants living in one-man tents, living in absolute squalor. Then they get here, we do our best, we bend over backwards to put them in decent accommodation, and all of a sudden they get a choice.”
Describing “grafters” in the oil industry who live on barges who “never complain once”, he continued. “It makes me sick to the pit of my stomach when these lefty lawyers, the charities, the human rights campaigners, say it’s not good enough.
People look on at the Bibby Stockholm barge docked in Portland Port
“Like I say: if it’s not good enough, then they should go back to France, in stronger words.”
In a further hardening of rhetoric, Mr Anderson claimed to feel “sick” every time a boat carrying ayslum-seekers crosses the channel and said it made him “furious” when asylum-seekers are housed in hotels and on barges.
Freedom from Torture, a refugee charity, said the “dehumanising and inflammatory” language puts people seeking sanctuary in the UK at “real risk”.
Natasha Tsangarides, associate director of advocacy for the organisation, said: “Time and time again, we’re seeing Government ministers amping up the cruelty of their anti-refugee rhetoric to distract from their own catastrophic mismanagement of both the asylum system and of this country.
“The dehumanising and inflammatory language used by certain politicians is putting people seeking sanctuary in this country at real risk, including the survivors that Freedom from Torture treat every day.”
Home Office figures released on Monday showed that the number of asylum seekers being housed in temporary hotel accommodation passed 50,000 in June this year – up by around 10,000 from December.
Campaigners, experts and Conservative MPs have repeatedly urged the goverment to open more safe and legal routes after criminalising small boat crossings – with such routes only open to certain people in a handful of locations, including Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.
