Yvette Cooper has denounced calls by Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch for tougher action on migrants, accusing them of “standing on the shoreline and shouting at the sea”.
The home secretary denied her attempts to curb small boat crossings by migrants had failed and said the problem would only be solved by “hard graft not grand pledges”.
Ms Cooper said: “You can just stand on the shoreline shouting at the sea – and that is what the opposition parties have been doing.
“Or you can get on with the hard graft, roll up our sleeves and do it step by step.”
Ms Cooper said the government was determined to maintain its current approach “whether that be by ending asylum hotels, preventing these dangerous boat crossings or putting a fair system in place that supports genuine refugees as this country has always done.”
There was “no alternative”, she insisted, claiming that the previous government made “grand promises” but failed to deliver on them.
In recent weeks both Reform and the Conservatives have called for more drastic measures to combat the rise in asylum seekers arriving in small boats this summer via the English Channel.
Last week, Mr Farage pledged to detain and deport up to 600,000 people with no right to be in the UK during the first term of a Reform government, including anyone who arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel in a small boat.
The party has also pledged to scale up detention capacity for asylum seekers to 24,000 and bring forward legislation to make everyone who arrives illegally ineligible for asylum.
The plans would require the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights.
But Ms Cooper dismissed calls by leading Labour figures including former home secretaries Jack Straw and David Blunkett to suspend Britain’s membership of the ECHR to make it easier to deport asylum seekers.
“We do not need to suspend [the ECHR] to take action on the way in which the legislation is interpreted in our courts”, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“We inherited a system in chaos. There is no silver bullet but there are lots of things that can make a difference. The difference in the approach I am taking compared to the previous government is that they made grand sweeping claims and then failed to deliver on them.”
The home secretary also rejected criticism of her decision this week to restrict the right of those granted asylum to be reunited with their families, claiming it resulted from such applications being made much sooner than previously.
The changes mean that refugees will be covered by the same family migration rules and conditions as everyone else while a new, tougher framework for family reunions is drawn up.
Refugees will now have to apply through the standard family scheme, which applies to British citizens. This requires them to demonstrate a minimum joint income of £29,000 per year before their foreign partner can join them in the UK.
Last month, figures showed that the number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel topped 25,000 this year – the earliest point in a calendar year at which the 25,000 mark has been passed since data on Channel crossings was first reported in 2018.
Over summer, the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, became the focal point of several demonstrations and counter-protests in recent weeks after an asylum seeker housed there was charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl last month. He has denied the charges.
In an attempt to bring down the number of people crossing the Channel, the government has agreed a returns deal with France, which ministers say will begin later this month, as well as unveiling a number of changes to the asylum system.
But Ms Cooper declined to guarantee that migrants will definitely be sent back across the Channel in September as part of the returns agreement.
The first returns are “expected” this month, the home secretary said, but speaking to Sky News she was cautious not to promise deportations will go ahead during September.
“We expect the first returns to take place this month. But I’ve always said from the very beginning on this, it’s a pilot scheme and it needs to build up over time”, she said.
