The year in politics: Illegal Migration and Boris Johnson found to mislead parliament

Dr Steve McCabe, Associate Professor at Birmingham City University provides analysis of the year’s nig political stories.

Transcript

00:00 We start our look back at the year in politics on the 7th of March when then Home Secretary

00:08 Soheila Brademan introduced the illegal migration bill to the House of Commons. The legislation

00:15 proposed to detain and remove those from the UK who arrive by illegal means and it's been

00:21 a contentious issue throughout the parliamentary year.

00:25 The British people are famously a fair and patient people. But their sense of fair play

00:33 has been tested beyond its limits and they've seen the country taken for a ride.

00:39 Before Brexit, this is the departure of the UK from the EU, legal migration, I stress

00:46 that legal migration was about a quarter of a million, it's now three times that. So there's

00:50 an issue there and I mention Brexit most particularly because Brexit was about the impact of people

00:57 and supposedly stealing jobs and so on and so forth. So that's one aspect. We've also

01:02 got the boats which of course Rishi Sonak has stated his reputation of dealing with

01:08 and you mentioned Soheila Brademan, she was a big fan of Rwanda and of course we still

01:12 see that going through, we had a vote on it earlier on this week. So quite clearly Rwanda

01:16 is going to feature in the forthcoming election. Again, what people don't tend to realise is

01:21 that we're talking about 100 people out of many tens of thousands to deal with so-called

01:26 illegal migration or refugees, which of course when I last look is costing something like

01:31 £4 billion a year. So it's a major, major issue.

01:35 It was a story that would drag on and cause problems for the government throughout the

01:39 year. In November, the UK Supreme Court ruled the plan wasn't lawful because of the risk

01:44 that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda could be returned to their home countries where they

01:50 could face harm. In response, the government signed a new treaty with Rwanda to strengthen

01:55 its asylum process and proposed new UK laws declaring that Rwanda is safe.

02:03 Mr Johnson's dishonesty, if left unchecked, would have contaminated the whole of government,

02:10 allowing misleading to become commonplace and thus erode the standards which are essential

02:15 for the health of our democracy. Far from undermining ministers, this report does precisely

02:22 the opposite. In June, a report by MPs concluded that former

02:28 Prime Minister Boris Johnson did indeed mislead Parliament.

02:33 Well what we'll remember is that Boris Johnson had been forced to resign the year before,

02:38 mainly because of course he had ministers who refused to serve under him so effectively.

02:44 There was no government for a very short period of time. So of course the fact that we actually

02:49 got to what would lead to the material evidence, and it was heard by those within Parliament,

02:56 his peers as it were, it came as no surprise that Boris Johnson is somebody who plays fast

03:01 and loose with the truth. Well, now there is a surprise.

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