Defence Secretary John Healey has been grilled by GB News host Dawn Neesom as Britain's migrant crisis continues to surge.Reform UK leader Nigel Farage joined the People's Channel as he witnessed a migrant boat being escorted to British waters by French officials.FULL STORY HERE.
00:00John, this is all very, very laudable, but while we've been on it this morning, we've seen yet another boat coming across with our 70 young men coming across from France.
00:08I mean, isn't the bottom line here with Macron over? This is a major embarrassment for the government.
00:12And you're talking about this defence deal. You can't even defend our own borders.
00:18Well, you're right. The small boats are part of the discussion and are likely to be part of the announcement.
00:22And it's actually an opportunity because this is a first state visit from any European ally since Brexit.
00:30And it's part of what we said we would do, which is to reset Britain's relations with key European allies.
00:35For the first time, France now recognises that the channel crossings, the small boats are a shared challenge.
00:43They're working with us together for the first time, which is why you're already seeing things happening which weren't happening before.
00:49More beach patrols, more drones. I think it's another boat with 70 young men in it coming over.
00:54While this meeting is going on. There's no one solution to this.
00:58But we've also seen for the first time last week, and we need to see more, French police in shallow waters stopping the boats in France.
01:05One boat. That was one boat, John. That was one boat with a knife.
01:10Correct. But it represents the recognition and agreement for the first time from the French
01:17that they are changing the rules for what their police can do to allow that sort of action.
01:22And we're discussing now the implementation of that alongside trying to get the new borders bill through Parliament
01:28to give our agencies the sort of counterterrorism powers they need to try and deal with the smuggling gangs
01:35and also building up the new border security command that we've established since the last election
01:40to try and deal with the fact that we've had small boat crossings out of control since 2018.
01:48And now for the first time, we've been able, because of this, in part, help and work with the French.
01:54We stopped 12,000 of those crossings in this year alone.
