Downing Street backs Tory deputy chair over ‘back to France’ comments | Immigration and asylum

Downing Street has backed the Conservative deputy chair, Lee Anderson, after he said people seeking asylum should “fuck off back to France” if they did not like being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge.

Anderson was criticised by opposition MPs and an anti-racism campaign group on Tuesday after telling the Daily Express that “people have had enough” of the transfer of asylum seekers to the barge being delayed by safety concerns and legal challenges.

“If they don’t like barges then they should fuck off back to France,” he said. “These people come across the Channel in small boats … if they don’t like the conditions they are housed in here then they should go back to France, or better, not come at all in the first place.”

Anderson received the backing of Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, who said that while his colleague’s language was “salty” his “indignation is well placed”, and the comments were “not bigotry at all”. Later on Tuesday, No 10 said the justice secretary was speaking for the government in backing Anderson.

Opposition MPs criticised Anderson’s language. The former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, now an independent MP, described it as “A new low even for the Tories”. Anderson hit back, saying: “I told illegal migrants to go back to France not genuine asylum seekers.”

Alistair Carmichael, the home affairs spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, who are targeting Chalk’s marginal seat in Cheltenham, said: “Lifelong Conservative voters expect decent and respectful political debate – something completely lacking among Tory MPs. People in Cheltenham would have been spitting out their cornflakes listening to Alex Chalk.”

Hope Not Hate, the anti-racism campaign group, said the language used by Anderson was unacceptable and that the Conservatives were adopting divisive tactics.

“Lee Anderson is deputy chairman of the Conservative party, right at the heart of his party,” the group said. “They’ve defended his words and it’s morally reprehensible.

“Words have consequences. Hope Not Hate has recorded a huge increase in far-right anti-migrant activity. When will the government recognise their language matters? The Conservative party is rapidly adopting dangerous and divisive tactics. This has to be challenged.”

Those due to be housed on the Bibby Stockholm are people who have travelled to the UK to seek asylum, with the move announced by the government to deter people from crossing the channel in small boats. About 15 people have gone on board so far, with many transfers having been held up because of legal challenges.

However, Care4Calais, a charity supporting many of those who face being transferred to the barge, said 19 out of 20 asylum seekers who had received letters telling them they were moving to the Bibby Stockholm had arrived in the UK by plane rather than small boat.

It is understood that those on the barge and those who had received letters informing them they were being moved but who had not travelled there after challenges by their lawyers had arrived in the country before 7 March. They are therefore having their asylum claims processed in the UK whereas the government plans to send more recent arrivals to Rwanda, if the policy is ultimately found to be lawful by the courts, to have their claims processed there. They have come from countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Syria where there is a high grant rate for asylum claims.

A spokesperson for Care4Calais said: “Around 95% of the asylum seekers we are dealing with who received Bibby Stockholm letters arrived here by plane, with only one person who arrived here on a small boat, although the government has said that use of accommodation like barges will help deter people from crossing the Channel in small boats.” About half of asylum seekers do not arrive in the UK in small boats, according to the Home Office.

Defending the policy and Anderson’s comments about sending asylum seekers back, Chalk told LBC radio on Tuesday morning that France was a safe country and a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

“People should claim asylum in the first country – it’s not like there should be an open shopping list of where you want to go,” Chalk said. “[Andersen] expresses himself in his characteristically robust terms, but there is a lot of sense, in my respectful view, in what Lee says.”

Chalk also defended the government’s crackdown on immigration lawyers who engage in malpractice after the government said they could face life in jail under the terms of the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

Ministers have been accused of “lawyer-bashing” and seeking to distract from their own failure to clear the backlog of asylum claims by pushing a crackdown on lawyers who act improperly.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Portland, launched a legal challenge against the home secretary, Suella Braverman, arguing that she had failed to obtain planning permission to use the barge in the Dorset port.

Carralyn Parkes, who is bringing the challenge as a resident, not in her capacity as mayor or as a local councillor, said she believed Portland Harbour was within the jurisdiction of the local planning authority.

A spokesperson for Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, who are representing Parkes, said: “The home secretary is circumventing planning permission procedures to use the Bibby Stockholm barge to accommodate vulnerable asylum seekers in conditions which are clearly inadequate.”

Parkes, who is crowdfunding for her legal challenge, said: “It’s wrong that the Home Office does what it likes without complying with the same rules. If they’d applied for planning permission, they would have had to consult with local people, but we never got the right to have our say.”

There were dozens of demonstrators by the port where the Bibby Stockholm was moored on Monday. Most were there to welcome asylum seekers being placed on the barge, though a small number arrived to express anti-refugee sentiments.