Yesterday, Ed Davey told Sky News the Lib Dems know how to “stop the boats”
Sky News declared yesterday that Ed Davey’s Lib Dems have ‘toughen[ed] up’ their rhetoric and stance on immigration.
Speaking with the Lib Dem spokesperson for Home Affairs, Lisa Smart MP, who announced the party’s policy to create more Nightingale centres to process the asylum backlog, called the plan “humane and sensible”.
She told Left Foot Forward: “We’ve come up with a sensible and humane plan, if some people want to see that as being tough, that’s fine.”
“Everybody wants a fair and effective asylum and immigration system, and that’s our plan to do that,” she added.
‘What is meant by Nightingale Centres?’
In a Q&A session on Immigration this afternoon, one concerned Lib Dem member asked Smart, and fellow panellist Lib Dem peer, Mike German: “What exactly is meant by Nightingale Centres?
“Are we not in danger of having centres where people might be detained or camps where people might be concentrated?”.
Smart’s response was that it is “inhumane for people to be stuck in asylum centres for months and years”.
She said she believes “it’s the humane, decent, humanitarian thing to do to tackle that backlog.”
Asked if there could still be delays leading to asylum seekers getting “stuck” in Nightingale Centres, Smart told Left Foot Forward it is her “firm belief” that wouldn’t happen if “you double the number of staff [case workers] and you get the answers right the first time”.
She pointed out that half of all applications that get rejected initially succeed on appeal, which she said creates unnecessary delay.
Lib Dems would not use ID to tackle immigration
On Labour’s plan to introduce digital ID cards, which they say will help tackle “illegal immigration”, Smart said the Lib Dems “would not countenance mandatory ID”.
She explained that while the party is still exploring the idea of digital ID and consulting members on it at conference, it would not be used as a tool to tackle “illegal” migration.
“That would certainly not be what we would be doing,” she added.
During the Q&A, Smart emphasised how much the UK has benefitted from immigration, who she says “power” the NHS, and rejected the use of terms like “illegal immigrant”.
The Lib Dems’ asylum policy may not be aimed at “toughen[ing] up” on immigration. However, the media does like to frame policies, on crime, welfare and immigration in those terms, and even the left can (wrongly) stray into that rhetoric.
The use of Nightingale Centre idea, which sounds similar to Kemi Badenoch’s Nightingale ‘camps’ and Davey’s use of the wording ‘stop the boats’ might invite tenuous comparisons to figures like Nigel Farage.
But ultimately on a policy level there are nothing alike and there has been no dramatic shift to the right in the Lib Dems’ stance, as the media might like to suggest.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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