Labour has blamed the Conservatives for the “frustration” over Britain’s migrant crisis after protests erupted in Dover and Portsmouth over the weekend.
Policing Minister Sarah Jones said anger in communities was a product of the “chaos and crisis” that preceded the 2024 general election, prompting a furious response from opposition MPs.
Her comments came after hundreds of protesters descended on Portsmouth after a small boat containing asylum seekers landed in the coastal city for the first time.
A day earlier, crowds of masked, black-clad men blocked road access to the Port of Dover.
Addressing MPs on Monday, Ms Jones said: “Let us never forget that the frustration we see in our communities today is a product of chaos and crisis in the years that preceded the general election of 2024.
“Since then, this Government has taken action to fix the broken system we inherited and bear down on the people smugglers.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp hit back, saying: “If they’re serious about fixing this and ending public anger, they need to get serious about the measures – leave the ECHR and deport illegal immigrants as soon as they arrive.
“Then people won’t be so angry.”
Reform UK’s Education spokeswoman, Suella Braverman, also rejected the suggestion that those angry about migration were extremists.
Mrs Braverman said people in her Hampshire constituency “are terrified, they are furious and they are desperate – they are not far-right racists”.
She branded the Government’s response to small boat arrivals “frankly pathetic”, pointing to “leaflets to illegal migrants, asking them not to rape British girls and women”.
Ms Jones had earlier branded Patriot Platform, the group which claims to have organised the Dover demonstration, as “far-right racist”.
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She told the Commons that around 120 migrants arrived in a boat near the Isle of Wight on Sunday afternoon.
More than 200 protesters subsequently attempted to stop three coaches due to take the arrivals for processing, according to the minister.
Ms Jones warned that demonstrators who crossed the line “from peaceful protest into illegality will face the full force of the law”.
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary has launched an investigation into potential assaults and criminal damage, although no arrests have yet been made.
Hampshire Police Federation chairman Spencer Wragg said officers “became the target for some of the protest”, but none suffered serious injuries.
He added: “Those scenes in that area of Portsmouth weren’t protests, they weren’t protests at all, it was clear that some people were intent on disorder and venting their frustrations.”
Patriot Platform founder Daniel Thomas, known as Danny Tommo, also confronted Reform UK’s Home Affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf during the demonstration, warning that Nigel Farage needed to be “careful with his words”.
Questions have meanwhile been raised about the police response after Kent Police described Saturday’s Dover demonstration as “spontaneous”.
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