Labour minister torn apart on Sky News with 1 brutal line on migrant crisis ‘Not working!’

Housing secretary Steve Reed clashed with Sky News’ Wilfred Frost over billions of pounds being wasted on asylum hotels amid ‘failed, chaotic and expensive’ Home Office system. Reed came onto the news breakfast show to discuss the high costs of housing asylum seekers, but it didn’t take long for Frost to land a brutal blow about Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “one in, one out” policy, which has seen one returned migrant immediately cross the Channel again.

Reed insisted that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was exploring different options for using hotels to accommodate asylum seekers, including disused military bases, and that costs were going to come down, but “it takes time”.

Frost asked: “You wouldn’t need to use these at all if you were processing applications more quickly. If there were different ways for applications to be processed so people could apply when they’re not necessarily in this country, when they’re not tempted to cross by small boats, surely coming at it from that angle.”

Reed hit back: “But we’ve got hundreds of additional caseworkers in there dealing with that now. We’ve bought in the one out, one in, one out, agreement with France so we can move more,” as Frost bluntly replied: “It’s one in, one out, one back in again, though isn’t it? It’s not working.”

Frost continued: “The point is you don’t want people coming across on boats so you’ve got a lot of people who have no right to be here and then have to be removed. We’ve removed 39,000.

“If people, as you’re saying, were applying outside the country, then those with a right to be here can come in, and those who have no right are kept out, and that is what we’re working towards.

“By increasing the number of caseworkers dealing with applications, we’ve removed a record number, 39,000 people, who have no right to be here since the parliament began, and the one in, one out system with France is starting to work.”