Good morning everybody.
Today we launch Operation Restoring
Justice and as far as the people of this
country is concerned, frankly these
measures can't come soon enough. As you
know, we've been running over the course
of the last 6 weeks our very successful
crime campaign. It's seen us rise
further in the polls. It's seen great
new recruits, Vanessa Frank and Colin
Sutton joining our party and today is
the last installment of that campaign
ahead of our party conference in
Birmingham on the 5th and 6th of
September. Today we're going to talk
about illegal immigration,
in particular the boat crossings, but
there's more, of course, to the story
than that. And perhaps it's appropriate
that we're here this morning after
yesterday, the scenes in Dober that took
place as 650
people arrived. 650 people yesterday
arrived into Dober and last I heard this
morning, there are many more boats on
the way today. That will take us up to
about 52,000 people since this prime
minister and this government came into
power.
The mood in the country around this
issue
is a mix between total despair
and rising anger. And I would say this
that without action,
without somehow the contract between the
government and the people being renewed,
without some trust coming back, then I
fear deeply that that anger will grow.
In fact, I think there is now as a
result of this a genuine threat to
public order. And that is the very last
thing that we want. And I've been
saying, of course, for a long time that
it's a growing threat to our national
security.
And we've seen just recently some
arrests made of people that came by boat
and they are suspected of being involved
in some form of terrorism.
Huge numbers of undocumented young males
who throw their passports and iPhone
into the English Channel when they get
to the 12 mile line. something that I've
been out and filmed. These huge numbers
of people do constitute a threat.
And I suppose the growing anger in the
country over the course of the last few
weeks is a cultural one in the sense
that many of these young men come from
countries in which women aren't even
secondass
citizens.
And frankly, the public have now just
had enough. And what began as a protest
of mothers and concerned citizens
outside the Bell Hotel in Eping has now
spread right across the country. And all
of it really poses one big fundamental
question.
Whose side are you on?
Are you on the side of women and
children being safe on our streets? Or
are you on the side of outdated
international treaties backed up by a
series of dubious courts?
The channel crisis began with a trickle
of dingies in 2018. The numbers in 2018
and 19 were very small indeed. But I
began to realize in early 2020 that
virtually nobody that came via this
route was being deported. They would
have been even in Tony Blair's
government time. If you'd done that, you
would have been deported. No question
about it. And so in early 2020, I
repeatedly went out into the English
Channel filming what was going on,
saying, "You may as well put a sign on
the white cliffs of Dober saying
everyone welcome."
And unless we start deporting people, I
predicted this would turn into, and yes,
I use the word invasion.
But 180,000 people later, what other
word could possibly describe what has
been going on? It is an invasion as
these young men illegally break into our
country. Well, I did my best in 2020. I
warned everybody.
I said unless we deport, the crisis will
worsen considerably. But I'm afraid that
the Conservative government for the
first few years did literally nothing.
Literally nothing.
And then belatedly they put in place a
Rwanda plan. They put in place
legislation.
But none of it could work because they
hadn't got the courage to face up to
illegal obstacles that made sure despite
spending huge amounts of money on these
plans that nothing uh was actually going
to happen.
Rishi's stopped the boats was a total
failure and frankly
anything that party or people who were
ministers at the time in that government
have to say uh we've got to take with a
very very large pinch of salt. And then
of course we had Karma,
the lawyer,
the man whose second speech as prime
minister in the House of Commons was
where he outlined his love for the
European Court of Human Rights, a party
many of whom have done very well out of
the human rights industry. Smash the
Gangs was never ever going to work. And
even as we speak,
despite the 800 million pounds we've
given the French, even as we speak,
there are French naval vessels
escorting these boats across to a 12mi
line where they'll be picked up by
border force or our volunteers for the
RNLI if it's a busy day and border force
simply can't cope. And now what happens
is the French give them all life
jackets.
And when they're picked up by border
force, border force give the life
jackets back to the French
so they can reuse them on the next
journey. I mean, we're literally
witnessing two governments colluding in
their support of criminal activity.
Well,
this issue has become a scourge of
modern Britain.
Just think about the hotels.
Think about the houses of multiple
occupancy. And not just the cost of it,
but think how unfair that is. Unfair to
the 1.3 million British people currently
on the social housing list. unfair
to those who have legally made their way
into the United Kingdom. It's unfair.
And the cost, frankly, is eye watering.
Official figures show the whole thing
costs about 7 billion pounds a year. But
that doesn't account for the massive
scale of operations in the English
Channel every day. It doesn't account
for the amount of police time and court
time, court time that is taken up with
crimes that are committed by those who
frankly shouldn't be here and have come
illegally.
Our proposals
will save
over the course of the next decades tens
and possibly even hundreds of billions
of pounds. For the end of a first
parliament,
we will have saved a huge amount of
money.
I understand the public have had enough
of this. But here's what we have to do
to make Operation Restoring Justice
actually work.
We have to leave the ECHR.
No ifs, no buts. It may have been a good
idea 80 years ago. Frankly, it isn't
today. We have the repeal, the Human
Rights Act of 1998,
brought in by a Blair government, many
of whose families seem to do rather well
off the back of it. We will for a 5-year
period discipline the 1951
refugee convention and any other
barriers that can be used by lawyers in
this country to prevent deportations to
prevent the right thing uh from
happening. We'll create a legal duty for
the home secretary to remove those that
come illegally. And crucially, we will
detain
all illegal migrants who come and we
will do so immediately.
The only way
we will stop the boats
is by detaining and deporting absolutely
anyone that comes via that route. And if
we do that,
the boats will stop coming within days
because there will be no incentive to
pay a trafficker to get into this
country. If you come to the UK
illegally, you will be detained and
deported and never ever allowed to stay.
Period. That is our big message from
today. And we're the first party to put
out plans that could actually make that
work.
We will stop the boats from coming.
There'll be no more incentive to pay
traffickers. Public trust will be
restored.
And we genuinely are the only party that
can be trusted on this. I am the only
party leader that has been clear and
consistent on this issue over the course
of the last five years. And I have a
feeling I have a feeling that what we're
doing today with Operation Restoring
Justice is going to be very popular in
the wider country. Indeed.
>> Um you've said that you're going to
detain anyone who arrives via small
boats. Will that apply to women and
girls and what about unaccompanied
children? Will they remain in Britain
while their parents are toughed out? And
then you said you would leave the UN
torture convention. Australia and the US
haven't done this. Are you comfortable
of the risk of people being killed or
tortured if they're sent back to their
country of origin? Um, and will pulling
out of these international treaties lose
UK credibility on the international
stage?
>> Well, we're talking about disapplying
for up to 5 years a variety of
conventions that that do need broader
debate and certainly at a UN level uh
need reform and change. uh as far as the
ECHR is concerned, we're very much of
the view that it is it's a body that
they say is separate from the European
Union, but you know, I could walk from
my office in Strasburg straight into the
European Court of Human Rights. Uh
they're joined at the hip. I don't see
any prospect, frankly, in the short term
of the ECR being reformed. Now you might
argue you might argue that Germany who
now of course have have a whole series
of deportation flights set up. You might
argue that Denmark which now has a zero
asylum policy. You might argue uh that
well if those countries can do it why
can't we do it? But of course the
problem has been our own judiciary. We
have to remove the tools from our own
judiciary for them to be a barrier to
this process. And yes, women and
children, everybody on arrival will be
detained. And I've accepted already that
how we deal with children is a much more
complicated and difficult issue. But you
know what? The people protesting outside
the Bell Hotel and at 30 migrant hotels
on Saturday around the country weren't
doing it because of a few children
coming. They were doing it because over
threearters of those that come are
young, undocumented males who come from
cultures that are entirely different
from ours, who are very unlikely to
assimilate into our community, who pose
a risk to women and girls, and some of
them, I'm afraid, pose a risk to
national security. So that's pretty
clear I think what our priorities