Suella Braverman’s approach towards the migrants in Dover was torn apart by Asda’s chairman on BBC Question Time this week.
The home secretary finally went to visit the migrant processing centre Manston in Dover on Thursday as concerns about overcrowding and refugees’ living conditions rise – but she travelled via a military helicopter.
Braverman also described immigration from the English Channel as an “invasion” earlier this week, days after a petrol bomb attack on a Border Force immigration centre in Kent.
Commenting on the political blame game about who is responsible for the ongoing struggles with English Channel crossings, Asda chair Stuart Rose told BBC Question Time: “I think we should get away from this playground talk.”
“Immigration has been around for thousands of years,” he said. “Mostly, it’s economic migration, because people who have got no food, no water, no education, no prospects for their children and no way to bettering themselves want to come to a better place.”
Rose said both of his parents were immigrants who came to Britain, but “they probably wouldn’t” get in today.
“So let’s not knock it, we’ve done that. People have come here from persecution, political persecution,” Rose said, before listing the nationalities who have come to describe the UK as home.
“In that migration, there’s always people who are going to game the system,” in reference to the government’s recent criticism of Albanian refugees in particular.
Rose said if the UK is to be a “rich, caring country,” we must accept it’s “part of our duty” to take in more people from other countries.
“The world is changing. It’s not from 1945, it’s from 1955, it’s 2022,” Rose continued. “We either live in this country and accept that’s what it does, or we go somewhere else, but you can’t stop it.”
He added: “I don’t like the way we’re dealing with it. I don’t like the rhetoric.
“I don’t like that the home secretary is standing there, and goes to Manston today in a Chinook helicopter.
“What kind of message does that send to people? Are we starting a war with these people down in Manston?
“How do we ever allow a person to do that?”
Touching on Braverman’s controversial description of the migrants’ “invasion”, Rose said: “How could she speak with such dangerous language about a problem?
“This will only be solved by negotiation, this will only be solved by people sitting around a table – as everything is solved.”