Labour pointed to record Channel crossings, in response to Tory claims that would-be migrants were waiting for a change in government before making the trip.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said migrants are “queueing up in Calais” waiting for a Sir Keir Starmer-led Labour government to scrap the Rwanda asylum policy.
But shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper cited record numbers of people crossing so far this year, saying: “Look at the facts, people are not waiting, they are arriving.”
The number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the Channel has hit a new record for the first six months of a calendar year.
Home Office figures show the provisional total for the year so far is already 12,901, before the end of June.
The previous record for arrivals in the six months from January to June was 12,747 in 2022. In the first half of 2023, arrivals were 11,433.
Ms Cooper and Mr Cleverly clashed in an LBC debate as the Tories tried to shift the focus away from the row about betting on the General Election date.
The Home Secretary said migrants and people-smuggling gangs were paying close attention to the UK’s domestic political battles and were aware Labour’s plans to scrap the Rwanda scheme, which is intended to send some asylum seekers who arrive on small boats to the east African country with no prospect of return.
Asked by host Nick Ferrari if “voters are really meant to believe that people living in camps and on sand dunes are looking at the polling of the next general election in the United Kingdom”, Mr Cleverly told the radio show: “They absolutely do.”
“We know that this is a digitally-enabled criminal enterprise,” he said, adding: “The people smugglers and the people that seek to be smuggled pay very, very close attention to a whole range of things.”
He drew on quotes from migrants in the Telegraph who suggested they were waiting for a Labour government and the removal of the threat of being sent to Rwanda.
Mr Cleverly said: “It is clear from these quotes that there is a cohort of people currently in France who are waiting for Rwanda to be taken off the table before coming over here.”
Ms Cooper accused him of “clutching at vox pop straws when he should be taking responsibility for the facts, which is that the boat crossings have reached a record high this spring, and since (Prime Minister) Rishi Sunak promised he would stop them last year, the problems are getting worse.”
People are going to be “disappointed” if they did think they should wait until a Labour government, she said, as she repeated claims her party’s plans would “smash the criminal gang networks that are currently organising these dangerous boat crossings”.
Reducing both irregular and visa-controlled legal migration, and tackling the asylum backlog, are key election battlegrounds.
Neither Mr Cleverly nor Ms Cooper were able to say how many asylum seekers were currently being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset.
And Ms Cooper repeatedly refused to set a numerical target for reducing net migration during the live debate.
She promised a “significant” reduction under Labour but would not put a number on it, saying the party was not doing this because every time the Conservatives have done that they have “failed and discredited it”.
Mr Cleverly said: “This is another example of what Labour are saying now in complete contradiction to what they were doing only very recently.
“They talk about wanting to bring this down. This is a road to Damascus-style conversion now that there’s an election.”
