Suella Braverman is facing further criticism from Conservative colleagues including the “red wall” MP Jonathan Gullis over claims that people crossing the Channel have values at odds with the UK’s.
It comes as the home secretary’s allegations that Albanian people arriving in the UK by small boats are exploiting modern slavery laws have been challenged in an analysis seen by the Guardian.
Asked about the home secretary’s comments on the values of people crossing on small boats, the Stoke MP said they made him feel “uncomfortable”.
Gullis, who previously suggested it would be “acceptable” to house migrants in tents, told LBC: “I don’t feel comfortable with the mentioning of the values. I don’t think that was appropriate, nor was it right.”
Braverman on Wednesday said people who come to the UK across the Channel in small boats “possess values which are at odds with our country” and there were “heightened levels of criminality”. She told the Guardian her claims were based on briefings from unnamed senior police officers, not data.
The Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi said Braverman should be replaced and the government needed a home secretary who would re-establish “evidence-based policies”.
“Part of what, unfortunately, the home secretary has a tendency to do is to make sweeping statements based upon nothing,” Lady Warsi told Channel 4. “I think she has to go back to having a sense of proportionality, a commitment to facts, making policy based upon evidence.”
Braverman’s allegations that many Albanians claiming to be victims of modern slavery were lying have been challenged by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University (OMO).
It found that just 12% of Albanians who came across the Channel in 2022 were referred to the national referral mechanism (NRM), which is designed to provide victims with safety and support.
Of the Albanians whose cases were assessed, 90% were found by the Home Office to have “reasonable grounds” for claiming to be victims of modern slavery, the body has discovered.
Braverman told Conservative party members in October: “Today, the largest group of small boats migrants are from Albania, a safe country. Many of them claim to be trafficked as modern slaves. The truth is that many of them are not modern slaves and their claims of being trafficked are lies.”
The OMO analysis found that of the roughly 12,000 Albanians who arrived via small boats in 2022, 1,467 (12%) were referred to the NRM by the end of 2022. Among all small boat arrivals in 2022, 7% were referred to the NRM.
“Of the 1,467 Albanians who arrived via small boat and were referred to the NRM in 2022, 1,382 (94%) had received by 2023 a decision from the Home Office on whether there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe the individual is a victim of modern slavery. Of these, the Home Office determined that in 90% (1,239) of cases there were reasonable grounds to believe these individuals were modern slavery victims,” the analysis said.
The figures also contrast with Rishi Sunak’s claims in December that “one of the reasons we struggle to remove [Albanian] people is because they unfairly exploit our modern slavery system”.
The government’s asylum law, the illegal migration bill, was voted through the House of Commons on Wednesday. The former prime minister Theresa May led criticism of the bill for abandoning people who have been trafficked or forced into slavery.
Labour has attacked Braverman for failing to provide hard evidence for incendiary comments about refugees. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, said: “The Conservative government is consistently misrepresenting asylum statistics and giving the public a misleading view of the reality of what we face in fixing the broken asylum system.”
A Home Office spokesperson said the UK government valued the Albanian community in the UK and welcomed those who come to the UK legally.
“Modern slavery remains a barbaric crime which the government is committed to stamping out and we continue to support thousands of genuine victims every year, but we will not allow people to abuse our laws,” the spokesperson said. “The illegal migration bill will change the law so that if someone is identified as a potential victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, we will ensure they are safely returned home or to another safe country.”
