Gary Lineker has sparked a BBC impartiality row after branding the Tories' latest plan to imprison asylum seekers entering the UK as 'beyond awful' in a post on social media.
Home secretary Suella Braverman announced the plans to the House of Commons on Tuesday (March 7), stating that asylum seekers who arrive in the UK on small boats will be detained without the possibility of bail.
She was joined by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as she formally unveiled the plans to remove and ban asylum seekers from re-entry if they arrive in the UK through unauthorised means.
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BBC Sport presenter Lineker, who welcomed a second refugee into his Surrey home in October last year, has since criticised the move, retweeting a video of Ms Braverman claiming that "Enough is enough. We must stop the boats" with the words "Good heavens, this is beyond awful". He went on to compare the government's new migration policy to the tactics of Nazi Germany in another tweet.
A Twitter user then replied to Lineker's assertions stating that "they could 'stop the boats' tomorrow by opening processing centres in France but they don't want to. They would rather have the optics and language of 'invasion' to enrage their flagging base" to which Lineker replied: "Yep."
In the Commons, Ms Braverman told MPs: “For a Government not to respond to waves of illegal migrants breaching our borders would be to betray the will of the people we were elected to serve. They will not stop coming here until the world knows that if you enter Britain illegally you will be detained and swiftly removed.
“Removed back to your country if it is safe, or to a safe third country like Rwanda. And that is precisely what this Bill will do. That is how we will stop the boats.”
The Bill allows the detention of illegal arrivals without bail or judicial review within the first 28 days of detention, until they can be removed, Ms Braverman said. Only children under the age of 18, and those who are “unfit to fly or at a real risk of serious and irreversible harm – an exceedingly high bar – in the country we are removing them to will be able to delay their removal”, she added.
But Lineker's response has sparked a row about BBC impartiality, after the presenter wrote: "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?"
The BBC's guidance says of its high-profile stars: "We expect these individuals to avoid taking sides on party political issues."
A BBC spokesman said: "Individuals who work for us are aware of their responsibilities relating to social media. We have appropriate internal processes in place if required."
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