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Kemi Badenoch has said government officials should not want to look after refugees and asylum seekers, promising a major overhaul of civil service hiring.
Outlining her plans to “rewire the whole system”, the Tory leadership contender lashed out at Home Office staff who she claimed were ineffective at managing Britain’s borders because “it’s not what they came in to do”.
At a speech in central London launching her Renewal 2030 campaign, Ms Badenoch said: “Many of the people we asked to enforce our borders are actually more interested in doing other things.
“They feel squeamish about it,” she told supporters on Monday. “They are not bad people, but it is not what they came in to do.
“Look at many of the officials I met from the Home Office, for example, they had come from refugee charities, they wanted to look after refugees and asylum seekers.”
The Home Office is responsible for considering the applications of those claiming asylum in the UK, including providing support and accommodation to those eligible as well as free healthcare and legal representation. The Conservative government’s failure to deliver on a promise to lower net migration and stop small boats crossing the English Channel were among the key reasons for
Suggesting a crackdown on Home Office civil servants sympathetic towards asylum seekers, Ms Badenoch said: “We need to take a better look at how we are recruiting into the civil to make sure people in places and in jobs where their skills are going to be best used. That is the kind of thing I am talking about. Change from the ground up."
Charities condemned the comments and urged Ms Badenoch to seek to understand why people move and avoid “contributing to a climate that breeds far-right violence”.
Refugee Action chief executive Tim Naor Hilton told The Independent: “They must also remember the official review of the Windrush scandal found it was allowed to happen because of poor understanding among officials of Britain’s colonial history and the history of inward and outward migration.
“Our leaders must focus on creating an anti-racist asylum system that respects people’s rights and fosters cohesion within our communities.”
Elsewhere in her campaign launch, Ms Badenoch lashed out at leadership rivals and claimed the previous government’s mistake was that it "talked right but governed left".
The shadow housing secretary, currently odds on to succeed Rishi Sunak, said "a government that tries to do everything will likely end up achieving nothing".
Addressing a packed room at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, she said: "This was one of our mistakes.
"We talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour.
"Government should do fewer things, but what it does, it should do with brilliance."
She said that Labour are only in Government because people no longer believed in the Conservatives.
"The British people are yearning for something better, and this Labour Government is not it," she said.
She said Labour are "trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public" about the state of the UK’s finances.
"They are already making worse mistakes than we did," she said.
Ms Badenoch also took aim at rivals including Robert Jenrick, who has set out plans to leave the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) in a bid to bring immigration under control.
She said candidates putting targets on net immigration and promising to leave the ECHR are “giving easy answers”.
“It’s not just about throwing out numbers and throwing out targets,” she added.
One rival camp hit back, criticising Ms Badenoch for attacking Dr Who, going on holiday during the campaign and refusing to set out plans to cap immigration.
“No wonder her campaign has written off the next general election,” a source said, in reference to her Renewal 2030 slogan.
Despite repeatedly calling for the Conservatives to focus on the future during the campaign and in opposition, Ms Badenoch launched the bid by reigniting an old spat with Doctor Who actor David Tennant.
The shadow housing secretary railed against the “cultural establishment trying to keep Conservatives down” and promised to “take the fight to Doctor Who or whoever and not let them try to keep us down”.
Mr Tennant had previously said he wished the Tory MP would “shut up” and that he hoped for a world in which she “doesn’t exist anymore”.
Ms Badenoch also hit back at criticisms that she was more concerned with culture wars than with the bread and butter of opposition.
"I got on the dispatch box against Angela Rayner, that video has gone viral," she said.
"That’s me in opposition. That is how I will be taking the fight to Keir Starmer.
"But people who say that all I did was culture wars were not paying attention. I was doing my job.
"I was the equalities minister, I had to look after very, very tricky issues like race and gender - things that everybody ran away from.
"I didn’t run away. And not only did I not run away, I defended people who needed help, and I dragged Labour onto our turf."
