New shadow home secretary Chris Philp called for “zero tolerance for crime and criminals” and to end illegal immigration into Britain.
Shortly after his appointment, the Croydon South MP laid out the hardline approach he will advocate as he branded the new Labour government as “soft on crime and on criminals”.
In a thread on Twitter, also known as X, he messaged: “Our principles include zero tolerance for crime & criminals, and ensuring dangerous or persistent offenders are behind bars.
“We must always protect and safeguard victims. We will also support the Police and Security services in their work to keep us safe.”
Our principles include zero tolerance for crime & criminals, and ensuring dangerous or persistent offenders are behind bars. We must always protect and safeguard victims. We will also support the Police and Security services in their work to keep us safe
— Chris Philp MP (@CPhilpOfficial) November 5, 2024
On Britain’s borders, he added: “We need to very substantially reduce legal migration, aim to end illegal entry to the UK and remove those with no right to be here - especially criminals. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of this critical mission.”
Attacking the new government, he emphasised: “They scrapped the Rwanda plan before it even started. Had the deterrent effect commenced in July as planned, we would not have seen over 17,000 illegal small boat crossings since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister.”
He did not go into details over the Tories repeated failure to implement their Rwanda plan, which cost billions, and failed to get a plane off the ground heading to the African country.
Mr Philp argued: “The Labour Government has already showed itself to be soft on crime and on criminals. They have released dangerous criminals early without the proper checks they promised and have dropped the Conservative’s plans for delivering Immediate Justice.”
“We now have a mission to hold Labour to account and win back the trust of the public. Conservatives need to work to develop detailed and credible plans, based on our core principles, in order to do that.”
However, the new Government says it inherited a prisons system in crisis, with overcrowded jails and few places left.
Ministers argue that they have been forced to allow the earlier release of thousands of prisoners to stop the criminal justice system collapsing, with police unable to arrest people as there would be nowhere to detain them given the scale of the crisis.
Mr Philp was a Treasury minister at the time of the Tories disastrous “mini Budget” in September 2022.
He drew up a list of possible tax and other options but says the decisions were taken by the then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Ms Badenoch, who was chairing her first shadow Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, has made Mel Stride shadow chancellor, Dame Priti Patel shadow foreign secretary and Robert Jenrick shadow justice secretary.
Orpington MP Gareth Bacon is shadow transport secretary.
