DAVID DAVIS says new emergency legislation is needed to deal with the migrant crisis.
The former Brexit Secretary said he wants to see fresh laws put in place meaning that if people come from a safe country, they are sent straight back to that safe country.
He set out his idea during an interview today (SAT) on GB News.
Speaking to Esther McVey and Philip Davies, he said: “The first problem we have is that the system's completely overwhelmed. I mean, you've got so many tens of thousands of people crossing the channel that the Home Office can't cope.
"And so you end up with it getting worse and worse because it's 420 days before they get a decision, which means in that time they start court cases, they recruit lawyers, they start families, and it becomes impossible to get rid of them.
"It's a classical problem - the longer you take, the worse it gets.
David Davis has called for emergency legislation to tackle the issue.
Image: GB News
Mr Davis continued: “The first thing we can do about it is to face up to the fact that in the last year, we've gone from almost no Albanian migrants to 12,000 - I say migrants and not asylum seekers because Albania is a safe country.
"Albania actually has lost fewer cases in the European Court of Human Rights in the last five years than we have or France.
"It's a perfectly safe country from the point of view of being an asylum seeker because you really can't claim asylum coming from there. Sweden, in many ways I'm sort of tempted to move to Sweden.
"It's so much more sensible than what we are. But the Swedes basically take no asylum seekers from Albania because they say it's a safe country.
"Our law for some reason doesn't allow us to do that. Our law doesn't allow us just to say you've got off the dinghy on Dover Beach, your next stop is Stansted Airport, which is almost how it should be.
“The second thing they do is they claim to have been trafficked - that they are modern slaves. We had this modern slavery legislation go through, well-intentioned legislation, but they claim they are trafficked.
"Let's apply a common sense test, if you've been trafficked, surely the thing you want to do is to go straight back home, isn't it?
"It's not to sit in Manston or in a hotel in my constituency for years, while we sort out what's happened to you. You want to go back home? And again, the legislation ought to allow that and it doesn't.
David Davis spoke to Esther McVey and Philip Davies about the asylum issues in the UK.
Image: GB News
"And it seems to me that we need to pass through the House of Commons, a very short piece of legislation, which doesn't say we're going to take people’s asylum rights away because we've been giving those hundreds of years, but says if people come from a safe country, they go straight back to that safe country.
"Not back to France or to Germany or wherever they've been en route, but back to the original safe country.”
Asked if he thought this would be possible to go through the House of Commons, Mr Davis: “The truth is I don't want the system destroyed by abuse. I will vote for it or any Tory will vote for it and this ought to unify the Tory party for a start, bringing us all behind one thing.
“I can remember when I was Shadow Home Secretary facing off against David Blunkett and Charles Clark, all trying to be very tough on migration. The idea that they would vote against a bill designed actually to make the migration system work properly, seems to me to be implausible. So I think it's doable, but the other key aspect of this is how we do it.
“Now again, normally, I'm very, very antagonistic to emergency legislation. We had the emergency COVID legislation, I was basically the only person to argue against it because I think the House of Commons should take time.
"But I think actually we should give the government a few weeks to think it through. But I think it can reasonably go through in a few weeks. It is an emergency, 12,000 people arriving and abusing our system is an emergency.”
