Shabana Mahmood refuses to say whether her asylum overhaul will slash number of illegal migrants making way into Britain

Ms Mahmood said: “I want to implement these reforms as quickly as possible… judge me on delivery. I want to get those boat crossings down, but I’m not going to set arbitrary targets.”

Christopher told her GB News viewers will “frustrated” by her refusal to say the numbers will drop, saying she could only “hope they will".

The Home Secretary insisted the public’s cynicism was “justified”, but urged voters to wait for the full package of reforms to be enacted before passing judgement.

“I know it’s a low-trust environment,” she said. “People will say, ‘We’ve heard all this before.’

"Judge us on the totality of the reforms once they’re implemented.”

The Home Secretary argued the Government’s combined changes to family life claims, asylum appeal rules and enforcement powers “can fix this problem and can bring those numbers down”, pointing to recent raids that she said resulted in “a thousand people removed”.

Christopher pressed her again, asking: "If they don’t work, you’ll go further?

"You’ve pulled back from ECHR withdrawal, which is what Reform and the Tories are calling for. Are there other ideas you could push forward?

Ms Mahmood responded: Well, look, I will always keep under review whether these measures are working as they should.

"But we’ve announced the set of proposals today. We’ve now got to consult and bring forward legislation, that will be the next stage, and then we’ve got to crack on with delivery as well.

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The Home Secretary said her own lived experience shows how “deeply” the issue is affecting communities of every background, not just white voters.

She told GB News that concerns about migration are “shared by British people of every ethnicity”, and insisted it was wrong to dismiss those worries as prejudice when they stem from a system that is “in fact broken”.

Ms Mahmood said the “pace and scale of change” had put pressure on local areas, fuelling tensions that politicians can no longer ignore.

She argued that mainstream parties must “face this head-on” and offer real solutions rather than downplay public fears.

“It is my job to fix this broken system,” she said, vowing to confront the crisis directly rather than “walk around the country pretending not to see it.”