Local Elections Debate: voters question five main parties

let's get a brief reaction from some of our politicians Lee roley if the conservatives lose over 400 seats next week richy sunak is toast doesn't he well I hope not I hope firstly I hope we don't lose those seats and uh I don't agree with any suggestion that the Prime Minister uh should be changed at all the conservatives gone through a difficult few years as a result of a lot of difficulties in the country and the world as a whole and what we've got to do is focus on what we're trying to achieve and then we've got to show the country what we want to do over next 5 years so you don't think your colleagues will be turning on him regardless of the result I you know people were wondering if you would go back to calling for KY badok to be the leader because you were big backer of hers last time round the prime minister is absolutely the right person to take since a general election and I don't think my party should be making any changes um Allison uh McGovern has labor miscalculated the Electoral impact of your position over Israel and Gaza um it's a dreadful situation that happening there and if I'm honest my thoughts on that are about the people who are really suffering there um it doesn't feel right to me to talk about it in that kind of way you know we need hostages to be freed about what your supporters want you to do and what they not I think the focus should be on in that in relation to that issue I think the focus should be on what needs to happen there to prevent the absolute Dreadful situation for civilians especially in Gaza it's absolutely horrific and I think I think that's where the focus should be Ellie CH shouldn't the greens be doing a lot better as insurgents we have been doing brilliantly I mean we've quadrupled our number of counselors in the last four years we had brilliant results last year we're looking forward to a really successful set of results this year people like voting for greens when they vote for them they vote for them again because they know they get counselors who work hard for their communities and really care about local issues and and the same for you Daisy I mean you know to what extent are you um you know all things to all people when it comes to local elections and to what extent are you going to capitalize on the national mood well in the local elections last year the liberal Democrats broke the Sky News swingometer because we won so many Council seats last may we won't take any votes for granted this may but we are really hopeful that we can make significant gains in key areas particularly where where we the key challenges to the conservatives and just briefly Chris I mean hasn't that exposed sort of the truth about reform which is that you're not really a national party yet you you know you get a lot of attention but you're not able to actually put up candidates really in the local election in a significant number of seats the reason that reform exists is because the four Legacy parties have betrayed Britain the the the British people do no longer trust the tourist the t is a toast they don't really want to vote for labor and the other two aren't there either they're looking for an alternative and reform UK The Point again you're not there nationally is the point people want to vote for you they can't really next week you mean as a local elections yes we're a young party we don't have the numbers but we we are go we are going for bigger fish we're going for the general election okay let me just briefly ask the people in this room the the audience when it comes to next week I mean turnout at local elections is always bad compared to a general election are you going to be voting on National issues or local issues if you're predominantly voting on National issues next week could you just raise your hand right that tells us quite a lot I mean obviously this is not scientifically selected as an audience but you're broadly politically um balanced and it informs the debate let's go to our first question tonight which is from Luke lutman Luke Council taxes Rising but councils are cutting their services everyone's feeling the pressure of the cost of of the cost of living crisis um what's the solution Al from the governor well we need measures in place to help people with the cost of living um and I want to see Breakfast Club in every primary school I want to see Labour's energy plans to get people's energy bills down for that and a raft of things that will help people with cost of living for that we need firstly we need stability because a lot of the problems that we've had with inflation and so on have been the turbulence and us all living in this like Tory Psycho Drama of Chang you can't promise services are going to get dramatically better are you because you're not promising councils a lot more money I think we can do better because when it comes to council funding if you go back to what George Osborne did the first thing he did was took away the early warning system by getting rid of the audit commission then councils are funded now on a year-by-year basis that's wrong because it means they can't plan and it's an ineffective use of money so I think we can change those things and across lots of areas of policy for example in my own area in employment I want to devolve employment support so that councils can do a lot more to change the opportunities for good jobs that people have in their area I know the situations that Council face up and down this country it's really bad but I don't believe we can't do better I mean you you saw the sort of the the mood of the room in terms of sort of national local politics but that question is about the fact that people are suffering in terms of service cuts and they're being asked to pay more in council tax and a lot of their councils are threatening that they're going to go bankrupt so I absolutely agree with you that there's been a significant challenge over the last few years there's no point pretending that isn't the case it's absolutely the case a lot of that comes from Beyond Shores we have inflation all around the world we have interest rates that have risen higher in many other countries than they have in the United Kingdom but the job of the UK government is to try to help so we brought forward quite a significant amount of support where we can but the first thing we have to do is get on top of inflation and in doing that we can help everybody but specifically on local government there's 65 billion pounds going into local government now I as a Tory as a conservative don't measure the inputs I measure the outputs and there's a huge amount of activity going on all across local government is it tough yes is it challenging yes it is but the job of politics is to try and trade is to try and Mar lots and lots and lots of very very important things with very with very fine that is exactly what the issue of inflation the reason why coun why people having to pay more money and their services are getting cut is largely because of the conservatives mini budget that put um inflation absolutely soaring I've seen in my own local area Council taxes had to go up um but services are being cut liberal Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to protect vital Services completely against the odds no but this is a brilliant example you you are absolutely right there have been challenges you are absolutely right the conservative party have made mistakes there's no point in suggesting that's not the case but you know it wasn't it wasn't the conservative party that was in government in Sweden with higher inflation it wasn't the conservative party was in government in Spain with higher inflation is the in government in the United no it's been the conservative party in government in this country for 14 years and ask any Council leader and actually even some Tory Council leaders what those 14 years have been like with allocation to them after allocation to them that they know is simply not enough and it's the Tories that have done that year after year get this additional money from are you going to improve the amount of money councils are getting that's the bottom line isn't it if you're in government as I was just saying I think there are things that we can do structurally to help councils which is part of addressing what has gone so wrong over the past 14 years and I think that we can do much better where where will you get the money from Alison the cost of living crisis is caused by politicians inflation is caused by politicians I'm not a politician only these four politicians I am a member of the public the reason I've got into politics ladies and gentlemen is because I'm sick to death of the fourl political parties you a politi sat on the stage you you are MPS I am a member of the public representing the members of the public who are sick to death of the Legacy parties the inflation has been created by government policy three in particular just to address the question you know what would you do about Council services and current budgets to improve by getting rid of the wasted uh tax money that these people are spending on things like Net Zero Net Zero is is the most net zero is the single most catastrophic economic idea ever devised okay Ellie so you know I've been promoted uh here I'm not an MP but I am a local counselor and so I have seen the cost of living crisis and the cuts to council Services you know face up the council that I serve on had to make 20 million pounds of cuts this last year a conservative Council and the reason for that it isn't just inflation and the trust budget although that's definitely a factor it goes back 14 years we have seen year after year after year of cuts of central government funding to local government and local government is really struggling the need but just address Chris's attack really which is that Net Zero is the cause of a lot of the problems in terms of the obligations on councils is there any truth to that Alle complete complete rubbish um actually more than 2third of what a council spends money on my councils like my one is social care it's kids and adults with social care needs and that's is what we should be doing we're going to come to that in a minute who else wants to talk about Services yes just Gentleman on the front um I'm 75 um in my lifetime the tourist have been in power for at least 50 of those years every time they came into power they attacked the public sector the councils they W they wanted to uh restrict wages all the time so that people didn't want to work in the services anymore we've now got a Health Service that can't get nurses because nobody wants to pay or nobody can afford to pay So you you're voting on National issues is what you're saying I'm voting can I can I just make the other point very quickly because I want to get other people 50 years ago as a young person growing up I could afford to rent a house I even could afford to buy a house we're going to talk about housing in one minute I promise all the other services were available they're not who else wants to talk about Council Services yes G ter services like education or health we here in Glon we're very close to Wales where labor um are running Services I'd like the panel to compare and contrast how those services are run compared with those in England I think that would be a good Benchmark well what's your understanding I'm not going to put that to everyone on the panel be here um the record on health and on education in England is quite simply better than that in in Wales which is run by a labor government so why should we believe the labor labor party when they say they can run those Services better okay who who who else want to come in on this section on when we're talking about council tax Rises and what you get in return in terms of your services yes lady on the end there our council tax seems to keep going up and all of our services are Beyond capacity and on their knees it just it The Masks isn't adding up so where does that leave you as a voter you know well what you can't see any solutions no one's telling me anything that I I I'm convinced by Lee R well the reason politi got to be straight with you there's there's 65 billion pounds going into local government there's millions of of of and there millions of things happening and the roads are crumbling there's the question Ellie where do you get the additional money from I can answer that I can answer that there are political choices because that is why there are political choices that timately the point the gentleman there says the cons servatives have attacked the Public Services over the last 14 years it's a strange attack when we've put hundreds of billions of additional pounds in per year say they're da here's the way that we can pay for some public services we have a winful tax on the big oil and gas companies the liberal Democrats were the first party to call for that we could close the loopholes and raise a lot more money to pay for our Public Services the conservatives gave A3 billion pound tax cuts to the big Banks which were already raising more money than they've Ever Raised before we could reverse that tax cut for the big Banks and spend that3 billion p on public services or health education anything else we've got these really big water companies now that have been allowed to pump sewage into our Rivers they've been raising millions in pounds as well there are big companies that are raking in billions of pounds and it's possible to tax them to pay for our Public Services we should not be taxing hardworking families in a cost of living crisis to pay you're not alarmed you know you you have voters here who are not really turning to you as the alternative when they're saying how bad their current services are which for which they do clearly blame the government to some degree I think when when I listen to people and and particularly when I listen to people um on doorsteps as I do really regularly I don't blame anybody for feeling a bit hopeless at the moment because the past 14 years have been incredibly challenging and I don't blame anybody for thinking it's difficult in fact when I um listen to the to the lady there um talk about our Council tax going up and up and services really struggling the thing that that makes me think is yes we've got to do things differently because we're aging as a country that's one of the challenges that councils face um as um um was pointed out before you know a lot of council's budget is on care and we're struggling to get people to work in care and it's becoming more and more expensive so we've got to rethink it and what I want to see is a national Care Service a framework so that we know we've got good standards in our care we've got care workers being treated properly to make it a more attractive profession to come into and I think if we change what we're doing then of course the money matters but it's also about changing the way we run our public services so we put the people at the heart of them and that hasn't been true for far too long yeah I just what I've seen is that not investing in our Public Services has really big long-term costs so back from 2010 we've had cuts to child care services support for families and so forth and then a few years down the line that makes things worse and more expensive we've got to recognize that money spent on public services is money well spent it's effective investment for the future and when we think about you know potholes Public Service people really associate with councils you know my area there's a 310 million pound backlog in potholes because there's been no money going into councils for 15 years then there's an election year the government says oh we can pick some money out of you know we found it down the back of the safer we'll promise you a bit more money next year but failure to invest means that people have been spending hundreds of pounds fixing their vehicles because they bump into we got to have a debate on this based in reality the first reality point is that there are billions and billions and billions of pounds going into local Services right now is it going in exactly the right place will that be down to your local council could there be more yes we've seen examples of where local councils have absolutely totally screwed up labor in Birmingham lost a billion pounds the conservatives in work lab in Lost hundreds of millions billion P of debt in working and the reality cons the reality on that is that there are choices being made because the labor party didn't sort their problems out in Birmingham and that's why they're going to have to cut Council they're going to have to raise council tax and cut services so it's all part National to try and give more money to to to people through uh for cost of living it's all part of a national plan try to give more money to councils but is there a challenge in that of course there's Challenge and when all these guys say oh more money more money more money the question isn't about whether more money will be nice it's about where more money comes this is why the public gets fed up with these four parties because they all sound exactly the same they are identical they oppose as aders they oppose as adversaries but they all are essentially the same they all believe in Net Zero they all believe in higher taxes they all believe in more control and they do not represent the will of the British people the the British people are fed up with these Legacy parties and they're looking for an alternative so there are there are two groups out there which we which haven't been let me tackle that Z Point head on you had there are many people let Daisy answer you on that there are many peopleon Z if we had had a proper windfall tax and we closed the loopholes we could double the warm homes discount and help people with their energy bills and we could launch a 10-year program an emergency program to insulate their homes that is classic example of where you can reduce bills where you can save people money and you can be benefit is an attack on energy when net when Net Zero raises the cost of energy and because everything requires energy to be built Net Zero makes everything more expensive we need to get rid of Net Zero let's try and get a bit more specific with our with our answers through the course of this debate because I I don't want to sort of the the sort of the taglines uh to to be repeated you know over and over again let's move on to another area which is of a lot of concern particularly in in in local politics because it's it's their responsibility Nikki Faith uh gler show is the 14th lowest funded local Authority for special educational needs in the C in the country um although my son's lucky for having an outstanding education and a specialist provision there aren't enough places the director of children's services is committed to changing this but she isn't a magician come July we Face the real possibility of my son going to a residential setting of up to two hours away because there's nothing in county for him how would you bridge the gap so all children in glera like my son can access the provision they need locally and get the education and life opportunities afforded to their peers without special educational needs Daisy Cooper it's a fantastic question so about a third of the casework that I do as a constituency MP is working with moms and dads who are struggling and fighting the S system and I have seen people push to Breaking Point and crying over and over again so my heart really really goes out to you and your family so um I have the same problem where I am in Harford here we're one of the poorest funded areas in the country as well and there's about 40 43 local councils I think your is one of those that is really really suffering there's a few things we need to do the first is that we I think liberal Democrats believe we need to take the high needs funding out from local councils that should be funded by a separate National body because that the bit that's the bit that costs a lot in terms of incentivizing incentivizing in schools to help children as soon as possible we need to reduce the amount of money that schools have to pay to support children with special educational needs and we have got to fix the funding formula so for our councils yours and mine and several others that are in that that bottom um the bottom 40 according to the government's new funding formula it will take 15 years for our funding to catch up with other councils around the country that is an entire Lost Generation of young people and I won't stand for it Allison well I think that parents who are struggling in the system right across the country would have a lot of sympathy with this issue because um similarly I've seen it in my constituency surgery to families incredibly frustrated and I want to just pick up on this point of um how we can do things differently because whilst the resources are constrained I think that we can get teachers to be able to use their skills much better in school s to um identify needs earlier on because the evidence that I've seen from some of the work that we've done the WHL where I'm from is that identifying those needs earlier means more effective help and also it's it helps keep the costs lower but there's absolutely no doubt about it we do need to investigate the system work out how to get the money to the right places because did you just say forgive me that your son might have to go to a residential place out of the county and I I think you know those sorts of situations are absolutely Dreadful and it's got to be fixed does anyone else want to come in on special educational needs is is Judy here in the yeah Judy yeah my question was more General about the education system um the education system is not fit for purpose it's become an exam Factory which causes anxiety to our children it exacerbates inequality and it fails our children um in Gloucester schools there's high levels of absenteeism SE children not getting the help they need as the lady that's your experience is it yeah and children are going to school hungry so I just wanted to ask the panel what they would do to change that thank thank you very much indeed um for that point um Lee I think you have to answer some on the first the first point I'm so sorry to hear that and I hope that you get the support that you need I see that also as an MP there are challenges and we try and work through like Daisy and Allison does where there are specific challenges and we tend to get results in in many instances but I hope you manage to do so with the support you need but you are right there are challenges in that system at the moment we put some additional money into it this year hopefully that will make a difference there but alongside that there needs to be a plan for reforming and changing you always need to change things you always need to look again at what you can do there are certain things around ehcps the care plans which need to be put in place there's some reforms that are needed around transport there are some clearly some areas where particularly where people need lots and lots of support where the fees that are being charged are too high so there's a lot of work going on by my colleagues in the department for education to try to resolve that and that's where you know when you get away from these kind of you know Argy bargy discussions when you actually get into detail it's about the plans and what we're trying to do is say going through a really difficult and challenging time but we're trying to work through how to solve the problems and what we don't want to go back to is square one and then finally to the lady about education General I'm so sorry but politicians are asked to speak straight I'll speak straight with you our children have going through a demonstrably better education system with demon better outcomes compared to International comparisons than they were 14 years ago and when I was a child in my 30 years ago it's absolutely the case we can have debates about this but we have to base it on the we we'll have to debate National Education policy another time I mean just last word on this I mean what do you think they should do to make you know your experience better we're hearing a lot about plans but when a plan's going to result in actions you know this the formula that's used a comparable County if they had if we had the same funding as other counties we wouldn't be in this situation we wouldn't have the deficit umse it so you it boils down to just more money central government funding how it's allocated the funding formula okay I'm going to move on to the I by far the topic that you sent in uh more than any other was housing so a question from Allison Rush hi yeah um I work for the housing and homelessness charity shelter and we're really struggling to meet the demand for our services across the Southwest at the moment in this region alone we have 12 a half thousand homeless people and nearly half of them are children we have rents that are Skyhigh we have over 130,000 people on the waiting list for a social home so my question to the panel is are you going to deliver the social housing that so desperately needed to end the housing emergency and are you going to make this a priority ahead of the local elections and the general election leey we need to build more homes need to build them in the the right place we' built nearly 2 and a half million homes since 2010 but there is definitely more to do on that that includes about 700,000 social and affordable homes as well but there is definitely more to do in that regard but housing is a function of population and when we come on in a minute to a discussion about immigration which I believe we're going to do we're going to have to as a country decide what level of population we want because from that flows how many houses we need to build if we Haven been very good at setting the level of built migration we've built 2 and a half million houses which has gone some way but there's clearly a much a big challenge here which needs to be resolved and the only part the only major party on this panel which is going to be straight with you about immigration which is we need to cut it is for the reasons like you have talked about and you're shaking your head but if you want actually to resolve homelessness issues you have to have a broader conversation you're basically blaming homelessness on migration no I no ABS you're saying absolutely is the case what I'm saying is if you want a proper discussion in politics you have to make sure that policies are linked and how you understand how all of those policies work and interact with each other and how if somebody said in 2010 the conserva is going to build 2 and a half million houses which we have done I think most people would say actually that would have gone a long way towards resolving some of the problems which you rightly we're going to have a long conversation about migration I think it's really shameful of you actually Lee try to try to absolutely nothing shameful about there's no but don't don't this is a shame point that you have highlighted there is nothing shameful about saying that politics needs to be linked and that different policies need to be l in order to solve let me finish my sentence I think it's shameful that you blame the housing crisis which is a very real thing in this country on one factor essentially you're saying it's about immigration that is not true it's about some people own more than one house it's about the rent it's about uh we're all living longer uh how uh families are um splitting up different living arrangements there were all sorts of factors that are driving the demand on housing but the key thing that's happened is that the price of housing has gone up and up and up we need policies like rent controls local rent controls so that people can actually afford to get you know to to even rent a place let alone get on a housing ladder I mean these days I think the average house price is eight times more than the average salary you know young people the generation kind of under R they can't even think about getting there and this is a product it is a product of political choice there's a radical idea for you Al from the Govern rent controls what does think of that absolutely not r sorry I realize your name was Alis I'll bring you in in a second Chris um so I've just spent the best part of a decade and a half trying to get social housing built in new Ferry the place just near where I live and the big barrier was that the people who owned the land who owned the deric properties there didn't want to sell and councils don't have nearly enough power that's the first problem we have got to build more social housing in this country for all the reasons that have been mentioned if we're going to do that we need more powers and more planners for councils to get it done I I find this conversation about migration which I'm sure we're going to come to bizarre because like if migration is the problem whose hand has been on the tiller as we've had this massive Spike of people coming to work here actually many of those people who coming to work here are coming to work in our NHS in our Health and Social care system so if we want to link policies maybe what we need to do is invest in our NHS make sure that we've got enough nurses and doctors and social Care staff actually to staff it properly and maybe that's where our focus should be getting the money in to do that but on the housing point I think we can build more social housing we also can get a ban on no fault evictions not this a funny thing that the Tories have done sort of saying that they're doing it but they're putting a kind of barrier in the way of it really happening we need to get that ban on NOP evictions and build social housing so that we can House people CH would reform councilors back the building of more social housing like anything it's supply and demand and they're both in because we need more houses we need more houses being built even though you have built enough uh built houses you haven't built enough the question was about social housing so just address that so social housing is a function of all housing so separate so we will build more houses and we that included in that will be social housing but the other side is you're right about the other side you can't ignore uh immigration we have 745,000 people join us in a single year that's the size of Bristol now that's bound to have an effect on housing on the rental housing and on people buying a house when I grew up I was able to buy a house it's it's now becoming more of a dream than an aspiration for many people okay can I say on social housing I think the question directly was Will We Will any party up here build the social housing that we need my answer to you is liberal Democrats definitely will we have a target of building 150,000 social homes and actually if you look at the cost of it long only over a decade or so you'll actually save that money it will reduce the amount of money councils have to spend paying private landlords can I hear your views in the audience rather than rather than questions yes gentlemen at the back yeah there's a lot of argument of what's causing the problem in the lack of housing but there's not a lot of argument of what can be the solutions now I'm a young person who's growing up and I don't want you to build more houses because where I live the fields which I used to play in where there were forests that have been cut down to build your houses why can't we bring them all into public ownership all housing can I can I pick up on this so I so one of the issues one of the issues with our planning system at the moment is it rewards developer greed over Community need and that's the problem so we do need to build more social homes we need to build 150,000 social homes a year but those social homes will then free up in other ways at the moment we've got councils paying absolutely through the nose for vulnerable people who are homeless and victims of domestic violence who are there being put up in temp we can't keep paying for that we from the a yes the lady on the front here yes so I mean I'm a young person here as well and with housing I've had an issue because I became homeless and I didn't know where to go and the systems were you know they supported people under the age of 25 which I am but then there were other people that couldn't get that support so it's more about those support systems that you were talking about earlier actually putting the energy into the people which I do think is a problem because a lot of people have left the UK now so a lot of those people that were supporting are not here so it's either trying to find more people that are there that are able to actually put energy into the right support and the right systems for people to actually feel like they can climb the ladder um and even teaching us ways of how to climb the ladder ourselves rather than it being so open thank you yes and the gentleman here yeah uh yeah I just wanted to make a point I don't like how you link um Heim with immigration I feel like it's just a bit of a copy like you're just using it as a scapegoat yeah um yeah I just wanted to make that point well the reason the reason the reason I do it is because the gentleman the previous gentleman's pointed about why by why build all the housing we're not building the housing isn't being built for anything's sake it's being built because we need to build it to ensure that people have a house to live in and the reason that that's the case is because population is rising significantly now as it happens I'm in favor of immigration not of the levels that it has been not with the illegal immigration we've got we'll talk about that in a minute I think but it is the reality again politicians have got to be straight with you houses we've built lots and lots of houses houses are por of population if the T government wants social housing and we do want to build on derel land because we do want to keep our Green Field so we want to build on der land why did homes England Hand money back to the treasury that such a ridiculous statement to make because you know that's not true homes England has got a budget of 11 billion the affordable hes the they spent the very funds that are supposed to be there to use um Brownfield to use deric land and that is they are the agency that's supped to help councils build is that this is the afford this is the affordable housing program it had 11 a. half billion pound at the beginning it still has 115 billion P it will be spent over a number of years which it's been done and it's why they tens of thousands of homes and affordable homes going to pause it there we are going to actually talk uh in more detail um on immigration uh but we're going to take a quick break now and we're going to talk about how immigration's affected local services and what people think about the whole debate around the Rwanda scheme and whether that's an electoral issue we'll see you in a minute welcome back to our special local elections debate program here in gloucester's Black Friars prior now we started talking uh about immigration and how it affects the whole question of housing uh in the last part but we're going to sort of focus in on it a little bit more in this next section with a question from Lindsay melier hi there is a shortage of rental properties for our young people what are you going to do about the huge number of immigrants being moved into rental houses okay thank you now I also we had a couple of questions on this I also want to hear from jendra Patel um who also had a question on this whole question of of immigration you tendra yeah so um I mean we talked about Council already you know they under pressure from you know service are being cut costs going up and everyone's s suffering from the hardship from it all um I think people are people are concerned about the amount of money being wasted um sending vulnerable people to Rwanda I know what the panel think about that you you think people are more worried about Services than Rwanda is that your point well I think yeah I think so money being spent on Rwanda when it could be used for local you know Services right okay um Daisy Cooper uh I mean you know we started this argument earlier on but I mean to what extent you know if people are kind of looking at sort of national issu should they be voting on the national question of immigration in a local election people can vote on whatever issue they like of course that's the point of our democracy what I would say on immigration however is at the moment we've got the worst of Both Worlds in terms of our immigration system we've got our NHS we've got the social Care Systems we've got hospitality and they are crying out for staff from anywhere from this country from abroad and they cannot get the people they need it's the same right across many sectors so we haven't got an immigration system that works for our economy at the same time our Asylum system is in a complete mess as well now for some unknown reason the government simply stopped processing claims a few years ago and those claims have gone absolutely through the roof and we've ended up with this enormous enormous backlog and I completely understand the frustration of local residents who say actually why is it that our housing or local hotels uh are full of Asylum Seekers well it's because the government completely lost control of the Asylum system so what we need is an immigration system that works for our economy so we're able to bring in people who we need for particular sectors so we can get growth in the country and we need an asylum system that is compassionate and fair and firm and so we can work and fast so that we can process claims as soon as possible so legitimate claims people can get on with their lives and those who don't have a legitimate claim can be deported Chris far it's important for people to get the sort of the fact as well isn't it so on the housing question for example it's important that they know that there is no priority for people who've recently been granted a right to remain immigration only works when it's legal and Limited at the moment we've got unlimited and illegal immigration going on we've got mass quantities of people coming in both legally but we've also got the problem in the channel of illegal immigration now when we've got illegal immigration and mass immigration immigration doesn't work for us it's got to work for us and by that it has to be legal and it has to be limited we've got the opposite of that that's why it's a problem it's it it is within international law perfectly legal to come into a country and claim Asylum however you come so it's not simply illegal immigration but I mean we've got people coming in across the not coming they're coming in from France they shouldn't be getting as far as England okay they should be going back to France government what would you say to the question yeah I just wanted to ask the lady who asked a question forgive me you were saying that there are rental properties there's a shortage of rental properties and people are being moved into them is that a particular is there a particular geographical area that you're thinking about there no as a whole a there there's there's Asylum Seekers that are being dealt with with companies like Ciro and then there's um the obviously immigrants that are in the hotels that have being moved into rental accommodations um there's there's there's several sort of categories of people that are being put into and actually are having priority of the rental properties above our own Bri well they don't have priority that's just not true but but the the point is that the system is chaotic at the moment and it's really not working for anybody not the people who are stuck in it not the people who are in a town or a city anywhere in Britain thinking why is that hotel not being used for things that that it could be used for so we've got to sort out the backlog and get people um more quickly judged so that we've got a secure system that's important for us all and also for those people who need to rebuild their lives that that can happen in a proper way and then the thing about rental properties in an area is like the rental system is really broken as well at the moment so I imagine lots of young people in this country and I've spoken to people recently who have been through flat after flat after flat because they keep being evicted so we've got to sort out the rental system as a whole and get that working as well as the immigration very quickly from the audience yes the lady in green um I'd just like to say isn't it the case that the excess of 500 million that's been spent on the Rwanda scheme would have actually gone a great way to clear the backlog okay thank you very much and the gentleman on the front just a quick observation I noticed that um when some of the um you guys are speaking that there are a number of individuals acknowledging what the other person is saying which is suggesting that you are agreeing on certain issues so if you are agreeing on certain issues why don't you come together on those issues that you are agreeing on yeah and for the benefit of people who are going to in the long run and benefit from whatever you do what do you come to get on those issues and work on them I I agree with you and where we can do cross party working we should do but the challenge on this issue as an example is the discussion so far has been about the backlog I want to get on top of the backlog as well it's coming down but we've got a lot more to do but you'll never get on top of the backlog if you keep getting 40,000 people on your beaches every year who enter the backlog in the first place and the way that you have to deal with that is by injecting a deterrence in the system so that people don't come on the beaches in the first so when do you think this deter is going to start working Ellie let's Ellie let's try it out and then we'll come back in a few months and see because the greens have an ideological problem with with actually protecting our borders the conservatives are trying to resolve an issue we should not be having 40,000 people turn upon our beach okay just very quick we don't have a lot of time when do you think this deterence is going to start in the are the votes going to stop this summer I wish it started already but it took four it took four to get through you're in charge of the Parliamentary timet for ab we don't have a lot of time Ellie last word le please give Ellie a word it's absolutely clear that this is an incredibly expensive way of being very cruel it will not work as a deterrent it will not work to address the issues in the Asylum system the backlog it could have been much better spent on doing that but also the reason we have people coming in boats nobody wants that to happen is because there aren't safe and legal routes for people fleeing violence to come to this country we must recognize that we have we have we have a humanitarian obligation to people fleeing violence we don't do anywhere close to our fair share glob and I can just fleeing from France we need to stop saying that imigration is a bad thing people make an amazing contribution to this country thank you very much indeed thank you all all of you very much indeed that's all we have time for this evening we're back at 7:00 tomorrow thank you to the audience thank you to our panel see you tomorrow bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 66,393

Keywords: Channel 4 News, local elections, local elections debate, election, elections uk, uk news, uk politics, uk news eu news, channel 4 news debate, debate, gloucester debate, chris farmer, alison mcgovern, daisy cooper, lee rowley, ellie chowns, reform uk, labour, liberal democrats, conservative, green party, channel4news, c4news

Id: R0y7qaeqqMI

Length: 41min 10sec (2470 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024