Greens call for safe and legal routes

10 May 2024

Responding to Labour Leader Keir Starmer's speech in Dover, Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said:

"Labour is right to signal it will abandon the government's inhumane Rwanda deportation plan, but it has failed to offer people seeking asylum the safe and legal routes that would offer a real alternative to people smugglers, or tackle the roots of the asylum crisis.

"I don't want people risking their lives crossing the channel in small boats.

"But the way to end this awful spectacle isn't Labour's punitive, inhumane alternative to the Conservatives 'failed Rwanda scheme.

"It is providing safe and legal routes for people to apply for asylum from overseas, working for strong international co-operation on supporting asylum seekers and working to address the reasons that people are having to claim asylum - including wars, poverty and the climate crisis."