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WATCH: Nana Akua fumes 'it is a deterrent' in heated Rwanda clash
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May 16, 2025
Former Labour MP Bill Rammell and GB News host Nana Akua have clashed over Prime Minister Keir Starmer's newly announced plans to send refused asylum seekers to overseas "return hubs".The heated exchange centred on comparisons between Starmer's proposal and the previous Conservative government's Rwanda deportation scheme, which Labour scrapped upon taking office last July.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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You have to come to the UK anyway
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We'll still pay all the legal bills and everything else. They're appealing and appealing and appealing
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It's only at the very, very, very last minute that they may get sent back
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Bill Rummel. With respect, I disagree. I think this is really worth pursuing
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Because this offshore sending of people who failed the asylum process, it's, one, it gives us a means to remove them from the country
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Two, it will act as a deterrent. This is not the same as Rwanda
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Why? Because Rwanda was overturned. Was a deterrent? Rwanda was overturned by the courts, not just European courts
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but British courts, because of sending people to a country with major human rights concerns
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It also didn't work as a deterrent, because only about 100 people would have been..
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It hadn't started. It hadn't started. It was working. It was scalable
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If you looked at the estimates, it wasn't scalable. It was. That was the maximum number of people to go there
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But the point is, it's a deterrent, So you don't need loads of things, loads of space for people in a deterrent
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And it was absolutely scalable. But the point is, it was a deterrent. And we had Patrick Christie interviewing migrants
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who were waiting for Keir Starmer to take office so they could cross the Channel
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And that's from their own mail, saying that the Rwanda they put off by Rwanda I don think it was ever going to be a long deterrent But you don know do you I don know But hold on Another difference between that scheme and what is being explored at the moment is that
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this is actually backed by the UN Commissioner for Refugees, which protects you from the
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legal challenge. But doesn't the UN also use Rwanda anyway? Yeah, it does. You have used Rwanda as a processing centre
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To keep girls in Afghanistan who are in danger. So Rwanda was used by the UN, the very people you're quoting
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Yeah, but I'm sorry. You know, this wasn't just European courts, it was British courts who overturned it
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because of the human rights concerns. My concern about this is actually the timescale
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And I think we need this to be brought forward. I don't know what happened with Albania
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My understanding is Albania wasn't credibly in the running. And it just underlines one of my beefs about the government
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after nine months, that the communications is bluntly not effective. Bill, can I ask you, we had a discussion last weekend about Keir Starmer
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I suggested he was reacting to reform's election result. You said, no, they've had this white paper in the pipeline for six months
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But it's clear since the election two weeks ago or so, Keir Starmer's tweeted about migration 15 times
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He's talking about getting tough, I won't stand for it, this and that. You have to concede He is trying to My introduction on my show was about them copying reform You have to concede slightly I beg you please that Keir Starmer is reacting to reform with this kind of rhetoric
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On tone, you may be right, but on substance, not. You know, go back to the manifesto
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and nothing got into the Labour manifesto without Keir Starmer's explicit endorsement
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and there's a clear commitment to reduce net migration and to wean us off a reliance on foreign workers
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that's built into the party's prospectus for power. And all the measures that have been taken
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the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee estimates by 2028 net migration will be down to 240,000
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from almost a million that we inherited. Now, if that is achieved, we can have a debate about
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is that the right level, do we need to go further? But it will be light years better than the situation we inherited
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It will be. I mean, my other issue with this is is the moment we let these people into our country
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to wander amongst the countryside and wherever they want to go, A, they can just disappear, which many of them do
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but B, within the ten years that it takes them to appeal, they meet people, they have families
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and then that gives them their final claim to stay right to a family life
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We have to stop this. They shouldn't be here in the first place. It's costing a fortune
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Hold on. Right to a family life. One of the very welcome changes within the White Paper is reframing Article 8 which is the element of the European Convention on Human Rights that leads to these ludicrous rulings like you allowed to
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stay in the country because your kids like chicken nuggets. That is unacceptable and
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it's part of the way that we tackle this problem. All right, let's talk about the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy. Apparently he yelled F French
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at me, says the cab driver. Foreign Secretary, yeah, he apparently said it twice over a furious
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route over a taxi fare. I don't believe it for a minute
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What bit don't you believe? That he yelled effing French. Well, he might have done
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If I drove away with all your stuff in the back of my car, you might say something like that
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Well, I know David Lammy and I don't believe he would have done that. However, David
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and his wife were bluntly the victims of a scam and a crime
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They agreed a price and the Foreign Office officials who were accompanying him agreed a price
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at the beginning of the journey. At the end of the journey, because the driver
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had worked out who Lammy was. He tried to charge him £600. But what's he doing, getting
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the equivalent of an Uber? Right. And that's the point I would go on to make. I was a Foreign
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Office Minister for three years. Regularly overseas, I would have protection officers
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with me. And certainly the Foreign Secretary, even in this country, had protection officers
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And I don't know why or how David was allowed to go on a 600-mile journey on his own. William
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