Priti Patel: when she was Home Secretary, she said Channel refugees were economic migrants and tried to stop the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) from saving them.

The Home Office has admitted it doesn’t have a scrap of evidence to support a long-standing claim that 70 per cent of people crossing the English Channel are “economic migrants”.

Here’s The Guardian:

As home secretary in 2021, Priti Patel told parliament that “70% of individuals on small boats are single men who are effectively economic migrants”. In December last year, with the number of boat arrivals continuing to increase, her successor, Suella Braverman, backed the assertion, saying to MPs: “There is considerable evidence that people are coming here as economic migrants, illegally.”

However, when asked via a Freedom of Information request for evidence to support Patel’s claim, the Home Office admitted it had none. Its response – dated 20 March 2023, a year after the request was sent – states: “We have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information requested.” But the former home secretary’s statement appears not to have been corrected.

Human rights groups say such claims help create a false narrative that individuals arriving by boat are not genuine asylum seekers so are less deserving of sympathy.

The Home Office’s own data confirms that most of the people who reached the UK by small boat in 2022 – at least six in 10 – would be recognised as refugees. Despite this, the British government has closed or severely restricted most safe routes to the UK, leaving people with no choice but to risk the Channel crossing.

Now, why would Tory ministers fabricate a lie that refugees are economic migrants?

Richard Murphy has an inkling:

I think he has a point. Don’t you?

Source: Home Office admits no evidence to support key claim on small boat crossings | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

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