we ve got our own show to make, so let s get on with this episode of newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello, it s james here in the studio in westminster. and it s chris in westminster, too. here we are, and one story that s dominated this week, chris, hasn t it, which has been this post office scandal? but there s one story going to dominate next week, i think, quite likely, in so much as we can forecast. what s that? it is rwanda. so it s the return of the conversation about how you deal with illegal migration. and the government is keen to have this idea of sending folk to rwanda. as newscasters will be aware, it s been getting relatively long in the tooth as an idea, but it hasn t yet happened for a million and one legal reasons. there are also very transparent differences of opinion within the conservative party about how you do it, how you make it work, can you make it work, and what s the best way of making it work? there was a bit of a to do before christmas
notjust because i think it s the right thing to do to bring down net migration, but it s also something that the public have been asking us to do, and too many governments have failed to deliver on those promises. you know, one of the reasons i left government, one of the things i m now committed to doing, is to making that public argument that a different way is possible, that we as a party and as a country can work our way through this age of mass migration in a sensible, intelligent manner, not using incendiary language or, you know, populist policies, but trying to find ways of actually delivering for the public. you very much, robert. right, let s introduce our panel. we have scarlett maguire from the polling companyjl pollsters.
30 backbenchers on the right of the party are backing plans to change it in one direction to one extent or another, and one of them s here with us. robertjenrick, conservative mp for newark. hello! hello, good evening. good evening! so, robert, give us a sense, first of all, for newscasters, about what it is that you guys are suggesting. well, our only interest is in making this work. if we re going to pursue this policy, and i strongly believe in it, i think it s absolutely critical that we do have a deterrent, and i think that illegal migration is one of the big ills facing not just this country, but all developed countries around the world today and for years to come, as we live in an age of mass migration, with millions of people on the move looking to leave, either fleeing wars and persecution, orjust for better economic prospects. so we have to put in place a deterrent like this, but we ve got to be honest with ourselves about whether this actually works or not. and having been
but it s not exclusive to voters in the red wall. conservative voters all over the country care quite strongly about it. i suppose, in that context, because we were talking to robert about the rwanda plan, it s whether the government, in pursuing the rwanda plan and then the conversation that s going on within the conservative party about how you make it work and what kind of flavour of the rwanda plan you should have, is whether kind of pursuing it and trying to make it work addresses the concerns of those 2019 conservative voters, or rather highlights the kind of failure to deal with the problem as they would see it around the whole question of illegal migration. yeah, i mean, ithought robert jenrick actually made some pretty compelling arguments. if you take this issue kind of almost in the abstract i and just say, you know, - some of the lines he came out with were challenging, you know, you can t be squeamish about this issue. it matters to people. countries that take a tough l
the government s own legal advice, which they haven t denied, says that it has a 50% chance at best of getting a single flight off to rwanda before the general election. so, if that s correct, this is destined to fail, and the public will rightly be furious that we politicians and the government have pretended that it was going to work when we knew it wasn t. newscasters who listen and watch us love understanding what it is that s led people in public life to the views that they have, and we have the space to explore that, which isn t always the case in broadcast interviews. and i wonder, robert, how your mind, if it did, changed on these issues as a result of the time you spent in the job that you re no longer in? or are your instincts broadly where they were, or was it the experience of being in thatjob that made you think, crikey, this is a bigger issue than i realised? well, i ve always, or at least for some considerable time, been concerned about migration