Luke Graham: Scotland wants solutions to the problems of small boats as much as the rest of the UK

Luke Graham was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Ochil and Perthshire South from 2017 to 2019, the candidate in Perth and Kinross-shire in 2024, and a former head of the Downing Street Union Unit.

 This weekend has seen anti-immigrations protests all over the UK in Scotland, England, Wales and reportedly in County Antrim in Northern Ireland. In every town and city, the protests have followed the same theme and organised by similar groups (this is on both protest and counter protest sides). Immigration used to be a minority problem – usually focused on certain regions of England, is now an undeniably British concern, with every part of the country wanting action taken.

Immigration and large numbers of asylum seekers is not a uniquely British problem, as seen by riots in France and other European countries and recently in Ireland, which was quoted to me on the doorstep over the weekend by a woman who had her granddaughter’s school at the heart of the Irish demonstrations.

But this is not a simple problem. Slogans like “send them back” or “stop the boats” ignore legal realities and human consequences. Tow a dinghy back across the Channel and you risk drowning those on board. Nor does it answer the challenges we have with the thousands already here — housed in hotels at huge expense, fuelling local anger.

The hotel scheme was meant to be temporary. Instead, it has become a £6–8 million-a-day cost to taxpayers and a blow to local economies. In Perth (a Scottish location of one of this weekend’s protests), a city of just 58,000, two prominent hotels — including a newly refurbished Radisson Blu — have been closed off for years. That’s more than 20 per cent of the city’s hotel capacity gone, constraining growth in a place crying out for jobs, investment, and footfall. You can understand why local resentment is building.

However, these hotel closures not only impact local plans, by taking up 20 per cent plus of hotel capacity in a city, they limit the economic opportunities these hotels were designed to create, at a time where we want to be driving growth. Perth and most cities and towns across the UK are crying out for increased footfall, more affordable housing and more local businesses to reduce unemployment and tackle some of the long-term structural issues we experience as a country.

A lot of the problem with our immigration and asylum system is administration – we have implemented many schemes with noble intent e.g. the Afghan Resettlement Programme but lack the system to process these applications in a timely manner and get the right people within a reasonable timeframe and then integrate them into British life. We need to use more technology, accelerate timeframes and not hold thousands in unemployed limbo.

I know from serving in government that policy changes of the scale can be difficult. However, inaction is not an option. There is no one golden policy to solve this challenge, the net migration drop from 906k to 431k 2023 to 2024 under the Conservatives shows that new policies such as Rwanda and visa tightening can work.

Politically we also have few options – the SNP clearly state they want more immigrants and will house more asylum seekers in “sanctuary councils” – I look forward to seeing this on their leaflets in the forthcoming Holyrood elections.

Reform is the other end of the spectrum promising “mass deportations” while being hazy about the details of how this would be delivered. This leaves the Conservatives on the centre-right looking for controlled immigration in their recent White Paper and announcing their position on the ECHR shortly.

Finally, Labour, who are in Government and can do something about this are making the right moves internationally, following the Conservatives moves to lock down international traffickers and try and stop the boats before they set off on the Channel, but they need to do far more locally.

So here are my recommendations for the Labour government to enact in the short term:

• Cut hotel use by half — repurpose former MoD sites, spread capacity fairly, but stop shutting down key economic assets in local towns.
• Boost growth where hotels are used — not just per-bed payments, but serious investment: lower business rates, infrastructure, and support for entrepreneurs to offset lost capacity.
• Drive integration – Coming to the UK does not mean you need to abandon your past culture, but you do need to embrace ours: our language, our laws, our norms, we cannot have a two (or three) tier Britain – councils, police and the community need to work together to do this.
• Act now – Having been in government I know how difficult changing and enacting policies can be. However, this is a reason not an excuse, we showed in Covid how dramatic changes can be brought quickly. This situation is now urgent, and people want to see change not hear warm words.

Labour has the majority and levers of power to act, if they don’t, they should be ready to be pushed out of the way by those that will.