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Labour’s Stephen Kinnock has had his say on the Belfast High Court ruling that provisions of the government’s flagship illegal migration legislation – which created powers to send asylum seekers to Rwanda – should be disapplied in Northern Ireland (more here).

The shadow immigration minister said it “truly beggars belief” the bill appears to have left Northern Ireland “with immigration rules that are different to the rest of the UK”.

He questioned why the government chose to “ignore” warnings from MPs that this could happen (see previous post).

Mr Kinnock went on to say that Labour is committed to the Good Friday Agreement and the Windsor Framework “in full”, and accused the government of being “more committed to its failing Illegal Migration Act”.

More broadly, he argued all pieces of government legislation to tackle immigration are “completely failing on their own terms”.

“It has been a shambles from start to finish,” he declared.

He called on the minister to “stop flogging this dead horse of a Rwanda policy and instead to adopt Labour’s pragmatic plan to stop the Tories’ small boats chaos and fix our broken asylum system”.

Labour has ‘no credible plan’

In response, legal migration minister Tom Pursglove said: “Same week, different rant, and week on week we hear the same rant about the opposition’s position on these issues.”

He said Labour has “no credible plan” to stop small boats crossings, and rejected Mr Kinnock’s “characterisation of the situation”.

He went on: “We are committed to upholding our legal obligations. But the Safety of Rwanda Act does not engage the Good Friday Agreement.”

He said while the government has “thousands of officials” working on this issue, Labour’s policy would mean a “migrant amnesty”.