Labour MP calls on colleagues to end infighting and back Home Secretary's immigration plan

Labour MPs need to end infighting and back the full implementation of the Home Secretary's plans to curb legal immigration rather than seek to dilute them, MP Preet Kaur Gill has told GB News.

In an in-depth interview with Gloria De Piero, Ms Gill said: "The Prime Minister has made it very clear, Andy Burnham, that he fully backs the Home Secretary, in terms of supporting what reforms she will bring. I think it's really important that colleagues come together and look at this.

"Because if we are really serious about building trust in politics, and we want Labour voters to stay with Labour, we need to address these very difficult decisions. I appreciate they might be difficult because there will be people with a range of views. And it's up to the Home Secretary to bring the parliamentary group together.

"At the end of the day we are here to serve the country and the country has made it very clear, and that is working class voters of every type, that they want law and order restored, they want our borders secure, and they want illegal migration to be tackled and they want a fairer system and we've got to deliver on that."

Asked what her message to Shabana Mahmood would be, Ms Gill said: "Keep going. You are doing a phenomenal job, and you know what? You have the backing of the majority of the country, I would say."

She added: "Many people come here and they feel quite entitled, and I think a lot of people see that. You know, somehow that Britain owes them. Even though if you think about the past and you think about the injustices, my parents never had that attitude. They fled and left India. My grandfather, great-grandfather, fought in the First World War, Second World War.

"There was a real sense of, regardless of that, Britain gave them an opportunity. Britain gave their children the opportunity to change their lives through education, through working hard. And I think we've got to restore that social contract.

"That's exactly what Shabana is talking about in terms of, from an immigration perspective – is what does contribution look like and solidarity and community and a sense of family look like?

"The level of racism and misogyny that we face, and this idea that we suddenly want to secure our borders and want to have control, that somehow we are not progressive enough, or we don't care enough about these issues. We understand it better than anyone.

"We've seen our parents' journeys. We see our own journeys, and we see the state of Britain today. You know, people that look like me, my community, the Sikh community say to me all of the time, 'We want to see tough action by the Home Secretary. We want to see our border secured.'"

Ms Gill said it is a myth only white working-class voters want curbs on immigration, saying: "Look, I represent a very diverse constituency. Yes, of course, I've got white working-class voters. I've got about 30 per cent black minority ethnic voters, and let me tell you, working-class voters are united on this position.

"Whether they're from my background, a Sikh, whether they're Muslim, whether they're Hindu, actually they want us to take tough action on this. I get this all the time from people saying, 'What is the Home Secretary doing? We will respect Labour if it actually can restore security in terms of our borders because the Conservatives just lost control'.

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"And so this idea that it's just white working-class voters, I just think that that is so disrespectful to make it, to be so divisive when actually working-class voters, but even middle-class progressives have shifted their position because the rate of migration and the changes that we've seen in our towns and cities."

"Let's not forget, this is concentrated in certain places like Birmingham, for example. People see it every day on their doorstep because they see the difference it's making, the impact it's having locally. Whether that's young girls going to school and being taunted by single men that have arrived here living in a hotel accommodation, whether that's because they can't get a school placement, whether that's because the housing register is just absolutely blown out of proportion.

"And yet people feel that we've lived here, we've grown up here, we've contributed to the system, and when they look around, they don't see that fairness in that very same system, and that's why the Home Secretary's got to get this right. Labour has got to respond to this."

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