Tory MP provokes fury as he announces in Commons he has banned asylum seekers cases from his surgery
Dudley North MP Marco Longhi is facing calls to resign after he said he will no longer deal with asylum seeker cases.
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Your support makes all the difference.Labour MPs erupted in fury as a rightwing Tory told the Commons that he has instructed his constituency staff to refuse any cases brought to him by asylum seekers.
Calls of “resign!” could be heard across the chamber as Dudley North MP Marco Longhi got up to speak.
His intervention was another shot across the bows for Rishi Sunak with the right of his party making their views clear on his failure to stop the small boats with asylum seekers on them.
Mr Longhi said: “I have stopped the large number of so-called asylum seekers from attending my surgey and I have instructed my office to not deal with asylum seekers for two reasons.”
His intervention drew cries of “shame” and “resign” from the opposition benches, but Mr Longhi ploughed on.
He said: “As MPs, we have zero authority, zero mandate over Home Office decisions. We have very limited resources and I for one want to dedicate my resources by putting Dudley people first.”
Leader of the house Penny Mordaunt said: “he raises a specific point. We have finite resources and we have to direct them in a specific way. That is why we need to control our borders. That is what the British people want.”
The exchanges followed a difficult week for Mr Sunak and his Tory government.
A report this week by former Home Office minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned from Mr Sunak’s government in December, with a hard right blueprint to clamp down on legal and illegal immigration.
With Dover MP Natalie Elphicke defecting from the Tories and the prime minister failing to keep his “stop the boats” pledge, pressure is mounting on the issue.
Ms Mordaunt insisted: “We are making good progress, we have continued to make good progress.”
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