Tory MP criticised after demanding legally settled families be deported
Katie Lam said move would make UK ‘culturally coherent’ and that a large number of people ‘need to go home’
A Conservative MP tipped as a future party leader has been condemned for saying large numbers of legally settled families must be deported, in order to ensure the UK is mostly “culturally coherent”.
The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, has been urged to condemn the comments by Katie Lam, a Home Office shadow minister and a whip for the party. Lam was previously a special adviser to Boris Johnson and is often described as a rising star of the new intake.
Lam told the Sunday Times she believed large numbers of people with legal status in the UK would need to have their right to stay revoked and should “go home”.
She said: “There are also a large number of people in this country who came here legally, but in effect shouldn’t have been able to do so. It’s not the fault of the individuals who came here, they just shouldn’t have been able to do so.
“They will also need to go home. What that will leave is a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people.”
In a letter to Badenoch, the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, called it “deeply concerning and unpatriotic. People who have come to the United Kingdom legally, played by the rules and made it their home do not need to ‘go home’. This is their home.”
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From left to right: La France Insoumise deputy leader Nathalie Oziol, Die Linke general secretary Janis Ehling, Workers’ Party of Belgium general secretary Peter Mertens, British-Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana