The Labour Government's decision to publish migrant crime "league tables" following pressure from across the political spectrum has been "welcomed" by leader of the Social Democratic Party William Coulston.Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has called on officials to release a detailed breakdown of offences committed by foreign criminals living in the UK - whilst awaiting deportation.FULL STORY HERE.
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00:00Something a lot of people have campaigned for, transparency when it comes to this data.
00:04People have filed FOI requests, including GB News as well, and been told by the Home Office,
00:10essentially, take too much resources, too much time to collate all this data and put it all
00:15together in a box for you. Seems as though it is now happening. Your thoughts?
00:21Well, I welcome it. I've long argued that we need this data. I'm slightly old-fashioned. I'm an
00:26old-fashioned Social Democrat on this. I think the public has a right to know. It's very legitimate
00:32that we should know this. And the second reason why we should know it is that you can't actually
00:37make evidence-based policy without the evidence, can you? So I think from Yvette Cooper's point of
00:43view, she needs to know, because she can't make policy if she doesn't have the data in front of
00:49her. So I think it's good. I think she has. I think there has been somewhat of a cover-up for years on
00:54this. And I think we need to thank certain MPs. And obviously, GB News, you've done your bit.
01:00But Neil O'Brien and Rupert Lowe and Nick Timothy have pressed this again and again. And Jenrick's
01:05pressed it as well. We need to know. I think the public has a right to know.
01:09What do you think could actually change when it comes to migration policy off the back of data like
01:16this? Say we found out that some country or other had far higher rates of crime. Should we sanction
01:24that country? Should we have a specific ban on visas for citizens of that country? How should this sort
01:32of data inform policy? Well, if you found out, Tom, that a particular population from a particular
01:39country was disproportionately criminal, massively so, then it would be very foolish, wouldn't it,
01:44to continue high migration rates from that country? I think to not do that is just totally
01:51irrational. But in fact, what we've had is a situation where we've lost control of the border
01:56on the South Coast. The country's economic model has been addicted to very, very high, low wage,
02:03low skilled migration for years. But we haven't had the data to look at it seriously. So criminality is
02:09one aspect. Another aspect, which I think is absolutely vital that the country open up so
02:15the citizen can see it, is net contributions per migrant population, migrant class. I think that is
02:22another bit of information that you need to have some sort of league table. You need to have some
02:26handle on what sort of contribution the person is likely to make on the basis of their population
02:32level. And if you don't have that, you can't make good policy. And yes, to answer your question
02:38directly, do I think that we should be more discriminating if we have high criminality
02:44amongst certain groups? Yes, of course we should. It would be crazy not to.
02:50People on the left or who are pro-immigration will probably say that then you're tarring everyone
02:57with the same brush. So what if, you know, one group is overrepresented in a certain crime? That
03:03shouldn't mean that someone else should suffer as a result and that this would take us down a very
03:08dangerous path where we're just picking and choosing based on the crimes that others have
03:13committed. What would you say to that, William? Well, we're governed by people that claim to be
03:19discriminating anyway. So, you know, the Tories always went on about we need high skilled migration,
03:25we need the skills we need. Well, that's a form of discrimination, isn't it? You're looking at
03:29people that fulfill certain criterias that you're looking for. I think there's nothing wrong in a
03:35democracy, a social democracy doing this. I think, indeed, it's rational not to do it. And I think
03:40that one of the reasons I'm very keen on, particularly the net contribution, the net fiscal contribution
03:45figures being published, is that there was a similar report produced, you may know about it,
03:50by Jan van der Beek and his team at Amsterdam University some years, a couple of years ago,
03:55on the net contribution of different migrant classes. Now, just to summarize that, you've got
04:00some forms of migration into Holland, they got the figures, from East Asian countries like Japan and
04:06South Korea, which were net, made net contributions, a lifetime net contribution of over 100,000 euros.
04:11There are some categories which that team estimated, sub-Saharan migrant application for,
04:17you know, migration, which was down at sort of minus 630,000 euros. That's pretty much half a
04:24million quid a pop. Now, I've long argued that, you know, the craziness down at the South Coast,
04:31if you have 700 people arriving unsolicited, undocumented, each day sometimes, I think it's
04:38not unreasonable to assume that those 700 people will cost your country 350 million over their
04:45lifetimes. And if that's the case, I think the citizens have a right to know. And then we have
04:49a right to challenge the politicians that are in charge of this, to ask them what the hell they're
04:54doing.