Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, CPC 2025 Speech

Chris Philp MP, Shadow Home Secretary, CPC 2025 Speech

“Now I think this is my 25th conference. And it's also ten years since I was elected to Parliament.  You never forget that first election.  I remember leaving the count as the sun rose over Croydon, and I turned to my wife and saying, “in your wildest dreams did you ever imagine you'd be leaving a general election count with your husband having been elected as a Member of Parliament?”. She turned to me and replied, “In my wildest dreams you don't feature”.

Now, the Home Office is a tough department, but I did not expect to be on my second opposite number already. When Keir Starmer talks about a one-in-one-out policy, it turns out he didn't mean illegal immigrants, he meant Home Secretaries.

And it's not just the Home Secretary. In the last reshuffle the Prime Minister removed more ministers from the Home Office than he has illegal immigrants back to France.

Now, let's start with a simple fact. Keir Starmer lied to get power. He lied to the Labour Party about what he believed in, he lied to the country about what he would do, and he lied to himself that he was up to the job.

No wonder Labour spent their conference plotting to replace Keir Starmer, who believes nothing, with Andy Burnham who apparently believes anything.

Keir Starmer came to office with no proper plan, no competent team and no principles. The result? The worst start for a newly elected government in decades.  

So, we must learn not just the lessons of our defeat last year, but also the lessons of Labour's victory.  We must never repeat Labour's mistakes – winning an election on a false prospectus and arriving in power with no plan.

The last general election was incredibly tough for us. But I know this.  Conservative values and Conservative principles are more important today than ever before. We have a Labour government taking us back to the 1970s – inflation doubling, unemployment rising, taxes sky rocketing, successful people fleeing the country in droves. A real fiscal black hole opening up to swallow Rachel Reeves. Rampant trade unions dictating policy.  All led by a weak Prime Minister who's lost control of his government and who watches passively as they drift a million miles from moderate Blairism. It's a cross between incompetence and old school, destructive socialism – and we Conservatives will fight it tooth and nail.

And what does Reform offer? They offer simple slogans with no substance, scribbled in a pub on the back of fag packet. That will not fix our country.

So, we must show we have the right principles and the right plan. Because if we apply Conservative principles with courage and with conviction, I know our country will be strong, prosperous and safe again – and that our best days still lie ahead.

And that's why I'm proud to be a Conservative.  As a south London Grammar school boy, I believe in opportunity. Having studied Physics at University, I believe in practical solutions which actually work. And before Parliament, I set up and ran several businesses. Now, my very first business – set up when I was 23 – was a delivery company.  I started off driving the delivery van myself and managing generally to avoid crashing it. 

A few years later, that company was listed on AIM, was bought by a large competitor, which in turn is now part of Tesco. 

So, I believe in hard work and free enterprise, and I literally know what it is to deliver. 

It's a shame no Labour cabinet minister, not even one, has ever set up a business. Although some do seem to have worked in the creative industries – mainly CV creation.

Look, Rachel Reeves may not be a real banker, but she did work in customer complaints, which I imagine is coming in handy now.

Now, let me start with Labour's clearest failure, which is on borders. Their weak gimmicks have not worked. First, they said they would smash the gangs. Well, that is laughable. Then they said the French would stop boats near the coast, that hasn't happened either. 

Next, they said they would send a handful of people back to France. Maybe one of them can have a turn at being French Prime Minister.

But none of their gimmicks have worked. This year so far has been the worst year in history for illegal immigrants crossing the channel. 

And Channel migrants have committed some terrible crimes, including brutal rapes and sexual assaults of young children. Some have even then blamed that on their own culture. Labour has lost control of our borders, and they are not fit to govern.

And Keir Starmer has been saying for decades that calling for border control is somehow racist.  We have seen him smear campaigners as “far right” for demanding the very inquiry into rape gangs he was finally forced into agreeing.

His government even instructed lawyers to argue that the rights of illegal immigrants were more important than the rights of people in places like Epping.  It's disgusting.

Well, I'm here to say border control is not racist. Standing up for rape gang victims is not far right. And if Keir Starmer won't stand up for Britain, then this Conservative Party will.

Now, this weekend saw a historic announcement – that a Conservative government would leave the ECHR. Because we cannot, any longer, remain part of a system that prevents us from controlling our borders – no matter how noble its original aims. Those aims have been twisted over the years by judges here and in Strasbourg, so the ECHR now protects dangerous foreign criminals and illegal immigrants.

This madness has to end.  We must leave the ECHR. We must do it as soon as possible.

And we will use the freedom provided by leaving to ban asylum and other claims for illegal immigrants.  We will abolish the immigration tribunal, thereby getting rid of every single activist judge. We will stop vexatious judicial review, and we will end legal aid for immigration cases, so our money is no longer wasted on this.

We will use visa sanctions to make sure countries take back their own nationals.  We will set up a removals force to remove 150,000 a year, who have no right to be here. Three quarters of a million over a Parliament.

And we will deport all illegal arrivals within a week and all foreign criminals. That's our plan back to their country of origin if safe and possible or a third country like Rwanda if not.  

So, Labour's gimmicks are not working. And Reform's slogans, written on the back of a fag packet, collapse after a few minutes of cursory scrutiny. We are the only party with the courage to act and the diligence to do detail.  We will secure our country's borders. We will end illegal immigration.

Let me turn to legal migration. I'll start by being brutally honest. For many years now, legal migration has been far too high. High under successive governments, including the last one.

It was a mistake. It should never have been allowed to happen. And under new leadership, we pledge it will never happen again.

Here's another truth. Mass low-skilled immigration is not good for our country. It puts pressure on housing. It puts pressure on hospitals and schools – and before the open borders Left say anything, less than 3 per cent of recent immigration has been for NHS doctors and nurses.

It also undermines social cohesion.  Over a million people speak no or little English.  In one east London Borough, a shocking 73 per cent of children don't speak English as their first language.  

For some nationalities, workforce participation– especially for women – is pitifully low. And Afghan nationals men are 22 times more likely to be convicted of a sex offence. We can't carry on like this.

A nation that is not united by common values and a common identify will fracture and break. As Abraham Lincoln said, a house divided cannot stand. As so it with our society.  A fractured society will lead to a broken country.

Being British is not about colour.  But it is about accepting and embodying our long-standing values as a nation. It is about loving this country and its history, and believing in this United Kingdom.  It means caring more about this country than about any other.  That is what it means to be British.

And here's another truth. We must also be honest that mass immigration is not good for the economy. Just 1 in 7, only 1 in 7, of recent arrivals from outside Europe came here primarily for work. And even those who did come here to work, around half did so for low wages.  And people who work on low wages pay less in tax than they consume in services. So, it is a myth, its untrue, that mass low skill immigration is good for the economy.  It isn't.

Perhaps one reason that productivity has stagnated is that some businesses have relied on importing low-skilled workers instead of investing in technology and automation, as many other countries have.

And one of the reasons there are 9 million adults not working is that business has hired low-skilled foreign workers instead. So, rather than import low-skilled workers, let's get people here into work and let's invest in technology.

Now, of course we welcome limited high-skilled immigration. In the tech sector, in the finance sector. In scientific research, or for medicine, we should make it easy to come and work in those high-skill, high-wage sectors. But the days of mass low-skilled migration have to end.

And that is why we will ensure that those who have come already to work, but have then not worked or have only worked on low wages, must leave when their visa expires.

And that is why only those who are making a contribution can stay permanently, and those who are not citizens cannot expect to receive any benefits funded by taxpayers.

And that is why we will set a binding annual cap on immigration, voted each year by our sovereign Parliament. And a Conservative government will set that cap at a low level to ensure more people leave than arrive. So, we will deliver sustained negative net migration.

This is a common-sense plan. Strong policies. Properly worked through. Real change. Building a genuinely united society. That is the change we will deliver.

And we will have a common-sense plan for crime and policing too. Supporting the fantastic Conservative Police and Crime Commissioners we have elected. Stand up and have a round of applause. There we are. Fighting crime up and down the country.

And while I am saying thank you to our team I should say thank you to Katie Lam and our shadow ministerial team and Matt Vickers and Alicia Kearns and Harriet Cross.

Now, nothing is more important than keeping our families safe. And this calls for zero tolerance on crime.

But Labour seems more interested in what people say on social media than they are in catching burglars. It is time to end the madness of police showing up on someone's doorstep because they have offended someone online.  The police should catch real criminals, not off-colour tweets.

Policing non-criminal social media posts is a catastrophic waste of time, and it tramples on free speech. In government we would end this nonsense, and we will abolish non-crime hate incidents. So you can tweet away.

Conference, there is no room in policing for politically correct posturing. And what I have to tell you now will shock you – there is a so-called anti-racism commitment plan from the College of Policing and the Police Chiefs Councils that literally says policing should not be colour blind.

Let me be clear: yes, it, should.

Treating racial groups differently to engineer the same arrest rate even if offending rates are different is immoral, it's plain wrong. People should stand equal before the law. It is that simple. Woke nonsense in policing has to end and as Home Secretary I will scrap that absurd document.

Now, we left office with record ever police numbers – nearly 150,000, in fact 149,769 to be precise, on March 2024. Not that I was counting. Now, under Labour these numbers are already going down – while shoplifting has surged 20 per cent to a record level and overall crime went up 7 per cent in Labour's first year. Reversing the declining trend under the last government, I might add.

Real crimes are going uninvestigated. Weak on crime, weak on the causes of crime. That is Labour today.

So, we need to turn this around. We commit today to hiring 10,000 extra police officers at a cost of £800 million per year. Funded by some of the Chancellor's savings announced on Monday.

These 10,000 extra police officers will catch more criminals, and they will protect our streets. That is our commitment.

And we will use some of these extra officers to deliver surge hotspot policing in 2,000 high-crime neighbourhoods across the country. They will deliver 8 million hours a year of hotspot surge patrolling and prevent 35,000 crimes. 

Every area where there is a serious crime problem should have intensive patrolling, all year round. That will deter crime, and it will catch criminals. All of the evidence clearly shows that this works, as I saw with Katy in Brighton a year or so ago. Katy Bourne the PCC for Sussex. So, we will mandate. And support for her mayoral campaign, I hope.

So, we will mandate this hotspot patrolling.

Now, we will also take knives off the streets. As a London MP, I'm afraid to say, I've seen first-hand the devastating effects of knife crime, including seeing the unimaginable grief of bereaved parents at their child's funeral. I'm never going to forget that, as long as I live.

Now, stop and search takes knives off the streets.  It catches criminals. When its use is measured, not against the general population, but when its use is measured against the offending population, the use of stop and search is not racially disproportionate.

Now under Mayor of London Sadiq Khan stop and searches dropped 60 per cent and what do you think happened to knife crime? It went up by 86 per cent, under Sadiq Khan. People are losing their lives as a result of this piece of Labour woke ideology.

It's insane that the smell of cannabis alone, or someone wearing a menacing mask alone, does not generally allow legally a stop and search.

Now, in my view, a single suspicion indicator should be enough. So, in our hotspot areas we will allow routine stop and search without suspicion, anyone can be searched. We will change the law to do this, and we will triple the use of stop and search. Lives will be saved, and knives will be taken off our streets. We have the courage to do that, Labour does not.

Now, we will also continue to fight for victims of rape gangs – where the sickening rape of young girls was covered up because the perpetrators were of mainly Pakistani origin. The government only agreed to a national inquiry, as you saw from that video, because they were forced to and months later that inquiry has still not been set up. Keir Stramer may think standing up for rape gang victims is a far-right bandwagon, but we think it's justice, and we will keep fighting until we get it.

Now, we will also fight the scourge of terrorism. We stand here on the anniversary of the atrocity committed on October 7th 2023. A day that will live in infamy. And we saw it on the streets of this city, just a few miles from where we now stand, at 9:31 last Thursday morning.

But let me say this, we will never be intimidated by terror. We will stand with this country's Jewish community and fight, with all our energy and all our resolve, the ancient evil of antisemitism wherever it is found.

And we must be honest. Islamist extremism is the clear majority of counter terrorism case-loads. We must all stand up, al of us in society, to extremism wherever we see it. Because standing by and saying nothing when encountering extremism is complicity. And those expressing extremism or antisemitism or racial, religious hatred of any kind, or support for terrorism who are not British citizens should be removed from this country, including those at the student marches today.

And I would like to thank all the officers who responded bravely to last Thursday's terrorist murder, and to all the officers up and down the county and the security services who take risks to protect us every single day. So let us say this to them, thank you.

Now let me finish by saying this. There is now only one party that will stand up for working families and for business; only one party that will stand up for pensioners, for farmers, for parents and pupils; only one party that will stand up for our military; only one party that will stand for law and order; only one party with a proper plan to protect our borders and only one party that will stand up for Britain and all its people. That party is the Conservative Party. And if we stand together, if we stick together we will win together, and deliver the change this country needs.”