Full Speech: Wilkinson calls for Big Tech to fund new police agency to tackle serious online crimes and challenges Zia Yusuf to immigration debate

In his keynote speech at Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, the Party's Home Affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson MP announced plans to create a brand new police agency to tackle serious online crimes. The party's pledge will be funded entirely by a new online crime levy on Big Tech and AI companies whose platforms enable it.

In the speech, Max also laid out plans to end dangerous small boat crossings, close down Jenricks's hotels, and finally fix the broken asylum system, left by the Conservatives, by entering the EU's landmark new Migration and Asylum Pact.

Max also laid down a challenge to Reform UK's Home Affairs Spokesperson Zia Yusuf, saying when are we going to debate? Or are you a chicken?.

Full Speech Text

Hello Conference!

We're here!

Robert Jenrick eh? What a plonker.

From the mighty lion to the weak lamb.

No - I know what you are thinking - not Katie Lam.

They don't get on so well these days after all that awkward defection business.

It turns out that the hard right doesn't have a sense of humour after all - how deeply un-British

Maybe they're the real snowflakes.

Conference, it's easy to mock Jenrick as the plonker he is.

But he and his party are plonkers with dangerous ideasand seventy two million pounds to deliver them.

And their allies in the Conservative Party are weakly following them.

We will stand up to them.

We must, because Nigel Farage's path to power runs through Liberal Democrat seats.

Reform will use their mega money to dominate the airwaves - to drive their warped vision of Britain onto our TV and phone screens to divide us.

Who will stand up against their poison?

Liberals, that's who.

We will stand up against the agenda of Reform - and those Tory MPs who parrot the same poison as they prepare for a grubby deal after the next election.

We will stand up because Liberal Democrats always stand up for liberty, for equality and community.

And for the universal rights of our fellow human beings - we always have and we always will.

And in Home Affairs we will fight for those values.

Nowhere is that fight against the hard right more important than in Home Affairs

I promise you today that the Liberal Democrats will fight to achieve a safe and controlled asylum system.

We will take every opportunity available to boost policing and tackle crime.

To stop violence against women and girls.

We will speak out to tackle the horrifying rise in antisemitism in this country and the islamophobia, and racism so often perpetrated by politicians on the hard right too.

And underpinning everything we do will be clear analysis of the problems and real, workable liberal solutions.

That's how we build a liberal Britain and put a stop to Reform and the Conservatives.

And it's how we make Labour realise they're going wrong too.

Nowhere has the culture war been waged harder than when it comes to immigration.

I'm a liberal internationalist. I'm proud of the role Britain has always played in welcoming people in need.

As we did during the Second World War for Jews forced to flee Nazi Germany.

As we did to help Hong Kongers - a legacy of our own Paddy Ashdown.

As we did just recently when Putin's Russia invaded Ukraine.

That must continue but it won't under the chaotic, dangerous and mean system the Conservatives created.

And it won't with Labour's proposed immigration changes either.

For years now, Conservative MPs - some of whom are now in Reform by the way - have purposefully caused havoc in our asylum system.

Conference, was it not Robert Jenrick himself who bragged about opening up more asylum hotels when he was Immigration Minister?

And was it not the Tories in the Home Office who stopped processing asylum cases leaving taxpayers to foot the bill for a huge backlog?

We have seen their politicians visit Dover and Calais over and over.. and over againand what do they do when they get there?

Shamelessly point at the mess that they created while blaming everyone else.

Taking a boat into the channel to pretend they've started a gun fight with the French for a few extra likes on X - I'm looking at you Chris Philp.

Imagine having that much brass neck.

And now both parties want to strip British citizens of our hardwon rights.

Conference, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights will not fix our asylum system.

It will not stop dangerous Channel crossings - not a single boat - and it will not stop the criminal gangs.

What leaving the ECHR would do is rip up hardwon British rights for everyone.

British rights that shone the light of truth after victims of the Hillsborough Disaster were falsely blamed for their own deaths

British rights that forced the state to admit that poor equipment had contributed to the deaths of our troops in Iraq

and British rights that uncovered repeated police failings of victims of the Rochdale grooming gangs

And what's the Labour response to this hard right agenda? Their Home Secretary has indulged in the sort of divisive language that we would usually expect from the authoritarian right

Well let me tell you Home Secretary - no matter how hard you chase, you'll never catch up with Farage - that is a fool's errand.

Now conference - all the other parties are missing the point.

The elephant in the roomthat only we will talk about.

Brexit.

That's right. The botched deal that blew up our relations with Europe.

And the removal of controlled and safe routes - that's what started the small boat crossings.

Here is what Reform and their allies do not want the country to remember:

Before the referendum, not a single small boat crossed the channel.

Since then, more than 200,000 people have tried to make that dangerous journey - some, tragically, never making it to safety on those flimsy rubber dinghies.

The new status quo created by the Tories and Reform and then weaponised by them has led directly to the unrest and mistrust we see across the nation.

There is a solution: to enter the EU's landmark new Migration and Asylum Pact.

To put a stop to dangerous Channel crossings and the criminal gangs' business model once and for all.

And so the most vulnerable are protected from harm.

And to close down Jenrick's hotels, which never worked for communities or asylum seekers, despite costing taxpayers a fortune.

This is the solution we need to build an asylum system British people can trust - that is fair and effective for all.

Leaving the ECHR would be Brexit two-point-oh - another disaster that grinds this country's political and legal system to a halt, and fixes nothing.

You can see that, and so can I.

One person who can't is Zia Yusuf.

The wannabe MP who spends so much time on X posting increasingly extreme and offensive ideas that even the Reform party is blocking his route to Parliament.

No wonder he's so angry.

So Zia - you're a self-styled hard man of politics - always up for a scrap.

I'm not afraid to mix it - so when are we going to debate?

Or are you a chiken?

Now where were we? Ah yes, Meta glasses.

Conference, whilst Reform wants to erode people's rights, we Liberal Democrats want to protect them.

Which is why I wanted to show you these.

You may know them as, let's be honest, as perv goggles creep glasses stalker specs.

These are more than a benign piece of tech that provides a bit of fun.

Since I put them on, I have been recording every single one of you without consent and without warning.

Does that make you feel uncomfortable? Because it should.

Yet this is becoming the new norm, because this Government won't stand up to Big Tech to protect our civil liberties.

Conference - I'm not a Luddite - I'm the MP for a town with a thriving cyber and tech sector.

The technology in these glasses could be a force for good.

But it needs regulation.

Because women and girls are being secretly filmed and sexualised without consent - for clicks and profit.

On Instagram, well over half of content filmed with smartglasses features harassment

That is totally unacceptable.

Thanks to my brilliant colleagues in the Commons, Anna Sabine and Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrats are leading the charge to properly regulate the manufacture and use of smart glasses and pushing for legal loopholes to be closed around covert filming.

Because the Liberal Democrats will always fight for the safety of women and girls.

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The most serious of crimes taking place online are simply not being dealt with.

We have heard the most horrendous accounts from specialists in online child sexual exploitation.

Manuals available on the web for child sex offenders telling them how they can commit their sickening crimes without getting caught.

Accounts of people like Robert Chown, who - from his home in South London - was masquerading as a teenage boy online to target thousands of children, some as young as six.

Many of us here today are parents and grandparents.

The thought that our children could be at the mercy of these people fills me with horror.

This is truly evil behaviour.

And it must be dealt with.

That's why we are calling for a new police agency with the resource and expertise to take on serious online crime.

Yes - to take on child sexual abuse - but also sexual exploitation, the use of AI nudification tools, and online-facilitated drugs, weapons and human trafficking.

Robert Chown used Google Translate hundreds of times to generate sexual instructions from English into Russian and Polish.

It's possible he used gaming platforms enjoyed by children to locate his victims.

The National Crime Agency has set out the steps platforms could take to decrease the risk of child sexual abuse material online, yet instances were up a horrifying 30% in 2025.

Big Tech is simply not doing enough to keep our children safe.

They must be called to account - and the only language they understand is money.

That is why this agency will be paid for by a new levy on the Big Tech and AI companies.

The very organisations currently enabling and abetting this harm.

Now they need to help us clear it up.

Our policy would put a quarter of a billion pounds a year into stopping these atrocities.

And create a clear incentive for the online giants to get a grip.

Because the more cases involving their services that they fail to report - the more they will pay.

This will have real benefits for our communities too.  

This new agency would free up local officers to get back onto our streets and keep communities safe.  

Conference, this is how we reform policing at the local and national level to meet modern threats.

In a liberal society, everyone should feel free from danger in their communities and online.

That is what the Liberal Democrats will deliver.

But we can only deliver if we are in power.

That is why it is so crucial we challenge the hypocrisy of Reform - and the Conservatives who mimic them.

The people who say they care about free speech, but really only care when it's free speech for them - and who plan to rip up our legal right to free speech anyway.

The people who are so keen to protect women and girls, but endorse hitting them over the head with a crutch when those women ask difficult questions.

The people who say they love this country, but whose plan to fix the asylum system they broke is to take away the laws that protect British people.

Britain is being held back. By a broken system - but also by parties that are desperate for it to stay broken.
 

They pretend to care, but we know they don't.
 

And can we rely on this weak Labour government to fix it? No of course we can't.
 

Liberal Democrats care - for you and every other citizen frustrated by a system that holds this great country back.
 

And that's why I know a safer, more prosperous liberal Britain is within our reach.
 

We care, so it is our duty to fight for it.