Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, responding to Amber Rudd’s conference speech, said:

“It sounded like the Prime Minister had a heavy hand in drafting the Home Secretary’s speech. We’ve heard these conference promises on net migration and child migrants before and they haven’t come to anything - people will take them with a pinch of salt. On Theresa May’s watch, net migration reached record levels. 

"Amber Rudd is right to introduce a scheme to help communities address the pressures of migration, as Jeremy Corbyn called for last week. But she had depressingly little to say about the largest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War and failed to repeat the commitment to taking a share of adult refugees. 

"This morning, the Prime Minister said that injustice makes her angry. But people will see a gap between the rhetoric and the Government’s continued failure to support Birmingham families with legal costs or ordering an inquiry into Orgreave. 

"The Home Secretary’s boasts of protecting the Police will appear hollow after six years of budget cuts - axing thousands of officers and allowing knife and violent crime to rise.

"Some of the cast may have changed but the script is the same. Theresa May and her party still have no answers to the problems facing Britain.”

Ends