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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. My name's Lissy Dunn and today I'm joined by James Heel and former Labour Advisor John McTurner. James, yesterday the government published its border security, asylum and immigration bill.

What are the biggest takeaways from this?

Well, I think it shows that Labour, all the Conservatives are both having to adopt similar measures

as they try and stop the constant flow of small boats across the channel.

So a number of the measures which are going to be kept as part of the bill were ones that the Labour Party was against in 2023, including the one that the Times led on, which was about having the Modern Slavery Act disapplied to those who were coming here illegally in such crossings. That was something that Labour voted against, some people like Jess Phillips were very much against that, calling it a smuggler's dream, etc. But I think it's a reflection

of the fact that those who are consciously coming here, the very different taste to those

being smuggled in with forced labour. And Labour right now, as a government arm, very much

focused not so much on those arriving, I think, perhaps, but in terms of public rhetoric,

but those leaving. So they're very much keen to point to the 16,000 or so who've been deported

since July. They're pointing out that, you know, they've done a lot of work on the asylum

backlog, redirecting some of that money for the Rwandan scheme there. So they are talking about

people coming here, but also about how they get them out of the country. And this is all really part of their efforts to show that they're going to be different from the government.

And yet, unfortunately, though, for them, the problem still very much remain in terms of the incentives, in terms of talking about the weather.

The weather. I mean, honestly, it reduces all our politicians to weather girls and weather boys.

I mean, basically, it does hugely affect who comes across the channel and when. But this was about the early publication of the bill ahead of the second reading on February the 10th and should be expected to come into law later this year. But this is one of those big challenges, Lucy, and countries all across Europe are struggling with it. And we'll see how Yvette Cooper does compared to James Cleverley and for that, Svaldraven.

And John, we know that immigration remains a key priority for UK voters. It's one of the reasons

they've seen a surge in support for reform and the public tend to believe that Labour is

handling immigration badly. Do you think the government could have gone in harder in this issue

during its first six months in power? No, I don't think so. I think the government has done

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