A MIGRATION expert has hit out at an LBC host for interrupting her several times while she tried to press the case for safe routes for asylum seekers to come to the UK.
Zoe Gardner spoke to Nick Ferrari on the radio station after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced endangering lives at sea is to be a new criminal offence, forming part of plans to tackle people smuggling.
Gardner – who worked as a policy adviser at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants – argued the UK needs to be offering a “real solution” for people risking their lives to come to these shores on small boats.
She added that “scary numbers” put out by the media are making people who want to help refugees feel as if the UK is going to be overwhelmed, when people taking these journeys only make up a small percentage of immigration to the UK.
Afterwards she said she was “fighting for my life to get a full sentence out” on the programme as she was interrupted several times by Ferrari.
Gardner said: “Let’s think about this in terms of what would be a real solution for those people. If we don’t want them to take the boats, then we have to engage seriously with what they’re escaping from that is so serious they’re willing to risk their lives in this way and we have to have solutions to share responsibility across Europe for giving them a future.
“They’re not going to disappear.”
Ferrari then stopped her and said: “But you know this is an industry that’s putting millions of dollars or euros or pounds into the pockets of people traffickers?
Fighting for my life to get a full sentence out with Nick Ferrari on LBC just now. We have to be realistic about safe routes: It’s a small number of people trying to come here & we desperately need people, too. pic.twitter.com/6MChsRNbzw
— Zoe Gardner (@ZoeJardiniere) January 31, 2025
“Yeah because we don’t offer people an alternative way to travel so we create a market for people traffickers,” Gardner responded.
Ferrari then stepped in for a second time to ask if Gardner would just “have everyone come in”.
“You started out this section with a big series of scary numbers and it makes people who really do care about helping refugees feel like we’re going to be overwhelmed. We’re talking about 3% of immigration to the country…”, Gardner said, before she was interrupted again by Ferrari while making a point about the safe route that was opened up for Ukrainians in danger.
Ferrari said: “We’re also talking about people drowning in the Channel and why it might be a good idea to try and prevent that.”
Gardner eventually went on: “How about what we did for Ukrainians? Ukraine is a country of 38 million people and it was invaded by a deranged dictator and we offered a safe route…”.
Gardner was interrupted yet again, prompting her to say: “Please let me finish my point.”
“We offered a safe route uncapped to as many Ukrainians as needed to come to safety in the UK. Not one Ukrainian got in a boat and drowned and we only received 200,000 people.
“The truth is that it’s a trickle of people that want to come to the UK and the UK needs people too.”
A bill introduced to Parliament on Thursday will allow people who refuse to be rescued by the French authorities to be jailed for up five years.
It would also allow people smugglers to be jailed for up to 14 years for handling small boat parts.
Some parents who bring their children to the UK in small boats could also face prosecution, which could ultimately split their families, a human rights assessment of the border security, asylum and immigration bill has concluded.
Campaigners have expressed concern that the bill maintains some of the draconian powers introduced by the Conservative government, including making it harder for people to claim they are victims of modern slavery, and powers to impose a cap on the number of people allowed into the UK on safe and legal routes.
Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “We are very concerned that by creating new offences, many refugees themselves could also be prosecuted, which has already been happening in some cases. This would be a gross miscarriage of justice.”
LBC has been contacted for comment about the interview.
