Downing Street insisted Boris Johnson continued to have full confidence in Priti Patel to tackle the migrants crisis.
Boris Johnson has full confidence in Priti Patel according to Number 10.
Aaron Chown
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “The Prime Minister fully recognises the work that the Home Secretary is doing to try and resolve this challenging issue.”
The spokesman said the single biggest measure that could be taken to resolve the issue would be for France to accept the return of migrants.
In response to criticism from France about the UK’s handling of the situation, the spokesman said: “The single biggest deterrent, the single biggest step we could take together with the French would be a returns agreement, as the Prime Minister set out last week.
“But we are already taking steps through our Nationality and Borders Bill to reduce the pull factors to the UK and make our asylum system firmer but fairer.”
France’s interior minister said Boris Johnson’s publication of a letter to Emmanuel Macron was “a mockery”.
Gerald Darmanin told BFMTV: “When there are serious diplomatic exchanges.. and lives that are at stake… and some minutes later you see that a letter, which no one has ever mentioned before, is published on Twitter from the British Prime Minister to the President of the French Republic before the President of the Republic has received it, it’s a bit peculiar.”
“When in this letter the English say the French should ‘take back their migrants, all their migrants’, it’s a mockery.”
He added that British/French relations were not currently “normal” and that “our private exchanges are not always in line with our public exchanges.”