Labour snubs Gosport MP as migrant boat lands overnight

Gosport MP Caroline Dinenage has accused Labour ministers of giving her absolutely no forewarning before a boat carrying 149 migrants landed in her town overnight.

Speaking to GB News after protests broke out in the Hampshire town, the Conservative MP said the arrivals came ashore at Haslar Marina late on Sunday evening following a Channel crossing from France, before being taken to Kent for processing. She told viewers the Home Office had offered neither notice nor any later contact to help her brief angry constituents.

Dinenage said she remains without a single call or message from the department. She had already messaged the Home Office minister around 1pm on Sunday after hearing another boat was heading for the area, and still had no reply. The MP, Gosport council leader Zoe Huggins and Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones had all written to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood warning that Gosport was not a suitable place for such landings.

She declared she could not express how furious she was, adding she had written directly to the Home Secretary more than two weeks earlier and received nothing back. The latest landing comes less than a month after another migrant boat was intercepted off the Hampshire coast and its passengers taken to Dover. Local people, she made plain, have been left to face an unpleasant and difficult situation with no information from the Government that now runs the system.