Helen Whately has cautioned Shabana Mahmood’s latest immigration proposals face significant implementation challenges.

Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary stated: “I think the Home Secretary is going to find it incredibly difficult to put some of the things that she’s talking about into practice.”

Ms Mahmood unveiled sweeping asylum overhauls on Monday, with faster removals and a new appeals system to restore “order and control”.

Speaking to GB News Political Editor Christopher Hope, she said of the plans: “What I am offering is a genuine set of proposals that can fix the broken system that we have and retain public consent for us having an asylum system at all.”

The Conservative frontbencher highlighted internal Labour resistance and the Government’s stance on the European Convention on Human Rights as major obstacles.

Ms Whately explained: “I welcome the fact that the Government and the Home Secretary herself is now listening to people on immigration and the level of unhappiness there is about the scale of immigration and the small boats. It’s taken them over a year to recognise that they’ve done nothing about it.

“In fact, the situation has just got worse under them while they’ve been in Government. So they’re listening, and I welcome any steps that they plan to take to tighten up and stop the boats and control immigration, but the fact is, I still don’t think that they’re going far enough.”

She added: “I think that the Home Secretary is going to find it incredibly difficult to put some of the things that she’s talking about into practice. She’s going to find it very difficult because of the opposition of Labour MPs, in fact, and even herself.

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“It was only a few years ago that she seemed to be calling for an amnesty on legal migrants. So she’s going to find it very difficult with her party, and also because they say, for instance, that they won’t pull out of the ECHR, she’s going to find it difficult to do in practice because of that problem with lawfare, that we encountered when we were in Government that made it so hard in practice to do the things you want to do to stop immigration.”

Despite her criticisms, Ms Whately confirmed the Conservatives would back measures that strengthen border security.

She told GB News: “We will support things that are in the national interest, and we think it’s in the national interest to have stronger borders. So we will support them to make progress on controlling immigration, making progress on stopping the boats.

“And we know that that might be particularly important because we know lots of Labour backbenchers won’t support this, just as we said with welfare, we will support the Government because they can’t control the welfare bill, because Keir Starmer’s backbenchers don’t support controls on public spending and on benefits.”

She insisted that withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights remains essential for effective immigration control.

The shadow minister warned that without ECHR withdrawal, legal challenges would continue hampering progress.

She concluded: “I simply don’t think that they’re going to go far enough on stopping the boats. I think they’re going to get stuck.

“One specific thing is that they really need to leave the ECHR to achieve proper controls on our borders. Kemi Badenoch looked at that and decided that is going to be necessary. So unless they do that, I think they’re going to get stuck in this lawfare and not be able to make progress.”

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