Leaked recording reveals top Tory knew of flaws in post-Brexit plan to return illegal migrants

One of Kemi Badenoch's top team has admitted there were flaws in the plan to return illegal migrants after Brexit, Sky News can reveal.

Boris Johnson repeatedly told the public that Brexit would mean taking back control of Britain's borders and migration system. Plans unveiled to ease prisons crisis - politics latest But in a leaked recording obtained by Sky News, Chris Philp, now shadow home secretary, said Britain's exit from the EU - and end of UK participation in the Dublin agreement which governs EU-wide asylum claims - meant they realised they "can't any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum".

Mr Philp appeared to suggest the scale of the problem surprised those in the Johnson government. "When we did check it out… (we) found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe." In response tonight, the Tories insisted that Mr Philp was not saying the Tories did not have a plan for how to handle asylum seekers post Brexit.

Mr Philp's comments from last month are a very different tone to 2020 when as immigration minister he seemed to be suggesting EU membership and the Dublin rules hampered asylum removals. In August that year, he said: "The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like.

Of course, come the 1st of January, we'll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach." Mr Philp was also immigration minister in Mr Johnson's government so would have been following the debate closely. In public, members of the Johnson administration were claiming this would not be an issue since asylum claims would be "inadmissible.