Downing Street backs Tory deputy chair over ‘back to France’ comments

Downing Street has backed the Conservative deputy chair, Lee Anderson, after he was criticised for saying people complaining about being housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge after entering the UK illegally should “fuck off back to France”.

Anderson made the comments in an interview with the Daily Express, after the transfer of asylum seekers to the barge was delayed by safety concerns and legal challenges.

He won the backing of Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, who said that while Anderson’s language was “salty” his “indignation is well placed”, and the comments were “not bigotry at all”.

No 10 also said the justice secretary was speaking for the government in backing Anderson.

But opposition MPs criticised Anderson’s language. The former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, currently an independent MP, said: “A new low even for the Tories.”

Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, whose party is targeting Chalk’s marginal seat in Cheltenham, said: “Lifelong Conservative voters expect decent and respectful political debate – something completely lacking among Tory MPs. People in Cheltenham would have been spitting out their cornflakes listening to Alex Chalk.”

Hope Not Hate, the anti-racism campaign group, said the language used by Anderson was unacceptable and said the Conservatives were adopting divisive tactics.

“Lee Anderson is deputy chairman of the Conservative party, right at the heart of his party. They’ve defended his words and it’s morally reprehensible,” the group said. “Words have consequences. Hope Not Hate has recorded a huge increase in far-right anti-migrant activity. When will the government recognise their language matters?

“The Conservative party is rapidly adopting dangerous and divisive tactics. This has to be challenged.”

However, the government showed no sign of distancing itself from Anderson’s words.

Chalk told LBC on Tuesday morning that France was a safe country and a signatory to the European convention on human rights.

“People should claim asylum in the first country – it’s not like there should be an open shopping list of where you want to go,” he said. “He expresses himself in his characteristically robust terms, but there is a lot of sense, in my respectful view, in what Lee says.”

Anderson’s comments came as the mayor of Portland, in Dorset, launched a legal challenge against the home secretary, arguing that she had failed to obtain planning permission to use the barge.

Carralyn Parkes is bringing the challenge as a local resident, not in her capacity as mayor or as a local councillor for the area where the port is located. Parkes said she believed Portland Harbour was within the jurisdiction of the local planning authority.

A spokesperson for Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors, who are representing Parkes, said: “The home secretary is circumventing planning permission procedures to use the Bibby Stockholm barge to accommodate vulnerable asylum seekers in conditions which are clearly inadequate.”

Parkes, who is crowdfunding for her legal challenge, said: “It’s wrong that the Home Office does what it likes without complying with the same rules. If they’d applied for planning permission, they would have had to consult with local people, but we never got the right to have our say.”

There were dozens of demonstrators by the port where the Bibby Stockhold was moored on Monday. Most were there to welcome asylum seekers being placed on the barge, though a small number arrived to express anti-refugee sentiments. The Home Office said 15 asylum seekers were onboard the barge that evening.