Suella Braverman was roasted on Sky News after she attacked Labour over the government’s failure to achieve its aims on immigration.
The home secretary said Keir Starmer’s party was blocking the government’s attempts to stop the small boats carrying asylum seekers across the English Channel from France.
But presenter Jayne Secker told her it was a “bit rich” to blame Labour for the Tories’ failings when they have not been in power since 2010.
The clash came as Braverman also refused to rule out reports that immigrants could be given electronic tags as there is not enough space to detain them.
Secker pointed out to the home secretary that thousands of migrants are continuing to cross the Channel, despite Rishi Sunak’s pledge to stop them.
But Braverman said: “Let’s be clear what we’re up against. We’re up against a range of forces which are intent on stopping us, whether it’s immigration lawyers, charities, NGOs (non-governmental organisations) - many of whom have very close links with the Labour Party - operating night and day to stop us in delivering this pledge.
“There’s a range of forces that we are dealing with, including no less than a Labour Party which is intent on stopping us.”
Secker hit back: “Well the Labour Party hasn’t been in power for 13 years, so it does seem a little rich to blame them for the crossing numbers.”
Braverman went on: “Labour has no plan whatsoever to stop the boats, they want free movement of people and actually they want to facilitate illegal migration.”
On the possibility of tagging migrants, the minister said the government “needed to exercise a level of control” of migrants.
She added: “We are exploring all options to ensure that we have that level of control over people so that they can flow through our system swiftly to enable us to thereafter remove them from the United Kingdom.”