A Conservative MP has come under attack for dismissing director Ken Loach’s BAFTA speech as “drivel”.
Loach, the Jeremy Corbyn supporting film maker, condemned the government for closing down its child refugee programme as he won a BAFTA for his film I, Daniel Blake.
But Tory MP Tim Loughton, who attended the ceremony in London, was unimpressed.
Loughton’s tweet triggered a backlash - including from former Labour shadow home secretary Andy Burnham.
Loughton, the MP for East Worthing and Shoreham and former children’s minister, hit back.
In his speech, Loach attacked last week’s announcement of the government taking in just 350 displaced lone children who are fleeing war zones including Syria.
His film depicts a man from Newcastle struggling to cope with Britain’s welfare system, and has already won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Accepting the award for Outstanding British Film, the 80-year-old said the “most vulnerable and poorest people are treated by this government with a callous brutality that is disgraceful”.
“It’s a brutality that extends to keeping refugee children out that we promised to help. And that’s a disgrace too,” he said.
“Films can do many things - they can entertain, they can terrify, they can take us to other worlds, they can make us laugh and they can tell us something about the world we live in.
“In that real world it’s getting darker as we know. In the struggle that’s coming between the rich and the powerful, the wealth and the privilege, and the big corporations and the politicians that speak for them, on the one hand, and the rest of us on the other, the film makers know which side they are on.
“And despite the glitz and the glamour of occasions like this, we’re with the people.”
Set in Newcastle, ‘I, Daniel Blake’ tells the fictional story of carpenter Daniel Blake who suffers a heart attack and is told by doctors he can no longer work.
Blake - who befriends a single mum also struggling with the system - is forced to hunt for jobs which he has to turn down as he is too sick.