PRITI PATEL refused today to say if the Royal Navy will be used to intercept small boats in the Channel, despite one of her ministers previously stating this would not happen. 

The Home Secretary said that no decision had been made on whether military vessels would be used to carry out the government’s widely condemned pushback policy, insisting that plans were still being drawn up about the role of the armed forces in the Channel. 

“The work isn’t complete so it’s totally inappropriate for me to comment on operational planning on what either the navy or Border Force will be doing,” she told MPs on the home affairs select committee. 

Her comments appeared to contradict those by Armed Forces Minister James Heappey who told the Commons last month that naval ships would not be used to push back small boats. 

Pulled up on this by committee member Diane Abbott, a former shadow home secretary, Ms Patel said the minister’s answer was given as a “view, not as fact.” 

This prompted committee chairwoman Diana Johnson to ask whether the Armed Forces Minister had misled Parliament, which the Home Secretary denied. 

The conflicting statements by ministers over the navy’s role in the Channel comes after the government announced that the armed forces were preparing to take over the Home Office’s operations to tackle small boat crossings. 

Earlier in the committee session, Ms Patel hit back at criticism from French President Emmanuel Macron on Britain’s approach to Channel crossings as “absolutely wrong.” 

The French president has said that Britain bears responsibility for refugee deaths in the Channel due to its failure to open legal routes for asylum-seekers in France. 

Ms Patel repeated her claim that the majority of people crossing the Channel are not asylum-seekers, despite a report by her own department finding “almost all” are.

On the issue of moving Afghan refugees out of hotels, the Home Office revealed that 12,000 people are still waiting for permanent homes, six months on from the Kabul airlift. 

The Home Secretary admitted that the department was struggling to find housing through local authorities, claiming the country lacked the infrastructure to quickly rehouse those languishing for months on end in hotels.