Labour Minister Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, falsely claimed on BBC Question Time last night that most small boat migrants are women and children, but the BBC failed to provide a factual correction. The Mail has more.
This is the moment a BBC Question Time audience turned on a Labour Minister for “outrageously” claiming most small boat migrants are women and children.
More than 14,800 people have arrived in Britain after making the crossing so far in 2025 – making it the worst start to the year on record.
The arrivals continued today, with pictures showing migrants being bussed away from Dover after being intercepted by a Border Force cutter.
The issue was a major topic of debate on last night’s Question Time, which hosted several senior politicians including Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf.
But Mr Jones provoked fury by claiming in front of a live audience that “the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women”.
Following cries of disbelief from members of the public, Mr Yusuf interjected to say that “more than 90% of them are adult men”.
Home Office figures show 73% per cent of small boat arrivals in 2024 – or 26,999 out of all 36,816 arrivals — were adult males.
Following Mr Yusuf’s intervention, host Fiona Bruce turned to Mr Jones and asked: “You’re saying that’s not true?”
He replied: “I’m saying it’s not true. I’m saying this is controversial for a reason and you’re told you’re not supposed to challenge the audience on Question Time, but I’m going to.
“When there are babies and children put into that position by human trafficking gangs, who are coming across the Channel with skin burns from the oil from those boats mixing with the salt sea water, I would ask any of you to look at those babies and children and say ‘go back’.”
Mr Yusuf hit back: “In my previous answer, I made the case that this Government prioritises foreign citizens over citizens of the United Kingdom. After that testimony, I can rest my case.
“‘The vast, vast majority of people making the journey from France by small boat are fighting age, military age, males, not women and children.
“We’re talking about asylum hotels, and Rachel Reeves saying we’re going to shut down asylum hotels.
“I spent many weeks in the constituency of Runcorn and Helsby. Runcorn is a very deprived area. And do you know the issue that exercised people so much? The reason is primarily because of HMOs – houses of multiple occupancies [i.e., not just hotels].
“In an unholy alliance of Serco and Yvette Cooper, illegal migrants are being deposited into communities and there’s no say for the local people.”
Government ministers seem to be living in a fantasy land where they don’t even hold in their heads the basic facts about the issues most exercising the country.
Why did Fiona Bruce ask Jones whether Yusuf’s claim was true? Why didn’t she just provide the facts? It’s a piece of data, not something up for debate. Totally inept.
Watch the clip (and read the article in full) here.

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You see, what everyone is forgetting in their outrage at what the imminent chancellor of the exchequer said, is that it is Labour policy not to distinguish between a man or a woman, so in the trans perception world everyone can be both. Equally, it doesn’t matter what the person, man or woman, looks like, if they say they are a child, then they damned well are children and it’s not for us to say otherwise and we should definitely not ask the child to prove their age via simple tests because that would violate their rights. So, the only thing he can be challenged on is whether the boats are full of babies, but hey, if they can’t even get the sums right on the finances of the country, we should forgive them for not knowing the difference between eighteen months and eighteen years old.
What have we done to deserve the dolts who rule us?
Voted for an easy life. We’ve always voted xxx. My father and his father before him.
As a matter of interest, when did you last vote for a party and policies you wanted, rather than against one you didn’t?
2024 – but also in 2019. i probably first started reading party manifestos sometime in the 90s. Prior to that I had been brought up to always use my vote ‘correctly’ and that carried on until it occurred to me that it might actually matter how I voted.
The ‘his father before him’ bit doesn’t apply because my paternal grandfather died in British India in 1922.
2015 when I was the candidate.
Voted for Marxist-Socialism since 1945 so we can have cradle-to-grave welfare State, “our” NHS, no need for responsibility for ourselves, total nanny State-dependence, lots of free stuff paid for by others, particularly the rich.
That’s what we have done – and we now have what we deserve.
A perusal of the names of the accused in Crown Courts and Magistrates Courts is a rough starting point for statistics and gender studies.
So the “mostly peaceful protests” in Ballymena are misguided as they are targeting the “mostly female or infant” arrivals? It’s amazing how the /BBC/Guardian/CivilService/Political/ complex mangle the English language. (The original phrase was “mostly harmless”, IIRC.)
Ah. The late great DNA.
I suspect this is one clip of television nonsense that will never age nor lose its usefulness. Darren Jones has perhaps provided the biggest boost to the anti immigration lobby imaginable. This blatant lie will lift the veil for thousands.
Anti establishment, anti Labour Gold.
O/T+ish. What is a “jury of one’s peers”? Would a defence barrister object to a juror who has made a “problematic” post on social media, or is a Reform candidate? Would a judge uphold the objection? Who determines what constitutes a representative cross section of society? What would happen if society became “mostly racist”?
Most of them are women and children and those who are not are all brain surgeons ready to join the NHS so that they can express their gratitude to Britain.
They are all wonderful, decent people too. None of them come here to sponge off the taxpayers, disappear into the black economy or spend their time plotting to blow up people. No, not one of them!
We should all embrace them and provide them with everything they want, even if it bankrupts us. Because they are good and we are just racist bigots.
I read the other day that there are over a thousand Albanian criminals in our prisons, and that our rulers have imported tens of thousands of criminals. How wonderful that our wonderful rulers have imported such wonderful people!
Well, unless various people are consistently uploading videos of male migrants, going to the trouble of editing out any women and children first in order to engineer a narrative ( ‘conspiracy’ ) then I call BS on this because I’ve yet to see a single mythical woman or kid. And there’s people a lot more invested in this than me saying the same;
”Labour treasury minister Darren Jones is a LIAR
As a Migrant Hunter on this for over 5 years I can tell you over 90% of illegals crossing the channel on small-boats are FIGHTING-AGE-MEN!”
https://x.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/1933561915046797494
As Ralph ( he’s a historian, so he knows stuff ) mentions in the comments, Britain ruled India with just 200,000 people, so is the ever increasing population of Muslims within the UK really too small to be sniffed at? Especially when there’s countless traitors in high places and useful idiots on the ground to help them along?
”I have been speculating recently, about when the culture of Islam will become dominant in Great Britain. As a result, I have been bombarded by people telling me that a (supposedly) six million Muslims cannot dominate British society, culture, politics, and law.
But that is simply not true . There are more than a hundred Sharia courts across the country, which are technically the law of the land for the small communities in which they reside and operate. A true believer Muslim woman cannot go outside the local mosque’s Sharia Court, to seek secular British justice, because that simply would not be accepted within that community. So Sharia law is the law of the land within that community.
And here is another example – church bells in West Yorkshire are being silenced for the first time in hundreds of years, because of a small vocal minority. And this is accepted by Lefty councils and authorities, in order not to upset ‘community relations’. However, down in Birmingham we now have the Islamic call to prayer being broadcast, while the concerns of other communities are being brushed aside. Community relations only ever operate in one direction.”
https://x.com/ralfellis/status/1933091964225736892
I can see there is a difference between 90% and 74% but to claim male adults are less than 50% is a stretch. Especially from someone whose job as a Minister is to speak with authority (sic).
I wouldn’t be in a rush to assume the official figures are accurate, personally. As recent history ( and many notable dissident experts demonstrated ) has shown us, so-called ‘official figures’ and data can be easily fudged and manipulated in order to convey whatever message to the public is deemed necessary. Post-Scamdemic, I’ve got serious trust issues.
The Mainstream media (especially the BBC) shape public opinion in different ways. They will omit things that do not fit in with the Liberal progressive world view, or they might mention something but stick away in a corner or not attach much importance to it. Or often they will interview people in the street and use them to resent their world view so they cannot be accused of propaganda themselves. —–On this occasion even an audience on Question Time were outraged and roared in disgust at this morons claim that most people in small boats were babies children and women. What planet does this half wit live on and no wonder this country is turning into a cesspit when people like this are anywhere near government.
Indeed. And here is another way, which is probably just confirming what we already knew, but still..It’s just one great big PsyOp;
”I’ve obtained internal government documents via a Freedom of Information request that reveal a coordinated effort by the UK Government to influence the content of television programming, including fictional storylines.
The documents show direct collaboration between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and broadcasters like ITV, Channel 4, and the BBC.
Officials discussed embedding government messaging into soap operas and entertainment shows, not just on COVID and vaccines, but also climate change, mental health, extremism, and “social cohesion.”
Broadcasters were encouraged to tailor narratives for “hard-to-reach” audiences, including ethnic minorities, young people, and working-class viewers.
Some programmes were rebranded entirely to align with government campaigns. Others included plotlines shaped by civil servants.
These documents have never been seen publicly until now.”
https://x.com/Lewis_Brackpool/status/1933403966647513293
Scary stuff isn’t it – very 1984
Proof positive that the Commie Labour Party are a bunch of con artists. How could any sane person vote for these clowns.
Illegal immigration is the only thing Lab. Are good at.
The BBC: You must not believe what you see with your own eyes!
I believe gaslighting is illegal.
Pathological liars (aka Labour): “Pathological lying, also known as pseudologia fantastica, is a chronic behavior characterized by the habitual or compulsive tendency to lie. It involves a pervasive pattern of intentionally making false statements with the aim to deceive others, sometimes for no clear or apparent reason, and even if the truth would be beneficial to the liar. People who engage in pathological lying often report being unaware of the motivations for their lies. In psychology and psychiatry, there is an ongoing debate about whether pathological lying should be classified as a distinct disorder or viewed as a symptom of other underlying conditions.”
We now have a stabilised economy, a recently discovered black hole filled in, and economic performance is doing so well, thanks to Labour’s brilliant policies, that we have £hundreds of billion to throw at this and that. Our energy bills will decrease any moment now, and thousands and thousands of green jobs are being created as we lead the World into the sunlit uplands of a totally decarbonised economy.