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Cameron and Miliband debate the UK’s hot issues

March 27, 2015 at 4:18 pm

Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband faced a grilling from veteran interviewer Jeremy Paxman last night, in the first of the debates and interviews broadcast in the run up to the general election.

Paxman brought up a number of issues including intervention in Libya, immigration in the UK and the situation in Syria.

He challenged Cameron to apologise for failing to reduce net immigration “to the tens of thousands” and asked Miliband whether Britain was already “full up”. Cameron responded stating that the government had cut immigration from outside the European Union by 13% and closed 800 “bogus” colleges which were acting as “visa factories”.

Miliband responded by saying: “We benefit from our diversity. Immigrants over the years have made a big contribution to our country, but we do need proper controls.”

When Cameron was asked if he regretted intervening in Libya, the PM responded: “If we had not stepped in, if I haven’t ordered those aeroplanes into the sky, we would have seen a massive catastrophe in Benghazi.” He added: “It was the right thing to do. I don’t accept that we left the Libyan people after that”.

On the situation is Syria, Miliband recounted his opposition to the government’s proposed action.

“In the summer of 2013 this government proposed action in Syria, the bombing of Syria, right? I was called into a room by David Cameron and Nick Clegg because president Obama had been on the phone, the leader of the free world, right?” He added: “I listened to what they had said and over those days I made up my mind and we said no”.

He called the situation a “failure of the international community”, stating: “What I’m not going do is repeat the mistakes of the 2003 Iraq war.”