Max Wilkinson sets out Lib Dem asylum and online safety plans

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Max Wilkinson used his party conference speech in Brighton to set out the party's immigration and online safety policies. He promised an EU asylum pact and a new police agency to tackle serious online crime, funded by a levy on Big Tech and AI companies.

On immigration, Wilkinson blamed the Conservatives and Reform for what he called a botched deal that damaged relations with European allies and removed controlled and safe routes. He said that before the referendum not a single small boat crossed the Channel, but since then more than 200,000 people have tried to make the dangerous journey, some dying in flimsy rubber dinghies. He argued the new status quo created by the Conservatives and Reform, and then weaponised, had led to unrest and mistrust across the country.

He set out the Lib Dem solution: enter the EU's landmark New Migration and Asylum Pact to stop dangerous Channel crossings and the criminal gang business model, protect the most vulnerable, close down generic hotels that he said never worked for communities or asylum seekers, and build an asylum system that British people can trust, fair and effective for all. Leaving the ECHR would be Brexit 2.0, he said, another disaster that would grind the political and legal system to a halt and fix nothing.

Wilkinson also attacked Zia Yusuf, calling him the angriest man on the internet, a wannabe MP who spends too much time on X posting increasingly extreme and offensive ideas, and who has been blocked by Reform from a route to Parliament. He challenged Yusuf to a debate and called him a big chicken.

On online safety, Wilkinson wore smart glasses during the speech and said he had been recording everyone without consent. He referred to the devices as perv goggles, creep glasses and stalker specs, and said that while the technology could be a force for good, it needed regulation. He said women and girls are being secretly filmed and sexualised without consent for clicks and profit, and that on Instagram well over half of content filmed with smart glasses features harassment. The Lib Dems are leading the charge to regulate the manufacture and use of smart glasses and to close legal loopholes around covert filming, he said, naming Anna Sabine and Vera Hobhouse as colleagues working on the issue.

Wilkinson then turned to serious online crime. He cited horrendous accounts from specialists in online child sexual exploitation, including manuals available on the web telling child sex offenders how to commit crimes without being caught. He highlighted the case of Robert Chan, who from his home in South London masqueraded as a teenage boy online to target thousands of children, some as young as six. Chan used Google Translate hundreds of times to generate sexual instructions from English into Russian and Polish, Wilkinson said, and may have used gaming platforms enjoyed by children to find victims. The National Crime Agency has set out steps platforms could take to reduce child sexual abuse material online, but instances were up a horrifying 30% in 2025, he said.

Big Tech is simply not doing enough, Wilkinson argued, and the only language it understands is money. He said the Lib Dems would create a new police agency with the resource and expertise to take on serious online crime, including child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, the use of AI notification tools, online facilitated drugs, weapons and human trafficking. The agency would be paid for by a new levy on Big Tech and AI companies, putting a quarter of a billion pounds a year into stopping these crimes. It would create an incentive for online giants to act, because the more cases involving their services they fail to report, the more they would pay. The agency would also free up local officers to return to the streets, he said.

In his political attack, Wilkinson challenged what he called the hypocrisy of Reform and the Conservatives who mimic them weakly. He said they claim to care about free speech but only when it is free speech for them, and plan to rip up the legal right to free speech anyway. He said they claim to protect women and girls but endorse hitting them over the head with a crutch when women ask difficult questions, and that their plan to fix the asylum system they broke is to take away laws that protect British people. He criticised the Labour government as weak and said the Lib Dems would build a big tent liberalism to bring everyone into the fight for the country's future.

After the speech, political analysis noted a sharper than expected focus on immigration for the Liberal Democrats, alongside the party's online safety plans. The party has faced calls from senior figures for a clearer message on immigration.