BBC to talk to Gary Lineker over tweets on UK asylum plan and Nazi Germany

The BBC will speak to the Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker after comments he made on social media about the government’s immigration plans in which he appeared to compare Home Office policy to Nazi Germany.

A number of Conservative MPs have expressed anger after he criticised the policy and the language used to introduce it, the BBC reported.

Lineker’s response to a video message by the home secretary, Suella Braverman, about stopping people crossing the Channel in small boats was: “Good heavens, this is beyond awful.”

When challenged by someone on Twitter, the presenter defended his comments, saying: “There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries.

“This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”

The BBC reported that while Lineker was not bound by the strict social media policies of BBC news and current affairs staff, the director general, Tim Davie, had discussed the issue of his comments in the past and it was understood he would be reminded of his responsibilities.

Tory politicians widely condemned Lineker’s latest comments and urged the BBC to take action.

The immigration minister Robert Jenrick told Times Radio: “My children are the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and I think those sorts of words should not be thrown around lightly.

“Gary Lineker is paid for by the British taxpayer and it is disappointing that he is so far out of step with the British public.

“They see people dying, literally, in the English Channel at the behest of some of the most evil criminal gangs we see in the world today, and they want the government to take