WE will stop the boats, easy peasy.
We will do it without leaving the ECHR by simply smashing the gangs and getting rid of the backlog.
GettyNine months after Labour’s landslide election victory, the migrant crisis is no better[/caption]
We will set up a border command and give Border Force and case workers the numbers and resources they need to do the job.
We will bin the gimmicky Rwanda scheme and move asylum-seekers out of expensive hotels.
We will also engage with our buddies across the Channel and work more closely with them.
A new Border Security Command, to be led by the commander, will pull it all together . . . blah, blah, blah.
So what has all this glib blarney resulted in, nine months after Labour’s landslide election victory?
Well, as promised, the Rwanda scheme was killed off on day one of Sir Keir Starmer moving into 10 Downing Street — this is about the only manifesto promise that has been kept.
Otherwise, there are over 8,000 more migrants in hotels than a year ago; and let’s not forget that according to the Home Office, asylum-seekers in hotels are costing around £8million per day, in other words, they have cost the taxpayer more than £2billion since the Election.
What better use might that money have been put to?
The asylum backlog has grown — over 5,000 up since the election.
Meanwhile, the numbers crossing the Channel are at record highs, and way above the numbers who crossed in the first three months of 2024.
In fact, they are 30 per cent up on the same period in 2022, when nearly 46,000 crossed by year’s end.
At the current rate, we could be topping 60,000 illegal crossings by December 31.
The Border Force are struggling to cope, in the knowledge that as we head into peak crossings’ season, they will face the same pressures and flak they have had to put up with in the last four years.
As a former immigration officer who served in Dover myself, I can’t help but sympathise with those sent out to pick up migrants at sea — migrants who know only too well that that is what is going to happen.
Providing a taxi service for those who make it on to the water, having slipped through the limp, if not non-existent, clutches of the French authorities, is not what immigration officials signed up to do.
We have paid France hundreds of millions for years to stop migrants from setting off illegally from their shores.
One wonders what their reaction would have been had the boot been on the other foot.
So what have Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper been doing about it?
The Prime Minister and Home Secretary have introduced the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is going to be about as useful as a bikini at the North Pole in January.
It will, much to the relief of the traffickers, formally do away with the Rwanda scheme, and, among other things, it will, “make provision for sharing customs data and trailer registration data, as well as make provision about articles for use in serious crime.”
Yep, that’ll do it Home Secretary.
PAThe Prime Minister and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have introduced the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill[/caption]
The numbers crossing the Channel are at record highsAFP
The Bill is formalising the setting up of the Border Security Command under a Border Security Commander.
What I find baffling is why this needed fresh legislation, time, effort and endless debate only to result in the Government doing what it wants to do — all but nothing.
The Bill is not only pointless and will not stop the boats or smash the gangs but will, I firmly believe, have the opposite effect.
It will encourage both traffickers and migrants, as I said when giving evidence to the Bill Committee.
Not that most of the Committee gave the impression of being interested in stopping the boats.
There were no questions about how the illegal flow of people across the Channel might be tackled or what to do with those who made it here.
Nor was there any discussion about the removal of those with no right to be here, the ECHR, the Human Rights Act and what part they play in encouraging illegal immigration.
Indeed, at no point was the word “illegal” uttered by any MP on the Committee.
‘HERE FOR GOOD’
As Ed Southgate’s excellent report in Friday’s Sun made clear, not only is there no shortage of migrants willing to take their chances in flimsy dinghies, to make their way to El Dorado (as the Mayor of Calais once described us), but there is little likelihood of them being apprehended before they set sail.
Having made it to Blighty, there is every likelihood that they are here for good.
They are put up in comfortable accommodation, fed, clothed, treated for any medical needs they may have and given £45-a-week spending money while they await news on their asylum application.
Should their application be rejected at the first stage, they will have legal aid to challenge the refusal, or their removal, in the courts.
With the Rwanda scheme binned, there is now nothing to deter illegal immigration, and that doesn’t refer to only those crossing the Channel illegally, who make up a third of asylum-seekers.
So, what should the government be doing?
They could set in motion withdrawal from the ECHR (something both the PM and the Attorney General have said will not happen.)
They should repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. This is essential.
Those making their way here illegally should be detained, dealt with quickly and removed, either to their country of origin or to a safe third country.
There should be no question of hotels and pocket money while they wait.
Or indeed, scope for spurious human rights’ claims.
Were all this to be done, the boats would stop overnight, which would not only serve our interests, but those of France too.
Without such firm action, the boats will continue to come, the costs will go on increasing, the public will get more frustrated and angry, and sadly more people will lose their lives.
Is that what the open-borders people really want?
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