Promising to lead a ‘global crackdown’ on illegal migrants, as more than 40 countries convened in London for a summit to tackle people-smuggling gangs, Sir Keir Starmer wrote in yesterday’s Mail: ‘Believe me, I get it.’
But does he? I have serious doubts. The Prime Minister spent so much of his career as a human rights lawyer that I am not sure he’s capable of understanding, let alone undertaking, the action necessary to tackle this existential threat.
Sloganeering and hollow pledges are no solution for a crisis that has shattered our borders and is costing the taxpayer billions, while posing huge risks to Britain’s security and undermining our democratic traditions of tolerance and fairness.
This uncontrolled influx of illegal migrants must not continue.
Handouts
Already this year we have seen unprecedented numbers of people, mostly young men of military age, clinging to dinghies as they make the perilous crossing over the Channel – more than 6,000 of them in the past three months alone.
That’s an increase of almost a third even on 2022 when, by the year’s end, more than 45,000 had crossed illegally in flimsy crafts. Nearly all of them claimed asylum and found themselves entitled to generous handouts courtesy of you and me.
If this trend carries on, as it seems certain to do, my think tank Migration Watch estimates we will see more than 60,000 migrants arrive illegally by boat this year – almost two-thirds more than last year.
That admittedly conservative projection doesn’t begin to count all those arriving in the backs of lorries; concealed in vans, coaches and car boots; or, indeed, those who continue to enter undetected by other means.
The Prime Minister spent so much of his career as a human rights lawyer that I am not sure he’s capable of understanding, let alone undertaking, the action necessary to tackle this existential threat
Those who are detained by Border Force officers will be held in a processing centre such as Manston in Kent before being moved to one of the hundreds of hotels requisitioned to house these men, or other taxpayer- funded accommodation.
By December last year, more than 112,000 people were enjoying free accommodation and subsistence in some form of UK government facility.
When Labour came to power last July, there were just under 30,000 migrants in UK hotels. By Christmas, that figure was more than 38,000 – and it continues to spiral.
The current cost is £8 million a day, or roughly £3 billion a year – enough to pay the salaries of 85,000-odd nurses.
Asylum claims were up 18 per cent last year. And while just over half of claimants were refused at the initial stage, only a small percentage are ever deported.
In the past six years, barely 3 per cent of illegal immigrants who arrived by boat have been removed from our shores.
The gangs who charge migrants extortionate amounts to reach Britain from halfway around the world are able to tell their customers truthfully: ‘Once you get to Britain, they will not make you leave.’
That’s what makes their business model so lucrative. If migrants believed they were at high risk of being refused entry or of being removed once here, they would be less eager to risk their money and their lives.
More than 6,000 migrants have illegally crossed the Channel in the first three months of this year
No doubt the smugglers would keep insisting the hardships of the journey were a worthwhile sacrifice, but word would soon spread that Britain was not the safe bet of former years.
Starmer refuses to admit this. Instead of ‘smashing the gangs’, as he feebly claimed he would do during the General Election campaign, his government has sent precisely the opposite message. Immediately upon assuming office, the PM and his Home Secretary Yvette Cooper ditched the Tory scheme for sending illegal migrants to Rwanda for processing – a flawed plan, to be sure, but one that manifestly had a deterrent effect.
Migration minister Angela Eagle made vague noises this week about ‘return hubs’, or processing centres sited overseas, perhaps in the Balkans. This is pie in the sky.
Without changes to human rights legislation, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and the 1998 Human Rights Act which embeds the ECHR in UK law, there is little chance of that happening.
No other system has taken the Rwanda scheme’s place. It’s as though, for all the grand words, Starmer and Co have simply given up.
They lack the will or the initiative to stem the mass-migration tide.
Yesterday the PM promised to spend an extra £3 million on pursuing and prosecuting the people smugglers. That sum is derisory. It’s the cost of housing our 38,000 illegal immigrants in their cosy hotel accommodation for less than one full day.
Disappear
And the boats are only the start. By far the main route for immigration is via the wide-open loopholes for those who arrive on short-term work visas.
Hundreds of thousands simply refuse to leave, on a variety of pretexts – claiming it is not safe for them to return home, or that they have a right to continue a family life begun in Britain.
Many just disappear from view, working in the black economy and contributing nothing in taxes.
The Home Secretary herself conceded this week that foreign criminals are exploiting the ECHR, and specifically Article 8 which protects the ‘right to family life’. ‘Some cases [raise] significant concerns, and that is also about the way in which the immigration asylum system operates,’ she said.
But what hope does the Home Office have of addressing this, with a dyed-in-the-wool human rights activist in No 10?
Both Starmer and Cooper have ruled out ditching the ECHR or rewriting the human rights legislation; to do so would be tantamount to admitting they’ve been wrong about these laws for decades.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has indicated that, if the ECHR contravenes our national interests, we will have to abandon it.
This doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. My feeling, as a former diplomat, is that these treaties should not be abandoned lightly, but abandon them we must.
Naive
When the 1951 Refugee Convention, from which the ECHR flows, was introduced after the Second World War, it served a crucial purpose. But our planet is unrecognisable. An international convention that endangers relationships between countries, instead of protecting them, has long outlived its usefulness.
Sir Keir Starmer wrote in the Mail yesterday that ‘international co-operation is the foundation of securing Britain’s borders’. But that’s naive at best, and probably downright delusional.
No one will solve our immigration nightmare for us. That’s up to us, with tough measures.
As long as young men in Africa, Eastern Europe, south Asia and the Middle East believe that Britain will give them housing, an income and free healthcare, of course they will continue to come here by any means possible.
And as long as there’s little chance of removal for immigrants making their way here illegally, organised criminal gangs will continue to strip entire communities of their savings in return for smuggling their people to Britain.
Alp Mehmet is chairman of Migration Watch.
