An issue I hear about time and time again when I speak to local people, and in the correspondence I receive week in, week out, is the desire to see illegal immigration, particularly via small boats crossing the Channel, stopped once and for all. As such, I wanted to provide a short update, following various developments in the past week or so.
What is clear, and as I have described here before, is that there is a global illegal migration crisis with long-term pull factors, all largely facilitated by evil criminal gangs who treat human beings as cargo, and, as such, there is no quick fix. I fully support the Government’s approach of tackling these issues upstream and not simply waiting until people have reached EU countries.
As such, I welcome that the Government has announced that the UK will be providing France with £500 million in funding over the next three years, to prevent people crossing the Channel illegally. The funding will provide an extra 500 officers who will patrol French beaches and a new detention centre in Northern France. A new command centre will also be established which will bring UK and French enforcement teams together in one place for the first time. These measures will be underpinned by more drones and other surveillance technologies, which will help to ramp up the interception rate, above the existing current prevention of roughly 50% of embarkations.
We will also be further tightening the law to aid us in removing those with no right to be here through the Illegal Migration Bill, debated in the House this week (see https://tinyurl.com/2p938uur for more details), whilst operationalising the measures already legislated for through the Nationality & Borders Act 2022, which I took through Parliament as a Home Office Minister - efforts that opposition MPs have consistently opposed and voted against, yet they offer no credible alternative plan. Only this Government will stop the boats.