- Statement
- The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Wednesday 11 December.
- “With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a Statement on the new border security agreements we have reached with Germany and with the Calais Group of Interior Ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, which met in London yesterday with Europol, FRONTEX and the European Commission to discuss strengthening action against small boat crossings and organised immigration crime.
- In the light of fast-moving events in the Middle East, we also discussed the situation in Syria at the Calais Group yesterday, and I will briefly address that issue first. As the Foreign Secretary told the House, we welcome the fall of the Assad regime, but continue to closely monitor this fast-moving situation, where there is a significant risk of instability. Considering that, I have taken the decision to temporarily pause decisions on Syrian asylum claims. All five Calais Group countries have taken the same decision. We will, of course, continue to keep all guidance relating to these asylum claims under constant review, and we will keep the House updated in the normal way.
- Last week, I updated the House on the new agreement the Government have reached with the Iraqi Government and the Kurdistan regional authorities to tackle organised immigration crime. This week, we have reached new, strengthened agreements closer to home. Smuggling and trafficking gangs have been allowed to get away with their vile trade in people for far too long. Britain needs strong borders and a properly controlled and managed asylum and immigration system, but, for the past five years, we have had the opposite. That is why we are prepared to do the hard graft to get the system back under control and tackle the gangs long before they reach our shores.
- Immediately after the election, we began to strengthen our international collaboration to go after those criminal gangs, including by increasing the number of National Crime Agency officers in Europol, setting up the new Border Security Command and making the new agreement with the G7. Already, that strengthened collaboration is delivering results. In the last few weeks alone, we have seen the arrest of a major suspect in the supply of boats and engines to the channel; this involved co-operation between Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK. A major operation last week against a Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish gang operating through Germany and France was led by French police but was supported by intelligence from the NCA and involved 500 German police officers. It delivered not just a series of arrests of suspected gang members but the seizure of multiple boats and engines destined for the channel—boats that could have led to thousands of people making dangerous journeys.
- Criminals need to know that there will be no hiding place. The gangs who undermine our border security by facilitating small boats crossing the channel are also facilitating dangerous and illegal journeys into other European countries and committing wider crimes, including serious violence, exploitation, money laundering and drug trafficking. These gangs operate across borders. Therefore, we need law enforcement co-operation across borders to bring them down, and new systems to work across different prosecutorial and legal systems. We need to rebuild basic intelligence sharing and co-operation that was damaged under the last Government’s post-Brexit arrangements, and new expertise is needed to deal with evolving threats.
- This week, I signed a landmark agreement with my German counterpart, Minister Nancy Faeser, to tackle irregular migration. The new joint action plan is the first of its kind between the UK and Germany. It includes much stronger operational co-operation, such as information and intelligence sharing, including very practical basic measures such as increasing the use of the SIENA—Secure Information Exchange Network Application—Europol system by the NCA to share information with German police to swiftly pursue investigations; stronger partnerships to deliver prosecutions; new work to take down social media content that is being used as advertising by organised smuggler gangs; joint working and co-ordination with transit and source countries; supporting each other on returns; and establishing the first German international liaison officer in the Border Security Command.
- Importantly, the joint action plan means strengthening the law in Germany to tackle people smugglers. We know that gangs are routing many supply chains through Germany, including using warehouses to store boats and engines that are destined for the channel. Clarification of the law in Germany will mean that activities facilitating migrant smuggling to the UK in Germany will be a criminal offence. This is a major change which will make it easier for German prosecutors to dismantle supply chains and prosecute the smugglers involved. It means that in Germany and across Europe, we are sending a clear message to the smugglers: ‘Activity to smuggle people into the UK is a criminal offence and you will be prosecuted and brought to justice’. Germany and the UK will also work together through Europol to investigate the end-to-end criminal activity of Kurdish gang networks that are operating in both our countries, in co-operation with the Iraqi Government and Kurdish authorities following the agreements I reached in Iraq.
- The joint action plan embodies our shared determination to pursue organised immigration crime, but it also reflects the same determination and commitment shared across other near neighbours, embodied in our meeting with the Calais Group in London yesterday. I strongly welcome the new announcements from the French Interior Minister on increasing the police presence and enforcement along the French coast through the winter, alongside the appointment of a new coastal préfet. The increased violence towards French police we have seen on the beaches is a total disgrace.
- The Calais Group also agreed a new plan to strengthen action across our five countries, including a range of actions backed by an end-to-end approach to tackling migrant smuggling networks, from the French coast through to source and transit countries, including Vietnam and in central Africa. This includes stronger enforcement capability through Europol, targeting the illicit finance model of migrant-smuggling networks, taking down social media advertising, and co-ordinated preventive communications to deter people from paying gangs to arrange dangerous, irregular journeys. We also discussed at the Calais Group the major escalation of enforcement activity we are undertaking here in the UK. Immigration and asylum rules need to be respected and enforced, and for too long they have not been.
- Over the summer we moved 1,000 more staff into returns and enforcement activity, which has already led to nearly 10,000 returns since the election, with enforced returns up by 19% and voluntary returns by 14%. Also during the summer, enforcement officers completed over 3,000 visits to employers and more than 2,000 arrests, a substantial increase on the figures in the previous year. We discussed the need to scale up all these operations drastically over the next 12 months, to ensure that words turn into decisive action against the gangs. Yesterday, as part of these efforts, we published a mission statement for the Border Security Command, setting out the approach that we are adopting to increase enforcement capacity in the UK and Europe, drawing on the best intelligence and enforcement practice in the police, the National Crime Agency, Border Force and our intelligence agencies.
- In the years before this Government came to office, criminal gangs were allowed to take hold all along our borders, establishing a criminal industry profiting from misery and exploitation and putting lives at risk. The terrible consequences of this phenomenon have been clear for too many years: fatalities in the channel as people risk their lives making dangerous journeys, border security undermined, and public trust in the immigration system eroded, while criminal gangs make millions in profits. They cannot be allowed to get away with it. In place of the failures of the past, this Government have a serious and sensible plan to strengthen our border security and fix our broken asylum system—a plan that is based on grip, not gimmicks, and on serious international partnership. I commend this Statement to the House”.
- 8:16 pm
- My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and welcome the Government’s decision to pause Syrian asylum claims. We welcome the fall of the Assad regime and wait to see what will happen in Syria, although the risk of instability is high.On the subject of new international agreements relating to border security, I am afraid that I cannot be as positive. The Government’s record so far on border security and immigration has been an unmitigated disaster. Illegal small boat crossings have surged on their watch, with record numbers of dangerous journeys across the channel putting lives at risk. This is a direct consequence of the Labour Government’s inability to get a grip on the problem and their refusal to make the hard choices necessary to secure the borders. The public know it and statistics prove it. Under Labour, the UK has become a magnet for criminal smuggling gangs. No doubt the Minister will tell me that the Government will be judged on the success of their delivery. Well, I can tell the Minister that he is being judged now and it is not a good look.The agreements reached with Germany and the Calais Group may sound good on paper but what is missing is any real action or delivery. Where is the urgency? What are the tangible results? Where are they? Smuggling networks remain entrenched. The enforcement measures announced today amount to little more than tinkering around the edges. The Home Secretary said in the other place that her approach was delivering results, but the facts do not bear that out. I can put it no better than my right honourable friend the shadow Home Secretary did:“In the 150 days since the election, more than 20,000 people dangerously and illegally crossed the English channel, 18% more than did so in the same 150 days in the previous year. I do not call an 18% year-on-year increase ‘delivering results’; that is a failure”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/12/24; col. 902.]
- My Lords, from these Benches we welcome the Statement, although I do wish that these Statements were not always headed as being about border security. It is about much more than security. In particular, we welcome the collaborative approach, which we see as essential to international issues.The Statement mentions Syria. I appreciate that the Statement is not really about Syria but as it is in here, let me take the opportunity to ask—although I think I can anticipate the answer—whether the Government are yet seeing any impact either of Syrians in this country who are now wanting to go back to the Middle East or any new wave of asylum seekers coming from Syria.The Statement refers to wider crimes. We know that organised crime covers a wide area and that these things are all related. It lists violence, exploitation, money laundering and drug trafficking. I am sure that the Government see that people trafficking and illegal working are all part of the picture—but I would be glad of the confirmation.The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about higher penalties. It is the same with policing. It is catching people, rather than the penalties, which is the deterrent. Given his background, I would be surprised if he disagreed with that. The Statement also refers to legislation identified by the Germans as being needed to add to their measures. Have the UK Government identified any need for further legislation here? I hope not, because legislation is often referred to as being the solution when so often it is action that is needed.Finally, I express one major reservation. Safe and legal routes are not mentioned. Were they part of the discussions between the international parties?
- I am grateful for those contributions from His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Benches. I have set out to the House on numerous occasions the record of the previous Government, and I shall not take the House’s time today to repeat that record, except to say that, since 4 July, this Government have had to take significant steps, which I will now outline, to tackle the backlog of problems left by the previous Government’s small boats initiatives, the failure to tackle asylum processing effectively and the use of hotels, which has gone from zero in 2019 to 200 hotels in 2024. I will not go on the record too much because I have covered that area before and, if provoked, will undoubtedly do so again.I hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, would have shown a little more enthusiasm and welcome for the steps that the Government outlined in this Statement. We have, for the very first time, secured agreement with Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands to take action on a number of key issues. Those key issues reflect what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said. For the first time ever, the Germans have agreed to look at their own domestic legislation to allow for criminal exchanges of a range of issues with the UK Government, because the UK is not a member of Schengen and current German legislation does not allow the Germans to do anything outside the Schengen area. They are now looking at that, and there is a commitment, I suspect, from all political parties, because Germany faces an almost certain election in February, to continue that process as a whole.The joint action plan on irregular migration, which was concluded last week, includes international co-operation, intelligence sharing and the use of the Europol system, of which we are now no longer technically part because of the decisions on Brexit. Therefore, we have strengthened information sharing, strengthened co-operation and a strengthened commitment from the five key partners that face the channel, plus Germany, to tackle this issue. That is a good thing that will help lead to people smugglers thinking twice about smuggling individuals or facing the consequences accordingly. The clarification in German law will facilitate migrant smuggling to the UK and Germany becoming a criminal offence. That is in addition to the measures that we have taken using money saved from the appalling, wasteful, useless Rwanda scheme that the noble Lord supported. That scheme has now been scrapped; the £700 million has been put into areas such as £150 million towards a new border command, which legislation will establish on a legal footing in the new year. Those are real, manifest issues.