Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

I welcome the work of the overseas territories to implement international standards, including the Cayman Islands, which have been appointed by the Financial Action Task Force as guest members under the new regional bodies’ guest initiative.

Finally, we discussed the important role of the overseas territories in implementing and enforcing UK sanctions. I commended the efforts of the overseas territories to implement UK sanctions effectively and acknowledged the excellent progress that the overseas territories are making on building their sanctions capabilities.

I encouraged the overseas territories to strengthen their enforcement frameworks, in line with the outcomes of the UK’s own sanctions enforcement review, including by exploring introduction of civil monetary penalties for sanctions breaches in overseas territory jurisdictions and increasing information sharing on sanctions wherever possible. I underlined the ongoing Government commitment to support the overseas territories in this vital work.

[HCWS877]

This regime delivers on the Government’s commitment to use every tool available to crack down on the abominable people smugglers risking people’s lives, including in the English channel. It gives the Government new powers to take direct action against them and their enablers in the way we can already against terrorists, cybercriminals and corrupt kleptocrats.

Sanctions experts from across Government have worked in close collaboration with the Home Office and law enforcement authorities to deliver an effective and targeted sanctions regime that will help stem the finance flows of people smugglers at source and deter them from taking part in this inhuman trade.

As the world’s first sanctions regime dedicated to targeting irregular migration and organised immigration crime, it will target individuals and entities wherever they are—from countries of origin to those who smuggle migrants across borders or enable and facilitate these dangerous journeys. It will allow the Government to sanction targets along the entire smuggling and trafficking chain, including companies involved in small boat supply chains and organised immigration criminals and their enablers.

While we are proud to be leading the way on this issue, people smuggling and human trafficking are not problems the UK faces alone, but shared global challenges. We will continue to play a leading role with our international partners to combat these joint challenges, including to strengthen our sanctions co-ordination.

This is part of the Government’s resolute mission to secure our borders and crack down on irregular migration. This Government have made irregular migration a priority from the outset, and we are continuing to break new ground on innovative approaches to address the challenge, including the recently agreed groundbreaking pilot with France to detain and return migrants who arrive via small boat. The Germans have also committed to amend their criminal legislation this year to explicitly cover facilitating irregular migration to the UK. This will save lives by disrupting the dangerous small boat supply chains of criminal networks.

The sanctions regime forms part of these wider efforts to secure our borders and disrupt and deter dangerous irregular migration, complementing new powers for law enforcement, including those introduced in the Border, Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. In the last year, this Government have more than doubled asylum decision making—a 116% increase since the election. We have also made over 35,000 returns since the election—a 13% increase compared with the same period 12 months ago. We have increased illegal working raids and arrests by 50% in the last year, with 7,130 arrests and over 10,000 raids—the first time in a 12-month period where more than 10,000 raids have taken place.

By helping to smash the people smuggling gangs and tackle irregular migration flows upstream, this regime will play an important role in delivering the Government’s plan for change on behalf of the British people.

[HCWS879]