What does delivering on immigration look like for this government? It’s the question the Prime Minister clearly sought to answer on Monday when announcing his government’s Immigration White Paper pledging to ‘take back control of our borders’.
Yet arguably the most urgent immigration delivery issue was largely absent from Monday’s announcements. In just 7 years, small boat journeys across the Channel have become an entrenched part of the way people claim asylum in the UK with deadly consequences – 82 people including 14 children are estimated to have died attempting the crossing last year. New Focaldata research, published by British Future, this week finds that public concern about immigration is largely focused on small boats rather than migration for work or study. Most people are unlikely to notice the difference between net 250K and 350K migration at the time of the next election – many will however, notice if the government has failed to reduce the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats. The near daily stream of images of men, women and children crammed into unseaworthy boats arriving to our shores is a window into the desperation of so many across the world, and it is also a regular reminder for many of the government’s inability to fully control who crosses its borders.
So what is the route map to reducing Channel crossings? As Keir Starmer heads to Albania today, most are in agreement that this lies through closer cooperation with Europe. Beyond this statement, however, there is so far little by way of a comprehensive vision. The Prime Minister and Home Secretary deserve credit for the quiet but effective diplomacy they have waged with EU leaders since July, and the UK-EU summit in London on Monday presents the first major opportunity for the UK to make progress on this most challenging of issues. But to do so, the Labour government will need to move beyond its singular focus on enforcement.
In our new FGF report ‘Asylum Management Centres: a new approach to tackle small boat crossings’, we argue Labour should look to the Biden administration for evidence of how a more comprehensive plan can successfully deliver.
By the very end of Biden’s term in office, irregular border crossings had reduced by over 90% for many of the main nationalities crossing (although too late for the Democrats to gain credit with voters). The solution was to combine:
- cooperation with Mexico on enforcement against the people smugglers
- with managed access to visa routes and resettlement at a scale large enough to offer a real disincentive to those who might otherwise travel irregularly.
This approach addressed both the supply of smuggling routes, and the demand for them by people fleeing persecution and violent conflict.
For too long, UK and EU leaders have failed to acknowledge the need for action on both these drivers of the smuggling business model. Successive Prime Ministers have spent millions on enforcement cooperation with the French only to see numbers in the Channel continue to rise.
We argue the UK and France should test a similar approach to the US, combining smart diplomacy and enforcement against smugglers with the ability to apply for asylum and family reunion in the UK from France. The UK and France could establish new ‘Asylum Management Centres’ in France (away from Calais), where people can self-refer and apply for asylum and family reunion to the UK, with robust procedural safeguards – and numbers capped. This type of external processing would be critically different from the Italy-Albania scheme as it would not involve forcible transfer or detention. At these proposed centres, people could also receive information about regularising their status in France and voluntary returns, which the UK could offer to assist France in delivering.
The advantages of this approach are clear – by determining people’s claims from France, the UK can differentiate those who have a valid asylum claim from those who do not before they get in a boat. And those refugees transferred to the UK arrive in a safe and managed way, with status and the ability to work rather than stuck in hotels. France too wants a solution to high profile small boat crossings, but won’t accept returns unless Britain also plays its part. Processing in France could unlock a much desired returns agreement with France and other EU countries.
A solution that relies on Britain taking in people from France as well as returning them will, however, require the government to make an argument to the British public that it has so far seemed reluctant to make – to argue for Britain’s continued responsibility to provide asylum to those in need and for the international rules and frameworks that protect them. And this means levelling with the public too that the government’s objective is to reduce the number of people getting into small boats to cross the Channel, not to reduce the number of people the UK provides asylum to – making a clear distinction with those politicians who wish to end all asylum to the UK.
Since 2022, successive prime ministers have made commitments to the public to tackle small boat journeys with limited impact on numbers – an exercise that has eroded public trust in the asylum system and government. On entering No.10, Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to reset the government’s approach on people smuggling: “In pursuit of solutions that will actually deliver results. And more than that… we will approach this issue with humanity. And with profound respect for international law.”
As Keir Starmer meets with EU leaders in London on Monday, he should return to those principles to help define a new approach to delivery on the Channel. An approach that could not only deliver significant reductions in Channel crossings, but could provide necessary leadership for a wider agreement between a ‘coalition of the willing’ across the globe. An alternative vision for how countries can effectively deliver on the commitment to provide the opportunity for the most persecuted and at risk to apply for asylum, building the bridge between our obligations under international law and a politics that demands governments demonstrate control and effective management of their borders.
