How the small boats crisis exploded under Starmer

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He accused Rishi Sunak of having “lost control of our borders”. But since Sir Keir Starmer entered Downing Street, 17,087 people have crossed the channel (as of Oct 31), with 2024 now the second highest year so far for small boats arrivals.

As well as overseeing a sharp increase in the number of arrivals, Labour also appears to be struggling to meet its manifesto pledge to end the use of hotels funded by taxpayers to accommodate asylum seekers, in some cases opening up more hotels.

Last week it emerged that asylum seekers were being transferred from the Bibby Stockholm barge to hotel and council accommodation in the Midlands.

Analysis by The Telegraph shows that there have been 17,087 arrivals since Starmer became Prime Minister on July 5 – 5,370 more than the number of Channel crossings during Sunak’s first period in office, from Oct 20 2022 to Feb 2023. Sunak’s first few months in office spanned the colder months when the number of crossings tends to be lower.

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, defended Labour’s record on Monday, arguing that under the Tories, the first six months had been the worst on record for crossings.

Labour, she said, had succeeded in halting the increase during the summer months of July, August and September, but milder weather in October made it the busiest month of the year with 5,417 crossings. It included one day when 973 arrived, the ninth highest on record.

However, the Tories argue that the removal of the Rwanda deportation scheme as a deterrent to crossings is to blame for the increase in the number of migrants seeking to cross and crossing the Channel.

Indeed, before the election, when The Telegraph interviewed migrants waiting in Calais to cross, they were looking forward to a Labour election victory and the removal of the threat of deportation on arrival in the UK under the Rwanda scheme.

Kevin Saunders, a former immigration chief, said: “Sir Keir Starmer has to come up with a deterrent to make the migrants not want to come to the UK. If they don’t want to come to the UK, the smugglers won’t be there to bring them,” he said.

“I think the Rwanda scheme deserved to be tried. I am not saying it would definitely have worked but we should have tried it because nothing else is going to work.”

Small boats
Small boats and outboard motors used by people thought to be migrants to cross the Channel at a warehouse facility in Dover, photographed in October - Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

So far this year, some 30,661 migrants have crossed the Channel, compared with 26,699 at the same point last year and 39,929 over the same period in 2022 (the year with the highest numbers since arrivals began in 2018).

Nearly 60 migrants have died attempting to reach the UK so far in 2024, five times the 12 deaths for the whole of 2023.

On Monday, Cooper refused to make any cast-iron commitment to reducing the crossings through Labour’s alternative “deterrent”. This comprises a combination of fast-track asylum processing and returning migrants to their home countries and bearing down on the people smugglers through its new Border Security Command. An extra 1,000 Home Office staff have been deployed to focus on returns of failed asylum seekers while 400 officers and investigators are being recruited to the Border Security Command, which oversees the Government’s strategy, and the National Crime Agency, to target people smugglers.

The crossing figures, however, demonstrate that the Government still has major hurdles to overcome. Having scrapped the Rwanda scheme and allowed the 118,000 asylum seekers in the backlog who would have been subject to the scheme to claim asylum, Labour is struggling to meet its pledge to reduce and end the use of hotels to house migrants.

The process was started by Sunak last year when he pledged to start winding down the use of hotels in the face of a major backlash among voters.

Before Starmer entered Downing Street in July, the number of migrants in hotels was down from a high of more than 55,000 last year, costing more than £8 million a day, to around 30,000 at the end of June in more than 250 hotels, costing taxpayers £4.2 million a day.

Figures showing the cost of such accommodation since Starmer became Prime Minister are not yet available. But at the weekend, comments by Angela Eagle, Starmer’s minister for borders, security and asylum, were interpreted as Labour watering down its pledge to end the use of hotels for asylum seekers.

She said: “It remains our commitment to end the use of asylum hotels and house people in more cost-effective and suitable accommodation in communities.

Bibby Stockholm barge
Asylum seekers are set to be transferred from the Bibby Stockholm barge to hotel and council accommodation in the Midlands - Matt Keeble/PA Wire

“The size of the existing backlog means we are forced to use hotels in the meantime. This is not a permanent solution. It is a necessary but temporary step to ensure the system doesn’t descend into chaos.”

Meanwhile, the Home Office is understood to have increased the number of asylum claims being processed from a virtual standstill under the Tories of just 500 a month to 6,000 which is starting to erode the 118,000 backlog of claims, many of whom require housing in hotels.

Today, Cooper said that Labour had inherited an asylum system in crisis, which meant officials told her on entering the Home Office that they would have to stand up significant extra accommodation over the summer. This, she said, they avoided, as crossings from July to September were lower than 2023 but, with the surge in October numbers, the opening of new hotels for migrants has now become unavoidable.

At the Interpol assembly in Glasgow, which represents law enforcement ministers and officials from 195 countries, Cooper joined Starmer in requesting help and co-operation in stopping the boats, with Cooper adding: “That kind of co-operation between the UK and other European countries just had not happened before under the previous government.”

But that is not entirely accurate: Sunak had already forged close relations with Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni, while former immigration minister Robert Jenrick had travelled to north Africa and European border countries to set up co-operative agreements.

The Telegraph
There have been 17,087 arrivals since Starmer became Prime Minister on July 5 – 5,370 more than the number of Channel crossings during Sunak’s first period in office - Leon Neal/PA

There is some evidence of success in stemming the supply of boats used for Channel crossings, evidenced by the declining quality of the dinghies and equipment being used to attempt the crossings and the dramatic increase in the number of deaths including children.

However, there are still major stumbling blocks such as Germany’s laws, which say that the facilitation of people-smuggling is not technically illegal there if it is to a third country outside the EU (which now applies to post-Brexit UK).

Cooper said the UK Government was hoping to reach a new agreement with Germany that works around its existing laws. Meanwhile, a more radical approach with offshore processing of migrants is being undertaken by Italy in Albania – though Cooper was, however, clear that this kind of strategy was not on the agenda.

“We are looking to adopt a fast-track system for within the UK if they are arriving from safer countries where we speed up those returns. There has already been a 23 per cent increase in returns for asylum cases,” she said.

Labour can only blame the Tory inheritance for so long. The next six months will be critical in determining whether the new Government can make inroads into the crossings.