15th February 2025, The Telegraph
We must free ourselves from these absurd human-rights shackles
Is that it? That’s what the government’s latest plan to “smash the gangs” left me thinking. Their Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill was debated in Parliament this week and left a lot to be desired. Surprise, surprise, it won’t stop the boats.
What was I expecting? Sir Keir Starmer has spoken occasionally about his “personal mission” to address the migration crisis, citing his experience in tackling organised crime as DPP. Yvette Cooper, meanwhile, has dismissed the Rwanda scheme as an “unworkable gimmick.” The rhetoric is polished, but the results paint a different story. Since the ‘adults have been in charge’, illegal crossings have increased by 30 per cent. The number of migrants in hotels has gone up by 6,000, enforced and voluntary returns of small boat arrivals are down and the asylum backlog is up.
This week alone the Telegraph reported a series of perverse judgements which saw a Gazan family allowed to come to the UK on the basis that they qualified under our Ukrainian Refugee Scheme, a Nigerian woman’s human rights claim to stay here bolstered by her membership of a terrorist group and a Ghanaian winning the right to stay in Britain after a “proxy” marriage she did not attend. So much for Starmer’s ‘Plan for Change’. Illegal migrants are making the most of this Labour government and heading to the Kent coast in their droves. Assisted by the liberal lawyer elites embedded in our government, our judiciary and our establishment, Britain’s borders have been flung wide open.
The fatal flaw with Labour’s approach is painfully obvious. As the National Crime Agency and the newly appointed Border Security Commander have made clear, deterrence is critical if the gangs are to be robbed of their business model. Deterrence means more than just quicker processing and more prosecutions – it means that those who come will not be allowed to stay. Labour’s plan of focussing on arresting and prosecuting migrants more swiftly is almost laughable in its naivety. Anyone with experience in this field will tell you that, once someone sets foot on UK soil, our criminal justice system, asylum appeals, and legal loopholes work to facilitate their stay.
Talk to any Border Force officer, and they’ll explain how rights of appeal, legal challenges, and endless reconsiderations trap our system in bureaucratic stasis. Even if the pilot of a migrant boat is arrested, they’ll likely invoke their rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and these days, argue that their child can’t eat foreign chicken nuggets! Good luck securing a prosecution under those circumstances. It might sound cynical, but the truth is that the vast majority of those arriving on small boats are economic migrants coming here for money, not fleeing war zones. And Labour’s plans do nothing to address this fundamental problem.
The reality is that those coming here illegally know the risk of deportation is so low they’re ready to gamble their lives on a treacherous journey across the Channel. Our open borders have fuelled a vile industry of smugglers ready to risk lives for profit. Every time someone drowns, it’s a sickening reminder of the horror of their final moments and the shame that our country couldn’t prevent it.
That’s why Labour’s scrapping of the Rwanda scheme (while flawed in its execution, the plan was a step in the right direction) is wrong. It sends a simple message to those weighing up the risks: if you get here, you’ll most likely get to stay. Labour’s Bill this week goes further in opening our borders and incentivising the people smugglers: it gets rid of the laws that I delivered as Home Secretary which banned illegal migrants from claiming asylum or British citizenship and ends the powers to remove illegal migrants from the UK. Granted, the previous Conservative government failed to stop the boats but at least we made more of an attempt through our Rwanda scheme than this lot.
£150 million has been pledged – mostly to the French, on top of the hundreds of millions we gave them when we were in office. There are drones over the Channel (presumably alongside the ones we’ve been using for years) and a snazzy rebranding as the “Border Security Command.” I’ll admit, it’s catchier than the “Small Boats Operational Command” I set up in 2023. But the most innovative idea? The new Border Security Commander has been empowered to… “write an annual strategic document and report on progress”. Hardly Trump-style action.
So, what is the solution? Firstly, we need a deterrence that stops the boats from setting out in the first place. That’s why the Rwanda scheme is the right idea. But to make that deterrence work – and this is where we Conservatives patently failed – we need to fundamentally overhaul our human rights laws. That means scrapping the Human Rights Act, extricating ourselves from the European Convention of Human Rights and the Strasbourg Court and reforming our judicial review framework. And lastly, we need more heavily resourced and functional operations: greater powers to our Border Force officers, more immigration detention spaces and quicker processing. If Starmer were serious about what he pledges, he could amend his pathetic Borders Bill to include these changes. Of course, he won’t.
Other countries, like the USA, Italy, Greece and now Denmark are demonstrating what is possible when there is the political will to reclaim control over the border. Millions of pounds and snappy slogans won’t be enough. It is up to our political leaders to grasp the nettle and fix this crisis. The question is: who will do so?
