Clear pre-election divisions have opened up between Labour and the Conservatives on immigration as Downing Street ruled out ever accepting an asylum seeker quota sharing deal with the EU, after Keir Starmer’s comments that he would.
Labour earlier announced details of a new immigration policy that it said would result in criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling being treated as terrorists.
The Labour leader, who was holding talks at The Hague with officials from Europol and other bodies on Thursday, has suggested that an agreement to send back people who cross the Channel could involve accepting quotas of asylum seekers via the EU. In interviews, he would not be drawn on the number of people he would be willing to take in under the deal that Labour believes it can reach with the bloc.
Asked later about the progress of the government’s own ongoing attempts to reach a returns agreement with EU, the prime minister’s spokesperson stressed that talks continued, with the caveat that the UK would never agree to a “burden-sharing agreement” where Britain had to accept a quota of migrants.
“We have set out that migration across Europe is a shared problem and it involves work with our European partners. The discussions we have had with the EU have been on the basis of sending migrants back on the basis that they travelled through a safe country,” he said.
Starmer, who courted controversy in an article for the Sun by labelling those who disagreed with his plans as “un-British”, said seeking closer cooperation with the EU on the issue did not mean a weakening of his stance on Brexit.
Speaking from The Hague, he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “There is no return to freedom of movement. We have left the EU. There’s no case for going back to the EU, no case for going into the single market or customs union, and no freedom of movement. I’ve been really clear that that’s the parameter.”
He said his main aim was ensuring people did not make it across the Channel in the first place. “The first stage is how do you work with police forces across countries to ensure that you stop people getting into the boats in the first place, and smash this vile trade. And that is about working here in Europol, working across Europe, to ensure that the criminals are brought down, that they are treated in the same way that we treat terrorists. So that’s stage one.”
During his talks with Europol, attended by its executive director, Catherine De Bolle, Starmer was expected to discuss a provisional agreement for a future Labour government that would include a replacement for the EU’s live police data and intelligence-sharing system.
The UK gave up its seat on the board of Europol after Brexit, a move that ended access to shared intelligence databases under the Schengen Information System (SIS II). Under the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) signed with the EU in 2020, British liaison officers are allowed to be present at Europol to facilitate cooperation.
Starmer wrote in his article for the Sun that “some people” said Labour should not talk about immigration “or shouldn’t believe in secure borders”, while others wanted Britain to “turn our back on the world”. “Both are wrong. Both are un-British,” he wrote.
Asked about this language on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, the Labour frontbencher Nick Thomas-Symonds said Labour was “a patriotic party who wants control of our borders” and the current migration system was “totally out of control”.
The former shadow home secretary, whose new brief involves planning for reaching agreements with the EU, said one of Labour’s objectives was to agree on a deal on illegal migration with the union.
Asked whether a future Labour government could strike a deal with the EU, he said: “It is an objective and I believe we would be in a far better position to do that than this government, which frankly has been trashing our reputation on the international stage for good faith, and indeed has been moving through prime ministers so quickly that they haven’t been in a position to build that rapport that you need with other leaders.”
Starmer will follow his visit to The Hague with a trip to Canada to join fellow centre-left leaders at a conference and will meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, next weekHe is seeking to draw on his experience as the director of public prosecutions as he tries to promote his vision of greater cross-border cooperation on countering illegal migration.
“We know that serious organised immigration crime is being run by gangs across borders, involving the movement of people and equipment and involving a huge amount of money that is being made by these gangs that are driving this vile trade,” he told Times Radio.
“That is not unique, because you have similar operations when it comes to terrorism, ammunition and guns being sent across borders, human trafficking, particularly of women being exploited for sex. So there are examples of how these gangs can be smashed.”
