The record number of people arriving in the UK by “small boats” crossing the Channel may not slow this summer, border minister Dame Angela Eagle has admitted.
She stressed a key bill to tighten Britain’s borders will not be in force for many months.
This is higher than the 5,435 who arrived in January, February and March in 2024 - at the time, a record for the first quarter of a calendar year, and well above the number in the same three months in 2023 and 2022.
Asked on LBC Radio when she hoped the tide would turn in the number of arrivals, Dame Angela said: “Once we have got the Border Security Bill operationalise, we have got more co-operative working, I hope we will be able to put much more pressure along the entirety of these criminal gang networks and see progress quickly.”
Pressed whether this would happen by this summer, she added: “We won’t have the Border Security Bill through the Lords...you have got to give us time to operationalise the changes that we are talking about.
“But I’m hoping that we will get the bill sometimes in the summer if their Lordships will co-operate with us.
Asked then whether the arrivals would have peaked by the autumn, she responded: “Certainly we have got to see a decline in these numbers.
“But the issue here is we have got to dismantle sophisticated gangs that have taken six years to form and become deeper, and have their tentacles everywhere.”
Around two thirds of people who reach the UK by “small boats” have been granted asylum in past years.
He stressed: “This vile trade exploits the cracks between our institutions, pits nations against one another and profits from our inability at the political level to come together.”
Countries including Albania, Vietnam and Iraq, from where migrants have travelled the UK, will join the talks, alongside representatives from France, the US and China.
Ministers and enforcement staff will discuss international co-operation on illegal migration, as well as supply routes, criminal finances and online adverts for people smuggling during the meeting.
Some £33 million will be spent to disrupt people-smuggling networks and boost prosecutions, ministers will announce, including on paying foreign prosecutors to hunt people smugglers across the world.
Officials from social media companies Meta, X and TikTok will also join discussions on how to crack down on the online promotion of irregular migration.
Developments aimed at tackling illegal migration ahead of the gathering include:
- The Government will expand right-to-work checks to cover gig economy workers by making amendments to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. Businesses that do not carry out the checks could be fined up to £60,000, or face closures, director disqualifications, and even up to five years in prison.
- Home Secretary Yvette Cooper signalled she wanted to crack down on the number of people who have arrived in the UK on a student or work visa and have since claimed asylum.
Senior Tory shadow minister Alex Burghart said Labour should never have scrapped the Rwanda deportation plan, which was aimed at deterring migrants from making the English Channel crossing in small boats.
