Keir
Starmer vows to stop people-smuggling gangs with tactics used to jail rioters
Prime
minister held a summit attended by National Crime Agency, Border Force and
senior ministers
Rajeev Syal
Home affairs editor
Fri 6 Sep
2024 18.49 BST
Keir Starmer
has pledged to break up people-smuggling gangs in the same manner used to
apprehend and jail hundreds of rioters this summer.
After a
meeting with law enforcement agencies and cabinet ministers to discuss plans to
stop small boats crossing the Channel on Friday, the prime minister said that
the “high-level summit” mirrored the approach taken after disturbances fuelled
by far-right activists.
“We sat
round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got
the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift
justice.
“I’m
absolutely determined to take the same approach here: active government, an
operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our
borders, take these gangs down,” he said.
Senior
ministers, including David Lammy, the foreign secretary; Shabana Mahmood, the
justice secretary; and Richard Hermer, the attorney general, attended Friday’s
summit at the National Crime Agency headquarters in London alongside
representatives from the agency, Border Force and the intelligence community.
During the
riots, the prime minister chaired Cobra meetings of police chiefs, ministers
and officials as part of the government’s emergency crisis response.
Rapid
arrests, charges and sentencing and high-profile policing appeared to act as a
deterrent.
The summit
comes at the end of a week which saw the deaths of at least 12 people after
their boat was “ripped apart” off the northern French coast while they
attempted to cross the Channel.
The 1,276
people who have already crossed the Channel this week bring the total for the
year so far to 22,328 – about 648 more than at the same point last year but
5,269 less than in 2022. Since the general election 8,754 people have made the
crossing, less than in the same two-month period in either 2022 or 2023.
Earlier on
Friday, the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick accused Starmer and the
home secretary, Yvette Cooper, of having “surrendered to the smuggling gangs”
after scrapping the Conservatives’ Rwanda policy.
Jenrick, the
frontrunner for the Tory leadership, said: “Yvette Cooper will meet the
National Crime Agency and police chiefs today, and they’ll tell her what they
told me when I was the minister, which is that although it’s important that we
do that work, it is not sufficient.
“You have to
have a deterrent.”
Starmer
dismissed reports that Germany plans to adopt the UK’s plan to deport asylum
seekers to Rwanda and insisted that it was an expensive gimmick.
“It cost us
£700m to persuade four volunteers to go to Rwanda,” he said, adding that the
money would be used on operational matters. “And I think the Germans have
already cleared up that they’re not using the Rwanda plan, and that’s because
they’ve concluded – like we have – that it won’t work,” Starmer said.
Asked by the
BBC if he might consider opening more safe routes for asylum seekers – a
majority of those who cross the Channel are subsequently granted asylum –
Starmer dismissed the suggestion.
“I think the
priority has to be on taking down the gangs that are exploiting vulnerable
people … That has to stop now,” he said.
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