Senior Labour figures are concerned the party lacks a sufficient plan to tackle the small-boats crisis amid growing calls internally for Sir Keir Starmer to ask to join the EU’s new border pact if the party wins the election.
Starmer has pledged to scrap the Rwanda policy and instead pour more money into the National Crime Agency to “smash the people-smuggling gangs” that operate the cross-Channel route. Labour also wants to put more resources into returning illegal migrants to their home countries as part of a five-point plan to tackle illegal migration.
However, some around Starmer have questioned whether the party has a viable deterrent to stop the small-boat crossings. One senior figure told The Times: “When the Tories say ‘we’ve got Rwanda, what’s your deterrent?’ it’s not a stupid question. Rwanda is a stupid policy but we can’t currently say how we are going to tackle the demand side of the issue.”
They are among those saying the party should be open to agreeing a quota system with the EU, arguing it is the price to pay for significant progress on crossings.
“It will be a rerun of the Brexit negotiations in some ways,” they said. “We will want something bespoke and the EU will say ‘we’ve gone through hell and high water to get this pact’, so will want to say you can somehow dock or connect with that pact. But we will be wanting something more bespoke.”
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Another senior figure in the party said: “There are some jitters starting to emerge. What if Rwanda does lead to a fall in crossings? We need a viable answer to what we’d do differently other than just ‘smash the gangs’.”
The EU’s new migration and asylum pact was finally passed by the European parliament on Wednesday and is designed to address the growing migration crisis that has hit the continent over the last couple of years. Frontex, the EU’s border agency, recorded a 17 per cent increase in migrants entering last year as 380,000 crossed the bloc’s external border, the highest level since 2016.
The new deal, which follows years of deadlock on the issue, will end the requirement for refugees to apply for asylum in the first country they arrive in and will force all EU member states to share responsibility for the relocation of asylum seekers and the costs incurred by frontline countries such as Greece and Italy.
However, it allows countries unwilling to take asylum seekers — such as Poland and Hungary — to opt out and instead pay the EU €20,000 per migrant or provide “measures in kind”.
An official Labour spokesman said: “We’re not members of the EU so won’t be part of any EU pact.”
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In an interview with The Times last autumn, Starmer said he would seek deals with France and other countries but has rejected Tory claims that an agreement could see a Labour government accept 100,000 migrants a year as “complete garbage”.
The Labour leader is understood to be privately confident that the party’s focus on stronger enforcement against people-smuggling gangs will cut the numbers crossing in small boats quickly. “He is convinced there’s a lot, especially on processing claims, that you can do straight away and that is worth getting right first,” one Labour source said.
Privately there are hopes that the arrival of Harvey Redgrave, a widely respected home-affairs adviser under the last Labour government, could mean more detail on a deterrent will follow soon.
A report Redgrave authored for the Tony Blair Institute recommended introducing universal mandatory digital identity cards to help to alleviate the Channel migrant crisis.
Under the plans, all individuals would be required to produce their digital identity card, showing their legal right to reside in the UK and to access employment or benefits. The report said this would make it harder for undocumented migrants to “disappear” into the informal economy.
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However, the idea of reintroducing ID cards has repeatedly caused internal disagreements within Labour. Stephen Kinnock, the shadow immigration minister, suggested that a Labour government could introduce “basic” ID cards in an interview with Times Radio in 2022 and said that the proposal was being looked at “very, very carefully indeed”.
He was almost immediately contradicted by his boss Yvette Cooper who, when asked about Kinnock’s comments, gave a flat “no” to the idea of introducing ID cards.
This month Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who first introduced the policy of ID cards in the aftermath of 9/11, called on Starmer to resurrect the policy to tackle the small-boats crisis. ID cards were scrapped when the Conservatives defeated Labour in 2010 and only 15,000 had been issued.
