Labour in Opposition cavalierly disparaged and disrupted all attempts by the Conservatives to get a handle on illegal immigration, while simultaneously exuding supreme confidence in its own ability to solve the problem by smashing the people-smuggling gangs. (As if the Conservatives hadn’t been trying to do just that.)
So, after 14 months of Labour government, I think we have a right to expect at least a sliver of progress.
Alas, far from any sign of improvement, every relevant measure indicates it’s getting worse. A record 50,000 migrants arrived illegally on small boats in the first 12 months of Keir Starmer’s watch, up 27 per cent on the previous 12 months.
By the end of June, 111,000 so-called asylum seekers were having their claims processed, another record, and 14 per cent up on a year ago.
More than 32,000 of these are being housed in over 200 hotels, a rise of 8 per cent on a year ago, despite Labour’s promise to phase out the use of this type of accommodation.
The few claims of success Labour does make crumble on examination.
Starmer boasts that people with no right to be here are being returned in record numbers. In fact, the vast majority of those leaving volunteered to go. The number being forcibly ejected is still minuscule.
The latest figures show that in the first half of this year 70 per cent of illegal migrants arriving by boat were single males, aged between 18 and 39, writes Andrew Neil
A Labour minister recently claimed most of the boat people were women and children – families fleeing persecution and war zones. It was such a ludicrous proposition, he quickly had to correct it.
The latest figures show that in the first half of this year 70 per cent of illegal migrants arriving by boat were single males, aged between 18 and 39.
The much touted ‘one-in, one-out’ deal recently agreed with Paris has all the makings of a French farce. Nobody seriously thinks it will make more than the smallest dent in the numbers coming here illegally from northern France.
As for smashing the people-smugglers, they seem to be operating with as much impunity as ever. All that’s been smashed is faith in Starmer’s ability to resolve the issue.
We are witnessing the impotence of the British state in a matter of grave and growing public concern. As a result, people are at the end of their tether, increasingly inclined to take matters into their own hands.
Asylum hotels across the country are facing a wave of anti-immigration protests this weekend after a High Court judge ordered the removal of migrants from a hotel in Epping, Essex, because it did not have planning permission to turn itself in to a hostel (which is what, in effect, it had become).
Folks elsewhere are on the march demanding the landmark ruling applies to asylum hotels in their communities too.
Yvette Cooper, the hapless Home Secretary, announced yesterday she would appeal the High Court ruling, which is hardly surprising – as it stands, it leaves the Government’s approach to housing asylum seekers in ruins. Over 80 councils up and down the land, including at least ten controlled by Labour, are mulling copycat versions of Epping Forest District Council’s legal challenge.
Ministers are stuck up that famously malodorous creek without a paddle. They tied themselves in knots this week when asked, in the aftermath of the court order, where they’d put 32,000 asylum seekers if hotels were no longer an option. It was clear they didn’t have a clue.
There’s talk of speeding up attempts to move them into rented housing, empty tower blocks and disused student accommodation. Dubbed ‘Operation Scatter’, only in the closeted world of the Whitehall Blob, hermetically sealed off from daily reality, could this be regarded as a serious solution.
Asylum hotels across the country are facing a wave of anti-immigration protests this weekend after a High Court judge ordered the removal of migrants from a hotel in Epping, Essex
Protesters stand behind fencing during a demonstration calling for the closure of the Bell Hotel in Epping
At a time of acute housing shortage it would stoke up even more resentment in the wider population, especially among those struggling to afford a decent place to live. Private landlords would be paid handsomely to house migrants in flats and houses at a time when there are already stories of tenants being evicted by unscrupulous landlords in anticipation of bigger takings to come from asylum seekers, whose rents would be paid by the taxpayer.
If the Government wants to fan the flames of current protests, it has stumbled upon a foolproof way of doing it. It’s time for some fresh thinking, starting with deterrence – that is, dissuading illegal migrants from coming here in the first place. At the moment, there is almost none.
If you can make it most of the way across the Channel, Border Force vessels will escort your dinghy for the final miles. You’ll then be provided with free food, a weekly stipend, a mobile phone and free accommodation – often a four-star hotel – while your claim for British residence is processed. There is no obligation to do anything but wait.
No wonder those protesting this week fear asylum hotels make their neighbourhoods more dangerous. I don’t subscribe to the view that migrants are more likely to commit crimes. But I do know that street and violent crime is largely a young, single man’s game and most illegal migrants coming by boat are young, single men – now with a lot of time on their hands.
I think we can all agree they are unlikely to be put off coming here by the prospect of the indefinite right to remain in a comfortable hotel.
Sending them to another territory far away from Britain to process their claims might have done the trick. That was the Tories’ Rwandan gambit. I’m not sure it would have worked, since it couldn’t be scaled up. But it was killed off by the courts and Labour before it was given a chance. So we’ll never know.
In the absence of another territory prepared to take large numbers for processing there is only one other alternative: large-scale detention centres in the UK. Either on some of the islands that surround our shores (we are the British Isles, after all), or in the more remote parts of the mainland.
These would provide basic accommodation, decent but spartan, and far away from population centres. Canteens would provide the food we’ve all eaten at some stage in our lives, there would be medical care and perhaps even some education courses on offer to keep minds occupied.
Those who got bored waiting for the asylum process to wend its painfully slow way to a conclusion would be welcome to return from whence they came, perhaps with a little financial assistance.
Those who were economic migrants might baulk at such conditions and request to leave the country since it was not quite in accord with the economic nirvana they’d been promised from afar.
Genuine asylum seekers would not be deterred, as a temporary stay in a UK detention centre would surely be an improvement on the hardships and danger they’d faced in their homelands.
You could be forgiven for fearing that such a project is beyond the capabilities of today’s British state. But we quickly built seven Nightingale hospitals in England alone in the early days of the pandemic, each one far more sophisticated than a basic detention centre. Nightingale accommodation for asylum seekers should surely not be beyond even this government’s competence.
As my Daily Mail colleague Stephen Glover has pointed out, the British Army built Camp Bastion in the wilds of Afghanistan, a vast base accommodating 28,000 people. Pop up detention centres in a few remote corners of our kingdom should be a breeze in comparison.
One thing is certain: for the Government to continue on its current ramshackle course would be perilous. The British are slow to anger but, when riled, our fury can quickly boil over.
My fear is that today’s protests are a harbinger of greater unrest to come. Already, 56 per cent think illegal immigration is the most important issue facing this country. Detention centres would signal to the world that we are no longer a soft touch. And that alone would be the start of the solution.
