Labour faces an ‘uphill struggle’ to reduce Channel migrant crossings under the party’s undefined plans to ‘stop the boats’, according to a migration expert.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, cast doubt over Sir Keir Starmer‘s proposals as she criticised a lack of detail.
The Labour leader has vowed to scrap the Tories‘ Rwanda deportation scheme on day one of becoming prime minister, if he wins Thursday’s general election.
Instead, his party’s manifesto pledges to ‘smash’ people-smuggling gangs through a new Border Security Command, as well as sign a series of new migrant returns deals.
But the Tories have claimed Labour’s interest in striking a returns agreement with the EU would see Britain obliged to take a quota of the bloc’s asylum seekers in return.
Home Secretary James Cleverly warned this is ‘likely to mean the UK taking 100,000 more illegal migrants into our country from the EU’.
One of the Conservatives’ top-performing social media posts in recent weeks has been a video of two people carving the word ‘WELCOME’ into stones on a UK beach.
They are also seen and rolling out a red carpet in a dig at Labour’s migration policies.
Sir Keir Starmer faces an ‘uphill struggle’ to reduce Channel migrant crossings under Labour’s undefined plans to ‘stop the boats’, according to a migration expert
One of the Tories’ top-performing social media posts in recent weeks has been a video of two people carving the word ‘WELCOME’ into stones on a UK beach – in a dig at Labour’s plans
Speaking to The Times, Ms Sumption warned Labour would find it difficult to significantly reduce small boat crossings.
She said the party’s approach was too heavily focused on people-smuggling networks, which would adapt quickly to law enforcement tactics.
‘The biggest claim in the Labour manifesto is that they can smash the gangs, that there can be an enforcement approach that can reduce small boat arrivals,’ she told the newspaper.
‘I think that it will be difficult to do that. I’ve no doubt it’ll be possible with more resources to find more of the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
‘But the question is whether it’ll have a significant impact on small boat arrivals because the smuggling networks are quite decentralised.
‘If you take out one group of people others move in to fill the space. There are so many people involved and as long as there is a lot of money to be made, there’ll always be new people to step in to fill that space.
‘I’m not saying there isn’t merit to be focusing on law enforcement, but it’ll be an uphill struggle to reduce numbers.’
Ms Sumption also questioned why Labour had not been explicit about a migrant returns deal with the EU in their manifesto.
In September last year, Sir Keir said he would seek an EU-wide returns agreement for asylum seekers who come to Britain.
But there is no specific pledge on an asylum deal with Brussels in Labour’s manifesto.
Ms Sumption said: ‘If Labour were to pursue some kind of co-operation with the EU there are scenarios where very many more could be sent to Europe than would have been sent to Rwanda, although that is theoretical because we’ve not seen the Rwanda policy put into action.’
She added: ‘It’s a pity that we don’t get more detail on the Labour side about what they would actually do.’
Sir Keir has previously dismissed the Tories’ claim that a migrant returns agreement with the EU would see 100,00 extra arrivals to the UK as ‘complete garbage’.
A recent analysis found, since the general election was announced, the clip of the word ‘WELCOME’ being carved into a UK beach was one of the Tories’ best-performing posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The clip, which was posted on June 20 and captioned ‘Don’t wake up to this on July 5’, gained about eight million views and 9,000 comments.
Some X users branded it ‘offensive’, while others said the video was ‘hypocrisy’ and ‘unbelievable given what has happened over the last 14 years’.
Home Office figures released today showed 85 people arrived on small boats across the Channel yesterday.
It followed 217 arrivals on Sunday, which took the total for the first six months of the year to a record high of 13,491.
Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said: ‘These numbers speak for themselves.
‘This is the highest total for small boat arrivals at the half-way point of the year, 18 per cent up on the same period in 2023.
‘Indeed, since Rishi Sunak called the election there have been 12 times the number of people crossing the Channel that can be deported to Rwanda in a whole year.
‘All that is squarely down to Rishi Sunak. He promised the people of Britain that he would stop the boats, and he has broken that promise.’