The bottom line to this idea is that governments shouldn't be
trading humans. Why are we having that
discussion? What are the answers here,
people? And you know, let's face it,
predominantly young men will still take whatever risk if they
think it's worth taking. Well, as Keir Starmer said,
there is no silver bullet and and actually the smash the gangs
approach does encounter a number of quite substantial operational
challenges. Last week, of course, we saw the
video that perhaps the far right wanted to see, which was police
going into the water and slashing a boat.
We heard the child screaming. We heard heard everyone on their
distraught. And maybe that's what they want.
Hello and welcome to the Forecast.
I'm Paul McNamara. The UK and France have just
signed a deal that they hope will cut down on the number of
migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.
The deterrent? Come to the UK illegally and you
can be shipped straight back or as quick as the courts will
allow. France will accept these
returnees in exchange for Britain taking in refugees with
family connections or legitimate claims.
But will this one in one out scheme really put off desperate
people fleeing war or famine? Small boat crossings are up
almost 56% this year, with more than 21,000 people making the
journey so far. Will those numbers come down and
fast enough to ease the political pressure from illegal
migration? To discuss this, I'm joined by
Doctor Peter Walsh from Oxford University's Migration
Observatory and from the refugee charity Care for Kelly Charlotte
Kahn. The numbers that we're talking
about here are, we understand, about 50 returned per week.
Well, at the moment, since Labour first came into power,
about 850 people have been coming to the UK every single
week. So will this be enough to deter
those people crossing the Channel in small boats, Peter?
It's unlikely to have much of an impact.
The working assumption has always been that the size of the
deterrent effect of any returns deal like this will depend on a
substantial share of people who reach the UK by small boat being
returned to France. After all, these are individuals
who have travelled thousands of miles to get to Calais.
They've spent thousands of EUR. They're willing to risk their
lives by getting in a small boat to reach the UK.
If there's not a substantial probability of being returned
swiftly to France, then there's a likelihood that they'll just
view this as one additional risk that they're willing to take.
Charlotte is that what you're hearing from people actually in
France? I think the bottom line to this
idea is that governments shouldn't be trading humans.
It's quite obvious that that shouldn't be happening, and I'm
a little confused to be honest. I mean, family reunification
should already exist. So with this new plan, what
exactly is the government suggesting that so far they've
been denying people this right? Or are they saying that they
will in the future deny family reunification unless some poor
person who's come across on on a small boat is forcibly removed
from the from the nation? I mean, this is, this is crazy
and it works on a horrible assumption that the people who
are coming over on small boats have no connection to the UK,
which many do. And an even worse assumption
that people on small boats don't have the right to claim asylum
in the UK, which they all do. So it's a nonsense and it it
won't work because it's a deterrent based policy.
And we know from years and years of working in this sector now
deterrent based policies do not stop people crossing the
Channel. But Charlotte, if they know that
there is a legal route and if they apply by the rules that
Keir Starmer has just laid out, they would have a way of coming
to the UK legally and have some sort of future here.
Would that not be an attractive prospect?
Am I in favour of safe routes? Absolutely 100%.
I think safe routes is the only answer.
It's the serious solution to this.
I I think all this pomp and ceremony and political circus is
it would be laughable if it wasn't costing lives.
Safe routes is the answer. Things will only work if they
affect the majority of people who at the moment are coming
onto small boats. So there would need to be a real
political will behind safe routes for it to work and it
would need to affect a lot more people.
And we saw this success of a political will being in place
with the Ukrainian scheme. And then that is the same sort
of thing that we would need to see for a wider safe route
across the Channel so people can just join our asylum system like
they do elsewhere. OK, before we start picking
apart this policy even more, let's just do a bit of new
reader starts here. So why are people willing to
risk death in the Channel, get in these small boats and come to
the UK when they could stay in France?
Peter. Several reasons.
I mean, chief among them would actually speak with the
individuals. They'll speak of the presence of
family members in the UK, existing family connections or
friends, members of the community.
That's a strong jaw. A second is the English
language, that these are individuals who already have
some facility with English. They prefer to develop their
English language skills rather than learn French, Spanish or
German. And 3rd, there is now emerging
evidence of a Brexit effect, which is that when we were a
part of the EU, we had access to the EU's asylum seeker
fingerprint database. We had access to the Dublin
system under which asylum seekers who had claimed in the
EU could be returned to the block.
We no longer have access to those as a result of Brexit and
people understand that if they've claimed in the EU and
been refused, they can have another bite of the cherry by
coming to the UK because we wouldn't know about that.
Look Charlotte, a lot of people watching this are going to turn
around and say what is wrong with claiming asylum in France?
So this is a big misconception. I think people who speak like
that think that every refugee wants to come to the UK.
This simply isn't the truth and we and we have all the
statistics to back it up. Most people seeking safety will
do so in a country neighboring their own.
The most the majority of people coming to Europe don't want to
come to the UK. So this is, this is a nonsense.
The people who are wanting to come to the UK do so for really
strong reasons and that is to be with their family or that is
language. It is to have a chance to
rebuild their life in safety. And they haven't found this
elsewhere. You know, we hear really
distressing stories and accounts from people that have worked
their way through Europe. Yes, they have been to
countries, but they certainly haven't found their safe place.
They have been met with state violence and to such an extent
that they have to move on. But there are some individuals
who, yes, they, they are trying to get to family here, which I
would do, I think most of us would do.
If I had an uncle in a country, I'd be heading to him.
What's the appeal of this deal, what we've had announced, What's
the appeal here for France, Peter?
It's a good question. I think a part of it is that
France wishes to show the willingness to cooperate on
really what is a shared issue. France already has quite a lot
of cooperation on this issue with the UK.
We have patrols over there. We share intelligence and by the
end of financial year 27 will have sent about a billion euros
in the 10 years prior to that. But I think it really is this
appreciation that this is an international issue.
France is not satisfied with the formation of informal migrant
settlements in and around Calais and really it's a recognition of
that fundamentally. So you spend quite a lot of time
in Calais, lots of pictures that have been raised.
Voters over the last couple of years have been no sights of
French policemen standing around, not doing very much.
When people hop into boats and then launch into the Channel,
why aren't the French intervening more?
Is it simply because they're more than happy for people to
leave the country? Come over here, let the UK deal
with it. Well, if people are wanting the
French police to make refugees lives a misery in Calais, they
can rest assured that that's definitely happening.
For years now we've seen an escalation in police violence
paid for by us, by the UK government.
Of course, on the sites in Calais, we've seen tear gas,
we've seen pepper spray, you know, the very few belongings
that people have in the world being destroyed in front of
them, violence against people. I mean, I did think I had seen
it all. But then last week, of course,
we saw the video that perhaps the far right wanted to see,
which was police going into the water and slashing a boat when
people were still on board. We heard the child screaming.
We heard everyone on their distraught and maybe that's what
they want and I think this is this is what the governments are
working towards. They are pandering towards the
FAR. Charlotte isn't there?
Isn't there an argument here that actually, yeah, they're
distressing images, but actually it's a kind of thing to make
sure that they're not further out and to see they're not
getting into more danger. You're stopping people before
you, before they take that really, really dangerous journey
the full way across the channel. Oh my God, yeah.
I wish that people wouldn't take that risk.
I, I wish that they didn't have to, of course, 100%, but we are
talking nonsense if we think that that one event is going to
stop people trying again. There was nothing to suggest
that they won't stop trying. We speak to people all the time.
We, we spoke to people specifically when the Rwanda
plan was there. It was meant to be the biggest
deterrent ever. Look, the biggest deterrent ever
is that you might lose your life in this journey and people are
still willing to do it. Peter is that is that the the
mood music that you hear that it doesn't really matter what
deterrents are put in place people and you know, let's face
it, predominantly young men will still take whatever risk if they
think it's worth taking. They are desperate to reach the
UK. And when you look at the
countries that they've come from, in some sense it's no
great surprise why they tend to come from some of the most
chaotic parts of the world, countries that suffer political
persecution, environmental catastrophe, war, civil or
ethnic conflict of various kinds.
And that's why it's no surprise, of course, that large majorities
claim asylum. And at the moment, of those that
have received a decision on their asylum claim, a pretty
large majority, 2/3, have been successful.
Charlotte, I get the impression from the from the top there that
you're not overly pleased with the announcement that's just
been made by Sir Keir Starmer. Is there any form of returns
agreement that you would have looked at and gone?
Yeah, OK, I can get behind that. I, I, my, my purpose isn't here
to talk about returns agreement. I, I'm, I'm really disturbed by
that idea that we have to trade humans in any way.
Why are we doing that? Why are we having that
discussion? Why aren't we talking about our
obligations as a country to, you know, help people who have come
to us asking for help? Why are we trying to shirk our
responsibility just because of this fluke of geography that we
have this deadly channel in between us?
Why are we doing that? My mind boggles.
I don't understand why we're not just talking about a safe route
and why we're talking about returns in this way.
There are returns policies in place, but can I go back to
something you mentioned about them, mostly young men.
And this is something that the that the far right really like
to, you know, get stuck in in on.
You know, when we look at the nations that the people are are
fleeing from the very targets of those governments that they are
fleeing and the persecution they flee, the very targets are young
men forced conscription into what is basically, you know,
death gangs. So they are the targets.
Why we would stop those young men seeking asylum in our nation
is disgraceful. I really do.
I really dislike this sort of gender based discussion that
happens on this topic. And maybe it's because I'm a mum
of two strapping teenage boys and God forbid that my very
tall, you know, 13 and 15 year old sons ever had to flee their
home like my friends, mothers have had to tell them, you know,
run. God forbid that they were met
with this, that people were wishing them to die on their way
to meeting a relative in a safe country.
Peter, can you talk us through the scale of the problem across
the whole of Europe? Because a lot of people watching
the news, watching the UK news will only see the people that
are crossing the Channel to get here.
But looking across Europe, how? What's the scale of the problem
in every other European nation? Yes, it's very much a European
challenge and the UK is most certainly not alone here.
If we talk about unauthorised maritime arrivals, Italy has
frequently 2 to three times, Greece often has more, Spain as
well. So there are many countries that
experience this. And certainly the extent to
which the UK experiences unauthorised maritime migration
is considerably of less magnitude than the numbers that
are reaching Italy, for example. So this is a pan European
problem, but what we've got now is an agreement between the UK
and France. Is there a risk that the
Europeans can step in here and say we're blocking this?
We've already seen some opposition from a number of
frontline states, Italy, Cyprus, Malta, Spain and Greece.
Their concern is that individuals that are returned to
France may end up back in those countries which already view
themselves as as overburdened and taking responsibility for
large numbers of individuals. But of course, at the same time,
an individual that could be returned to those countries is
also coming to the Uki think one of the big questions about this
fairly limited deal for the time being is whether it might be a
stepping stone to a broader agreement between the UK and the
EU as a whole. And the big win, I think for UK
policy makers would be regaining access to the E US fingerprint
asylum seeker database. Charlotte, immigration is a huge
issue in British politics. Labour feel that they've got to
get on top of this. Just talking to Labour MPs
before we started this podcast, one, one of them was saying to
me, look, this is a good start but we're going to have to go
further because we are facing real problems here from Reform
who are looking at taking a far harder line stance.
Are you concerned that if Labour don't tackle this problem now,
it's not going to be whatever Keir Starmer comes up with, but
it might be what Nigel Farage comes up with which you would
find far less palatable? So I, I do think it's
extraordinary that a Labour government is in place and we're
having these discussions. I've worked in this sector for
years now and even in our, in our darkest day under the Tory
government, you, you at least have that hope that, you know,
one day they're going to get voted out and this change is
coming. But here we are with the Labour
government having the same discussions.
I think it's extraordinary that Labour are choosing this
strategy of trying to out reform, reform.
I mean, that's not a a vote winner.
Who's going to do that? If you if you want to vote for
the for the very worst, in my opinion, you know policies, then
you just the. Polls show that it that it is a
vote winner Charlotte. Well, I mean, I, I really do
think that the majority of Labour, traditional Labour
voters don't want what the Labour government are bringing
in place. They honestly don't.
And it's certainly not our experience as a charity who are,
you know, out in the UK, across the UK all the time, we have
thousands of volunteers. We come across loads of
different communities who are not interested in what reforms
are selling now. Do we all share the same sort of
frustrations that perhaps reform voters have?
Yes, I think we do. I think that's a wider political
discussion. Peter, this isn't just a
European problem, it's not just Auk problem.
This is migration. Global migration is a problem
across the world. I've just come back from the
Mexico, Arizona border. Donald Trump by taking a really
hard line approach, has pretty much shut down that border.
The border crossings are down by huge numbers.
He's only with aggressive tactics of forced immigration,
immigration now we've got people who are volunteering to return
to their home nations because it's such a toxic environment.
Could a similar system work over here if the government went
really, really hard line, really appeal to those voters who might
be flirting with reform? Law enforcement has its
limitations. That the case of the US is
actually quite instructive in that it showed that a
combination of enforcement, sometimes harsh and rigorously
applied, along with the safe and legal routes, proved to be the
most effective kind of solution. The big question, of course, is
whether the Labour government would find that politically
palatable. But that has been one of the big
lessons coming out of the UK case study, the US case study
Look. Long term, what are the answers
here? How can so, how can the
government stop these small boats crossing?
You know, we've heard so much about smash the gangs.
Well, how many gangs have actually been smashed so far?
How are we going to get these crossings down, Peter?
Well, as Keir Starmer said, there is no silver bullet and
actually the smash the gangs approach does encounter a number
of quite substantial operational challenges.
The smuggling networks are increasingly professionalised,
well resourced. They've always been adaptable.
It takes a lot of resource to hand smugglers.
They can be quickly replaced and senior figures operate in
countries not just beyond the UK's jurisdiction but beyond
that of the EU, and often in countries with which the UK has
very little to no law enforcement cooperation.
So the magnitude of the challenge very substantial
indeed. Charlotte, what about you?
Is there any solution you can see?
Yes, well, I mean, he says there's no silver bullet.
You know, we heard there was no magic money tree either and all
of that. We've we've heard phrases like
this before. There is it's safe routes.
It's a safe route to cross the channel.
That is what will destroy the smugglers business model
overnight. I I'm incredibly frustrated that
the government refused to even research or look into a safe
route in order for people to cross the channel.
We've produced policies with with PCs union who represent
Border Force, who represent people who work in the Home
Office. We're not some sort of lefty
crazy utopian thinking agency here.
We have put forward a serious solution here which they are
refusing to consider. Is that essentially an open door
though, Charlotte? No, no, it's not.
I mean. So would you put numbers on?
Would you put? Would you put limits on?
Please, let's start that conversation.
You know, I, I'm not here to go into the minutiae of exactly
what the Home Office would do, but let's have a look at that.
You know, we have a blueprint. It's not just talk.
We have a blueprint based quite heavily on the Ukrainian scheme
where people would be able to access the right to cross the
Channel to enter our asylum process.
So our asylum process, we are told by Labour is robust.
Therefore let people enter it without having to risk their
lives because that is what the crisis is.
The crisis is people are dying in the Channel.
It's not that people are seeking asylum in the UK, surely.
Peter, if you're a betting man, how much money would you put on
what's been announced today having any real impact on
getting the numbers down? I can see Charlotte shaking her
head already, by the way. The numbers would have to be
substantial such that there would be a large chance of being
returned to France under this initial pilot stage.
Those numbers are not particularly up large.
That's really the the low number scenario where it's difficult to
imagine much material the Tarrant effect.
And if it doesn't have an effect, what's the
ramifications? Very difficult to predict.
The UK may very well seek a broader deal with the EU, but
the big question is there, well, will the EU be keen to do that?
It certainly prefers deals with the block as a whole rather than
these kinds of bilateral agreements.
But the question for the EU will be, well, why would we give the
UK these additional powers that have been typically reserved for
member states? And Charlotte, do you think this
is ultimately going to have any impact on the people that you
deal with in Calais? I don't think it's going to stop
people crossing the channel, no, I think it's going to risk
people's lives. That's that's the truth of it is
that people will die. Last year at least 78 people
died in our channel. This is just this just can't
continue. So the result will be this is
yet another cruel deterrent based policy, which won't work.
It won't stop people and people will just continue to die.
What will will what happen is that the far right will continue
to use it in the way that they do to stir up hatred.
We'll, we'll be distracted from the issues that are really
important to people who live here.
And rather than looking elsewhere, we will be, we will
be guided towards people who are running from war and
persecution, who have nothing and are just asking for safety.
That's who we are supposed to blame.
And that will continue. And that's the rhetoric that
will continue and nothing will change.
I don't think that's the write up Keir Starmer was hoping for
straight after his press conference.
Sure it's not. Yeah, I'm sure it's not, but
there we go. Sometimes we have to speak truth
to power, don't we? But play Doctor Peter Walsh from
the Oxford University's migration to Observatory.
Charlotte Kahn from Care for K Thank you very much for joining
us. Thank you.
That's it for this episode of
The Forecast. Until next time, goodbye.