This week saw Rishi Sunak’s ‘Rwanda plan’ finally pass parliament. As I’ve written before, while you don’t often hear it inside the M25, more British people support the plan to deport asylum-seekers and illegal migrants to Rwanda than oppose it.
Furthermore, I’ve not yet met a single security expert or analyst in the National Crime Agency who thinks Britain can ever hope to resolve the growing crisis on the southern border without some kind of active third country deterrent.
Will the Rwanda plan work in practice? I’m not sure. Will illegal migrants and their growing army of lawyers be able to find legal loopholes and ways around it? Possibly. But is the plan a useful first step toward establishing this deterrent, to making it crystal clear Britain is serious about tackling a crisis that’s costing lives and making a mockery of its claim to be a self-governing nation with control over our its laws and borders? Absolutely.
That’s why I supported it and advised MPs about it. I don’t think it’s perfect but nor do I think the status-quo —or, for that matter, the Labour Party’s plan—are viable alternatives. As I pointed out on the Westminster Hour this week, while debating a Labour MP, I’ve not yet met anybody who knows something about the issue who thinks Labour’s vague and abstract talk about ‘smashing the gangs’ will work when, in reality, all you need is a dinghy and a torch. It’s just Whac-A-Mole.
The blunt reality is that too many people are still risking their lives in the Channel, too many heartless criminals are exploiting migrants and their families, too many people are continuing to flood into Britain illegally, and too many British people, who want tough and decisive action on this issue, are being ignored and misled.
The only way forward is to establish effective deterrents which discourage migrants from heading for the borders and the boats in the first place, revise our legal architecture so we can more effectively ignore international courts and conventions that prevent us from controlling our own borders, reform government departments like the Home Office where civil servants have clearly put politics ahead of doing their actual jobs, and simultaneously increase investment in patrolling our borders and the Channel to stop any boats that do make it through.
And in case you’ve forgotten why all this is necessary, I’ve just got hold of some striking new data on the sheer scale of this crisis on the border, as well as some fascinating recent polling on what the British people really think about this issue.
Last year, I threw light on the crisis by looking in detail at some of the staggering numbers that are involved. Now, I can bring this story up to date by showing you what’s really going on with the small boats.
And to be blunt it’s pretty shocking.
Here are some of the latest statistics on the small boats crisis and why, in my view at least, Rishi Sunak and his team are right to make this an absolute priority:
· Between 1 January and 21 April 2024 there were 6,265 small boat arrivals compared to 5,049 in the same period last year. This is an increase of 24% and blows a hole in Rishi Sunak’s claim to be taking control of the situation. Since 2018, nearly 120,000 people have come to the UK on the small boats.
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· Two groups, Vietnamese (1,266) and Afghan (1,216) arrivals, comprise 40% of the total arrivals in this period. They are the top two nationalities so far in 2024.
· Vietnamese nationals make up 20% of all arrivals this year compared to less than 3% in the same period last year; this represents a ten-fold year-on-year increase.
· Afghan nationals make up 19% of all arrivals so far this year, which is broadly similar to the proportion of arrivals in the same period last year.
· Iranians (13%) and Turkish nationals (11%) were the next two most common nationalities to arrive this way.
· About 85% of small boat arrivals in 2023 were male and - where age was recorded - nearly a fifth were between 25 and 39-years-old.
· More than 84,000 people claimed asylum in 2023, which is just below the nearly 100,000 who claimed asylum in 2022 when small boat arrivals accounted for 45% of these claims. This means we are basically back to the numbers last seen in 2002, when people fled conflicts and wars in Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq.
· Of the 129,407 initial asylum decisions that were received over the last year, between April 15th 2023 and April 14th 2024, 89,365 were substantive decisions (56,744 grants and 36,597 refusals). This is a grant rate of 61% and the highest annual number of substantive decisions on asylum cases in more than 20 years.
· In 2023, the largest number of UK asylum seekers came from Afghanistan, with 9,307 doing so. The next biggest group, 7,400 people, came from Iran, followed by Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. In 2022, Albanians were the top nationality with more than 17,300 people, including dependants, claiming asylum, the vast majority of whom (73%) arrived on the small boats.
· The number of hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers has fallen from 398 on 22 October 2023 to 267 this month. As of February this year, which is the latest data we have, 45,768 asylum-seekers are being accommodated in hotels.
· In the year ending March 31st, 2024 there were 26,027 returns, of which 5,976 were Albanians. In the preceding 12-month period ending 31 March 2023 there were 16,786 returns of which 2,419 were Albanians. This equates to a year-on-year increase of 55% in all returns and almost two and half times more Albanians.
· Yet there are considerable delays and blockages in the system, with an overall backlog of more than 128,000 asylum claims. While this backlog is beginning to be dealt with it remains at historic highs, as you can see below.
· The volume of enforced returns has increased by 69% from 4,159 in the year ending March 2023 to 7,030 in the year ending March 2024, though this is still a very low number of enforced returns overall and reflects the ongoing failure of the asylum system to take control of this issue.
· In 2023, 6,014 people who were not granted asylum in Britain were returned to their home country, which is double the number of returns in 2002, though this is mainly because of the rise in Albanian returns.
· Only 1,889 people who arrived in the small boats were returned in 2023. Between 2018 and 2023, only 2,580 people who came to the UK in small boats were returned which is just 2% of all small boat arrivals in this period. In December 2023, the Home Office revealed only 408 non-Albanians who had come to the UK on small boats had been returned to their home countries since 2020.
· What do ordinary people think about this issue? Recent work by YouGov finds the most popular individual view among voters is ‘people who come to the UK on small boats from France should be removed from the country immediately, and should not be able to appeal and block their removal through the legal system’. This is the most popular individual view in 516 of 575 seats in England and Wales.
· The most liberal position, namely not removing asylum-seekers and illegal migrants from the country and having their claims assessed on a case-by-case basis, is the most popular individual view in only 59 seats, reflecting how the media, political, and cultural class are often only speaking for a small minority of the country, much like they were when they called to stop Brexit.
· As you might expect, conservative voters, Brexit voters, and the over-50s are the most likely to give majority support to removing small boat arrivals without appeal, with more than seven in ten conservatives and Brexiteers holding this view
· And if you want to know what the public mood on the issue of the small boats looks like when applied to a constituency map then take a look at the map below …
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