Yvette Cooper says ‘crammed' small boats using shallow water launches behind rise in arrival numbers

The Guardian

20 hours ago

Update:
Date: 2025-08-05T08:43:24.000Z
Title: Yvette Cooper
Content: Good morning. Keir Starmer has invested a lot of effort in measures that will 'smash the gangs' and today the government is announcing the start of one of his big achievements in this area – a returns agreement, of sorts, with France. It is only a pilot, and the numbers are likely to be small, but the Conservatives never negotiated a deal of this kind when they were trying to stop small boat arrivals. (In fact, as a result of Brexit, they achieved the opposite.) Here is Jessica Elgot's story about the 'one in, one out' returns deal with France.
And here is the Home Office news release.
, the home secretary, has been giving interviews this morning. In media interviews, some politicians are keen to go on the offensive, by opening up new arguments or lines of attack. Cooper is the ultimate defensive player, smothering all awkward questions with splurge of officious, technocratic reasonableness. Journalists find it frustrating, because she tends to be a bit boring, but government spin doctors are happy because she never messes up.
When Starmer and Emmanuel Macron announced the 'one in, one out' pilot last month, details about how it would work were sketchy. In her interviews this morning, Cooper did not reveal anything new about how the scheme would operate, arguing that, if she were to release this information, that might help the people smugglers evade the new regime. It has been widely reported that the scheme will start with about 50 people being removed per week, but Cooper would not even confirm this. On numbers, she told the Today programme:
We are not putting an overall figure on this programme. Of course, it will start will lower numbers and then build, but we want to be able to expand it. We want to be able to increase the number of people returned through this programme.
But Cooper did try to counter the key charge being thrown against the government – that all the 'smash the gangs' measures it is announcing are failing, because small boat arrivals are at record numbers.
On the Today programme, when she was asked why arrival numbers have been soaring over the past year, Cooper cited two reasons. She said:
What we've seen in the course of this year has been the change in tactics by the criminal gangs, and they've been doing two things.
First of all, exploiting the French maritime rules, which have meant up until this summer, that the French authorities just could not intervene in French waters. That's why we've seen these disgraceful scenes of the loading of people into small boats in shallow waters, and then the French police unable to intervene according to their rules.
And that's why it's so important that, as part of this agreement with France, France is changing their maritime rules, and that will be starting later this summer.
The second reason is we're seeing [a] big increase in the overcrowding of the boats, so far more people being crammed into the boats.
That is why we are seeking to change the law. We have the new border security bill going through parliament at the moment, bringing in the new offence of endangerment, so that people who are getting on overcrowded boats who are frankly putting other people's lives at risks, can themselves be prosecuted for getting on these overcrowded boats. Because it's those two factors that are particularly driving this.
By citing these two factors as the explanation, and stressing that the government is addressing them, Cooper was implying that the government will be able to reduce arrival numbers.
The Conservatives claim that she is wrong because only a Rwanda-style deterrent policy would work. In an overnight press notice, the party descibed the UK-France deal as the 'migrant surrender treaty' (using Boris Johnson's inflammatory Brexit rhetoric) and Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said:
Returning just 50 illegal immigrants a week, and probably less, will make no difference whatsoever. This amounts to just 6 per cent of illegal arrivals. Allowing 94% to stay in the UK will be no deterrent at all. This is a gimmick which won't work.
The Rwanda removals deterrent, under which 100 per cent of illegal arrivals would be removed, was ready to go last summer but Labour cancelled it just days before it was due to start with no proper replacement plan. As a result, this year so far has been the worst ever for illegal immigrants crossing the channel.
Only removing all illegal immigrants upon arrival will provide the necessary deterrent to stop the crossings. This is the Conservative plan, but Labour is too weak to implement it and as a result they have lost control of our borders.
It's August, parliament is in recess, and there is almost nothing in the diary for today. This morning the Home Office will publish the text of the 'one in, one out' returns treaty with France. And Kemi Badenoch is doing a visit in her North West Essex constituency, where she will be restating the Tories' opposition to what they call Labour's 'family farm tax'.
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