The secrecy on migrant crime statistics must end
Middle England is in revolt at the persistent failure to stop the boats (yes, under multiple governments – as I would be the first to admit). They have been made to endure the costs of illegal migration for far too long and their patience snapped long ago.
When I've been in quiet towns this past week, I've heard their worries about asylum hotels. It's the talk at the school gates, at the hairdresser's, in the pub.
'I know you're a father, Mr Jenrick,' a woman said to me, walking her dog beside the harbour in Fareham. 'Would you want an asylum hotel on your street?'
I don't want my young daughters to share a neighbourhood with men who broke into this country illegally, about whom we know next to nothing. And I don't want anyone else's family to have it forced upon them either.
First and foremost, because they have no right to be here, having entered in flagrant breach of our laws. But it's not just that. They impose economic costs on cash-strapped councils, diverting resources away from Brits in need. They totally change the character of areas.
And there's another, darker reason, one that few will confront: small boats are fuelling crime and making everyone less safe. The press reports only seem to get worse: drug dealers, rapists, murderers and even terror suspects are arriving on small boats. If you're unlucky enough to have an asylum hotel in your area, you are almost certain to have been impacted by the petty crime that accompanies them.
Somehow it's still a taboo for the Government to admit it publicly. The furthest the Home Office has gone to acknowledge the problem is issuing guidance to migrants in hotels explaining what sexual abuse is and that it's illegal.
But sensible countries do not bury their heads in the sand. When I visited the notorious Eagle Pass checkpoint on the US-Mexican border in 2023, America's border force openly displayed the data on the criminal pasts of those they intercepted. In that small section of the border 113 convicted sex offenders had been intercepted that year; across the whole of the southern border they had stopped 15,267 convicted criminals in total.
The lesson is that when the unfiltered truth about illegal migration is out there, the authorities have no choice but to respond. This issue propelled Trump to the Presidency with a mandate to end the disorder.
Just as in America, the border crisis here is a national security emergency. But instead of trusting the public with the truth, this Labour Government has force-fed the public the lie that the majority of people arriving are women and children. Fact check: 75 per cent have been adult men.
In our topsy-turvy world, the British public are asked to deny reality. The facts about crime are covered up because of a toxic combination of bureaucratic inertia and weak leaders who pussyfoot around the truth.
It's flat out wrong. I tabled an amendment to lift the veil of secrecy over migrant crime under the last Government and I have just done so again under Keir Starmer. I won't stop until the Ministry of Justice publishes the background of criminals by their nationality, country of birth, visa status, asylum status and their method of entry to the UK. Our membership of outdated international treaties like the ECHR will look trivial when it's clear the safety of our communities – of our children and loved ones – is at stake.
We have enough problems with law and order already without making it worse. When the British state finally acknowledges that, they might just be shamed into stopping the boats.
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