Starmer signals he has duty to stop Channel crossings following record weekend
Some 1,194 migrants arrived in 18 boats on Saturday, according to Home Office data.
It was the first time daily crossings topped a thousand in 2025, and prompted Defence Secretary John Healey to claim Britain had 'lost control' of its borders over the last five years.
As he made a major defence speech in Glasgow on Monday, the Prime Minister was asked if the Government was failing to keep the UK safe in the English Channel.
He told journalists: 'In relation to border security, I want to be really clear: nobody should be making that journey across the Channel and it's our duty to make sure that we ensure that they don't.
'We are working very closely with our counterparts in France and elsewhere to take further action in northern France, and of course, we are giving enhanced powers to our own law enforcement through the Borders Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.'
Speaking about the previous Government's Rwanda plan, Sir Keir insisted it 'didn't deter anybody', after his decision to scrap it was highlighted.
He added: 'I'm not up for gimmicks. I'm up for the hard work of working with partners, enhancing the powers that law enforcement have, in my determination to take down the gangs that are running this vile trade.'
Saturday's crossings brought the provisional annual total so far of migrants who have made the journey to 14,811.
This is 42% higher than the same point last year (10,448) and 95% up from the same point in 2023 (7,610), according to PA news agency analysis of the data.
It is still lower than the highest daily total of 1,305 arrivals since data began in 2018, which was recorded on September 3 2022.
On Sunday, Mr Healey said the scenes of migrants being picked up by smugglers 'like a taxi' to be brought to the UK were 'shocking'.
Britain has 'lost control of its borders over the last five years,' he added.
The Defence Secretary said it is a 'really big problem' that French police are unable to intervene to intercept boats in shallow waters.
French police officers were seen watching as migrants, including children, boarded at a beach in Gravelines, between Calais and Dunkirk, and authorities were then pictured escorting the boats.
Some 184 people were rescued, the French authorities said.
The UK agreed a £480 million deal with France to beef up its efforts to stop migrants in 2023 under former prime minister Rishi Sunak.
It was the latest in a series of agreements with France since 2014 aimed at cracking down on crossings.
This year is on course to set a record for Channel crossings, with the 14,811 total arrivals so far the highest recorded for the first five months of a year.
It has also surpassed the highest total recorded for the first six months of the year, which was previously 13,489 on June 30 last year.
In 2024, the number of arrivals did not reach more than 14,000 until July 9 (14,058).
Sir Keir Starmer's Government has pledged to 'smash the gangs' behind people-smuggling operations to bring down crossings.
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Wales Online
2 hours ago
- Wales Online
The £6bn rail line argument that masks what you should be really angry about
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Over the last few days, there has been one hot topic in the world of Welsh politics - a train line which will run between Oxford and Cambridge. Given these two cities are roughly 200 miles from Wales, you can be forgiven for asking why. East West Rail is a railway project which will link Oxford and Cambridge at an estimated cost of £6.6bn. Any money spent on it will trigger extra payments to Scotland and Northern Ireland so they can spend it on their transport systems. But, just as has been the case throughout the HS2 debacle, there won't be any extra money for the Welsh Government. The reason for this is both incredibly simple and reasonable on the surface but devillishly complicated and truly unfair beneath it. It may not necessarily be a scandal in itself. But it symbolises everything that is wrong with how rail funding is allocated in England and Wales. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here On the face of it, this issue isn't linked to the spending review that has been happening in Westminster for the last six months or more and of which chancellor Rachel Reeves will stand up in the Commons on Wednesday and deliver the conclusion. Yet it helps shed a light on why that will be enormously complex to understand and why the real story may not be the one you read in headlines that evening. So bear with us while we go through it. The fury from politicians Opposition politicians in Wales have been fulminating about East West rail. They say that the rail line should have been classified as an England-only project like Crossrail so that the Welsh Government would get a guaranteed share. Lib Dem MP David Chadwick said Wales will lose out to the tune of between £306m and £363m as a result. Describing it as another HS2, he said: "Labour expects people across Wales to believe the ridiculous idea that this project will benefit them, and they are justified in not giving Wales the money it needs to improve our own public transport systems. 'It's a disgrace, and it shows there has been no meaningful change since in the way Wales is treated since Labour took power compared to the Conservatives." Plaid Cymru's leader Mr ap Iorwerth took a similar tack, telling plenary: "For all the talk of the UK Government acknowledging somehow that Welsh rail has been historically underfunded, this is some partnership in power." Yet, while there's a lot of truth to what they're saying, it's also much more complicated. Which is where the spending review comes in. Comparability factors There will be so many numbers in the paperwork that accompanies Wednesday's spending review that finding the most important ones isn't straightforward. Yet if you want to know just how much of the England and Wales transport pot is going to be sucked into paying for massive rail projects in England like HS2 (£66bn) or East West rail (£6bn) or all the tram/train projects being promised in England outside London (£15bn), then look out for the overall transport comparability factor for Wales. Very simply, this is the number that the Treasury uses to work out how much the Welsh Government should get for every £1 it spends on transport in England. The reason everyone has been so, so angry about HS2 and the massive billions being poured is that back in 2015, Wales used to get a comparability factor of 80.9%. Yet when the number crunchers in Horse Guards Road sat down to work out how much the Welsh Government should get at the last spending review in 2021, that comparability factor fell to just 33.5%. Ouch. For every £1 spent on transport by Westminster, since the last spending review the Welsh Government has received a population adjusted share (5%) of 33.5%. Or about 1.6p. For context, it used to be around 4p. If Mr Chadwick and Mr Iorwerth are right and the UK government plans to plough even more money into rail in England in the coming years on projects like HS2, East Coast and what the Tories used to call Northern Powerhouse rail, then the new comparability factor that the Treasury mathematicians will conjure up this time could be even lower. But even that is massively misleading. Because if the UK government also promises to plough vast sums into rail in Wales then the comparability factor for the Welsh Government would not rise - it would fall further still. Is your mind boggling yet? We said it was complex. What the Welsh Government wants Because the Welsh Government isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending, the transport comparability factor really just reflects how much money is going on rail. The less that's spent on rail, the higher a share of the overall transport pot the Welsh Government gets. The more that goes on rail, the lower a share of the overall transport spot the Welsh Government gets. The real problem for Cardiff Bay then is not the comparability factor. Neither is it the fact that East West rail isn't classified as England-only. The problem, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned, is the fact that the England and Wales rail pot itself isn't shared fairly. HS2 and East Coast rail are the symbols of a system that is broken that pours vast sums into English rail projects while Wales misses out. Even if they were classified as England-only, the money would go to the Welsh Government which isn't responsible for rail infrastructure spending. "The way that the system operates at the moment—for years I've been saying—is redundant," Wales' transport minister Ken Skates has said. "The east-west line, which has been in development, I believe, for around about 20 years now, is part of the rail network enhancements pipeline, where everything in a large footprint, a substantial footprint, including Wales, is packaged together. "Where you have all schemes in England and Wales packaged together in what's called the regional network enhancement pipeline it means that projects in Wales are always going to be competing on the business case with projects in affluent areas of the south-east, of London. That means that we are at a disadvantage. "I want to see it change. I've been saying it for years. There's nothing new in this story. I've been saying that we need reform for years and suddenly people have woken up to it." Wales' First Minister Eluned Morgan has said the same. "What we have is a situation where there is a pipeline of projects for England and Wales. Are we getting our fair share? Absolutely not. Are we making the case? Absolutely." "I've made the case very, very clearly that, when it comes to rail, we have been short-changed, and I do hope that we will get some movement on that in the next week from the spending review," she said. What does this mean for the spending review When Rachel Reeves stands up in the Commons on Wednesday, we fully expect she will announce some funding for rail in Wales, as you can see in our piece here, and our expectation is that will be about the rail stations earmarked in the work by Lord Burns after the M4 relief road was axed. They would be in Cardiff East, Parkway, Newport West, Maindy, Llanwern and Magor. But what matters is how much and when - and how that compares to the money being spent in England. Imagine the chancellor announces a few hundred million pounds for those rail stations in Wales in the spending review, what we do not - and will likely not know for many years - is whether that amount is a fair reflection of the mass spending she has announced in England because we know she has also touted £15bn of improvements in England. It will likely take years for academics to assess what kind of share of the rail pot has been spent in Wales. In the past, it certainly has not been fair. In 2018, a Welsh Government commissioned report by Professor Mark Barry estimated that the Network Rail Wales route, which covers 11% of the UK network, received just over 1% of the enhancement budget for the 2011-2016 period. In 2021, the Wales Governance Centre told MPs on the Welsh affairs select committee that had rail been fully devolved to the Welsh Government, Wales would have received an additional £514m for enhancements via Network Rail had rail infrastructure been devolved as it is in Scotland. So when Leeds West and Pudsey MP Ms Reeves gets to her feet in the Commons on Wednesday, you can pretty much guarantee there will at least one or two headlines relevant Wales. But we may not understand what they really mean for a while yet and East West rail won't help us understand either.
South Wales Guardian
2 hours ago
- South Wales Guardian
Rayner faces Labour backbench call to ‘smash' existing housebuilding model
Labour's Chris Hinchliff has proposed a suite of changes to the Government's flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill, part of his party's drive to build 1.5 million homes in England by 2029. Mr Hinchliff has proposed arming town halls with the power to block developers' housebuilding plans, if they have failed to finish their previous projects. He has also suggested housebuilding objectors should be able to appeal against green-lit large developments, if they are not on sites which a council has set aside for building, and put forward a new duty for authorities to protect chalk streams from 'pollution, abstraction, encroachment and other forms of environmental damage'. Mr Hinchliff has told the PA news agency he does not 'want to rebel' but said he would be prepared to trigger a vote over his proposals. He added his ambition was for 'a progressive alternative to our planning system and the developer-led profit-motivated model that we have at the moment'. The North East Hertfordshire MP said: 'Frankly, to deliver the genuinely affordable housing that we need for communities like those I represent, we just have to smash that model. 'So, what I'm setting out is a set of proposals that would focus on delivering the genuinely affordable homes that we need, empowering local communities and councils to have a driving say over what happens in the local area, and also securing genuine protection for the environment going forwards.' Mr Hinchliff warned that the current system results in 'speculative' applications on land which falls outside of councils' local housebuilding strategies, 'putting significant pressure on inadequate local infrastructure'. In his constituency, which lies between London and Cambridge, 'the properties that are being built are not there to meet local need', Mr Hinchliff said, but were instead 'there to be sold for the maximum profit the developer can make'. Asked whether his proposals chimed with the first of Labour's five 'missions' at last year's general election – 'growth' – he replied: 'If we want to have the key workers that our communities need – the nurses, the social care workers, the bus drivers, the posties – they need to have genuinely affordable homes. 'You can't have that thriving economy without the workforce there, but at the moment, the housing that we are delivering is not likely to be affordable for those sorts of roles. 'It's effectively turning the towns into commuter dormitories rather than having thriving local economies, so for me, yes, it is about supporting the local economy.' Mr Hinchliff warned that the 'bottleneck' which slows housebuilding 'is not process, it's profit'. The developer-led housing model is broken. It has failed to deliver affordable homes. Torching environmental safeguards won't fix it—the bottleneck isn't just process, it's profit. We need a progressive alternative: mass council house building in sustainable communities. — Chris Hinchliff MP (@CHinchliffMP) June 6, 2025 Ms Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, is fronting the Government's plans for 1.5 million new homes by 2029. Among the proposed reforms is a power for ministers to decide which schemes should come before councillors, and which should be delegated to local authority staff, so that committees can 'focus their resources on complex or contentious development where local democratic oversight is required'. Natural England will also be able to draft 'environmental delivery plans (EDPs)' and acquire land compulsorily to bolster conservation efforts. Mr Hinchliff has suggested these EDPs must come with a timeline for their implementation, and that developers should improve the conservation status of any environmental features before causing 'damage' – a proposal which has support from at least 43 cross-party MP backers. MPs will spend two days debating the Bill on Monday and Tuesday. Chris Curtis, the Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, warned that some of Mr Hinchliff's proposals 'if enacted, would deepen our housing crisis and push more families into poverty'. He said: 'I won't stand by and watch more children in the country end up struggling in temporary accommodation to appease pressure groups. No Labour MP should. 'It's morally reprehensible to play games with this issue. 'These amendments should be withdrawn.'
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Government struggles to cut foreign aid spent on asylum hotels
The government is struggling to cut the amount of foreign aid it spends on hotel bills for asylum seekers in the UK, the BBC has figures released quietly by ministers in recent days show the Home Office plans to spend £2.2bn of overseas development assistance (ODA) this financial year - that is only marginally less than the £2.3bn it spent in 2024/ money is largely used to cover the accommodation costs of thousands of asylum seekers who have recently arrived in the Home Office said it was committed to ending asylum hotels and was speeding up asylum decisions to save taxpayers' money. The figures were published on the Home Office website with no accompanying notification to aid is supposed to be spent alleviating poverty by providing humanitarian and development assistance under international rules, governments can spend some of their foreign aid budgets at home to support asylum seekers during the first year after their to the most recent Home Office figures, there are about 32,000 asylum seekers in hotels in the promised in its manifesto to "end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds". Contracts signed by the Conservative government in 2019 were expected to see £4.5bn of public cash paid to three companies to accommodate asylum seekers over a 10-year a report by spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) in May said that number was expected to be £15.3bn. On June 3, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Home Affairs Committee she was "concerned about the level of money" being spent on asylum seekers' accommodation and added: "We need to end asylum hotels altogether."The Home Office said it was trying to bear down on the numbers by reducing the time asylum seekers can appeal against decisions. It is also planning to introduce tighter financial eligibility checks to ensure only those without means are Whitehall officials and international charities have said the Home Office has no incentive to reduce ODA spending because the money does not come out of its scale of government aid spending on asylum hotels has meant huge cuts in UK support for humanitarian and development priorities across the cuts have been exacerbated by the government's reductions to the overall ODA budget. In February, Sir Keir Starmer said he would cut aid spending from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% by 2027 - a fall in absolute terms of about £14bn to some £ was the scale of aid spending on asylum hotels in recent years that the previous Conservative government gave the Foreign Office an extra £2bn to shore up its humanitarian commitments overseas. But Labour has refused to match that commitment. 'Poor value for money' Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy at the Bond network of development organisations, said: "Cutting the UK aid budget while using it to prop up Home Office costs is a reckless repeat of decisions taken by the previous Conservative government. "Diverting £2.2bn of UK aid to cover asylum accommodation in the UK is unsustainable, poor value for money, and comes at the expense of vital development and humanitarian programmes tackling the root causes of poverty, conflict and displacement. "It is essential that we support refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, but the government should not be robbing Peter to pay Paul."Sarah Champion, chair of the International Development Committee, said the government was introducing "savage cuts" to its ODA spending, risking the UK's development priorities and international reputation, while "Home Office raids on the aid budget" had barely reduced."Aid is meant to help the poorest and most vulnerable across the world: to alleviate poverty, improve life chances and reduce the risk of conflict," she said. "Allowing the Home Office to spend it in the UK makes this task even harder.""The government must get a grip on spending aid in the UK," she said. "The Spending Review needs to finally draw a line under this perverse use of taxpayer money designed to keep everyone safe and prosperous in their own homes, not funding inappropriate, expensive accommodation here." Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: "Labour promised in their manifesto to end the use of asylum hotels for illegal immigrants. But the truth is there are now thousands more illegal migrants being housed in hotels under Labour. "Now these documents reveal that Labour are using foreign aid to pay for asylum hotel accommodation – yet another promise broken."A Home Office spokesperson said: "We inherited an asylum system under exceptional pressure, and continue to take action, restoring order, and reduce costs. This will ultimately reduce the amount of Official Development Assistance spent to support asylum seekers and refugees in the UK."We are immediately speeding up decisions and increasing returns so that we can end the use of hotels and save the taxpayer £4bn by 2026."
