The small boats crisis is out of control. This plan could solve it

Times

4 hours ago

In December 2018, Sajid Javid, then home secretary, cut short his holiday and declared a 'major incident' after 78 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in four days. Since then six more home secretaries, and four prime ministers, have struggled with the same problem: how to stop the boats. All have failed. A record 17,000 have crossed so far this year. More than 900 crossed in a single day this month.
There are some who argue that this proves, once again, that irregular migration can't be stopped and there is no point trying. This is wrong: the premise is false and the counsel unwise. Irregular migration can be controlled.
There are plenty of examples of countries stopping or significantly reducing it. Australia has reduced it to almost zero: not once, but twice. It did so in 2001, and again in 2013, by shipping 'boat people' off to Nauru, a tiny Pacific island. Israel did the same in 2012 by building a fence and pushing migrants from Africa back across its border with Egypt. And, in the United States, President Trump is making a pretty good fist of it now: by strengthening border patrols and denying asylum applications at America's southern border, he has reduced encounters with irregular migrants to 12,000 in April this year, compared with 240,000 in April 2023.
All these policies have three things in common: they are cruel and they violate people's rights. But they are also popular; or voters are at least prepared to put up with them if nothing else appears to work. In Australia, the 'Pacific solution' is now backed by both main parties. Trump is polling steadily on migration, even if the expansion of his deportation policy has dented support in recent weeks.
None of this is lost on Nigel Farage, or his equivalents on the Continent. Seeing all else fail, voters are warming to Reform's promise to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and turn boats back at sea, using the navy if necessary. It is doubtful whether this very dangerous policy could work: you still need a place to push boats back to, and France is unlikely to be obliging. But it sounds simple and radical enough to tempt both voters and, it seems, the Conservative Party.
This is a big problem for a Labour government that has promised to reduce migration but is reluctant to follow that path. Sir Keir Starmer's government desperately needs a humane, lawful, effective alternative. Is there one?
More law enforcement is definitely not the answer. Close to £1 billion has been spent on boosting patrols in France; even more won't make much difference. A 'safe third-country agreement', with another faraway country that will admit and process asylum seekers, is perhaps an option. There is a version of this policy that could work, and could be lawful. The Supreme Court was clear on this, even as it scotched the previous government's half-baked Rwanda plan. But Labour criticised this policy so vehemently in opposition it would struggle to revive it now.
• 1,378 migrants tried to cross the Channel in one day. France stopped 184
There is still one thing worth trying, however. It's also a safe third-country agreement, but not with Rwanda or some far-flung country. The deal the UK needs is with countries much closer to home: countries in the EU.
From an agreed day onwards, the UK would agree with a group of EU countries, ideally including both France and Germany, to swiftly return almost all migrants who arrive irregularly across the Channel. This would reduce crossings to zero within a few weeks. As soon as it became clear that there was no prospect of success, the incentive to undertake a dangerous, costly journey would evaporate. After a few weeks, therefore, the number of transfers back to participating states would also fall to zero.
The agreement would not be with the EU itself and would not replicate the unwieldy and unworkable system for intra-EU transfers known as the Dublin system, under which hardly anyone ever got sent anywhere. Anything that resembled this would fail — it is essential that asylum seekers do not suspect that there is a good chance of remaining in Britain anyway.
Instead, it would be an ad hoc, one-off agreement with a coalition of interested EU countries, designed to ensure fast, efficient transfer for almost everyone within three or four weeks, with very occasional exceptions for people with the strongest family ties.
The idea is not to turn boats around at sea. Intercepted migrants would be brought to British shores. They would be held securely and processed fairly. They would get a hearing, but unless they could present a credible other ground to remain here their claims would be declared inadmissible because there was a safe country to which they could be sent. There is no question that Germany and France — or Denmark, or Austria or the Netherlands for that matter — are safe. Their asylum systems are no worse, arguably better, than ours. Transfers would, therefore, be perfectly legal.
There is an obvious question about such a deal. Why would European countries go for it? France and Germany have both had significantly higher numbers of asylum seekers per capita than the UK in recent years. They could not possibly agree to any arrangement in which the traffic was all one way.
For this reason the UK would have to offer something in return: to take in, through organised legal channels, a fixed number of asylum seekers from the EU a year for the next few years: say 20,000 a year for four years, after which the scheme could be reviewed. A capped scheme similar to the Homes for Ukraine visa scheme would be set up to achieve this.
This would be a good deal for Britain. Admitting 20,000 asylum seekers a year would be 30,000 less than are likely to arrive this year if nothing changes. Some would see this as an admission of failure, but a sharp reduction in numbers and, crucially, the restoration of control would quickly bring political dividends.
A scheme such as this would almost entirely eliminate illegal migration. In comparison, the Darwinian lottery of the UK's current protection system, where over half of those securing it must have the strength and resources to undertake deeply hazardous journeys, is surely unsatisfactory.
But what's in it for a Macron, or a Merz? Ultimately, something similar. Mainstream parties in Europe are leaching support to populists promising much more radical solutions to irregular migration. Right now, they have no policies of their own that credibly offer control. Nor are uglier ones that they are already endorsing (pushbacks at external borders from Greece to Poland, and deals with Tunisia and Libya to intercept boats and take them back before they even get there) working particularly well.
This deal offers the outline of such a policy. Western European countries have every interest in showing their voters that migration can be controlled lawfully and humanely through safe third-country agreements. If they agreed this policy with Britain, EU countries would then need to invest in similar arrangements of its own, with partners it can find.
For EU countries, finding (genuinely) safe third countries to transfer migrants to will be harder and will take time. But it is not impossible. Short of legalising the abuses occurring at their own borders, this is the only policy option they have. Developing this plan with the UK could quickly show that the model, control through co-operation, works. They would have a narrative and plan: two things sorely lacking right now.
Like all good agreements, this one appeals to interests on both sides. It won't appeal to everyone. Participating states would be criticised from all sides: too generous for some, not generous enough for others.
But if even closely allied, rights-respecting countries such as Britain and Germany cannot reach civilised migration control agreements, there is little hope for such agreements being reached anywhere. And little hope, therefore, for humane border control — meaning cruel ones will prevail.
John Dalhuisen is a senior fellow at the European Stability Initiative. The ESI helped to broker the EU-Turkey deal in 2016, to address the migrant crisis caused by the Syrian civil war