There is a global illegal migration crisis with criminal gangs who treat human beings as cargo, and as such there is no quick fix. We have seen an unprecedented number of attempts to illegally cross the channel in small boats. Some 40,000 people have crossed this year alone—more than double the number of arrivals by the same point last year. Not only is this unnecessary, because they have come from France, a safe country, but it is lethally dangerous. We must stop it.
I am proud of our record of welcoming people who are genuinely fleeing persecution, war, conflict and human rights violations, but we cannot accept a situation where people are bypassing those routes — jumping the queue — on an illegitimate basis and making fabricated claims to be victims. As the Home Secretary acknowledged, there has been a particular problem this year with Albanian gangs.
I know the decent, law-abiding majority of British people want safe and secure borders. We must end the business model of the smuggling gangs and deter migrants from putting their lives at risk.
Last night, the Home Secretary reiterated that she is utterly serious about ending the scourge of illegal migration, and that she is determined to do whatever it takes to break the criminal gangs and fix our asylum system. This includes co-operation with the French, the Rwanda partnership and speeding up the asylum claim application process. I offer my support to this important work.
The Labour party have no credible solution, given their rejection of the Rwanda partnership and their support for the lawyers who have prevented flights to Rwanda taking place. They say they would like to see an enhancement of safe and legal immigration routes.
However, these safe and legal routes already exist. Unless we expanded them to be unlimited - and there are no doubt hundreds of millions of people who would like to come - there will still be people willing to take the dangerous journey across the Channel, unless and until they realise that they will not be able to remain in the UK.