PM attends small boats summit as Home Secretary insists progress is being made
Yvette Cooper said small boat crossings in July and August were down compared to previous years.
People smugglers “should not be able to get away with” putting lives at risk, the Home Secretary has said ahead of a summit aimed at destroying the gangs involved in the trade.
Yvette Cooper said crossings were down in July and August compared to previous years, but lives were still being lost and smuggling gangs were still operating along the French coast.
Speaking ahead of a meeting with the Prime Minister and law enforcement officials on plans to tackle people smugglers, she told broadcasters: “Those gangs should not be able to get away with it, and that’s why we are determined to go after them.”
She stressed that the new Government was both hiring more investigators for the National Crime Agency (NCA) and working more closely with other European nations to address the issue.
Senior ministers including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Attorney General Lord Hermer also attended Friday’s summit at the NCA headquarters in London, alongside representatives from the NCA, Border Force and the intelligence community.
An analysis commissioned by the Home Secretary which dives into the gangs’ capability was expected to be examined at the summit, which also considered closer collaboration with European agencies such as Europol, and advancing the new Border Security Command.
The summit comes at the end of a week which saw the deaths of at least 12 people die after their boat was “ripped apart” off the northern French coast while they attempted to cross the Channel.
Some 1,276 people have already crossed the Channel this week, bringing the total for the year so far to 22,328 – around 648 more than at the same point last year but 5,269 less than in 2022.
Since the general election, 8,754 people have made the crossing, less than in the same two-month period in either 2022 or 2023.
Speaking before the summit, Ms Cooper said: “The last two months has seen encouraging progress, with significant seizures of boats and equipment in Europe.
“But there is work to do, and the Border Security Command will bring all the relevant bodies together to investigate, arrest and prosecute these networks, as well as deepen our ties with key international partners.
“At the same time, we are swiftly removing those with no right to be in the UK, which will ensure we have a fair, firm and functioning asylum system where the rules are respected and enforced.”
She also told broadcasters that the Government was making progress on clearing the asylum backlog and returning those with no right to be in the UK “so that we can end these very costly asylum hotels”.
Earlier on Friday, former immigration minister Robert Jenrick accused Sir Keir Starmer and Ms Cooper of having “surrendered to the smuggling gangs” after scrapping the Conservatives’ Rwanda policy.
Mr Jenrick, the current frontrunner for the Tory leadership, said: “Yvette Cooper will meet the National Crime Agency and police chiefs today, and they’ll tell her what they told me when I was the minister, which is that although it’s important that we do that work, it is not sufficient.
“You have to have a deterrent.”
