Latest news with #illegalmigrants
The Sun
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Keir Starmer's useless small boats plan won't deter ANYONE – hapless French cops will only let them loose to do it again
SIR Keir Starmer's small boats plan was branded an "absurd gimmick" today, as border experts warned the pilot scheme will have no deterrent effect. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp insisted that record numbers of illegal migrants will continue to the cross the Channel at pace. 3 3 And Head of the Immigration Services Union, Lucy Morton, slammed the plan for failing to guarantee returned arrivals won't just try again. It came as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper refused to say how many illegal migrants would be sent packing to France under the new arrangement. Pressed to give a figure this morning, Ms Cooper responded: "The numbers are not fixed, even for this pilot phase that we are starting now. "So this will be a programme that we roll out step-by-step, and we will provide updates as we go. "But we are going to do this in a steady way." Revealed in the Plan: Migrants arriving via small boat will be detained and returned to France in short order A one-in, one-out system will operate with migrants sent back to France in exchange for asylum seekers The plan is merely a pilot scheme - which could be canned if it doesn't work Only 50 a week will be sent packing - a fraction of the thousands crossing into the UK The PM's one-in, one-out deal with President Emmanuel Macron — who blamed Brexit for the surge in illegal crossings — would mean migrants arriving here are detained and then sent back. Under the arrangement, agreed yesterday, for every one returned, Britain will take an asylum seeker from France with a legitimate claim and an all-clear on security. Migrant camps brace for impact as UK-France deal fuels crossings But officials are bracing for legal battles similar to those over the axed Tory scheme to sent migrants to Rwanda in Africa. They admitted those selected for deportation under yesterday's deal with France would be able to wage lengthy court appeals. And the initial pilot, hoped to be launched in the coming weeks, will see just 50 migrants sent back per week with the French exercising a veto over who they accept. Mr Philp blasted the PM's claim that his new plan is "groundbreaking" and "aggressive". The Shadow Home Secretary told Times Radio: "This new announcement is a gimmick just like the smash the gangs gimmick was a year ago because under their proposal 50 migrants a week will get sent back. "We've got record ever numbers of illegal arrivals this year so far under Starmer, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper. "They have failed and I'm afraid they're going to continue to fail." Mr Philp added: "The fact you can't even give a number shows that this hasn't been properly agreed. "But it clearly is going to be a very low number. "If it was going to be a higher number they would obviously have said that and corrected the record." Ms Morton warned that the plan is lacking crucial details and currently border force staff have no idea who they are supposed to be preparing to return to France. The Head of the Immigration Services Union told Radio 4: "Who's going to be returned? "We're only talking about 50 people a week. On average, we get about 800 a week. "Are we going to detain them? "That's really not much of a deterrent. "What will the French do with them when they get them back? "Will they just let them go back into the pool of migrants to try it again?" PM's bad bet WHAT are the odds on Keir Starmer's returns deal with France actually working? Vanishingly small. At current rates, just six per cent of the 44,000 illegal migrants who have crossed since Labour took power — about 50 a week — would be sent back. In gambling terms, anyone lumping £3,000 on being smuggled to Britain would have a near 20-1 ON chance of success. That's overwhelmingly worth the punt. Yesterday as many as 600 migrants arrived — three months' worth of returns — as the Prime Minister and Emmanuel Macron unveiled their agreement. In a huge error, Labour had promised no more 'gimmicks' as it scrapped the Rwanda scheme — our only viable deterrent. Yet this pilot with France will prove to be nothing more than a stunt if it is torpedoed before it starts by other EU leaders, who fear migrants ending up in their countries instead. Europhile Sir Keir thinks he has a helpful pal in Macron, who couldn't resist having yet another foot-stamping sulk about so-called Brexit 'lies'. As this agreement will prove, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the PM's triumphalism on the 'groundbreaking' deal, Mr Macron said it had been struck 'in principle' but was subject to 'legal verifications' and EU sign-off. Ms Cooper today insisted euro commissioners would back the plan. She said: "We have been talking to the EU commissioners. We've also been talking to other European interior ministers and governments throughout this process. "The French interior minister and I have been speaking about this to develop this since October of last year, and the EU commissioners have been very supportive. "So that is why we have designed this in a way to work, not just for the UK and France, but in order to fit with all their concerns as well." Asked whether she was confident it would be signed off by the EU, she said: "Because we've done that work all the way through, we do expect the EU Commission to continue to be supportive." The French would also be able to choose whether to accept an individual, with the UK also given the same right over who comes here. The Home Office refused to reveal how the 50 migrants per week would be selected, but said they would mainly be from countries deemed safe, with low rates of successful UK asylum claims. The numbers are expected to be limited by how many cells are available in immigration detention centres, which currently have around 2,500 spaces. Another 1,000 are being added. The selected migrants, all of them adults, will be handed notices informing them that they are due to be sent back to France. It is not yet known how they will be returned but it could be by chartered flights or on coaches. Starmer's barmy one in one out migrants plan has a fundamental flaw By Julia Hartley-Brewer IMAGINE you live in a basket case country like Afghanistan, Eritrea or Iraq. Now imagine your entire family have saved up to fund the dangerous journey for you to get to Libya, where you then pay armed smuggling gangs to get you over the Mediterranean. Then imagine arriving in Greece or Italy and making your way across Europe to get to the beaches of Calais, where you pay £1,500 to another gang so you can wade into the water to get on a rickety small boat overcrowded with 50 strangers to risk your life crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world to get to the land of milk and honey in Britain. But wait! The British Prime Minister has just announced that if you make it here, you face a one-in-17 chance of eventually being sent back to France. Do you say: 'Oh well, in that case I'll give up and head back to Eritrea?' Of course you don't! You get on that dinghy and head out to sea. This, I suspect, may be the fundamental flaw in Keir Starmer's latest cunning plan to cut migrant crossings: IT WON'T WORK. Not that this stopped the PM confidently announcing his new 'one in, one out' migrant deal with great fanfare at the end of his Downing Street summit with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday. Instead of ' smashing the gangs ', as he promised to do last year, Starmer has decided to play swapsies with Macron by agreeing to take a supposedly 'genuine' asylum seeker from France in return for every illegal Channel migrant we return to them. The two men announced the plan for a trial of this migrant exchange scheme, to start later this summer, with initially just 50 Channel migrants being sent back to France each week, in return for 50 asylum seekers coming here. Fifty migrants account for just one in 17 (or less than six per cent) of the 44,000 illegal migrants who have arrived on dinghies in the past 12 months of this Labour Government. Indeed, more than 600 migrants were picked up in the Channel on Thursday alone. That's 12 weeks' worth of exchanges coming in just one day. So I, like everyone else, have some questions about this much-touted plan to stop the boats. How long will the trial last? What will count as a 'successful' trial? How many people do they eventually hope to swap if the trial is extended? Oh, and my final question: Are they out of their friggin' minds? Because Starmer must be absolutely barmy if he thinks voters are going to fall for this nonsense. We don't want 'one in, one out'. We want 'NONE in, ALL out'! There are so many problems with this plan that it's difficult to find the space to list them all, but I'll have a go anyway. First, as I've already pointed out, the chances of ever being sent back to France are so vanishingly small that they don't provide any deterrent. And even if a Channel migrant was among the unlucky few sent back to France, he would simply head back to the beaches at Calais and pay the smuggling gangs for a place on another dinghy. Added to that, as Macron rightly said in his Westminster speech this week, Britain is the first-choice destination for a third of all illegal migrants who arrive in Europe because of the ' pull factors ' that this new plan will do nothing to end. After all, why stay in France — where you get nothing — when you can come to Britain and get housed in a hotel or even your own flat, be given some spending money and are free to work in the black market as a food delivery rider or any other job, without any realistic risk of ever being deported? That's why the smuggling gangs are making fortunes, with hundreds every day paying upwards of £1,500 each for a place on a small boat, with Eritreans, Afghans and Somalians now making up the largest number of arrivals on our shores. The French authorities claim to have stopped 12,000 migrants from crossing so far this year, but almost double that number — at least 21,000 — have successfully made it across, a 48 per cent increase compared with the first six months of 2024. And all of this ignores the huge backlog of tens of thousands of arrivals in the past few years, with 32,000 asylum seekers still in hotels, while we fund the rents for hostels and flats for tens of thousands more. Another major flaw in this plan is that the so-called legitimate asylum seekers coming from France via a 'safe route' will be chosen from those who have a family link to someone already here. After all, why stay in France — where you get nothing — when you can come to Britain and get housed in a hotel or even your own flat, be given some spending money and are free to work in the black market as a food delivery rider or any other job, without any realistic risk of ever being deported? That's why the smuggling gangs are making fortunes, with hundreds every day paying upwards of £1,500 each for a place on a small boat, with Eritreans, Afghans and Somalians now making up the largest number of arrivals on our shores. The French authorities claim to have stopped 12,000 migrants from crossing so far this year, but almost double that number — at least 21,000 — have successfully made it across, a 48 per cent increase compared with the first six months of 2024. And all of this ignores the huge backlog of tens of thousands of arrivals in the past few years, with 32,000 asylum seekers still in hotels, while we fund the rents for hostels and flats for tens of thousands more. Another major flaw in this plan is that the so-called legitimate asylum seekers coming from France via a 'safe route' will be chosen from those who have a family link to someone already here. Quite why anyone should have a right to come here just because their uncle lives in Leicester is beyond me but, more worryingly, what's to stop those asylum seekers from bringing in their entire extended families, from their wife and kids to their parents, siblings, brothers-in-law, long-lost second cousins and everyone in between? And then THEIR relatives would claim a right to come here too! We'd end up swapping one migrant for an entire village. We'll also see the rise of a brand new money-making racket for the criminal gangs: Rent A Relative. If you want to apply for asylum in the UK, the gangs will find a suitable 'brother', 'cousin' or 'in-law' living in Bradford to vouch for you, in return for a hefty fee. Meanwhile, if the number of deportation exchanges is ever ramped up at the end of the trial to the thousands needed to offer some deterrent to making the Channel crossing, we all know what will happen: The migrant arrivals will quickly disappear from their hotels and hostels and into the black market, never to be seen again. After being transferred to France, they will have access to the French asylum system or could be removed back to their country of origin. Anyone who comes back across the Channel in a small boat will be removed again and not allowed to claim asylum. The 50-per-week trial agreement is equivalent to just 2,600 returns annually, compared with the 44,000 who have arrived since Labour took power a year ago. And this year alone more than 20,600 migrants had crossed the Channel — a 56 per cent rise on the same period in 2024.
The Sun
25-06-2025
- Politics
- The Sun
Dark forces are exploiting our soft-touch borders – it's time to take back control before it's too late
Putin boat in NATO leaders met yesterday to discuss global threats, including from Russia and China. Yet there's one massive security disaster that the British Government has been sleep-walking into. 1 Suspected terrorists, sex offenders and drug gang leaders have all arrived here illegally on small boats. And now security chiefs fear hostile states are taking advantage of Britain's inability to protect its own borders to sow division. The Left likes to dismiss the seriousness of illegal migrant crossings. Yet there is now mounting evidence that dark forces abroad want to weaponise the epic failure of our soft touch system to unpick the fabric of our society. Some illegal migrants are now effectively state-sponsored by rogue regimes like Russia and Iran, whose agents have provided support and false papers. The Home Office insists it is aware of the problem. Project beer ON the day he entered Number 10, Sir Keir Starmer promised to 'tread more lightly' on the lives of voters. How does he square that with the idea of draconian restrictions on booze ads? You'd think Labour's fun police would have learned their lesson after the ban on smoking in pub gardens went up in a flame of public outrage. Sun probe uncovers asylum seekers in hotels linked to string of rape cases Instead, the constant desire to interfere suggests we will never be free of the Nanny-knows-best attitude which infects our public health bodies. Labour now finds itself in the bizarre position of wanting to give the vote to 16-year-olds — yet barring anyone over 18 from watching an advert for lager online, or before 9pm on TV. What on earth will they consider next? A ban on eating sausages? A crackdown on cake? Life in Britain should be about freedom and choice. This latest crazy plan is enough to drive anyone to drink. Steely resolve IT'S a current madness that in the dash to Net Zero, Britain bans new drilling for fossil fuels while China burns billions of tons of coal to make cheap steel for wind turbines — which it then sells to us. But welcome changes now mean the Chinese can be cut out of Government contracts in critical areas of national security. That's not only a major boost for British steel and other UK firms. It's also a vital step towards keeping one of our biggest security threats at arm's length.
Telegraph
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
This Government is the most devious and dishonest in Britain's history
I thought this Government of Gaslighters had reached its apogee of untruth with Darren Jones's suggestion that most of the illegal migrants crossing the Channel were ' women, children and babies '. When it was pointed out to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that the Home Office's own figures showed the crossings since January 2025 comprised 81 per cent adult men, he later conceded he 'could have been clearer'. 'I was telling a story about a visit I had to the border security command where I was shown a number of dinghies which did have women, babies and children in them', he insisted, prompting understandable cries of 'liar' on social media. But he's not the only Labourite who has been taking the public for fools. They're all at it. This week, Leader of the Commons Lucy Powell told the chamber, with a straight face: 'We never ruled out returning to the issue of a national inquiry [on grooming gangs].' Yes, that's the same Lucy Powell who accused Tim Montgomerie, the founder of the ConservativeHome website, of peddling 'dog whistle' politics on Radio 4's Any Questions, merely for asking whether she had seen a recent Channel 4 documentary on the scandal. 'Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now do we', she sneered. 'Let's get that dog whistle out shall we'. Powell's fib came after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper performed a politically expedient u-turn and announced there would, in fact, be a judge-led national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal – having spent the previous year saying we didn't need one. Had the Government admitted it had got it wrong, and changed its mind, it would have been fine. But instead a succession of MPs insisted that they had always wanted a judge-led statutory inquiry and that it was all Kemi Badenoch's fault that the Conservatives hadn't already held one – even though Sir Keir Starmer had suggested that she would be 'jumping on a far-Right bandwagon' for doing so. Such is the utter hypocrisy of Labour's position that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, of 'Tory scum' fame, called for the issue to be depoliticised, yet when asked by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp if she would apologise for the Prime Minister's 'far-Right' slur, attacked the opposition for its inaction. Natalie Fleet, the Labour MP for Bolsover, herself a sexual abuse survivor, then took to the airwaves to attack the Conservatives for failing to do enough, while completely failing to mention all the Labour councillors and MPs who covered it up for fear of inflaming 'community relations'. When Telford MP Shaun Davies was the town's council leader, he opposed a local grooming gang inquiry. In 2016, he wrote to the home secretary and prime minister along with nine other local authority figures, saying: 'We do not feel at this time that a further inquiry is necessary.' Yet in a statement to The Telegraph this week, his spokesman insisted: 'To suggest Shaun Davies attempted to obstruct a local inquiry would be completely incorrect.' Do these people think we are as stupid as they are? And they wonder why trust in politics is at an all time low. Jess Phillips is the kind of self-righteous political narcissist who insists that anyone who disagrees with her is a gaslighter. Yet she too has taken this form of psychological manipulation to new heights with the claim, on Newsnight, that she had 'never turned a blind eye' to what was going on. The Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, who nearly lost her Birmingham Yardley seat to a pro-Palestinian Workers Party opponent at the last general election, rejected Oldham Council's request for national support for the inquiry. She repeatedly refused to acknowledge the racially motivated nature of the crimes and criticised the Conservative MP Katie Lam for raising the ethnicity of the perpetrators and yet told the BBC: 'I would never shy away from calling a problem what it is'. (She also once compared the Cologne sex attacks to 'a typical night out in Birmingham'). These were precisely the politicians who would regularly accuse Boris Johnson of being a liar. Maybe he was economically with the truth. But this Labour government has reached plumbed new depths of dishonesty that make Partygate look like, well, a piece of cake. I've checked the Labour Party Manifesto 2024 (preferable to sleeping pills if you're struggling to bed down in this heat), and there is no mention in there of either assisted dying or changing the abortion laws. Yet both have been ramraided through Parliament without the public even being consulted. So much for Starmer's pledge, on the steps of Downing Street almost a year ago, that: 'My government will serve you.' When he promised a 'return of politics to public service,' I don't think anyone thought it would mean bunging his union buddies huge payrises while the private sector, which employs 83 per cent of the total workforce, is shafted by Rachel Reeves's Budget. That was the biggest deceit of them all, that Labour wouldn't tax 'working people'. In fact, the £25 billion increase to employers' National Insurance contributions has done exactly that. When Rishi Sunak tried to do the same in 2021, the Chancellor personally lambasted the plan as a 'jobs tax'. She's another Labour politician who thinks we haven't kept the receipts. It's as insulting to the electorate as her continual claim that rising inflation and unemployment, combined with record business closures and a millionaires' exodus is absolutely nothing to do with her and all down to Donald Trump. This is weapons' grade gaslighting. Similarly, we are all supposed to believe that she reversed the cuts to the winter fuel allowance because 'the economy is doing better', even though we learnt this week that the UK has suffered the second highest fall in wealth of any major economy. Growth is down, retail sales are down, hirings are down – and despite what they say, it's all of Labour's making. Need we even get started on Starmer's hollow claim that he is 'standing up for Britain's interests' when he can't even seem to decide whether the murderous mullahs of Iran should have nuclear weapons that could wipe out western civilization? Yet again, he's being egged on by his bestie Lord Hermer, who gaslit the electorate by insisting it was a good deal that we paid £30 billion to give away the Chagos Islands to China-backed Mauritius. We're supposed to believe he's a cuddly respecter of human rights…who likens Tories and Reform to Nazis. And these inadequates seriously expect us to believe they are capable of running the country? That's the biggest con of them all.
Daily Mail
17-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
From Channel crossing to channel surfing: Migrant arrivals' TV licence fees, bowling trips and trampoline visits have been funded by the taxpayer
Illegal migrants' TV licence fees, bowling trips, cinema visits and even trampoline park outings were paid for by the taxpayer, Reform UK says. The party's 'Doge' unit found more than £24,000 had been spent by Kent county council on the extravagant visits, alongside spending sprees at JD Sports and PCWorld. They claim the finances also shows spending on crazy golf trips, skating and luxury hair extensions. The extraordinary audit discoveries came after the Nigel Farage-led group vowed to slash spending at the authority, having seized it from the Tories in the local elections earlier this year. It comes as the number of illegal migrants who have crossed the Channel so far this year passed 16,000 - with 1,500 already making the journey this month. Almost 40,000 have crossed in 713 inflatable dinghies since Labour took power last year. 'For too long, British citizens have been prosecuted for not paying for a TV licence, yet asylum seekers are having theirs paid for by taxpayers,' Reform's Doge leader Zia Yusuf said. 'The old Tory regime at Kent county council has a lot to answer for. Reform will fight for taxpayers.' The party's 'Doge' unit found more than £24,000 had been spent by Kent county council on the extravagant visits, alongside spending sprees at JD Sports and PCWorld. Pictured: File photos The Reform cost-cutting squad follows the US Doge, which was launched during Donald Trump's presidency with the Tesla billionaire in charge to cut federal spending. Reform's previous efforts to root out what it sees as unnecessary spending by authorities it controls have so far struggled to make any impact. New Greater Lincolnshire mayor Andrea Jenkyns vowed to remove diversity officers from the county council, which later confirmed it did not employ any. And a recent claim by Mr Yusuf that the party would scrap low traffic neighbourhoods in the 10 council areas it controls was undone when it was found that there were none. But the spending on migrants will likely be a bitter pill for taxpayers a week after it was announced that the average home's council tax bill will increase by £359 by 2029. Ministers are working on the basis that councils will increase the rate by 5 per cent a year for the next three years, the Spending Review revealed. More than 900 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats on Friday, with a further 228 in four boats intercepted yesterday. The number to cross so far this year now stands at 16,543 in 290 boats. This shows a 42 per cent increase year-on-year and is up 79 per cent from the same date in 2023. But Friday's total number of migrant crossings was not the highest daily number so far this year. On May 31, 1,195 people arrived into Britain via the Channel in small boats. Last year, almost 37,000 people left the northern French coastline and arrived in the UK.
Telegraph
17-06-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Channel migrants ‘given free TV licences'
Illegal migrants have been given free TV licences funded by the taxpayer, a Reform UK 'Doge' audit has found. The Reform waste-busting team found that in 2022 at least £1,000 was spent by Kent County Council on paying small boat arrivals' TV licence fees. They were also funded for visits to go trampolining, bowling and to the cinema, according to an audit of the finances of the council which Reform now controls. Reform estimates that the activities, alongside spending at JD Sports and PC World, have cost more than £24,000 of taxpayer cash. It comes as the number of migrants crossing the Channel have passed 16,000, more than 50 per cent of the same point last year. Some 1,500 have arrived so far this month including the second highest daily total of 919 on Friday. 'Reform will fight for taxpayers' Zia Yusuf, Reform's Doge leader, said: 'For too long, British citizens have been prosecuted for not paying for a TV licence, yet asylum seekers are having theirs paid for by taxpayers. 'The old Tory regime at Kent County Council has a lot to answer for. Reform will fight for taxpayers.' Reform won control of Kent County Council, and 11 others across the country, from the Tories in May's local elections. Since then they have begun sending in auditors to identify and end waste in an Elon Musk-style cost-cutting drive. It comes as town halls are set to hike rates by the maximum five per cent or £14 to meet Sir Keir Starmer's plan for more police funding. He said: 'Council tax rises are obviously for councils to decide, year on year, which is what they all do.' The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that council tax is set to rise at the fastest rate for two decades. Local councils have the power to raise their bills by five per cent a year to pay for their services. They can raise taxes by more than 5 per cent – but to do that they would have to hold a local referendum to force through the changes.
