Home Secretary pledges to ‘restore order’ to migration system

Yvette Cooper blamed the Tories for failures in the migration system over the past five years as she made a statement in the Commons.

It comes after Home Office figures showed 122 people made the journey on Sunday in two boats – Sir Keir’s 150th day in office – which means 20,110 crossings have been recorded since the Labour leader walked into Number 10 in July after his party won the general election.

Speaking in the Commons on Monday afternoon, Ms Cooper said many people had “understandably lost faith in the entire system”, but sought to blame the Conservatives for a “collapse in controls”.

She claimed illegal and legal migration had both “substantially increased” under the Tories, while the asylum backlog “soared” and “enforcement of basic rules fell apart”.

“The scale of failure and loss of control has badly undermined trust in the entire system and it will take time to turn things around,” the Home Secretary added.

Ms Cooper said Labour would enforce new visa rules put in place when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, and would go further by tackling exploitation in the legal migration system.

She also said the new Border Security Command and a “landmark” deal with Iraq signed last week and intended to crack down on people smuggling would help stem the number of illegal migrants coming to the UK.

The Home Secretary told the Commons: “We have the chance now to turn that around, to fix the chaos, to bring net migration down, to tackle the criminal gangs and prevent dangerous boat crossings, to restore order, control and fair rules properly enforced, not through gimmicks but through hard graft and serious international partnerships.”

Ms Cooper also announced a detailed breakdown of the costs of the now-scrapped Rwanda deal would be published.

The scheme was aimed at deterring migrants with the threat they could be flown to Kigali, but the Home Secretary said: “The result of that massive commitment of time and money was 84,000 crossed the Channel from the day the deal was signed to the day it was scrapped.

“This so-called deterrent did not result in a single deportation or stop a single boat crossing the Channel.”

Downing Street has insisted fresh efforts to tackle Channel crossings are starting to show results, but ministers have so far been reluctant to set any targets.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp urged ministers to introduce a hard limit on migrant numbers, telling the Commons: “If they are really serious… about reducing net migration as we are, what we really need is a hard cap on the numbers, proposed by the leader of the opposition and I last week.”

He added: “Behind all the bluster and all the chat about previous governments, we see her record and her Government’s record. A 64% increase in small boat crossings since the same period before the election, 6,000 extra people in hotels, the asylum backlog up by 11,000, all since the July 4.”

2024 saw a record number of crossings in the first three months of the year, as did the period between January and June.

Labour sources said the weather played a “significant part” in the numbers, citing Home Office analysis they claimed showed that October 11 to November 10 saw the “highest ever ratio” of so-called red days in a month-long period – when weather conditions are considered to make crossings likely or very likely.

This saw 26 out of the 31 days classed as likely to see Channel crossings compared to three red days for the same dates last year.

Some 6,288 migrants crossed the Channel between those dates, compared to 768 in the same period last year.

During Mr Sunak’s 20-month premiership, he saw 11,309 migrant Channel crossings within his first 150 days of being in charge of the country.

It took around eight-and-a-half months for migrant crossings to top 20,000 after Mr Sunak became prime minister, and this number was reached on his 257th day in office.

His tenure began in the autumn, meaning his first few months in power coincided with winter weather conditions when typically fewer crossings take place.

By contrast, Sir Keir took on the role in the middle of the summer period when crossing numbers are usually at their highest and most frequent amid spells of better weather.

The latest crossings are the first since November 16, marking a 14-day hiatus in activity amid bad weather.

That was the longest period without crossings so far this year and means November saw the lowest monthly total for arrivals since Sir Keir became Prime Minister.

The first arrivals in December take the provisional total for the year so far to 33,684, PA news agency analysis of the figures shows.

This is up 18% on this time last year (28,453) but down 24% on 2022 (44,174), which was a record high year for crossings.