Keir Starmer promised to ‘finally’ get a grip on Britain’s borders earlier this week. In a major speech on immigration, the UK prime minister outlined a series of measures tightening up the rules around visas. The focus was on legal routes and reducing net migration. What Starmer neglected to mention was Britain’s soaring levels of illegal migration, most visible in the small-boats crisis on the southern English coast. Migrants who arrive illegally are very rarely deported. Attempts to remove even criminals are routinely resisted by the courts, often on the most spurious grounds imaginable. How can the UK ever have control over its borders if we can’t even decide who gets to come and stay here?
Tony Smith, the former head of the UK Border Force, sat down with spiked’s Fraser Myers to discuss why Britain can’t stop the boats. What follows is an edited version of their conversation. You can watch the whole thing here:
Fraser Myers: It seems as if every week we read about a new absurdity in the UK’s immigration system, from the Albanian criminal who can’t be deported because his son won’t eat ‘foreign’ chicken nuggets to the Pakistani paedophile whose alcoholism might put him at risk in his home country. How do these things come about?
Tony Smith: In my opinion, it’s largely due to the interpretation of international conventions – specifically the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These treaties have permeated UK law in one form or another. If someone comes to this country unlawfully, or stays unlawfully, Border Force should be able to initiate removal proceedings and send them back. That can’t happen anymore.
Now, illegal immigrants who face deportation can lodge an application to stay on the grounds of international law, rather than UK domestic law. This involves extensive litigation, and often ends with an immigration judge finding that deportation would breach the UK’s international human-rights obligations. Usually, these decisions are made on the grounds of Article 3 or Article 8 of the ECHR.
Those are the main reasons why it’s very, very hard for Border Force to remove people. Essentially, there is a legal framework that has been built up over the years that disables it from doing so.
Myers: Are these conventions still fit for purpose?
Smith: After the Second World War, the framers of these conventions were very much occupied with the treatment of Jewish people and the millions of European refugees whose countries had been destroyed by war. They wanted international protection to ensure that, if we did see another Hitler, those fleeing would be given sanctuary and support.
More than 70 years later, we’re still relying on these various interpretations of international law to dictate our own border policy. Increasingly, ordinary people are becoming more concerned, because they never voted for these laws. Most pollsters will tell you that the electorate prefers a strong border. The majority of the country doesn’t like the idea of people coming here, particularly without permission, on a small boat, without a passport and being allowed to stay.
It needs a very bold government to stand up and say, actually, this isn’t valid anymore. We’re not going to listen to human-rights claims from people who come illegally. We’re going to send them away. That’s exactly what the public wants.
Myers: How do we strike a balance between protecting people who are genuinely refugees and blocking those who aren’t?
Smith: It was never intended that people could flee their own country, cross multiple borders and eventually settle in a country where they would quite like to stay, such as the UK. The fact is that a great many of the people who are coming here from France have been in Europe for a long time and out of their own country for a long time. They’ve probably even applied to stay in other countries that have refused them.
In the 2000s, we upheld the position that, unless you were immediately fleeing persecution, the Refugee Convention did not apply to you. Unfortunately, that interpretation has been trumped by what we were talking about earlier – namely the endless claims made under the ECHR.
The current government wants to ‘smash the gangs’ behind the boat arrivals. My own personal view is that this won’t work. You need to create a deterrent that will undermine the business model of the smugglers. As long as there is a chance that you can stay in the UK, people will take that chance and pay for it. And every time you arrest one bunch of smugglers, there’s another gang just waiting in the wings to take over because of the amount of money involved.
Fraser Myers was talking to Tony Smith. Watch the whole conversation here:
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