The UK Government says migrant deportations have hit a five-year high with nearly 13,500 people deported since the Labour party came to power in July.
Ministers claim the record numbers prove they have a "tough approach" to migration, but campaigners are warning the policy could put lives at risk. Correspondent Michael Voss reports.
Ministers claim the record numbers prove they have a "tough approach" to migration, but campaigners are warning the policy could put lives at risk. Correspondent Michael Voss reports.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that when he came to power in July he would
00:05deport more people in the first six months of the new government than in the
00:10past six years and that figure you've just mentioned of 13,500 deportations
00:15suggests that the government is on course to reach that target next month
00:20but if deportations are going up so are the number of people still risking their
00:26lives making crossings in small boats coming across from France 35,000 in the
00:32first so far this year an increase of 20% and in a televised interview Sunday
00:39morning the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper would not be drawn on a timetable for
00:45actually reducing those numbers an indication of just how tough a problem
00:49it is and Yvette Cooper was just in Italy wasn't she what are the tools and
00:54policies that is the government considering to to add to its arsenal to
00:58deal with this problem well remember Italy has a far bigger problem than
01:02Britain that's where tens of thousands of people are coming across in boats
01:07from North Africa I think the the central plank if you like of the
01:12government's plan is to go after the smugglers and and and certainly in
01:16Italy looking at the sort of anti-mafia technique of following the money now
01:22Yvette Cooper the Home Secretary was in Iraq last month she went to the Kurdish
01:27region which is where several of the major trafficking gangs are believed to
01:31be based offering financial incentives to crack down on them the government has
01:38scrapped the controversial Rwanda scheme where they'd send where the previous
01:43government plan to send migrants to have their cases assessed in Africa and
01:47instead it's set up something called the border security command it has
01:52enhanced ways to go after traffickers and freeze their bank accounts there's
01:57also something called the Calais group UK France Belgium Germany and Holland
02:02and they're coordinating approaches to go after the smugglers in a separate
02:07issue Britain has announced that it is suspending all asylum claims from
02:12Syrians following the fall of Bashar Assad the government says it's it's now
02:17going to see when it would be safe whether Syria is a safe country to send
02:21people back to and that no deportations until that point but where it leaves
02:27these six and a half thousand or so Syrians in terms of accommodation and
02:31work is very unclear right now