Home Office minister Seema Malhotra says it will take time to tackle illegal immigration as figures show a 25 per cent increase in English Channel crossings during 2024, compared to the previous year.
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00:00We must remember that the number of small boat crossings is actually 34% lower from July to
00:05December of 2024 compared to two years ago and the Tories may have amnesia but we don't because
00:13the first six months of last year actually saw the highest number of small boat crossings
00:19for the first half of a year since records began on this and the issue has been that
00:26the small boat crossings have been increasing over the last six years. Gangs have been able
00:32to take control, gangs have been able to take a hold on our borders where small boat crossings
00:39were at just a few hundred in 2018 and then at tens of thousands by the time that the Tories
00:45left office. What we know is that it's going to take time to turn this around. As the Prime
00:50Minister has said this is going to take time to turn around and that's why we've put in place a
00:54serious plan, a core foundation of our plan for change that is now seeing the new border security
01:00command in place, seeing increased working of intelligence agencies across the UK, making sure
01:06that we've got that 150 million pounds behind our work with new specialist investigators,
01:11increasing caseworkers to tackle the backlog that the Tories lift, making sure that we've
01:16increased returns over 13,000 since we came to power but also the important new powers
01:21we're announcing to back up that work of the border security command and new international
01:26agreements because fundamentally this is an international problem and it needs an international solution.