No one can doubt the Government’s commitment to looking busy when it comes to tackling illegal migration to the UK.
The last couple of months have seen a blizzard of announcements on everything from Border Security Command, Keir Starmer’s pledge to “smash the people smuggling gangs”, to Serious Crime Prevention Orders and, most recently last week, “world-first sanctions” aimed at those smugglers.
What is less clear is how effective these measures will really be in practice. The i Paper revealed in November how Home Office officials had been “underwhelmed” by the approach taken towards Channel crossings by Starmer and his Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
The insiders warned that “nobody” understood how the much-vaunted Border Security Command – that the Government says will take the lead on combating people smugglers launching small boats – would operate.
Now The i Paper has learned there is further scepticism both inside and outside the Home Office about how successful Labour’s latest announcements will prove to be.
With almost 37,000 people crossing the English Channel on small boats in 2024, and a record of at least 78 people dying in the attempt, charities and experts have again warned that focusing on “smashing the gangs”, rather than offering safe alternatives for asylum seekers to reach the UK, risks making crossings more dangerous, but no less frequent.
Unveiling the plan to target people smugglers with sanctions last week, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “The UK is set to be the first country in the world to develop legislation for a new sanctions regime specifically targeting irregular migration and organised immigration crime.
“This will help to prevent, combat, deter and disrupt irregular migration and the smuggling of migrants into the UK.”
An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants makes its way towards England in the English Channel (Photo: Chris J Ratcliffe/Reuters)He suggested that the financial sanctions could be used to “cripple people smuggling gangs” by freezing bank accounts and assets held in the UK.
But officials and experts have raised doubts about whether the scheme will really reduce numbers arriving over the English Channel, or have a significant impact on internationally-networked and “flexible” groups who have continued plying their deadly trade despite years of enforcement efforts.
‘This won’t change anything’
Some Home Office insiders have told The i Paper they are sceptical that the sanctions will have a significant impact, because small boat gangs rarely have a presence in, or assets inside, the UK that can be targeted.
“It won’t change anything,” said one civil servant at the department. “The groups do not have assets here or, if and when they do, they are hidden. They are trying to find a quick fix but money laundering legislation already exists, and has never stopped the smugglers.”
But perhaps the biggest revelation about how little the initiative might do combat Channel small boat crossings has come from another arm of the state. At a press briefing last month, the National Crime Agency (NCA) confirmed that most of the organised crime groups involved in small boat crossings were not present in the UK, but instead based in France, Belgium, Germany and Turkey.
NCA officials also revealed that efforts to trace the groups’ financial flows had also been challenged by the use of an informal transfer system that bypasses major banks – another factor that could limit the effectiveness of sanctions.
The NCA told reporters its work had mapped international networks moving the dinghies and engines that are ultimately assembled on French and Belgium beaches for crossings.
Vessels manufactured in China were often shipped to Turkey and then transported into Europe, sometimes being warehoused in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands before being moved to France.
Rob Jones, NCA director-general of operations, said: “The fact remains that the majority of the organised crime involved in small boats is not in the UK – it is upstream and it’s overseas.
“We are concurrently applying pressure in all of those places [but] it’s a challenging crime to attack.”
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Nevertheless, the Government is going ahead with its “world-first sanctions regime” which could potentially apply to other forms of organised immigration crime as well as small boats.
New legislation will be needed for the powers, which officials hope to lay in Parliament before the end of this year. But the Government has not said how many smugglers could be targeted.
The Foreign Office announcement also lacked detail on what the threshold for sanctioning groups or individuals would be. But it claimed the action would “stem finance flows at their source and deter smugglers from profiting off the trafficking of innocent people”.
The Home Secretary said disrupting gangs’ finances would make it harder for them to operate, alongside separate work against Channel crossings by the Border Security Command, which is still being set up.
But sanctions expert Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security at the RUSI think-tank, warned that there had to be a “nexus between the target of the sanctions and the UK” for them to be enforced.
“If there isn’t, we’re shouting loudly but not achieving anything,” he added. “There’s a high risk that two years from now we’re discussing what impact these sanctions have had on the flow of people crossing the Channel in small boats, and the answer is nothing.”
Keatinge said that “naming and shaming” people smugglers on a sanctions list could spark voluntary action by international banks, and that if EU countries take similar action the impact could be greater.
But he warned that historically sanctions have served mainly as a diplomatic “messaging tool” rather than means of having a real-world impact on criminal groups.
And while the Government points to the impact of sanctions on Russian interests since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine – itself a claim that some would dispute – Keatinge argues that Putin’s regime is an “outlier” because of the previous business and financial links between Russian firms and the UK.
Marley Morris, associate director for migration at the Institute for Public Policy Research, said the Government was sending a “strong message” but that small boat gangs had proven themselves to be resistant to previous enforcement efforts.
“Most of the people, especially at the top of the chain, are going to be largely based in regions of origin and that’s where a lot of the money is concentrated,” he added. “Even if there is some money that is based in the UK it’s probably fairly easy to move it out quickly if they needed it to. If the sanctions are just in the UK, it is going to be very hard to see a significant impact.”
Serious Crime Prevention Orders
The sanctions were announced days after the Home Office unveiled separate laws that would allow suspected people smugglers to face immediate travel bans, social media blackouts and restrictions on phone usage without a crime being proven.
Unlike the sanctions, which can be introduced through secondary legislation, the expanded “Serious Crime Prevention Orders” will have to be fully scrutinised by Parliament as part of a new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
The Home Office said that new interim orders would speed up existing processes for the orders, allowing the NCA, police and other law enforcement agencies to apply directly to the High Court to impose immediate restrictions while a full order is considered.
“By taking immediate action at an early stage, without requiring a conviction, these interim orders will help crackdown on people smugglers and other forms of serious and organised crime,” a spokesperson said.
Restrictions under the proposed orders would vary on a case-by-case basis but could include travel bans, restrictions on laptop or mobile phone usage, social networking, association, communications and finances.
But Morris warned that Channel gangs had so far been “flexible enough to be able to respond” to escalating international law enforcement efforts.
“Most of them are not in the UK and they could easily adapt to enforcement measures,” he added.
“There’s always a risk with some of these measures that you end up affecting the victims rather than the people behind them.”
Charities have drawn a direct link between increasing patrols on French beaches and disruption of dinghy supplies to rising deaths in the Channel, saying enforcement has caused increased overcrowding and more chaotic and dangerous methods to board boats.
Both the new sanctions and orders are part of the Labour Government’s wider strategy to “smash the gangs”, but experts have cautioned that work is also needed to tackle the demand for crossings.
Introducing “safe routes” for asylum seekers that would stop them from having to resort to such illegal and dangerous methods of arrival are seen by many as the key way to cut the demand for crossings that the gangs thrive on.
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Currently, for most asylum seekers, a safe route is not an easy option. The law says asylum can only be claimed in person on British soil and if there is no visa for people to travel to the UK for that purpose. While refugees can apply for resettlement schemes organised by the United Nations refugees agency, eligibility is limited and the numbers arriving have been far lower than asylum applications by small boat migrants.
Morris said: “If you want to see an impact you need to combine enforcement with safe routes to provide an alternative to people.
“If you’re making it tougher to come to the UK without providing a safer alternative, they find other ways, and sometimes they’re more dangerous.”
Sile Reynolds, head of asylum advocacy at the Freedom from Torture, said safe routes to sanctuary in the UK “remain inadequate and inaccessible”.
“Smuggling gangs will simply adapt to the new control measures the Government is looking to introduce, as they have always done, and continue to provide their services to desperate people,” she added.
“We know only too well that cracking down on the methods refugees use to escape persecution, instead of holding states accountable for their failure to protect their own people, only serves to make the journeys more dangerous for the refugees involved.”
When the Home Office and Foreign Office were approached for comment, The i Paper was pointed to comments Lammy made last week when he claimed that sanctions could allow the Government to “go after” people smugglers’ “supply chains”.
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