Government defends immigration strategy after Channel tragedy – as Tory MPs criticise ‘dysfunctional’ Home Office
The government has defended its immigration strategy after deaths in the English Channel prompted renewed criticism of the “stop the boats” pledge – including from Tory MPs.
At least six people died after a small boat crossing from France to the UK capsized and sank, in what has been described as an “appalling and preventable” tragedy.
Campaigners are now urging the government to create more safe and legal routes to the UK while MPs from across the political spectrum are calling for a clampdown on the criminal gangs profiting from these dangerous journeys.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made “stopping the boats” one of his five priorities in government.
Asked if the Channel tragedy was a “damning indictment” of his failure to make good on that promise, Welsh Secretary David TC Davies said: “No, it’s not. The government has been stopping boats.”
Mr Davies said funding for patrols on the French border had reduced the number of crossings, while a returns deal with Albania had resulted in a 90% reduction of people coming from the south European country.
He admitted it is a “really difficult problem to completely solve” but said the Rwandan deportation policy – currently held up by legal challenges – would act as a deterrent.
“I believe those people who are genuinely fleeing from war and oppression will be happy to be housed in any safe third country,” he said.
“But it is going to take away the incentive for people to jump into a rickety boat and risk their lives coming here, sometimes in the hands of people smugglers who are making a fortune out of it. We need to stop these tragedies, not to encourage more people to come in.”
The Channel tragedy came at the end of Rishi Sunak’s “small boats week”, which was meant to reinvigorate his plan to tackle illegal immigration but quickly unravelled amid the discovery of bacteria in the water supply of the Bibby Stockholm barge.
It meant all 39 migrants who had boarded the vessel in Dorset just days earlier had to be removed – a significant set back to a plan that has been beset with delay and controversy from the very start.
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Asylum seekers ‘not valued’ as humans
However, ministers intend to push on with plans to hire more barges to house asylum seekers, as well as student halls and former office blocks, The Telegraph reported.
The government has argued using basic accommodation will act as a deterrent to Channel crossings while bringing down the £6m a day it is spending on hotels.
But in a further blow to Rishi Sunak, this week saw the highest daily number of people cross the Channel, with 755 migrants making the journey on Thursday.
It brought the cumulative total since records began in 2018 to over 100,000.
Further crossings this week – including the arrival of 509 people on Saturday – mean more than 1,600 people crossed the Channel in the past three days, bringing the total for the year so far to 16,679, according to Home Office figures.
Read More:
Asylum seekers on board Bibby Stockholm ‘re-traumatised’
Fiasco shows how far Sunak has to go to deliver on boats promise
Immigration plans ‘total failure’
Labour accused the government of a “total failure on immigration”.
Shadow education secretary Bridget Philipson said ministers should come up with a plan to target people smuggling gangs and bring down the asylum backlog rather than “ridiculous, ludicrous and increasingly unworkable schemes”.
She told Sky News: “We need a serious government that is focussed on this as a real issue that we’re facing as a country. What we get increasingly from the Conservatives is gimmicks and headlines.“
Calls for action also came from within the Conservative party.
Writing in the Sunday Express, Tory backbencher and former party chairman Sir Jake Berry said: “We must put a stop to the vile people smugglers who trade in human misery and whose actions result in the loss of life.”
He called for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, saying “only radical changes can truly turn the tide”.
Meanwhile Conservative MP Tim Loughton said it was not a good idea to have a “small boats week” as it was “hostage to fortune”.
“Clearly it depends on how many people are risking their lives coming across the Channel, which is dependent on the weather and how people smugglers are operating,” he told Times Radio.
Mr Loughton, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, added that there was a “dysfunctionality” about the Home Office dating back years beyond the current government and called for “an absolutely systemic analysis” of where it is going wrong.
The government department was also derided by senior Conservative backbencher David Davis, who said their “startling incompetence” was laid bare by the Bibby Stockholm saga.
Shuttered crypto exchange Garantex is reportedly back under a new name after laundering millions in ruble-backed stablecoins and sending them to a freshly created exchange, according to a Swiss blockchain analytics company.
Global Ledger claims the operators of the Russian exchange have shifted liquidity and customer deposits to Grinex, which they say is “Garantex’s full-fledged successor,” in a report released to X on March 19.
“We can confidently state that Grinex and Garantex are directly connected both onchain and offchain.”
“The movement of funds, including the systematic transfer of A7A5 liquidity, the use of one-time-use wallets, and the involvement of addresses previously associated with Garantex, provides clear onchain proof of their link,” the Global Ledger team said in the report.
After completing its investigation on March 13, Global Ledger says it had found onchain data showing Garantex laundered over $60 million worth of ruble-backed stablecoins called A7A5 and sent them to addresses associated with Grinex.
Global Ledger claims Garantex has moved all its funds over to a newly launched exchange and is back in business. Source: Global Ledger
“In this case, the burning and subsequent minting process was used to launder funds from Garantex, allowing new coins to be minted from a system address with a clean history,” the team said.
A Garantex manager also reportedly told Global Ledger that customers have been visiting the exchange office in person and moving funds from Garantex to Grinex.
“Additionally, offchain indicators, such as transactional patterns, commentaries and exchange behaviors, further reinforce this connection,” it said.
The report also points to a description of Grinex on the Russian crypto tracking site CoinMarketRating, claiming that the owners of Garantex created it. The reports said this shows “Grinex is not an independent entity but rather a full-fledged successor to Garantex, continuing its financial operations despite the exchange’s official shutdown.”
Source: Global Ledger
By March 14, the volume of incoming transactions on Grinex was nearly $30 million, according to Global Ledger. CoinMarketRating shows that the trade volume for the month is now over $68 million, with spot trading topping $2 million.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control first hit Garantex with sanctions in April 2022 for allegedly money laundering violations.
Related: US, UK, Australia sanction Zservers for hosting crypto ransomware LockBit
On March 6, the US Department of Justice collaborated with authorities in Germany and Finland to freeze domains associated with Garantex, which they claim processed over $96 billion worth of criminal proceeds since launching in 2019.
Stablecoin operator Tether also froze $27 million in Tether (USDT), on March 6 which forced Garantex to halt all operations, including withdrawals.
Only a few days later, on March 12, officials with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Aleksej Bešciokov, who allegedly operated Garantex, on US charges that included conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Magazine: How crypto laws are changing across the world in 2025
Ministers are drawing up plans restricting foreign donors from giving unlimited funds to UK political parties, Sky News understands.
Currently, political parties can accept donations from any company registered in the UK – and foreign donors can and have used these companies to make indirect contributions.
The rules allow for British companies to be used in this way even if they don’t make any money at all.
However, Sky News understands that officials are currently looking at restricting donations based on how much money a company makes – either using a profit or a share of revenue to calculate a potential cap for the amount each UK business can give.
The government says this is in line with its manifesto pledge to “protect democracy by strengthening the rules around donations to political parties”.
Senior government sources have told Sky News these changes are partially about Elon Musk.
Officials are said to be anxious about the rumoured donation of $100m (about £80m) that Musk has suggested he would make to Reform UK.
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Nigel Farage says ‘Musk is going to support Reform’
The government’s thinking is that the tech billionaire is likely to do this just before the next election, and they hope they can pass their Elections Bill – the legislation through which the donation loophole would be closed – through parliament before that happens.
The bill would enter parliament in the next session, but ministers have told MPs that they should expect an update to these plans within months.
Musk’s donation would be an astronomical amount in the context of British politics.
The sum would trump all political donations that have been made to any political party this year – and would inevitably make a big impact on campaigning.
Elon Musk is not on the electoral register and the British arm of his company X – X.AI London Limited – has not yet made any money.
Under the proposed changes, this avenue of donating money to Reform UK would not be possible.
Reform UK’s total received donations for 2024 would be considerably higher with £80m from Elon Musk
A government source said this is just one of the options on the table, adding that another change they are considering will mean enhanced due diligence checks on donations from unincorporated associations.
In exclusive polling, Sky News has found that any money given to parties by foreign donors is incredibly unpopular.
A total of 77% of respondents thought foreign nationals who are not registered to vote in the UK should not be allowed to donate to political parties, while only 7% thought they should be.
Even looking specifically at Reform UK voters, who would likely benefit from an Elon Musk donation, the percentage is roughly the same: 73% said they shouldn’t donate to British politics at all, while 7% said they should.
A total of 77% of respondents said foreign nationals should not be allowed to donate to UK political parties
There is a lot of cash swirling all around Westminster and foreign money can and does enter UK politics.
Transparency International found almost £1 in every £10 donated to parties and politicians came from unknown or dubious sources between 2001 and 2024.
Whatever the motivation, these changes could bring greater transparency to what’s behind any murky money swirling into Westminster.
Crypto regulations must be enacted through an act of Congress to become permanent and meaningful pieces of legislation, according to former Congressman Wiley Nickel.
In an exclusive video interview with Cointelegraph’s Turner Wright, Nickel urged bipartisan collaboration to push through comprehensive crypto regulations. The former Congressman added:
“I think it’s really important for anybody who cares about this issue to step back and realize that if you want lasting change in Washington, you must move legislation through Congress. Otherwise, if you’re talking about executive orders, it will just go back and forth.”
“You don’t want to have the mess that we saw just months ago with Gary Gensler’s SEC — you need to get legislation through Congress,” Nickel reiterated.
President Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order establishing the Working Group on Digital Assets, which also prohibited the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and the order establishing a Bitcoin strategic reserve alongside a separate crypto stockpile, were both examples of executive actions that can be reversed at a later date.
Former Congressman Wiley Nickel is pictured sitting second from the left at the Blockworks Digital Asset Summit. Source: Cointelegraph
Related: Congress on track for stablecoin, market structure bills by August: Blockchain Association
Both chambers of Congress rush to push through meaningful legislation
Rep. Tom Emmer, the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives, reintroduced legislation banning a CBDC in the US on March 6.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis also reintroduced the Bitcoin Act in March, which builds upon an earlier bill of the same title but allows the US to purchase more than 1 million Bitcoin (BTC).
Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin Act of 2025. Source: Senator Cynthia Lummis
Rep. Byron Donalds recently announced that he would draft legislation to codify the Bitcoin strategic reserve into law — shielding President Trump’s original executive order from being overturned by a future administration.
On March 12, the House of Representatives repealed the IRS broker rule requiring decentralized finance platforms to report information to the Internal Revenue Service in a 292-131 vote.
Speaking at this year’s Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna said that Congress should be able to pass comprehensive crypto regulation in 2025, including a stablecoin bill and a market structure bill.
Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered
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