Home secretary to chair summit on smuggling gangs following deaths in Channel
The home secretary will meet with ministers and members of law enforcement for an operational summit that will set out the government’s plan to tackle small boats in the Channel.
Yvette Cooper will be joined by at the headquarters of the National Crime Agency in London by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Attorney General Lord Hermer as well as representatives from the NCA, Border Force and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
“Smashing the gangs” was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s key pledges to tackle small boat crossings in the Channel after his party pledged to scrap the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme to send those arriving illegally into the UK to the African nation.
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Shortly after taking office, Labour announced it would divert tens of millions of pounds from the Rwanda scheme to set up a new Border Security Command (BSC) in a bid to tackle illegal migration.
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The party is also pressing ahead with the previous government’s plan to reopen two immigration centres in a bid to stop small boat crossings.
The summit on Friday comes following the deaths of at least 12 people in the Channel this week, including 10 women and girls.
Part of the government’s strategy will be to look at how smugglers operate and how the government can better collaborate with Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency.
Ms Cooper said: “Exploiting vulnerable people is at the heart of the business model of these despicable criminal smuggling gangs. Women and children were packed into an unsafe boat which literally collapsed in the water this week. At least 12 people were killed as part of this evil trade. We will not rest until these networks have been dismantled and brought to justice.
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“The last two months has seen encouraging progress, with significant seizures of boats and equipment in Europe. But there is work to do, and the Border Security Command will bring all the relevant bodies together to investigate, arrest and prosecute these networks, as well as deepen our ties with key international partners.
“At the same time, we are swiftly removing those with no right to be in the UK, which will ensure we have a fair, firm and functioning asylum system where the rules are respected and enforced.”
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Kemi Badenoch is to launch a review into whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – and set out plans to revive a Rwanda-style deportation scheme.
In a speech on Friday, the Conservative leader will announce a commission into how lawyers could be prevented from using international legislation to block government decisions on immigration.
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She will also announce plans to prevent people who arrive by small boat from claiming asylum and deport them to a third country.
It is unclear if this would be Rwanda or another location.
One of Labour’s first acts in government was to scrap the Tories’ Rwanda scheme, which would have deported illegal immigrations to the African nation for them to claim asylum there.
The plan was held up by a series of legal challenges and ultimately failed to get off the ground before the election, despite around £700m being spent on it, according to the Home Office.
The saga sparked a debate within the Tory party about whether the UK would need to leave the ECHR, which was established after the Second World War and sets out the rights and freedoms of people in the 46 countries signed up to it.
During the Conservative leadership race, Ms Badenoch said leaving the ECHR wasn’t a “silver bullet” and “not even the most radical thing that we probably will have to do” to control immigration.
It put her at odds with her rival Robert Jenrick, now the shadow justice secretary, who claimed the Tories would “die” if they did not back exiting the ECHR.
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Ms Badenoch’s commission will be chaired by Tory peer and former justice minister Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, the shadow attorney general.
A Conservative Party aide close to the detail said: “Kemi has worked hard to bring the shadow cabinet together on this very difficult issue.
“She has always said she will take her time to build a proper, workable plan to tackle the issue of the courts subverting parliamentary democracy. This commission, led by the brilliant lawyer Lord Wolfson, will make sure we’re ready to take the tough decisions.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls since the general election, has also said he would leave the ECHR.
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Labour’s policy is to remain in it, but to bring forward legislation to “ensure it is the government and parliament that decides who should have the right to remain in the UK”.
According to the immigration white paper unveiled last month, this would address cases where Article 8 right to family life legal arguments have been used to frustrate deportation, often in the case of foreign criminals.
Article 8 was also used in the case of a Palestinian family fleeing Gaza after they applied to enter the UK through a Ukrainian refugee scheme.
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Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday that family migration has become “so complex” that courts are applying “exceptional” human rights guarantees to about a third of cases.
She said: “The proportion of decisions being taken as exceptional – often under interpretations around Article 8 – end up being about 30 percent of the cases. That is not exceptional, that is a much broader proportion.”
However, she rejected calls to disapply the ECHR, saying compliance with international law has helped the government strike deals with France and Germany to help crack down on criminal gangs.
She said the government will draw up a “clear framework” that will be “much easier for the courts to interpret and will reflect what the public want to see”.
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