Smuggling gangs’ desire to profit from human misery has no limit – we won’t rest until we have broken business model

THE SMALL boat gangs have no regard for human life and no respect for the way other people live.

So of course, while people across Britain have been enjoying Christmas, those gangs have seized on the mild weather to make yet more money undermining our border security and putting lives at risk sending dangerously overcrowded dinghies across the Channel.

For too long, they have been able to get away with that evil trade.

Over the last six years they have been allowed to build up a vast criminal industry along our border, stretching right across Europe and beyond, with manufacturing and supply chains for the boats, illegal finance networks to take payments, and extensive advertising operations full of false promises.

Their desire to profit from human misery has no limit and no conscience.

Pay extra and you get a life jacket – even though it is fake and wouldn’t keep anyone afloat.

Pay less and you take your chances on a dinghy with 70 people on board – where so many women and children have been crushed to death this year.

Failure to stop the gangs taking hold in recent years has left our border security far too dependent on how many days of good weather there are in the Channel for them to organise their boat crossings.

Vile trade

That is why this Government will not rest until we have broken the business model of the smuggling gangs and strengthened our borders once more.

The scale of the operation they have established is not easy to smash, but we must take on that task or this vile trade in people will continue.

It will demand much stronger international law enforcement and cooperation next year alongside major new action and enforcement here at home.

Our new Border Security Command, led by former Police Chief Martin Hewitt, will receive £150m of investment over the next eighteen months, plus new technology, new dedicated investigators working out of the National Crime Agency, new operations overseas and refocussed UK enforcement teams.

Already we are strengthening our work with Governments and agencies across Europe, backed up with new international agreements.

Smuggler gangs operate across borders, so law enforcement must cooperate across borders in order to bring them down.

France has announced stronger measures along their northern coast, Germany is changing the law so they can target the warehouses where small boats are stored.

And after intercepting more than 450 boats and engines across Europe in the last 18 months, recent weeks have seen dozens more raids supported by British investigators and intelligence, and the arrest of multiple suspected gang leaders.

In 2025, we will bring forward new legislation to give law enforcement tougher powers to investigate, prosecute and disrupt organised immigration crime.

we are sending a clear message: the rules must be respected and enforced

Yvette Cooper

The criminals breaching our border security need to know that they will face the full force of both the UK and international law enforcement and justice systems.

But alongside our work overseas, we need to do something important here at home.

For too long under the Tories, the asylum and immigration rules were not properly enforced, and it was far too easy to work here illegally.

Over their time in power, returns of people with no right to be here fell, and in their last thirty months in office, just four employers were charged with hiring illegal workers.

That has to change. So, we are sending a clear message: the rules must be respected and enforced; those with no right to be here must be returned; those who employ people here illegally must face the consequences.

13,500 people have been removed since we came to office, on track to meet our pledge of delivering the highest rate of returns since 2018 within our first six months, including chartering the four biggest return flights in our country’s history.

Wasted time

Since the election, our immigration enforcement teams have increased raids on car washes, nail bars, construction sites and other businesses, leading to thousands of arrests and increasing prosecutions against employers.

Next year we will bring in new biometric kits and body worn cameras so people with no right to be or work here can be identified on the spot.

This is all part of this Government’s Plan for Change to strengthen our borders and fix the foundations of a broken immigration system, while also putting more money in people’s pockets and making the NHS fit for the future.

For the last six years, while the Tories wasted time on failed gimmicks, the people smuggling gangs were busy tightening their grip on the Channel trade, expanding their empires, and increasing their capacity to launch crossings whenever the weather allowed.

To defeat the gangs, we have to be even more organised, relentless, and more determined than the criminals we are up against, and under this Government, that is what we will be.