Stopping all migrants arriving in small boats will be “very difficult” to achieve, the military commander in charge of Britain’s operational response to Channel crossings has warned.
Major General Duncan Capps, head of the small boats operational command, said that he believed it was possible to “significantly reduce” migrant crossings and to ensure the business model was unviable for people smugglers. However, speaking in an interview with The Times, he said that it was unrealistic to expect to get the numbers to zero.
Capps is among those attending a landmark immigration summit in London this week hosted by Sir Keir Starmer, who confirmed that he was considering deporting failed asylum seekers to “return hubs” in the western Balkans and other countries.
The prime minister said that he would “look at anything that works” when asked about the proposals, adding that the government was working “very closely” with Italian counterparts about their plans to open offshore migrant centres in Albania.
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, told the summit that the policy had “gained increasing consensus” as she pointed to the European Union endorsing “return hubs”. The Times revealed that the government was drawing up proposals to open a series of these hubs in countries including Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia, where migrants would be sent after they had been rejected for asylum and had exhausted all avenues of appeal.
Starmer said: “The principle approach that we take is that we will look at anything that works. Obviously, that’s got to be consistent with international law and it’s got to be cost-effective.”
He defended human rights lawyers who have represented asylum seekers and foreign criminals and successfully blocked efforts to deport them from the UK.
The government is reviewing the use of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to family life, which is increasingly being exploited by failed asylum seekers.
However, defending the lawyers who represent them, Starmer said: “Lawyers are employed to represent people, and they represent them, whether they agree with them or don’t agree with them.”
Starmer accepted that combatting small boat crossings was “very challenging” after figures revealed that migrant arrivals in small boats hit a record 6,642 for the first three months of the year, a third higher than last year.
But he rejected suggestions that it would be impossible to stop illegal migration. The prime minister said: “I don’t accept that. I think it’s wrong to be defeatist about this and say this is a problem that simply can’t be cracked. What I do think is right is that it demonstrates that it’s got to be a whole system approach. It’s got to be at every stage of the journey from working with countries where they’re beginning their journey.”
Capps said that he could not envisage migrant crossings falling to zero given that Britain could not control the French coastline.
“Trying to quantify it in a binary way, particularly when you don’t control any of the parameters where they come through, which is what this is about, is really difficult,” he said.
“I think it will be very difficult, but if we can cut off the supply of boats and engines, the illegal manufacture of these, then I think we could get it to a point where it’s just not viable. And in a perfect world, we could disestablish the operation that I run so we don’t need to have that any more.”
He said that more could be done to hurt smugglers’ business models by getting social media companies to remove adverts that promote the illegal journeys.
Meta, TikTok and X are also attending the two-day organised immigration crime summit being held at Lancaster House in London and have agreed to take more action to remove content that promotes illegal migration.
Capps said: “One of the advantages we do have is if you’re a people smuggler, unlike a classic terrorist, you want to be seen, you want to be advertising.
“So I don’t think we’ve done enough previously to use that back against them.”
Capps said that it was vital to avoid simply displacing migrants on to other illegal routes into Britain. Before 2018 the sight of small boats crossing the Channel was very rare and only became a regular occurrence after a major increase in security at the ferry ports in Calais and the Channel Tunnel in the same year, which targeted stowaways.
He said: “What we don’t want to do is just displace [migrants] into other vectors … because otherwise, obviously, all we’re doing is playing whack-a-mole.”
He said that the surge in the number of crossings in March, when more than 4,000 migrants arrived in small boats, was due to “pent-up” demand after a quieter period over Christmas. A raid on one of the main smuggling gangs, which included the arrest of a smuggler known as “The Engine King” because he was a key supplier of dinghies and engines, led to a dip in crossings from the end of November to the beginning of January.
Capps defended the action taken by his French counterparts, who have faced repeated criticism for failing to do enough to stop boats from crossing the Channel. He said that they faced growing levels of violence and also increasing “sophistication” and co-ordination by the smuggling gangs.
He said: “There is a narrative that the French haven’t been doing enough. It is an exceptionally difficult situation that they find themselves in with increasing levels of violence.”
The smugglers were also making it harder to detect them by launching crossings from further down the French coast. Boats are now setting sail from as far away as Dieppe, almost 200km south of Calais, which also makes the journey across the Channel more dangerous as it is a 60km trip to the south coast of England.
