Britain’s Home Secretary has delivered an extraordinary assessment of the violence surrounding the Channel migration route, warning that women waiting in northern France to cross to Britain have probably been raped during their journeys.
Shabana Mahmood said criminal gangs and people traffickers had effectively taken control of the process by which migrants are selected to board small boats, leaving the Government unable to determine who reaches British shores.
“We’re not in control of this border,” she told The Rest Is Politics podcast.
“The sifting of the people that end up in the north of France and are about to get on a dinghy is done by criminal gangs who are also, by the way, people traffickers.
“You can almost guarantee that every woman that’s in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey. Some of the men too, they’ve certainly been abused and threatened.”
Her remarks underline the central contradiction confronting Labour’s migration policy; ministers want to reduce dangerous Channel crossings while simultaneously expanding controlled humanitarian routes into Britain.
Mahmood said the Government intended to reopen the UK Resettlement Scheme and expand community sponsorship, allowing charities, universities and businesses to support refugees entering the country through legal channels. She said Britain should look globally for communities where it could make a difference.
“We should accept them as refugees before they arrive and then help them integrate into our country,” she said.
“In the not too distant future, we’ll be accepting people from all over the world on a community sponsorship model.”
The Government argues that safe and legal routes can undermine the business model of trafficking gangs by removing some of the incentive to undertake dangerous journeys.
But Mahmood also acknowledged the limits of Britain’s ability to return people who arrive by small boat.
“I’m afraid we don’t just get to say, ‘France take them back’, and they just take them back. That doesn’t work. They have to agree to do that,” she said.
France and other European governments, she argued, face their own domestic political constraints.
“They’re politicians too,” Mahmood said, explaining why attempts to establish wider arrangements for returning migrants have struggled.
Labour’s previous one-in, one-out arrangement with France resulted in roughly 1,500 people being returned to France, while a similar number were transferred to Britain. Ministers are now examining the possibility of “return hubs”, where failed asylum seekers could be transferred to a third country while arrangements are made for their eventual return.
Mahmood pointed to the EU-Turkey agreement as a model, arguing that the prospect of being returned could deter migrants from making the journey in the first place.
The Home Office has also issued guidance warning migrants that sexual offences against children and domestic abuse are crimes in Britain.
The wider policy challenge is increasingly stark. The Government must simultaneously disrupt criminal networks, secure cooperation from European partners, expand legal routes and demonstrate control over the border.
Mahmood’s comments suggest ministers believe the answer lies in changing the incentives around the journey rather than simply attempting to police the Channel.
But until Britain can reliably control who crosses, who stays and who is returned, the political and operational strains surrounding the small boats crisis are unlikely to disappear.
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