Border Security: Collaboration

James Cleverly Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend has considerable experience in these issues, and I thank him for all his work on this. He is right to say that, with something as basic as the right kind of information and intelligence sharing, if the systems are removed and no new systems are put in place, basic operational actions simply do not happen, whether they involve going after the criminal gangs or preventing dangerous boat crossings and criminal activities. This is as basic as making sure that we now have much stronger systems, including using the Europol secure information exchange network application—SIENA—system, so that when the German police get information from the National Crime Agency, it is in a form that they can swiftly use to pursue investigations and prosecutions. My hon. Friend is right. We have to make sure that the detail works, which has often not been taken seriously for far too long.

[Mr James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to maintaining the relationships with the Calais group interior Ministers that I was developing when I was in her role, and to building on the UK Frontex agreement that I signed with Commissioner Johansson in February of this year. However, I want her to explain this to the House: if the role of the Border Security Command is so clear, if the division of labour between it and the small boats operational command is so clear, and if this issue is so pressing, why has it taken five months to give them a mission?

[Yvette Cooper]

I recognise the points that the former Home Secretary has made. To be fair to him, he had to do a lot of work to try to repair the relationship with the Calais group and with some of the European partners, after some of his predecessors had been rather more careless, shall we say, and rather more destructive in that relationship. But we now have these further agreements in place, and they are crucial, practical arrangements about strengthening law enforcement co-operation to go after the criminal gangs.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the Border Security Command, I know this has been a bugbear of his, in that he wants to see it as the same as the small boats operational command, but they are very different. The small boats operational command is rightly focused on the operations in the channel and it does some excellent work to ensure that we can have order around the system in the channel. The Border Security Command is a much broader programme of work. For example, Martin Hewitt travelled with me to Iraq and Kurdistan in order to build those operational relationships so that we can work upstream. He was also part of the Calais group meetings yesterday in order to build those co-operation arrangements as well. We have provided continual updates on the work of the Border Security Command and we will continue to do so, but we are already getting on with work that I am afraid his party, and he as Home Secretary, never did.