Border Security: Collaboration

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a really important point about the work upstream. We did include interior Ministers from north Africa as part of the G7 discussions in Italy in October. That was important and it reflects a lot of the work with north African countries which Italy, for example, has been leading. I also agree with him about the importance of the Sahel. Some of the issues that we discussed in the Calais group yesterday included looking at areas of instability and areas from which people have been making dangerous journeys. We need to engage with those countries. We talked about the Sahel and about central Africa, and we talked about Iraq and some of the middle east areas. We also talked about Vietnam, from where we saw a significant increase in the number of people arriving in small boats at the beginning of the year.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement today and congratulate her team on the work that they are undertaking in this very difficult area. Back in 2021, the previous Government committed to £62 million as part of an agreement with France that included strengthening law enforcement deployments, more wide-area surveillance technology and vehicles, and enhanced physical measures at transport interchanges. Then in 2023, they committed to a further £500 million and to continuing these agreements. My constituents see these agreements, and the financial commitments being made with our neighbours, and yet, over the past few years, they have just seen increasing problems with small boat crossings and backlogs. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give my constituents that these agreements will make a difference, and—because this goes to the heart of fairness—that these funding agreements will bring about the change that people want to see?

[Yvette Cooper]

People clearly want to see practical changes on the ground, which is why the partnership working we have been taking forward—not just with France but with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and other countries—is so important. This has been about the prevention work along the French coast, and the work with the French authorities. However, the reality is that we have to be taking action long before the boats, the engines, the people and the gangs reach the French coast in the first place. That is the fundamental difference between the approach we are now taking and the previous Government’s work. It is about how we work with other European countries to tackle the gangs before they reach the French coast. That is where we need much stronger partnerships, and that is where many of our efforts have been focused.