Smashing the gangs alone is 'not going to stop the boats', ex-Border Force chief tells GB News

GB News

The former Director General of UK Border Force has taken aim at Labour's "unrealistic" asylum hotels target, warning Sir Keir Starmer's "biggest political error" in tackling the migrant crisis.Labour's pledge to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029 has been dismissed as "unrealistic" by the country's very own borders watchdog.FULL STORY HERE.

Transcript

00:00Here we are again, it's Groundhog Day. David Bolt, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration,

00:06said we can't end the use of asylum hotels, we don't have enough houses, and we can't smash the

00:12gangs because it's simply too lucrative. Tony Smith, you and I could have told him this ages

00:18ago, finally reality bites. Yeah, it's important to recognise that David, of course, he is the

00:25independent Chief Inspector or Auditor, if you like, of the Border Force, of the Home Office,

00:30Immigration Functions, and so he is allowed, actually, Martin, to come out and say what he

00:34thinks, and I think he's come out and said exactly what you and I have been saying for a while,

00:38really. It is unrealistic to be able to expect us to be able to wipe out the backlog of people in

00:44hotels by, you know, 2029, and equally, you know, smashing the gangs alone is not going to stop the

00:50boats, is it? We've had a record number, over 108,000 asylum applications over the last year,

00:57they've not really made any dent in the numbers of hotels, and we had an NAO report, didn't we,

01:03just last month, which said that actually we're going to end up spending three times more than

01:09we thought we would in 2019 on asylum hotels, because we simply haven't got anywhere to put the

01:15migrants, Martin, where are they going to go? You know, they can't really grant their way out of

01:22this, because if they don't grant their way out of this and let everybody stay, well, they've still

01:25got to live somewhere, and that will simply shift the cost of housing them from the Home Office budget

01:31onto local authorities who are already struggling, I think, many of them on their own, to find housing

01:36for their own Indigenous communities, which in turn, as we know, leads to community unrest and

01:42housing of multiple occupancies. So, I mean, it's all very well to come out and say these targets,

01:47but I think they really need to say, well, how are they going to deliver them? And I think what

01:52David is challenging is, well, I don't actually see any evidence about how you're going to do this.

01:56You're exactly right. If you move this problem around the country into a housing accommodation

02:01unit near you, on a street near you, I think the people won't stand for it anymore, Tony Smith.

02:07It's simply too late. The genie is out of the bottle. Back to the second point about,

02:12it's simply too lucrative to smash the gangs because it's like a game of whack-a-mole.

02:17You smash one gang, another one pops up. We can't win the war on drugs. We can't win,

02:22I put it to you, the war on people smuggling until we have a proper deterrent and a threat

02:27of deportation.

02:29Yeah, crime does pay, Martin, and in this area, it pays very, very well, actually, very handsomely

02:35to human smugglers who are beyond the reach of us, I'm afraid. They are trying to take new powers

02:39under the new Border Security Bill to give us more authorities. But in my experience,

02:44you need the cooperation of the countries. Most of these are operating overseas, not in the UK.

02:49Probably make it easier to catch people who are operating in the UK. But outside of that,

02:53we know from the French beaches, we're not allowed to send officers over there. They won't let us.

02:57It's their beach. It's their land. And it's the same with investigations. We may have some

03:01collaborative agreements with some European countries, but smashing the gangs on its own

03:05is not going to be working. We've been trying to do that for a long time, Martin. Believe me,

03:09the NCA Border Force, we've been on this for a long, long time. We've been trying to do that.

03:13We know it doesn't work. The only thing that really works, which is the Australian model

03:16of stopping the boats, was, as you say, a removals deterrent. And we had that, didn't we,

03:20with Rwanda. I mean, we were there or thereabouts with Rwanda. And I think the abolition of the

03:26Rwanda plan, for what were essentially politically ideological reasons, rather than any common

03:32sense reasons, to just scrap it without giving it an opportunity to run. We'll never know now

03:38if that would have had to. But I thought that was a very bold attempt to say, no, you can't

03:42come in here. You can't claim asylum. We're not having you. You wouldn't have to put people

03:46in hotels. You wouldn't have to put them in hotels. They wouldn't even be here. You wouldn't

03:48have to detain them. They'd be in Rwanda. And I think once that message got out, maybe,

03:52just maybe that might have a very significant impact. I think scrapping that has been one

03:57of the biggest political errors of our time.

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