What are Labour’s plans for asylum, and will they work?

Small boat Channel crossings are one of the big issues of the 2024 UK election. They have been the main justification for radical changes to UK asylum policy over the past three years, and the response of the current government has rightly received a lot of attention. But with the Labour Party likely to win the next election, their approach also needs scrutinising.

Just a couple of weeks before the election was called Kier Starmer gave a speech in Dover about the Labour plan for asylum, if they come to power. He did so while standing next to the former Conservative MP for Dover and Deal, Natalie Elphicke, who had just defected to the Labour Party. Starmer said in that speech “we need to turn the page and move on from an unhealthy interest in gesture politics that has long defined this policy area”. What, then, is this plan that moves away from gesture politics, and will “finally grip this problem”?

Before coming to Labour’s plan, first we need to understand what has led to small boat Channel crossings.

Small boat crossings

Stowing away in lorries was a common approach to enter the UK irregularly from the late 1990s, but in 2018 people began to cross the English Channel to seek asylum in small boats. 299 people crossed that year, later rising to 45,755 in 2022. Even though 93% of small boat arrivals claim asylum, these arrivals account for only 29% of people who claimed asylum in the UK 2018-23. Nevertheless, it is this phenomenon that has shaped asylum policy since 2018.

There is no legal way to enter the UK in order to claim asylum. People cross the Channel in small boats because it is not possible to travel to the UK on a ferry or a plane, both much cheaper than small boat or lorry as a mode of travel. To prevent people travelling in order to claim asylum there are a wealth of strategies used by the UK (and other countries such as France) to stop them. This includes large fines for airlines and ferry companies if they allow someone without a pre arranged visa (not available for refugees) to board.

Since they cannot travel legally, only illegalised routes are available to people who wish to claim asylum in the UK. It is now extremely difficult to cross via the Channel tunnel or lorry. Giant x-ray machines, CO2 detectors, dogs, miles of fences, infra-red detectors, and much more are deployed (at massive expense to the Treasury) to stop these modes of travel.

Because people still travel to seek asylum in spite of these barriers, what borders do is impact the routes that people take. They also create business for smugglers, who become the only people who can help people on the move to cross borders. As this is a captive and desperate market, smugglers can make huge amounts of money from this business opportunity. It currently costs around £3500 to cross the Channel in a small boat, paid only when the journey has been made successfully.

The Conservative Party response

The Conservative government have responded to small boat crossings by drawing on the repertoire of the far right. They have framed people crossing the Channel as criminals “breaking in to Britain”, and have made mode of entry the basis to declare someone inadmissible for asylum before any of their documents or circumstances have been looked at. 

Small boat crossings have been criminalised, and a deal has been brokered with Rwanda to deport people seeking asylum to the central African state. It is said often that this will be a deterrent for other future people who will be dissuaded from making the journey themselves, though there is no evidence globally from similar schemes that offshoring has a deterrent effect (or indeed that the deterrent effect exists). This plan has also been ruled by the Supreme Court to be in violation of various national and international laws.

Slow processing of asylum claims, and the ceasing of assessment of asylum claims since 2022 means that there is a large backlog and insufficient housing for these people. This has led to the use of military barracks, barges, and most notably, hotels to house would-be refugees for long periods of time.

The labour response

The Labour Party have been damning in their assessment of the Conservative policy agenda. If/when in power, they have argued that they will not oversee an asylum system in “chaos”, small boat crossings increasing year on year, and would-be refugees housed in emergency accommodation for long periods of time. Instead, they will fix the problem of small boat Channel crossings by stopping the smugglers from operating their illicit business in Northern France.

The Rwanda Plan will be scrapped, and the UK will again begin assessing the claims of the tens of thousands of people who are currently languishing with the status of ‘inadmissible for asylum’ based on their mode of arrival. They will clear this backlog and restore the asylum system in line with international standards. Clearing the backlog and moving claims through the system will be combined with increased deportations of people whose claims have been rejected. This, they suggest, will allow them to cease the use of hotel accommodation.

Counter terrorism style cross border policing approaches will be used with the aim of stopping the business of smuggling. Presumably, smugglers will be arrested until there are no more to provide services to people wanting to cross into the UK from northern France.

Will Labour’s plan work?

The Conservatives have failed to stop small boat Channel crossings because their plan does not account for the fact that it is the borders that necessitate irregular journeys, and thus create a demand for smuggling services. A problem produced by bordering cannot be solved with more bordering. It also cannot be solved with imaginary psychological tactics such as ‘the deterrent effect’. 

At first glance, Labour’s approach seems very different. The Labour position seems less performative, less cruel, more sensible, and does not entail violating international human rights laws. 

Re-establishing and properly staffing the UK’s asylum system is to be welcomed. Ending the Rwanda Plan is also to be welcomed. Sending people to Rwanda is cruel, expensive, pointless, and violates the Refugee Convention. Instead, more people will have their claims assessed, and as they tend to be from major refugee producing countries, many will receive leave to remain in the UK, and be able to get on with their lives. This will also minimise the reliance on hotels.

But the “1000 strong Returns Unit to ensure failed asylum seekers and others with no right to be here are removed” seems likely to encounter many of the problems that others have faced in the past. That is, even though people are refused asylum it may actually not be easy to deport them to their country of origin. The country in question may deny this person is a citizen of their country, the person may have no documents to prove as much, the country may be in the midst of a war, or the person may be understood to be at risk upon return even though they couldn’t meet the high bar for leave to remain. It seems unlikely, based on the past experiences of consecutive governments, that numbers of returns will dramatically increase.

It also seems unlikely that the Labour Party plan will stop small boat Channel crossings. They will continue to spend lots of money on border security in northern France. There is already a lot of work being done to stop smuggling, and cross border police work on smuggling and trafficking has been going on since the 1960s, though massively ramped up when the Channel tunnel opened in 1994. Over the last year this work has succeeded in disrupting the supply of inflatable vessels to Northern France. The result of this has been more chaotic departures, overcrowded dinghies, injuries and deaths. Always, more intense bordering produces more danger for migrants, but it does not stop them from moving. 

The smuggling gangs will not be “smashed” once and for all, because they are loose networks of people, and the people on the ground who can be found and locked up are not the ones with the money and the power. Smugglers often recruit migrants themselves who earn their passage. Those people temporarily become implicated in the business of smuggling in one way or another, but arresting them will have no impact on the overall phenomenon. Many young men have been arrested in recent years for smuggling, simply because they controlled the steering device of their small boat. But imprisoning them of course has no impact on the broader phenomenon. Equally, like other organised crimes, if the upstream actors are located and arrested, others will fill the vacuum when they are gone. 

Futures

Forced migration will continue because of wars, genocide, and persecution. The only way to actually stop small boat Channel crossings is to deborder the Channel. 

Could we imagine moving the UK border back on to UK soil? Could we imagine abolishing carrier sanctions? Could we conceive of spending the billions that is spent on border controls to punish people for moving, on things that would encourage human flourishing, would ensure human dignity, and that would treat people as though they are actually equally worthy of respect? If the aim is to actually stop Channel crossings, these are the hard questions that need to be answered.