When immigration minister Chris Philp announced last summer that he was in the process of agreeing a ‘new operational plan’ with his French counterparts to stop the cross-Channel traffic in irregular migrants, it seemed as though the government was finally getting a grip on the crisis.
In a statement to camera he declared:
‘We had a very constructive meeting with our French colleagues in Paris this morning. We have reaffirmed our unshakeable shared commitment to making sure this route of crossing the Channel is made unviable…we have worked on a joint operational plan, with the objective in mind of completely cutting this route. We’re going to work at pace in the coming days to make that plan a reality.’
A couple of weeks later, in early September, he gave a bit more detail in the Commons, telling MPs of a ‘joint intelligence cell’ that had already resulted in successes. He said the Government was ‘currently working to return nearly 1,000 cases where migrants previously claimed asylum in European countries’
Philp also flagged up the appointment of Dan O’Mahoney as clandestine Channel threat commander, tasked with a mission to ‘collaborate with the French to build on joint work’. One of O’Mahoney’s early actions was to set up an official Twitter account to provide ‘updates on how we’re saving lives by making dangerous Channel crossings unviable’.
Philp concluded his Commons statement by pledging:
‘This Government will not rest until we have taken the necessary steps to completely end these crossings.’
Nine months later, how is it all going? Well, the number of migrants who have been returned to other European countries on grounds that they already claimed asylum in them is precisely zero. The number of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats has in fact soared.
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