Starmer blames lack of joint action for surge in migrant arrivals in UK by small boat

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said a lack of coordination between the police and intelligence agencies is partly responsible for a surge in the number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats across the English Channel.

At an international meeting on boosting border security and tackling people-smuggling, Starmer expressed frustration at the difficulty of stopping thousands of people a year risking the dangerous sea crossing from France.

"We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies," Starmer said, as officials from more than 40 countries met in London.

"A fragmentation that made it crystal clear, when I looked at it, that there were gaps in our defence, an open invitation at our borders for the people smugglers to crack on."

Starmer's centre-left Labour government, elected nine months ago, is grappling with an issue that vexed its Conservative predecessors.

Despite law-enforcement cooperation with France and work with authorities in countries further along the route taken by migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, more than 6,600 migrants crossed the channel in the first three months of this year, the highest number on record.

The opposition Conservatives say the figure shows Labour should not have scrapped the previous government’s contentious plan to send asylum-seekers who arrive by boat on one-way trips to Rwanda.

Starmer called the Rwanda plan, which was never implemented, a "gimmick" and cancelled it soon after he was elected in July.

Britain paid Rwanda hundreds of millions of euros for the plan under a deal signed by the two countries in 2022, without any deportations taking place.

Monday's meeting was addressed virtually by Italian Prime Minister