Yvette Cooper’s Plan to ‘Smash the Small Boat Gangs’ is Doomed to Fail, Warn Border Force Whistleblowers

Within days of taking office, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper had announced the launch of a new Border Security Command which she promised would “smash the gangs” making millions out of small boat crossings. The language was almost a cut-and-paste from the rhetoric of the last Conservative Government, which had itself put in place a unit to tackle the smuggling networks, to little effect.

So is Labour’s plan any different? Some of those working in the Home Office and on the border are far from impressed.

“It’s a rebranding exercise”, one disgruntled Border Force official told this paper following Cooper’s announcement.

“It’s been tried and tested multiple times and ways before, not least with the ‘Small Boats Commander’ Dan O’Mahoney in 2020.

“It’s all about showing the public they mean business when they know full well it will never work. We need practical solutions so people don’t keep dying in our waters, but as usual, it’s all about politics.”

More than 50 people have died attempting to cross the Channel so far this year, with a dozen losing their lives in the last week alone. Despite all the deterrents, smugglers have continued to succeed in getting around UK-funded beach patrols and surveillance technologies. Boats have become more overcrowded, with the numbers of passengers crammed onboard typically double what they were a year ago.

Meanwhile, migrants are being forced to start their journeys further along the coastline, in order to make longer and more perilous crossings. They are boarding dinghies in estuaries and canals and wading out into the water, despite many being unable to swim. As a result their bodies have been discovered washed up on banks and beaches after attempting to reach the ‘taxi boats’ stationed beyond the shoreline.  

Everyone agrees that something needs to be done to prevent further loss of life. However, rather than expanding resettlement programmes, creating a functioning family reunion pathway or creating additional safe routes – the new Government, like the old one, has put all of its bets on yet more border security.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a visit to Italy to “learn the lessons” from his far-right counterpart Giorgia Meloni, who plans to offshore the processing of asylum claims to Albania. At a press conference following their meeting, Meloni told reporters that Starmer was “very interested” in their offshore processing scheme.

He is likely also interested in examining ways to replicate Italy’s broader model, which has seen the number of boat crossings cut by almost two-thirds in the last year. However, little was said to reporters about the tactics Italy has used to achieve this – some of which have been condemned by human rights groups as unlawful and inhumane.

Meanwhile, sitting alongside the Prime Minister in Rome was the newly-appointed Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt, the former head of the National Police Chiefs Council. The Home Secretary said that Hewitt’s appointment showed that the Government was making serious attempts rather than the “gimmicks” and presentational politics of the Conservatives. Not everybody viewed it that way, however.

“It’s a rinse and repeat [of what we’ve seen before] and will not yield much”, one Border Force official said of Hewitt’s appointment. “How do you expect to do things differently when you put the same people with the same background and experience in the same role? We need someone with a deep understanding of maritime in the role. At least Dan O’Mahoney had a Border Force and marine background. Now we’ve got someone with less experience at the top and the approach is the same. I suspect he’ll be less effective.”

The Home Office are continuing to roll out their plans apace. A few hours after the Starmer-Meloni press conference, the department announced a cash injection of £75 million for the Border Security Command. The funding will be re-diverted from the pot of money set aside from the scrapped Rwanda plan, it said. There would be additional officers, including 100 specialist investigators within the National Crime Agency, along with equipment and “state-of-the-art” technologies such as covert cameras.

Under Hewitt’s watchful eye, the new Command plans to increase inter-agency working, with officials from the NCA, intelligence agencies, police, immigration enforcement and Border Force coordinating efforts with Europol and European police forces to disrupt supply chains, identify individuals and prosecute them swiftly.

“There really hasn’t been serious, coordinated law enforcement involving countries right across Europe all the way along, in which the boats are being brought in, the way in which the engines are being put together, coordinating right along the way that the criminal gangs operate. That’s not been done before,” Yvette Cooper told the BBC. 

It may sound impressive. However, her own staff appear to disagree.

“Inter-agency working, nationally and internationally, isn’t anything new; it’s just never been very successful,” one senior Home Office official told me. “The crucial thing for me is whether anyone in law enforcement has called for this. It’s not clear that they have.” 

“We’ve had a lot of backwards and forth within the Home Office over the years about the structural arrangements for border security and migrant crossings”, the official added.

“Border Force and immigration enforcement formed a unit briefly, but there was always tension between the Director Generals, so that didn’t really work. Presentationally, it sounds good but I’m not anticipating that much will change.” 

A Home Office spokesperson insisted the new measures were a step beyond what had previously been tried.

“The new Border Security Command (BSC) will go further than before to unite government agencies, the police and international partners to share intelligence and smash the people smuggling gangs”, the spokesperson said.

“We have already injected £75 million into the BSC to deliver new cutting-edge technology and extra officers deployed to the NCA, ensuring we have the tools needed to go after the gangs and tackle dangerous boat crossings.”