Andy Burnham has pledged to be “relentless” in tackling small boat crossings after tens of thousands of migrants entered Ceuta, a Spanish territory, but said “safe routes” for refugees were necessary to tackle trafficking gangs.
Speaking during a visit to Dover, the prime minister said he had been assured by the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, that approximately 98% of the estimated 50,000 people who entered Spain’s north African territory of Ceuta last week have now been returned to Morocco.
But while that dealt “substantially” with the immediate issue “of course there’s a broader issue about the Schengen area and our relationship with it”, said Burnham, adding “I would want to be in regular dialogue with the EU on those issues”.
Asked if he wanted to change the tone of the debate on the issue by stressing the need for safe routes, he said the UK had to “deal with the issue rather than play politics with the issue” and make changes that would reassure the public.
“The public don’t like the idea that the border looks like it’s not controlled. We need to bring back that control, but also we need to offer support for people who genuinely need it,” he said. “It’s about changing the whole approach, and slowly but surely we are putting in place those building blocks of a very different approach to this issue.”
Wednesday marked the busiest day for small boat crossings across the English Channel so far this year, with 752 migrants arriving in the UK. Official provisional figures suggest 14,526 people have entered the UK so far this year. This is 43% lower than the number recorded by this time last year (25,436) and down 14% on the same period in 2024 (16,903).
“Progress is being made, but we’re not complacent,” said Burnham. He added that since the start of 2025, the number of National Crime Agency officers tackling organised immigration crime has more than doubled from 376 to almost 800.
On Sunday, the latest figures showed that more than 2,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats since Burnham became prime minister. Home Office numbers show 326 migrants arrived on Saturday in four boats, bringing the number up to 2,057 since he took over from Keir Starmer on 20 July. There were 1,962 crossings in the same period last year.
On a separate visit to the National Crime Agency headquarters in Stratford, Shabana Mahmood said the government’s work to tackle small boat crossings were beginning to “bear fruit”.
The home secretary has faced fierce opposition within the ranks of the Labour party over proposed immigration reforms including doubling the time it takes to qualify for indefinite leave to remain from five to 10 years. But she said reform was needed “to address the pull factors that draw people into boats in the Channel”, adding: “I want to change the calculus. I want them to change their mind about whether they get on the boat in the first place.”
She rejected calls to copy Spain’s response to the influx into Ceuta, which has seen tens of thousands of people return to Morocco without processing any asylum claims. That was possible because Morocco and Spain share a land border, and have an agreement in place. People smuggling and the shared waters of the Channel made that “trickier in many ways”, she said.
The two visits come after at least 72 people died trying to reach Ceuta, with some drowning while others were crushed when attempting to climb the border fence.
Sánchez, called the huge influx “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity”. The surge of people, which took place over the course of just 24 hours from Thursday, overwhelmed the city of 85,000 people, triggered a political crisis for Madrid and led to an angry reaction from some EU countries, including calls for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen free-movement zone.
On Saturday, Spanish police installed a 500-metre (1,640ft) floating barrier off its border with Morocco, to prevent others from making their way around the border. But Spain’s left-wing government has continued to come under pressure from right and centre-right governments already angry at the Spanish prime minister’s plan to regularise about 500,000 immigrants living in Spain.
EU ministers have convened emergency talks for Tuesday. The leaders of 22 EU countries have demanded an emergency response, citing the need to prevent further uncontrolled crossings. The summit was called during a “sobering” meeting of officials representing EU member states and Frontex border agency experts on Saturday, as EU leaders seek to heal divisions in the bloc and restore a unified approach to migration.
Source:
www.theguardian.com
