The comments made by Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, on 31 March 2025.
It’s great to welcome you all to Lancaster House. It was right here, earlier this month that the UK convened leaders from across Europe together with President Zelenskyy to support a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.
Because we know that Ukraine’s security is our security. And we can only deliver it by taking bold action at home, with the biggest increase in defence spending since the Cold War.
And also, by working together with our international partners.
Now – the same is clearly true for the security of our borders.
Illegal migration is a massive driver of global insecurity. It undermines our ability to control who comes here. And that makes people angry.
It makes me angry, frankly because it is unfair on ordinary working people who pay the price, from the cost of hotels to our public services struggling under the strain.
And it’s unfair on the illegal migrants themselves. Because these are vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs.
So look, we must each take decisive action in our own countries to deal with this. Nobody can doubt that the people we serve want this issue sorted.
But the truth is – we can only smash these gangs, once and for all if we work together.
Because this evil trade, it exploits the cracks between our institutions. Pits nations against one another. Profits from our inability at the political level to come together.
And that’s why from the moment I took office we said the UK would convene this Summit.
And I’m delighted today to be joined by all of you. Representatives from more than 40 countries across the world, building a truly international effort to defeat organised immigration crime.
And let me tell you why. Let me take you back to a visit I made as a relatively new Member of Parliament in 2016 to the camp on the outskirts of Calais.
I can still picture it now. The muddy ground, sodden with rain and human waste.
Children as young as five and seven, the same age as my children were then huddling together in freezing temperatures with almost nothing to keep them warm.
Now, of course, that infamous camp has long since gone. But the evil of the people smuggling businesses that put people there, that remains.
The gangs remain. That exploitation of desperation, misery and false hope – that all remains.
There’s nothing progressive or compassionate about turning a blind eye to this. Nothing progressive or compassionate about continuing that false hope which attracts people to make those journeys.
No – we have got to get to grips with it once and for all. That’s why when I spoke at the INTERPOL meeting in Glasgow last year I said we need to treat people-smuggling as a global security threat similar if you like to terrorism.
We’ve got to bring to bear all the powers we have at our disposal in much the same way we do against terrorism.
Before I was a politician, I was the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales. We worked across borders throughout Europe and beyond to foil numerous plots.
Saving thousands of lives in the process. We prevented planes from being blown up over the Atlantic. And we brought the perpetrators to justice.
So I believe we should treat organised immigration crime in the exactly same way. I simply don’t believe organised immigration crime cannot be tackled.
So – we’ve got to combine resources. Share intelligence and tactics. Tackle the problem upstream at every step of the people smuggling journey, from North Africa and the Middle East to the high streets of our biggest cities.
And look, to that end, we’ve already got to work. Begun to make progress since I came into office. The UK has re-set its entire approach to international collaboration.
I’ve put smashing the gangs on the agenda of international summits. Showing that the UK now means business. Working together with our allies. We’ve struck new agreements and plans with so many of the countries represented in the room here today.
Take our work with France as a good example. Now previously – their maritime doctrine prevented French law enforcement from responding to small boats in shallow waters.
But now we’re working with them to change that, to make sure we get new border patrols and specialist units on the French coast using state-of-the-art surveillance technology.
With Germany another example, if you can believe it, it wasn’t technically illegal to facilitate people-smuggling to a country outside the EU, like the United Kingdom. But now it will be.
And with our new bilateral agreement Germany will be able to prosecute the criminal networks facilitating this vile trade.
Just a few examples of the international collaboration that is so important to taking this challenge on. And it’s beginning to bear fruit.
At the end of last year, a major operation by French, German and British law enforcement smashed an Iraqi smuggling network with multiple arrests and the seizure seizing hundreds of boats and engines.
In Amsterdam, a man was arrested on suspicion of supplying hundreds of small boat parts to people smugglers.
That was a joint operation with our National Crime Agency together with Dutch and Belgian police.
We’re also working upstream to address factors that drive people towards small boats in the first place.
Working with the authorities in Albania and Vietnam on campaigns to deter those who are thinking about making that perilous journey.
Because there is also nothing progressive about allowing working age people to come here illegally instead of supporting them to build their own economies, secure a better future for their own countries, and build a safer, more prosperous world.
But look – as we work together more closely I think than ever before we’ve also got to take the tough measures at home in our own countries.
That doesn’t mean gimmicks. You may be familiar with the gimmicks of the last 14 years here in Britain. It means understanding the problem.
And coming up with pragmatic solutions that work. Actually, fixing what’s wrong.
Few things show this more clearly, than our approach to border security. We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies.
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.
To be honest it should have been fixed years ago. But we’re doing it now with our new Border Security Command. Led by Martin Hewitt – who many of you I think will know.
We’re recruiting hundreds of specialist investigators from across our police, our Border Force and intelligence agencies. Creating an elite Border Force. Working with our international partners. Ending the fragmentation.
£150 million invested over the next two years and new powers and criminal offences to get the job done. So the police will be able to seize the phones and devices of migrants arriving on our shores and gather intelligence about the smugglers.
The police will be able to act when they have reason to believe preparations are being made for criminal activity instead of waiting for a crime to happen before they can act.
And it will be an offence to endanger lives at sea to prevent more tragic deaths in the Channel.
We are also redeploying resources away from the Tory’s wasteful Rwanda scheme. A scheme that spent over 700 million pounds of taxpayer money to remove just four volunteers.
You know, even if that scheme had gone well, they were claiming they might remove – 300 people a year.
Since coming to office – I can announce today we have returned more than 24,000 people who have no right to be here.
That would have taken the Rwanda scheme 80 years to achieve. This is what I mean about not giving in to gimmicks. Just focusing our efforts and resources on the nuts and bolts of removing people. Getting the asylum system working properly. That’s how we’ve delivered the highest returns rate for eight years and the four biggest return flights ever.
We’re also ramping up the deportation of Foreign National Offenders with a new team of specialist frontline staff going into our prisons, speeding up the removal of prisoners who have no right to be in this country.
Now, all of this is providing a real disincentive to people thinking about coming to Britain illegally. But if we’re talking about incentives – we need to talk about the people smugglers as well.
Because they don’t care about borders. They don’t care about the people they traffic. And they don’t care about our country and our people.
They only care about one thing: money. They make huge profits out of ruining people’s lives. I mean – a few months ago, I went to see some of the boats that had been seized at the NCA headquarters.
Now we call them small boats, but honestly they’re not worthy of the name boat. I don’t know what you would call them. To me they look like death traps.
Flimsy. Rubber. No firm structure. You would not let your children climb aboard, even for a second in shallow waters.
Seriously – if they were a car, they’d be off the road in minutes. The police would intervene.
And don’t tell me they’ve got any purpose other than people smuggling. So I see no reason why we can’t go after them. And so we are.
We have seized hundreds of boats and engines, driving up the costs for the smugglers.
We have taken down 18,000 social media accounts. That’s 10,000 more than last year, disrupting the way smugglers promote their services.
And more than that, we have announced a new sanctions regime. Treating people smugglers like terrorists. Freezing their assets, banning their travel.
Putting them behind bars – where they belong. But just as important – putting their entire model, out of business, securing our borders on behalf of working people.
Because as I said at the start – this is about fairness. And there is little that strikes working people as more unfair than watching illegal migration drive down their wages, their terms and their conditions through illegal work in their community.
We have to be honest here. For too long, the UK has been a soft touch on this. While the last government were busy with their Rwanda gimmick, they left the door wide open for illegal working.
Especially in short-term or zero-hours roles like in construction, beauty salons and courier services.
And while of course most companies do the responsible thing and carry out right to work checks.
Too many dodgy firms have been exploiting a loophole to skip this process: hiring illegal workers, undercutting honest businesses, driving down the wages of ordinary working people.
And all of this, of course fuelling that poisonous narrative of the gangs who promise the dream of a better life to vulnerable people yet deliver a nightmare of squalid conditions and appalling exploitation.
Well, today we are changing that because this government is introducing a tough new law to force all companies to carry out these checks on right to work.
They take just minutes to complete – so they are not burdensome for business. And they can be done free of charge – so there will be no excuses.
And no ability to claim they didn’t know they had illegal workers. And failure to comply will result in fines of up to £60,000. Prison terms of up to 5 years and the potential closure of their business.
Now, none of these strategies on their own are a silver bullet. I know that.
But each of them is another tool. An arsenal we are building up to smash the gangs once and for all.
We must pull every lever available. And that is what this Labour government is doing.
No short cuts, no gimmicks. Just the hard graft of sleeves-rolled-up, practical government.
Securing our borders. Getting a grip on illegal migration. Delivering our Plan for Change.
We want to work with you and with everyone who is as determined as we are to end the misery and evil of people-smuggling.
Because together we will save lives.
We will secure our borders.
We will smash the gangs that undermine our security…
And deliver fairness for the working people we serve.
Thank you.
