A minister was grilled about the lack of safe and legal asylum routes to the UK on Sky News this morning.
Border security and asylum minister Angela Eagle was out speaking to the media to to promote the government’s renewed bid to “smash” the people smuggling gangs, which Labour say are driving the migrant crossings across the English Channel.
It comes as this week has recorded a surge in crossings, with 1,544 people making the perilous journey – 12 of whom died when their boat ripped open.
On Sky News, Eagle was questioned about the government’s priorities when it comes to dealing with this ongoing crisis as ministers look to strengthen border security first.
Suggesting that could just force migrants to take longer and more dangerous journeys to get to this country, presenter Anna Jones asked: “How worried are you that your policies could actually cause more deaths in the channel?”
“We want to stop deaths in the Channel,” the minister replied. “The issue is, however people get to the country, we cannot allow smuggling gangs to decide who gets to come to the country. We have to get control of our borders so we decide who comes to the country.”
She added that “everybody recognises that we have to tackle criminality at the border”.
So Jones asked Eagle if the UK needs more safe routes for asylum seekers to come across.
But the minister replied: “Not everybody who is fleeing torture or collapse in their own country would ever have the right to come to the UK.
“We can only take so many people, and we do, actually.”
“Do we need more safe routes?” Jones asked again.
“There is a safe route system,” Eagle claimed, saying 30,000 people have come in via that way over the last decade. “Whatever we were to decide on that, in any time in the future, we’ve got to get control of the borders and smash the smuggling gangs.”
According to the UN’s refugee agency, between 2015 and 2023, around 28,000 refugees came to the UK through UK resettlement schemes in partnership with the UNHCR and International Organisation for Migration.
These schemes are offered for Afghan, Ukrainian and Hong Kong nationals, as well as a families of individuals who have already been granted protection in the UK.
However, fact-checking organisation FullFact explained last August that there are no safe and legal routes by which to travel to the UK for the purpose of claiming asylum.
Eagle also told Times Radio this morning that expanding safe legal routes to the UK is not under consideration at the moment.
Back on Sky, Jones asked Eagle: “If [border control] is such an urgent issue, why has the new head of the UK’s border control not been named?”
The minister said the government were “very close” to making that appointment, and there would be announcements about it soon.