| The causes of steep increases in crossings vary from year to year but there are overall trends that account for the rise. According to the latest Conflict Intensity Index, the proportion of the world engulfed by conflict has grown 65% over the last three years. The global refugee population increased by 7% to 43.4 million last year and as of June 2024 an estimated 122.6 million people around the world were forced to flee their homes. “We know that since 2021 the top nationalities of people crossing the Channel year on year include people from Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea, Sudan, Syria – it’s quite clear why people are being displaced from these places and why they are seeking safety,” Featonby says. Will the new interim order work? Featonby points out that it is difficult to know what the outcome of the new interim order will be without seeing the full details once the legislation is published and starts to progress through parliament. They will affect a number of serious offences including trafficking, drug smuggling, money laundering and firearms offences. Labour’s hope is that the strategy will make it more difficult and expensive for traffickers to smuggle people into Britain. It may have some impact in bringing traffickers to justice, but there is little evidence to suggest that it will make much material difference to the number of people crossing the Channel. This kind of deterrence has little impact on people’s behaviour (as Kenan Malik wrote in the Observer more than eight months ago). Punishing those who run smuggling gangs is part of the puzzle to dealing with the small boats crisis – but it is still only one piece. The limitations Featonby says there are a number of concerns about the government’s plans. “Previous measures that target smugglers have also actually ended up targeting the people in the boats who are trying to reach the UK,” he says. The Nationality and Borders Act, for instance, ended up targeting people who were found to be steering the boats that were carrying people, regardless of whether they were involved in any further trafficking activity. One report found that hundreds of people, including children and victims of trafficking and torture, have been convicted and jailed for arriving in the UK in small boats to claim asylum. “More broadly, our concern would be that although it is obviously the right thing to do to try and target the smugglers who are taking advantage of people, it is not clear that those types of enforcement measures are actually going to make a meaningful impact on the number of people who are putting their lives at risk,” Featonby says. Even if a small number of smugglers are found and brought to justice, he adds, “it seems likely that others will pop up to fill those gaps” because it is so lucrative. The majority of people who arrive in the UK by small boats end up claiming asylum, “which is why we’ve said that anything to do with enforcement needs to be part of a far wider set of measures that has a focus on the expansion of existing [safe and legal ways] and the creation of new safe and legal ways for people to reach the UK, to give those people a real alternative to putting their lives at risk in small boats,” Featonby says. What are some examples of safe routes? Last year’s US election was dominated by immigration and concerns about a crisis at the southern border, which prompted some hardline policies to maintain the appearance that the Biden White House was tough on immigration. Despite this messaging, Featonby notes there is growing evidence that it was a sponsorship programme creating safe and legal routes for 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans – along with a refugee resettlement scheme offering 24,000 new places – that led to a reduction in irregular migration. Another route to reducing the number of small boat crossings is to make it easier for people to join their families already in the UK. While it is possible for some people to join family members with refugee status, it is limited: only an adult refugee who is already in the UK is able to sponsor their closest family members, such as their spouse or any dependents. “One of the things that we’ve been calling for is for children with refugee status in the UK to be able to sponsor their parents to come and join them,” Featonby says. The boldest and newest idea being pushed by the Refugee Council is the introduction of 10,000 refugee visas that target the nationalities which are most likely to get on those small boats in high numbers. People would be able to put in a claim in the region where they live. “That would be a safe and legal process where the UK government knows exactly who is arriving, that person’s travel is facilitated for them to get to the UK, and then they go through the asylum system once they’re here,” he adds. “Our concern is that if the focus continues solely to be on enforcement, the number of people dying in 2025 will be even higher.” | 