THE UK could suspend visas to countries that do not "play ball" with deportations, the Home Secretary has said.
Shabana Mahmood, appointed to the role on Friday, has met counterparts from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance for talks on international efforts to tackle smuggling gangs.
In her first major engagement as Home Secretary, Mahmood hosted counterparts from the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in London after the number of small boat crossings reached more than 30,000 in 2025.
Speaking to Sky News after the meeting, Mahmood said: “For the countries that do not play ball, we’ve been talking about how we can take much more coordinated between the Five Eyes countries and for us that means including possibly the cutting of visas in the future, just to say we do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back.”
The policy has previously been touted by Reform UK and the Tories.
Ministers are also examining using military bases to house asylum seekers in “temporary but adequate” accommodation as Keir Starmer tries to reduce immigration.
Some 1097 people arrived in the UK in 17 boats on Saturday, bringing the total in 2025 so far to 30,100 – a record for this point in a year.
The figure is 37% up on this point last year (22,028) and also 37% higher than at this stage in 2023 (21,918), according to PA news agency analysis.
Mahmood (above) said the numbers were “utterly unacceptable” and that she expected migrant returns under a deal agreed last month with France to begin “imminently”.
Ahead of Monday’s meeting, she said the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing pact would “agree new measures to protect our border, hitting people smugglers hard”.
She was joined at the talks by US secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, Canadian public safety minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australian home affairs minister Tony Burke and New Zealand minister Judith Collins.
The group was also discussing new measures to tackle child sexual abuse online and the spread of deadly synthetic opioids.
Starmer carried out a major reshuffle over the weekend, including wide-ranging changes at the Home Office. It was triggered by the resignation of his deputy Angela Rayner and came as the Government scrambled to gain the front foot in the debate on immigration, currently being dominated by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The Prime Minister has told his new Cabinet to “go up a gear” in delivering on Labour’s agenda, part of which now involves a toughened immigration policy in response to Farage’s summer campaign to drive the issue up the agenda.
The Government is now considering using barracks as temporary asylum accommodation as ministers seek to speed up plans to end the use of hotels after they became a focal point for demonstrations in recent weeks.
Defence minister Luke Pollard (below) said bases with existing housing blocks or large areas of hard standing which could be used for temporary accommodation would be considered, along with non-military sites.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “We’ve deployed a military planning team into Border Security Command and the Home Office to look at military and non-military sites, about where we can help build temporary but adequate accommodation that enables us to transfer those folks from asylum hotels into that temporary accommodation so we can close even more hotels.
“We’ve closed 25 in the last year, but the Prime Minister is clear he wants every single one of them closed.”
Campaigners criticised the move to expand the use of military sites, saying the policy had been a failure.
“The solution is faster, fairer decisions and safe housing in communities, so refugees can work, study and rebuild their lives,” Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said.
