On the bright side, the Government has registered that immigration levels are a problem. The Deputy Prime Minster, Angela Rayner, has warned that immigration is having a “profound impact on society” and that the Government must register “real concerns” about the impact that rapid demographic change is having on society.
Well, that’s very nice, Ange. About 25 years after most people have registered the profound impact, it’s perfectly lovely that Labour is going through that now familiar manoeuvre of the U-turn.
But lest we get carried away about ministers’ new sensitivity to what is perhaps voters’ most significant concern after the economy, bear in mind the dissing the PM got when he tried to articulate the problem with his “island of strangers” speech, a metaphor which was designed to express where he didn’t want the country to end up as a result of rapid demographic change. That ended with him declaring that he hadn’t read his own speech after being given a mauling by his own lot.
But if the Government is extraordinarily slow to discern that immigration levels are, and have been, unsustainable – 948,000 last year before taking into account people leaving – it can’t actually get away from one aspect of the crisis, illegal migration on small boats. The recent riots outside the Epping migrant hostel are a symptom of the problem. There were 44,125 irregular migrants and refugees that we know about in the year to March, and the question is, what to do with people when they land here - and are awaiting a result from their asylum application.
The last Tory government tried to ensure that anyone arriving here illegally would simply not be able to register a claim to remain in the first place, but that was seen off, as, of course, was the Rwanda scheme. And so far the Government’s efforts to reduce the number of people coming to this country simply haven’t worked; this year’s arrival figure is 14 per cent up on last year’s.
So, what do you do with asylum seekers, almost all of them young men? They have to go somewhere, and the previous government’s efforts to put people on boats – prison hulks was a popular option at one point – didn’t really catch on (indeed, it was a total scandal).
They will, plainly, have to be put up in hotels – unless someone has an alternative other than tents, which is the case in Calais. But where the hotels go is the thing. My own modest proposal is that the migrants should be situated first and foremost in the constituencies represented by cabinet ministers. So, Holborn and St Pancras (Sir Keir Starmer) should be obliged to take on about 10,000; ditto Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner); ditto Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper); with the rest to be distributed pro rata among the areas represented by the front bench.
This principle was articulated by rioters outside a proposed hostel in a working class area of Limerick – for Ireland has just this problem – whose spokesman declared that he’d be prepared to consider taking in hundreds of asylum seekers if and only if the bulk were spread among the more affluent parts of Dublin. The same goes here. If the problem is brought home – quite literally – to the front bench rather than being foisted on poorer areas or Tory constituencies (Epping), the urgency of the Cabinet’s approach will be quite markedly intensified.
The problem of the migrant hostels is only the symptom of a much larger problem
As for the electronic identification cards for migrants seeking work with Deliveroo et al, which the Government is keen to promote, it still leaves unanswered how best to employ thousands of young men for the year during which they are not allowed to work. It’s asking for trouble to have a concentration of idle males in any area. Blaming the hard Right for the riots ignores the vexation and discontent on the part of normal residents faced with the prospect.
The real problem, of course, is, as the French president observed during his visit, that the UK has a uniquely hospitable approach to those who come here, being unconstrained by the ID cards that other countries require in order to function in the labour market. This unwelcome policy is probably now unavoidable.
But the UK must also see that this country is only the last leg of a migrant journey that often started in Afghanistan, Iraq or Africa and had Libya as its embarkation point. The Government, if it really wants to act like a responsible European power, must take the initiative and support Frontex, the European border force. It has a co-operation agreement since last year, which doesn’t appear to amount to much.
Robert Fox, this paper’s defence correspondent, says flatly that Britain doesn’t have the ships or the sailors to play a part in policing the Mediterranean – which suggests that Britain really does have a problem on the naval front. In that case, the UK should pay to support those governments that are doing deals with Libya – Georgia Meloni is the woman to talk to – and who are paying for ships to patrol the coasts.
The problem of the migrant hostels is only the symptom of a much larger problem. And the Government seems unable to cope either with symptoms or cause.
Melanie McDonagh is a columnist at The London Standard
