00:00When are you going to stop the boats, Prime Minister?
00:03Since Sakir Starmer became prime minister in July,
00:0630,000 people have crossed the English Channel
00:09in small boats.
00:10Today, he invited representatives of 40 countries
00:13to a summit at Lancaster House to try and tackle the issue.
00:17The prime minister says people smugglers
00:19have been given an open invitation
00:21to send migrants to the UK because the police
00:24and intelligence agencies were not working together.
00:28It makes me angry, frankly, because it's
00:31unfair on ordinary working people who
00:33pay the price, from the cost of hotels
00:37to our public services struggling under the strain.
00:41And it's unfair on the illegal migrants
00:43themselves, because these are vulnerable people being
00:48ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs.
00:52Recent good weather has seen a surge in small boat arrivals.
00:56More than 6,500 so far in 2025, up from 5,400
01:02from the same point last year.
01:04The crucial thing is the government
01:05needs a deterrent so that those coming across on small boats
01:09know that they will be detained and removed within hours
01:12and days, not weeks and months.
01:14But what did Labour do?
01:16They scrapped the Rwanda deterrent
01:18as one of the first things they did
01:20after the general election.
01:22Kier Starmer has no credibility on this issue.
01:24He was told we needed a deterrent.
01:27The National Crime Agency told him that.
01:28Yet he scrapped the Rwanda scheme before it even started.
01:32And these are the results.
01:33However, Sir Kier gave short shrift
01:36to the previous Conservative government's Rwanda scheme.
01:39A scheme that spent over 700 million pounds of taxpayer
01:44money to remove just four volunteers.
01:51Now, you know, even if that scheme had gone well,
01:55they were claiming that they might
01:57remove 300 people a year.
02:02Well, since coming to office, I can announce today
02:05we've returned more than 24,000 people
02:09who have no right to be here.
02:12That would have taken the Rwanda scheme 80 years to achieve.
02:17TikTok, Meta, and X were at today's summit
02:21under pressure to crack down on social media posts, which
02:24have become a key recruitment tool for smugglers.
02:27The government believes an international collaborative
02:30approach is the only way to bring down illegal migration
02:33and is beginning to bear fruit.
02:36However, an electorate impatient to see action and not summit
02:39will need to be convinced their plan will work.
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