Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 5
First Report - Channel crossings, migration and asylum
Published 18 Jul 2022
Paragraph 21
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee Channel crossings, migration and asylum-seeking routes through the EU All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The visibility of small boat crossings of the English Channel should not prevent our remembering that migrants also use ferries, planes, trains and vehicles to enter the United Kingdom irregularly and by clandestine means. The rapid increase in the proportion of people making the dangerous journey across the Channel may suggest, however, that security improvements made by the French and UK authorities in northern France is displacing traffic from those routes into small boats. We agree with the Permanent Secretary that any policy that closes down small boat immigration by inadvertently creating something even more dangerous would be a pyrrhic victory and reiterate the necessity for the Government fully to develop, test and risk assess any such policy before it is announced.
From: Home Affairs Committee, First Report - Channel crossings, migration and asylum (HC 199), paragraph 21, 18 July 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 28 October 2022 (deadline 18 September 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Government's overall position is that there is "no silver bullet" for illegal migration, that the Rwanda partnership is "just one part of the approach", and that it disagrees with the Committee's criticism that it has not paid sufficient attention to the problem.
- On the Committee's proposal for UK asylum assessment facilities in France, the Government says it "could not possibly consider protection claims from the very large numbers of individuals overseas who might like to come to the UK", and that this could "create a new pull factor".
- On the Rwanda partnership, the Government disputes that policies were announced without agreement across departments. It says full funding details would be "prejudicial to interests of the UK government", and that it will provide an updated Accounting Officer note "ahead of the next financial year".
- On the Committee's call for an independent end-to-end review of children's experience of the asylum system, the Government says it "will commit to looking at the current projects and research in progress to determine their suitability".
- On guardianship for young asylum seekers, the Government says there is "currently no intention to expand the scope" of the Independent Child Trafficking Guardian service to all young asylum-seeking children in England and Wales, citing its "specialist nature".