Starmer to rip up Rwanda scheme and fund new anti-smuggling unit

Keir Starmer will promise to rip up the government’s Rwanda scheme and divert £75m to fund hundreds of new specialist officers to tackle people-smuggling with new counter-terror powers.

At a speech on Friday in Dover – the home of Natalie Elphicke, who defected to Labour this week after criticising Tory failures on border security – the Labour leader will call the government’s plan “an insult to anyone’s intelligence” and say “the gangs that run this sick trade are not easily fooled”.

Starmer will pledge to divert funding from the Rwanda scheme – estimated to cost £541m over five years – to create a new border security command of specialist enforcement officers and investigators.

Labour will also pledge to:

• Create a new post of border security commander to oversee the unit, working across Europe and with multiple agencies on enforcement and intelligence.

• Recruit hundreds of additional special investigators, intelligence agents and cross-border police officers.

• Expand stop and search powers for use against those suspected of people-smuggling.

• Use Serious Crime Prevention Orders, enforced on terrorists pre-conviction, to shut off the bank accounts and internet access of suspected smugglers.

• Extend seizure warrant powers normally reserved for terrorism to include organised immigration crime.

Elphicke, a rightwing Tory MP whose shock defection to Labour has caused significant discontent within the party, used her resignation statement to say the Tories had “failed to keep our borders secure and cannot be trusted”.

Labour has a narrow lead over the Conservatives on most immigration issues – but a majority say they do not trust either party.

Last week almost 1,500 people arrived in the UK on small boats, with Channel crossings more than 35% higher than the same period last year.

David Neal, the former immigration watchdog who was sacked after exposing flaws in UK border security, welcomed the proposals. “Change is definitely needed in the Home Office,” he said.

“My reports frequently identified poor leadership, lack of grip and a failure to align responsibility, accountability and authority. Direct reporting into the home secretary makes absolute sense to give a clear independent voice into the heart of government.”

Labour said its plan for a new border security commander would go further than the government’s small boats commander role, with significantly more resources and a remit to work across Europe and coordinate across multiple agencies.

Starmer will contrast Labour’s plan with the “gimmick” of the Rwanda scheme, which is estimated to cost £1.8m for every asylum seeker sent there – though no deportation flights have yet taken off.

“It’s not hard to see why the prime minister might want a path to deterrence without the hard graft, the boring graft maybe, of fixing the wider system,” Starmer will say.

“Let me spell it out again – a scheme that will only remove 1% of small boat crossings a year can not, and never will be, an effective deterrent.”

He will say the Rwanda scheme will lead to a “perma-backlog of nearly 100,000 people” and that refusing to process asylum claims will mean “that even if they have absolutely no right to be here they cannot be removed, billing the taxpayer for expensive hotel accommodation”.

He will add: “The government has achieved the complete opposite of what they claim – a Travelodge amnesty, handed out by the Tory party that, if nothing else, is warmer and safer than spending winter under canvas near a beach in northern France.”

Labour said last week that it would let people who had crossed on small boats into the asylum system, contrary to the Illegal Migration Act, which effectively bars any individual who comes to the UK illegally from claiming asylum.

The government has said those stuck in asylum limbo – estimated at about 90,000 people – will be removed to Rwanda. But Labour has said that will take almost 100 years at current rates, and it will instead “get a grip on the asylum process, to clear the backlog with a fast track for safe countries and remove those with no right to be here”.

Starmer and the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, have previously said that no deportation flights to Rwanda will take off if Labour takes power, despite speculation the party would let the scheme continue until a new system was in place.

Starmer will say on Friday that Labour’s plan would “restore integrity and rules to our asylum system” and that hundreds of caseworkers would be hired for a new fast-track returns and enforcement unit.

The Labour leader will pledge to make British beaches “hostile territory” for people smugglers with new investigative powers modelled on anti-terror laws. “It’s a vile trade that preys on the desperation and hope it finds in its victims,” he will say.

In a veiled criticism of the French operations, Starmer will say he will work harder with French police to stop the boats departing. “The gangs now use dinghies that are on a scale way beyond anything you would see for legitimate recreational activity,” he will say. “We should turn over every stone and use every reasonable power – that is my message to the smugglers: these shores will become hostile territory for you.”

The home secretary, James Cleverly, said Labour’s new plan was “an amnesty for all illegal immigrants, scrapping our Rwanda plan even if it’s working”.