LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he will double funding for Britain’s border security agency and treat people-smuggling gangs like terror networks in an attempt to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.
In a speech Monday to a meeting of the international police organization Interpol, Starmer will say the gangs behind irregular migration are a serious threat to global security.
Arguing that “the world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge,” Starmer will say that “we’re taking our approach to counterterrorism, which we know works, and applying it to the gangs,” according to extracts released by his office.
He’ll call for more cooperation between law-enforcement agencies, closer coordination with other countries and unspecified “enhanced” powers for law-enforcement.
Starmer plans to increase the UK Border Security Command’s two-year budget from 75 million pounds ($97 million) to 150 million pounds ($194 million). The money will be used to fund high-tech surveillance equipment and 100 specialist investigators.
Like previous Conservative British governments, Starmer’s Labour Party administration is struggling to stop thousands of people fleeing war and poverty from trying reach the UK from France in flimsy, overcrowded boats.
More than 31,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes so far this year, more than in all of 2023, though fewer than in 2022. At least 56 people have perished in the attempts this year, according to French officials, making 2024 the deadliest since the number of channel crossings began surging in 2018.
Starmer leads a center-left government, and has raised some eyebrows in September when he visited Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and praised her nationalist conservative government’s “remarkable” progress in reducing the number of migrants reaching Italy’s shores by boat.
Starmer will argue on Monday that “there’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the channel.”
The opposition Conservative Party argues that Starmer should not have scrapped the previous government’s plan to send some asylum-seekers who reach Britain by boat on one-way trips to Rwanda. Supporters of the proposal say it would act as a deterrent. Human rights groups and many lawyers say it is unethical and unlawful to send migrants thousands of miles to a country they don’t want to live in.
Starmer called the plan a “gimmick” and canceled it soon after he was elected in July. Britain paid Rwanda hundreds of millions of pounds for the plan under a deal signed by the two countries in 2022, without any deportations taking place.
Senior police and government officials from the 196 Interpol member states are attending the global police body’s four-day congress in Glasgow, Scotland.
On Tuesday, Brazilian police official Valdecy Urquiza is expected to be named the new general secretary of the Lyon, France-based organization, replacing Jürgen Stock of Germany.
UK leader Starmer tells Interpol he will treat people-smuggling gangs like terrorists
https://arab.news/9aft7
UK leader Starmer tells Interpol he will treat people-smuggling gangs like terrorists
- Starmer plans to increase the UK Border Security Command’s two-year budget from 75 million pounds ($97 million) to 150 million pounds ($194 million)
EU assembly weighs freezing US trade deal over Trump’s Greenland threats
- Signatories were mainly fellow members of Clausen’s Left Group, but also included center-left Social Democrats and Greens
- Greens lawmaker Anna Cavazzini said the only argument in favor of the deal was to bring stability
BRUSSELS: The European Parliament is considering putting on hold the European Union’s implementation of the trade deal struck with the United States in protest over threats by US President Donald Trump to seize Greenland.
The European Parliament has been debating legislative proposals to remove many of the EU’s import duties on US goods — the bulk of the trade deal with the US — and to continue zero duties for US lobsters, initially agreed with Trump in 2020.
It was due to set its position in votes on January 26-27, which the MEPs said should now be postponed.
Leading members of the cross-parliamentary trade committee met to discuss the issue on Wednesday morning and decide whether to postpone the vote. In the end, they took no decision and settled on reconvening next week.
A parliamentary source said left-leaning and centrist groups favored taking action, such as a postponement.
A group of 23 lawmakers also urged the EU assembly’s president Roberta Metsola on Wednesday to freeze work on the agreement as long as the US administration continued its threats to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
“If we go through and approve a deal that Trump has seen as a personal victory, while he makes claims for Greenland and refuses to rule out any manner in which to achieve this, it will be easily seen as rewarding him and his actions,” the letter drafted by Danish lawmaker Per Clausen said.
Signatories were mainly fellow members of Clausen’s Left Group, but also included center-left Social Democrats and Greens.
Greens lawmaker Anna Cavazzini said the only argument in favor of the deal was to bring stability.
“Trump’s actions show again and again that chaos is his only offer,” she said.
French lawmaker Valerie Hayer, head of the centrist Renew Europe group, said on Tuesday the EU should consider holding off a vote if Trump’s threats continued.
Many lawmakers have complained that the US trade deal is lopsided, with the EU required to cut most import duties while the US sticks to a broad rate of 15 percent.
However, freezing the deal risks angering Trump, which could lead to higher US tariffs. The Trump administration has also ruled out any concessions, such as cutting tariffs on spirits or steel, until the deal is in place.
