I’ve interviewed so many migrants in France - Starmer must do these 4 things to end crisis

OPINION

“Smash the gangs” Keir Starmer has squeaked in his nasal I’m-speaking-to-the-judge voice enough times to sound ridiculous.

And while countless rivals have mocked the Prime Minister’s tactics for stopping the migrant crisis, few have come up with solutions that don’t just recycle tired old ideas.

Having been to the migrant camps of Northern France many times and spoken to those wishing to come to Britain, I’ve got a few leftfield suggestions that would have a bigger impact.

Starmer, Sunak and Boris all talked tough, but none of them have been willing to go after the British people who benefit from illegal immigration.

As I’ve said previously, if business directors were held criminally liable for employing people who don’t have the right to work in Britain, there would be a huge impact.

However, I think to truly be effective the threat of jail should be extended to any tech platform that enables illegal migration.

So, in addition to directors of major companies facing five-year prison terms if a single illegal worker is found on their sites, I’d hit the leadership of any messaging platform or social media network discovered to have played a role in bringing people to Britain illegally with the same sentence.

The approach would be top-down, so small subcontractors couldn’t be blamed by big companies.

I’d incentivise employees to dob in their employers by handing out massive fines to the companies and using that cash to fund a lucrative whistleblowing scheme, that would encourage disclosures in addition to offering legal immunity.

If you actually want to smash the gangs, you’d put Meta executives in prison for allowing traffickers to use WhatsApp and Instagram to conduct business and fine TikTok a billion pounds for allowing smugglers' adverts.

If a lorry driver has migrants clamber into the back of their vehicle in Calais without their knowledge and they accidentally drive them to England, they can be charged with trafficking offences.

This is because the law was changed to shift personal criminal liability to the individual driving the vehicle and ignorance was no longer an adequate defence. The increased risk to drivers pushed the price of smuggling people to Britain on lorries sky high and reduced the volume.

What’s crazy is that a French naval captain can play exactly the same role as a lorry driver and escort a boatload of migrants to British waters with impunity. In fact, the British Border Force will even ferry back some lifejackets for them.

One of the reasons that French police are reluctant to intervene with the small boats is the fear that, under French law, they could be held individually liable if one of them drowned.

But if you flipped the script and held them personally liable for trafficking it would change their behaviour. The deaths that occur on the Channel happen because small boats are being escorted into these dangerous waters; those bringing them there should be held liable regardless of whether they are wearing a uniform or not.

The simplest way to prevent people from getting on a small boat to Britain is to process their claim to come to Britain while they’re in France. If you only accept asylum applications from people in France, there is no incentive to cross the Channel.

If you combined this with a change to the asylum process, where making a contribution to the country you are seeking to settle in by working was a condition, you’d also eradicate the hotel situation.

Why not have jobs, like fruit picking, that are already overwhelmingly filled by migrants, taken by asylum seekers employed through a government labour agency?

It could be a condition of applying that you agreed to contribute to your costs through work. This way they’d be able to fund their own housing, pay taxes and stay busy. Plus it would send the overwhelming message that if you want to apply to live in Britain you come to work.

Whether it’s the ill-fated Rwanda scheme pushed by the Conservatives or the equally derided one-in-one-out policy Labour has announced, most British politicians believe there needs to be a ‘deterrent’ for those coming to the UK on small boats.

Although the concept sounds sensible from a turretted office overlooking the River Thames it has almost zero impact on those living in the squalid camps of Northern France. Most of the migrants in tents outside Calais or Dunkirk don’t speak English, let alone keep up with the talking points of British politics.

What Starmer needs to recognise is that there is an information war about Britain that the country is losing badly. Most migrants who travel to the French coast have a totally distorted view of what the UK is.

Often, they are misled or deluded - their facts about the country are pulled from Premier League football matches or local folklore. It’s not just the hotel rooms and day-trips that migrants in the camps are inspired by, but a fantasised vision of Britain.

Establishing a unit based in France that was focused purely on shifting this perception by having sessions with migrants that emphasised the danger of travelling by small boat and helped them apply for asylum in France could have a huge impact.

Equally, the exercise could be used to gather as much information as possible about how and why they are travelling to the UK. This, in turn, can be used to dissuade them from such a journey. It’s only then that any so-called deterrent policy can be effective if people are actually told about it.