Sunak plan to stop the boats is working, says Mercer

RISHI SUNAK’S plan to stop the boats is “beginning to work”, a Cabinet minister has insisted in the wake of the Government unveiling its Rwanda Bill.

Johnny Mercer, the veterans’ minister, admitted measures already taken to combat illegal Channel crossings had not been “everything we wanted”.

However, he pointed to a year-onyear reduction of almost one third in the number of small boat arrivals and insisted Mr Sunak’s legislation would serve its intended purpose.

Speaking on the BBC’s on Thursday night, he said: “We’ve resettled 25,000 people from Afghanistan now and people are working incredibly hard every day to show the compassion that we need in this country towards these people. That is not the same as open borders… This is an entirely separate issue.”

Mr Mercer also pointed to a 90 per cent fall in the number of illegal migrants arriving from Albania after the Government signed a returns agreement with that country last year.

He added: “You say it’s not working, right, but in other countries we’ve seen a massive increase in the summer, in Italy and places like that, up to 80 per cent. In this country, small boats have gone down 30 per cent.

“Is it everything we wanted? No. But it’s a start and the things we’re doing are beginning to work.” Measures taken by previous governments include a deal negotiated by Theresa May with Emmanuel Macron, the French president, to pay Paris an extra £44.5million for border security. The UK is planning to send France another £471.6million to “stop the boats” between now and 2026.

Tom Pursglove, the legal migration minister, insisted the scheme would deliver value for money after

disclosed Britain had given Kigali an extra £100 million this year before the deportation of any asylum seekers.

“When you consider that we are unacceptably spending £8million a day in the asylum system at the moment, it is a key part of our strategy to bring those costs down,” he told Sky News.