The migration deal with France is a waste of money
Suella Braverman isn’t someone with whom many will feel much sympathy, seeming, as she does, to be possessed of an unusual callousness apparently driven by an almost pathologically deluded political ambition. It is, nonetheless, painful to see her signing a deal with the French interior minister that will do little if anything to ameliorate the refugee crisis.
It is, in its own small, offensive way, a symbol of how political dogma is placed before even the interests of the taxpayer – let alone effectiveness. Devoting £63m to a policy that didn’t work when it had £54m spent on it doesn’t seem like the brightest idea, even by the standards of the overheated mind of Ms Braverman.
It is certainly an egregious waste of money – though it is probably the only category of UK public expenditure enjoying such a boost, albeit to be sent direct to the French government. There are no performance targets, no guarantees of anything, and British Border Force officials or police officers will be mere observers in French control rooms.
It would be impossible for them to be anything else – imagine the outcry in the UK if French police were given the power of
arrest over British citizens on British soil. The British government is in a poor position to demand that the French give up their sovereignty for the convenience of Brexit-backing British ministers. The ironies are rich, and poignant.
The fundamental realties remain the same: the French coastline is very long, the people smugglers are well organised – and desperate people are willing to pay large sums of money and risk a horrible death in order to get to the UK. More drones and more patrols may help a little, but only temporarily. It’s not an answer.
The £54m so far expended has apparently prevented some 29,000 people from making their crossing – that is a cost of around £1,800 for each one, and some of them, at least, will have had a valid claim anyway. But it is more likely that these crossings will merely have been postponed.
Paying the French to disrupt the people smugglers’ business model does cause those profiting from this trade some inconvenience, and the extra money will no doubt mess up some of their future endeavours. But the net effect is probably negligible. The refugees and the economic migrants – and the many whose personal circumstances occupy a grey area between these categories – will keep coming, because they feel they have no alternative.
The policy, in other words, won’t work, or at least not to anything like the degree suggested by ministers. Ms Braverman and the foreign secretary – James Cleverly – cut rather pathetic figures, negotiating with France to control Britain’s borders.
Brexit, which they both enthusiastically support, was supposed to end such humiliations and allow Britain to “take back control” of its borders. Turns out it doesn’t. Given the state of Anglo-French relations – poisoned by Brexit, Boris Johnson, and accusations of bad faith over fisheries and Northern Ireland – it’s a bit of a surprise that the French conceded anything to Britain over the Channel crossings. But because of the diplomatic tensions, Ms Braverman has paid through the nose for cosmetic concessions.
The Rwanda plan suffers from the same flaws and misconceptions, at a prospective cost of £140m. In exactly the same way, the real risk of being deported, processed in Rwanda, and left there even if an asylum case is genuine, will not deter the most desperate. The people-traffickers will still have a ready supply of paying customers. The trade will continue.
It seems obvious that the hundreds of millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money flooding to Paris and Kigali to pay for these futile projects would be far better used to go after the criminal gangs, and to invest in processing asylum claims more rapidly. The extreme delays at present allow economic migrants to arrive in the UK and work, illegally, for many months – even years – before their claims are determined, at which point, if they are bogus, they are sent home. It is enough time to make their journey to Britain worthwhile despite the dangers.
There is so much that could be done with the money wasted on the government’s performative projects, but Ms Braverman and her colleagues seem to enjoy passing laws that can’t be enforced and signing treaties that won’t change much. Time for a more radical rethink.
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