David Cameron appeared to suggest that the British government has been forced to resort to extreme solutions to break up the people-smuggling gangs because the UK has left the European Union.
Small boat crossings to the UK, which barely existed before Britain’s decision to leave the EU, have increased exponentially over the past few years, reaching a peak of 46,000 people in 2022.
So far this year, crossings have already topped 6,000, despite prime minister Rishi Sunak making it one of his five pledges to stop them.
Speaking to reporters, foreign secretary David Cameron appeared to concede a returns agreement with France to break up people-smuggling gangs is “simply not possible” because of “the situation we’re in”.
Pressed on whether he would have pursued the policy while he was prime minister, he said: “We had a totally different situation because (we) could return people directly to France.
“Now, I’d love that situation to be the case again, that’s the most sensible thing. People land on a beach in Kent, you take them straight back to France, you therefore break the model of the people smugglers. That’s not available at the moment. It’s simply not possible.”
Asked whether this was because of Brexit, he said: “Because of the situation we’re in, because of the attitude of others and all the rest of it.”
Meanwhile, Home Secretary James Cleverly said the criticism of the Rwanda Bill from the ECHR, which he “values enormously”, is “out of step”.
“There is a real moral hazard in saying to a nation state government that it cannot manage its own borders, it cannot make decisions about who does or does not live in its own country,” he said while speaking at a think-tank in Rome.
“Because that undermines the integrity of the democratic process in which we live.”
Related: Leaving European Convention on Human Rights ‘not necessary,’ Cameron says
