Welcome, Mr Hewitt and Mr Jones, to our first evidence session on the work we are doing on border security. We are very grateful that you could come in. Could you please introduce yourselves before we start the questioning?

I am Martin Hewitt, and from 7 October last year I have been the Border Security Commander within the Home Office.

I am Rob Jones, and I am the Director General (Operations) for the National Crime Agency.

Thank you very much.

Good morning to you both. To set the scene, could you briefly explain the main purpose of your role, what you are responsible for and what you are not responsible for?

As you may be aware, once the new Government came in the Border Security Command was created. The role of the Border Security Command was to convene the entire system that relates to border security, with a very particular focus, in the first instance, on tackling organised immigration crime, and particularly the phenomenon of small boats coming across the channel. My role is the role that did not exist before: to have responsibility across all HMG assets that either have an interest in a secure and effective border or play a role in that border. My responsibility is to bring the system together in order to deal with the issue of organised immigration crime, particularly small boats, with the primary mission being to undermine the criminal business model that the smugglers are using to come across the channel.

What unique actions do you feel your role has enabled in the past year since taking up your position?

For the first time ever, to my understanding, I have brought and continue to bring together all Government Departments that have a role in a secure and effective border, and also other relevant agencies—the National Crime Agency is clearly a key partner. I run a border security system leadership board, which I started doing fairly quickly after starting the role. That brings all those Government Departments together. Every Government Department has a role to play, but there is a particular focus on working closely with the FCDO, which we have been doing increasingly during the period of my tenure. The National Crime Agency, the Crown Prosecution Service, policing in the form of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the forces, counter-terrorism policing and UKIC are all members of my strategic leadership board. Since I started, we have pulled together a single integrated plan looking at all the relevant things we need to do to undermine the business model and impact border security. The concept of Border Security Command came out of previous ways of dealing with counter-terrorism—having a central body that has a responsibility to bring together all the various agencies to understand the intelligence picture and the threat and is then able to manoeuvre those various elements within the system to have the maximum impact. The single integrated plan we have created is to deliver a full-spectrum effect across all the elements so that we can undermine the business. I have established that plan along the lines of what we have done in terrorism previously. We are working to a 4P plan: prevent, pursue, protect and prepare. That is the way we are organising the plan. It was very clear to me from the outset that there is no single impact or single solution that will deliver the outcome that we need, so we need to work across the full spectrum. It was also immediately clear that we need to operate internationally to deliver. This is an international problem faced by every country, and particularly our European partner countries. There is an intelligence aspect. There is an aspect about bringing the system together and the mechanisms to do that. There is a law enforcement aspect, which is particularly around undermining the gangs. All that is also seen through the spectrum of international operating, which is the only way we can deliver.

You used the phrase “secure and effective border”. Many will argue that we are nowhere near that. Do you feel empowered enough with the responsibility you have in your role to be able to carry out the objectives?

I do feel empowered. You will be aware that the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill is working its way through the parliamentary process at the moment. A number of measures in the Bill will provide a greater position of authority to my role, and other measures will help us significantly in the fight against the organised criminality we are dealing with. I have to say that, even in advance of the Bill achieving Royal Assent, co-operation across Departments and agencies has been very good. As I said, I established the first border security system leadership board about a month after I started, and meetings of that have happened repeatedly as we have developed our plan and the level of sophistication and understanding of what we are doing. There has been significant support across that and for the very significant political focus on delivery against our objectives. The Prime Minister has been chairing stocktake meetings on irregular illegal migration fairly regularly as well. That provides great support to my role and the plan we are trying to deliver to ensure that all parts of the system come together.

You explained how better collaboration has been taking place over the past year since you took up your position. Is that happening effectively and efficiently, as you might have anticipated when you took on the role, or do you need additional powers to facilitate your objectives?

In anticipation of the role, it was fairly evident as I was going through the process of applying for it that this was an incredibly challenging issue. We have seen that the way the smugglers are operating has shifted over the past number of years. In fact, I think it has shifted in response to some of the things we have done collectively over the year. The system is aligned with delivering what we need to deliver, and certainly in the UK that system is there. My role has been respected across the system, and I get high-level attendants coming into and working through the various elements of what we do. I described my board, which is a one-off meeting; it is all the work that is going on in the background among the people in Border Security Command and the people in all the other Departments that has been delivering. That will be enhanced when the various measures in the Bill achieve Royal Assent. The work is enhanced significantly by processes such as, in particular, the PM’s stocktakes, which have been driving action in various parts of the system. One of the other challenges is that much of the necessary work to deliver is being delivered internationally. What has been critical from my perspective is the ability to engage effectively with other countries, particularly those countries that are especially relevant in this work. In that regard, it has become apparent to me that achieving movement with the other countries very much needs political leadership and drive, which I have seen repeatedly from both the current and the former Home Secretary and from the Prime Minister. When my job was being announced, I was with the Prime Minister in Italy, talking to a range of a partners there. There has been clear signalling to international partners about my role, it being a convening role and its significance. Also, working at the official level, I have been able to establish strong relationships with the key countries. A lot of that has been on the back of first visiting those countries with the Home Secretary, a Minister or indeed the Prime Minister, getting a level of credibility into the other systems. To answer your question about what has happened in the first year, another international point has been really key. In March, the Home Secretary—with the Prime Minister present—hosted at Lancaster House an international border security summit with a particular focus on organised immigration crime. Fifty-odd countries attended that meeting. The first day was a ministerial meeting, chaired by the Home Secretary, with counterparts from those other countries, to look at how we can work collectively on that. The second was a very law enforcement-focused day, and a meeting with all our contemporaries from those countries was chaired jointly by me and Graeme Biggar, the director general of the National Crime Agency. That was worldwide, not simply European countries, and it was key to ensuring that that was worked through. For example, I was at Lancaster House again yesterday as the Home Secretary chaired a meeting of the Balkan countries for the Berlin process, which was started back in 2014. We were there with the Interior Ministers from all the Balkan countries. The Balkans are one of the key routes for migrants to come through, so it is important that we work closely. That meeting covered other organised crime aspects later in the day, but we had a big session in the morning on organised immigration crime. What I fed into that meeting was the fact that, the week before, I had been in Sarajevo for two days as part of the Berlin process. On the first day, I met a range of partners, up to and including the Minister from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a week ago today I hosted a meeting of all the border police chiefs from the six Balkan countries—it was jointly hosted by the International Organisation for Migration and Frontex—to bring people together and ensure that we are working as effectively as we can with them.

It is great to hear that all these meetings are taking place, but we want to see outcomes delivered on the ground, and they do not seem to be being achieved. More than a year into this Government, why are those outcomes not being achieved in terms of reducing the number of illegal immigrants coming across the channel, based on all these meetings you have been having?

It is not just about the meetings; it is about getting all the work done. This organised criminality has been developing for six or so years. It has become and continues to become more sophisticated. The criminality is very well established, from source countries and organising countries right the way through the various transit countries and into the UK. The approach we are taking, and that we have started to take since the establishment of Border Security Command, is about bringing together the range of attacks that we need to make across all the different elements to suppress and, ultimately, undermine that criminal business model. Now, that is not going to happen very quickly. Previously, there have been views that there is one thing, or one or two things, that will provide the answer. I very firmly believe that that is not the case. This is an established criminality and it is incredibly profitable, and there are increasing numbers of people who are in a situation in which they could see the potential to become migrants. I do not think this was ever going to happen very quickly. Since establishing the command and bringing together much greater and closer working between not only all our assets within the UK, but all the work that is going on internationally to ensure that at every stage of the route there is intervention to prevent the smugglers from doing what they need to do, that work is definitely in development. We are starting to see some of the impact of what we are doing in the ways the smugglers have shifted their methods at the moment. That points to some of our interventions that are making it more challenging in that respect. But this was always going to take time. I am sure we will come on to talk about the funding that has been made available to me within the Border Security Command. That has been very much about the vast majority of funding going into places where we are going to have operational delivery and operational impact. Quite clearly, that takes time to work its way through and to turn into people operating in the way that we want them to operate. As you would imagine I, more than anybody, find the fact that the numbers are where they are frustrating and really challenging—this issue could not be more high profile—but I am convinced that the cross-spectrum plan we have in place will deliver. We need to keep pushing and delivering that plan and we need to keep putting the funding into those areas that will make the maximum impact.

Thank you both for coming in today. It is good to hear about an integrated plan, a full-spectrum approach and a board, and it is good to hear that people across Government are talking to each other about this, although I imagine that was already happening, but what about the Border Security Command is actually new? What is happening now that was not happening before?

I can give a number of examples. First, you characterised it as bringing everybody together, but that did not happen previously. There may well have been other conversations going on between different Departments, but I do not think that was happening in any sort of structured way.

Who wasn’t talking to who before?

I am absolutely sure that different Departments were talking to one another. It is about whether the conversations, and the action you then take, are focused on a very clear purpose and a very clear outcome that you are seeking to achieve. That is a key point. Bringing all those people together has shifted the situation in a way that did not happen before. That work then feeds into the cross-Government level of oversight that is there, obviously from the Home Secretary in the Home Office but also from the Prime Minister. To go back to the point I made briefly at the outset, one of the first things I did when I came into the job was to make sure I had a properly integrated intelligence picture of how we see the threat manifesting itself. While there were various intelligence products that looked at elements within organised immigration crime, they were happening in different places and were not necessarily coming together. Bringing that group together allowed us to produce, in the first instance, a comprehensive picture of what the threat looked like. On the basis of that threat, we could then ask what we know about the organisers. What do we know about the countries that the migrants are coming from? What do we know about what is happening in the transit countries? That then informed the creation of the integrated plan, so that I was able to identify where we needed to focus our attention and how we needed to do that. All those things had not happened prior to the creation of the Border Security Command. An amount of funding was immediately put into the command and, after I arrived, that funding was increased for the 2024-25 year. Subsequently, within the current year, HMT has provided an additional £100 million from the reserve to allow us to accelerate even further some of the work we are putting in place. All of that is a change. Of course, one of the elements that will come out of the command, certainly once the Bill has received Royal Assent, is that I will then be accountable to Parliament in terms of our plan and the priorities that I set. I will then report back to Parliament on how effectively those priorities are being delivered.

May I add my perspective on what the BSC has brought to this? Of course people were speaking before, just like they were speaking about terrorism before OSCT was created, but this is a recognition that you have a chronic threat on which Whitehall is engaged and working. As a result of that, and the ministerial interest, as you will know, lots of units get created and lots of people in complex structures come together. For me, this is a simplification and rationalisation that allows us to focus entirely on delivering operational effect, while the development of the 4P plan across Whitehall means we have the level of engagement and a focal point in the Home Office to deliver. Since this began in 2018, more and more teams have been layered on to the existing structures. This is a moment, with the legislation, to codify everything, bringing it together in one place and allowing the operational element to focus on that, while the policy issues and the rest of the planning is done in one place.

Overnight we received a letter that talked about structural changes. How will that affect you? Will it make you more effective?

I apologise that the letter arrived so late, because of various clearance issues. I was really keen that you received the letter before I came and spoke to you today. As you rightly point out, it contains a shift in resources. When I started the role we asked the question, “How do we take this challenge on?” As I said, I started with the intelligence picture, and we then produced the plan. I was very clear at the outset that what I was not prepared to do was walk into a new role and say, “We need to take this bit from here and that bit from there to create this new entity.” I saw it very much as a question of how we bring the system together and how I convene the system. Inevitably and understandably, as the year has progressed and we have seen how things have moved forward and the plan has developed, there have been parts of the system, certainly within the Home Office, that I have been working closely with, for the obvious reasons. There has been a natural process of evolving. It really is important to be very clear that on the day before the election in 2024, there was no such thing as the Border Security Command. After the election this thing came into being, so we are still in a very early stage of developing. I think it is entirely reasonable that, as that has come through, we would identify ways that we would seek to look at it. Very much in line with the questions we have already received, the permanent secretary instigated a review on basically answering the question, “This BSC thing is here now; does it have the power and capability to deliver what it is there to deliver?” That review was undertaken, with all parties feeding into the review and its conclusions. One of the elements that came out of it was that clearly there are some parts of the system where it is integrally linked into the day-to-day working of what BSC delivers. In the current configuration, you have a lack of clarity on line management and leadership. There are two parts of the Home Office that will be migrating to come under my line management. First, and fairly obviously, there are the elements within Border Force that comprise the Small Boats Operational Command, or the people who deal with the activities in the channel on a day-to-day basis. The second element is Home Office Intelligence, which is a significant entity that looks across all the requirements that the Home Office has for producing intelligence activity and assessment, and it has people who work not only in the UK but overseas. We will move those two elements across to come in under the BSC line management, to go alongside the fairly small existing command that we have put together thus far.

How often does your board meet?

It is either four-weekly or five-weekly, essentially. You aspire to once a month, but often, for various reasons, it will shift. Generally speaking, every four or five weeks we will bring the senior leadership board together.

How regularly are you getting data and metrics about what is going on in the channel?

Every day. As you might imagine, my phone pings four times every day to tell me precisely what activity is in the water, in both the UK territorial waters and the French territorial waters. Apart from the internal Border Security Command governance arrangements, which I don’t imagine you are particularly focused on, I chair a small boats operational meeting every Wednesday afternoon. That meeting brings together all the elements within the Home Office that have a direct responsibility in relation to this: my people, the National Crime Agency, the Small Boats Operational Command people, and Home Office Intelligence people. I also have our staff from post in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and the European Union, because the so-called Calais group—the near-neighbours group—is significant to understand the work that is going on in those countries. That meeting is convened every week. One of the products I have for that meeting is a common intelligence picture product, which I am sure you are familiar with. I will have that CRIP, which will be the core product, if you like, that we discuss at that meeting. That will have covered the previous week up to the Monday. I will start off and talk immediately about what has been going on since Monday, if there is something happening, and we will then work through that common picture. We will discuss the common picture and then further inputs will be put into that product, which will be finalised later in the day on the Wednesday. Then, on the Thursday, that product is shared very broadly across all the parts of Government that are involved in the work that we do, and obviously upwards politically, to give that picture, with a covering note from me that picks out and highlights any particular issues that we think are relevant.

So Ministers see that?

They do, yes.

Are Ministers involved in any of the meetings?

Not in my board meetings. I have a regular meeting with the Borders Minister, which is now Minister Norris. I meet him very regularly—theoretically, it is weekly, but sometimes it is every week and a half. Obviously there has been a change of the ministerial team recently, and lots of other stuff has been going on, but that will settle into a regular meeting. I have had a regular border security meeting with the Home Secretary on a weekly basis to talk through where we are in relation to that. As I have alluded to a number of times thus far, the Prime Minister chairs an irregular-migration stocktake meeting—those have been happening more or less monthly. There are different elements of irregular migration and sometimes he will chair those meetings for other elements, rather than the small boats element.

I am glad you talked about accountability to Parliament, because the Committee is clearly very interested in that. It would be very helpful if we could have sight of some of the data regarding progress, or otherwise, and an understanding of what is happening on a regular basis.

We can certainly take that away and come back with a proposal.

I am glad the review has taken place. According to the Guido Fawkes blog, it took place very recently.

It did.

Can the Committee have sight of the review, on a confidential basis if needs be?

I cannot see any reason why we would not be able to do that, but I will take that back and ask that question. I think that should be fine.

On the background, between January and September 2025, we had the most small boat crossings. I hear what you said earlier to Robbie about it not happening overnight—it is not going to happen quickly—but people listening to this will be very frustrated to hear that. The number of small boats, and the number of people in them, is going up. What do you think the main challenges are to preventing the boats from coming from France?

I absolutely share the frustration and the concern that the numbers are going up. It is worth talking about a range of things. As I have alluded to—you just mentioned it again—we are seeing a real shift in the smugglers’ tactics. We have seen that shift over time, but I would point to a couple of things. In the 12 months that I have been in this role, we have seen quite a shift in the primary nationalities of the people coming over as migrants. We have seen a much higher number of migrants coming from sub-Saharan Africa. Eritreans are at the top of the list. Eritrean, Ethiopian, Sudanese and Somali migrants are being trafficked over, and that has had a number of impacts. One of the first was particularly prevalent towards the tail end of autumn, into winter, last year, when we had the horrific period in which the number of fatalities rose quite significantly. Some of that was because, in a sense, for a period the smugglers lost a bit of control of the process that they were running. The Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants, in particular, were storming and getting on to boats, even when they had not paid, and that was making the boats overcrowded. A lot of the people who died drowned or were crushed on those boats. Rob may want to come in and give a bit more detail, but we then saw an exercise whereby the smugglers started to take back control around the crossings, so that phenomenon has died down, but they have wanted to get more and more people on to the boats. I am sure Rob will talk through the law enforcement elements that we have focused on. One of those elements has been choking the supply of the equipment to make it harder for them to be in a position to do what they are attempting to do. When they know it is a day when it is possible to cross, they need to get the right equipment and the migrants in exactly the right place at the right time to allow them to launch. What we have seen—you will have no doubt seen this in the media—is a shift to this taxi-boat methodology. Previously, the boat would be loaded up with the people and would attempt to launch from the beach. What we are now seeing, because of the numbers on the boats—the average number this year has been 61, but we have all seen many examples in the media where it has been considerably higher—is that it is impossible to launch the boat on the beach, so they have created this taxi-boat concept. The migrants will wade into the water and the taxi-boats will come along, and we have ended up with those numbers—the highest we have had is 125, which is extraordinary and incredibly dangerous for those migrants. It is worth Rob talking about the various elements that he—

Before Rob comes in, we have had presentations on organised crime before. We were told about the boats and where they were storing them, and that they have changed their operation. Then we were told that they were paying people to go up the motorway to Germany. That is always going to change.

It is.

And organised crime will always be difficult for you to combat. I would be interested to know from both of you, once Rob has spoken, what do you think is the most effective way? Are you really reliant on France—is that what you are saying?

I will let Rob talk about the organised crime, but I want to talk about France, because it is really important that the Committee understands the work we are doing with France, and the relationship.

Your point that if you just apply pressure in one area, the OCGs will adapt and work around the problem, is exactly the point. We have moved over the last year to produce concurrent effort in numerous areas. Whereas traditionally you would just pursue the people who are involved in facilitation—who are committing the offences to bring people illegally to the UK—we have looked at the business model and developed that thinking to create five main lines of effort, which we think are the ingredients where wherever you move, you will encounter law enforcement and pressure. To summarise those: one of them is illicit finance and the way that the hawaladar system works for payments to move across and through the value chain—that includes both migrants and equipment supply. The other one is social media, which plays a massive part in this. Since 2021, we have taken down 23,000 accounts. That is just whack-a-mole; we actually need to deal with the people behind those accounts, and that is something that we have begun to do at scale. The supply of equipment and engines is a really important point, because much of what we are tackling here is not unlawful to possess. If you are tackling a shipment of drugs you can seize it, but if you are trying to interdict a shipment of equipment you need to show that it is linked to the criminality in a conspiracy; otherwise you have no powers of seizure—although some of this equipment is in breach of safety regulations, and there is more work to do, I think, in terms of criminalising the bespoke equipment that is used in these crossings. There are other parallels to this on the Iberian peninsula, where, in terms of drug trafficking, law enforcement pursues go-fast vessels—which have four 300 hp engines and specialist hulls—with a regime that regulates them, and ultimately people involved in their supply can be guilty of criminal offences. That type of approach around equipment is something that we need to look at with bespoke equipment, because the large vessels we see—from 8 to 12 metres—that are made out of substandard material are only made for this; there is no legitimate purpose for them. In addition to the finance and the equipment—which also includes engines and improvised lifejackets, which are substandard and dangerous—we also look at the people who are involved in moving large numbers of migrants. Our Operation Wireworker is an example of that: an individual in the UK was moving thousands of people from Libya into Italy. By taking that individual out, we saw a reduction in those flows in terms of general maritime.

But did someone fill his place?

Of course people will fill their place, but that takes time. My point is that if you just do that, then somebody can take their place, and you don’t sustain the effort. If you sustain the effort against all those lines of effort and they are resourced in the right way, you will begin to have impact. Finally—this will probably link with what Martin will say about France—there are people who are in northern France, who are largely Iraqi Kurds, and some are Afghans and some Syrians. They are the people who do deals with people who want to travel—the fixers at the last stage of the journey. We are doing much more to provide as much intelligence as we can to the French on those individuals, but of course, we are reliant on a judicialised response in France for those people to be arrested. What we can do with the capabilities that we have and are now available to us is produce more information for the intelligence to work jointly with the French. We have a joint unit in France, which has been working on this since 2021, which has resulted in the dismantling of 54 organised crime groups and 300 arrests. That package needs to be deployed; it is not just one thing. When you are under pressure with a problem—and a chronic threat—like this, the temptation is to look for one thing that will be the silver bullet that stops this. Our experience over the last three years is that clearly there is not just one thing, and you need to keep applying that pressure, particularly with the organised crime.

As you point out, the relationship with and working with France are absolutely key. Every one of these migrants is getting on the boat in France. We have very strong working relationships with the French. The Committee will be aware that the so-called Sandhurst funding programme—the three years of funding that is currently in play—ends at the end of March next year. I am leading the negotiation and work with France to see what goes forward. Obviously, the profile there at the moment is the one that I inherited. The real focus for me is using any money that we are giving to France in a way that is absolutely pointed at the things that are going to make the biggest operational difference to what is happening. In the last year, I have worked closely with France, and really challenged France to step up its level of ambition on where and how we are intervening with the smugglers. I think it is the reality—it is certainly my perception—that once the smugglers have actually arrived on a beach, it becomes very difficult for the law enforcement officers there to do much. You are talking about large numbers, particularly on days where the smugglers are trying to push lots of people. A significant level of violence is being offered to French law enforcement officers on the beaches. That is another phenomenon that has emerged out of the different profile of the migrants that are coming across. In the last calendar year, I think 60-plus French officers were injured, some quite seriously injured, with the levels of violence that have overtaken them. It is for us to make sure that we have the right kind of assets on the beach to do the work that they are doing. It is also about pulling away from the beach. The French do some good work in relation to the points getting close to the beach, such as railway and road junctions—they are doing a lot of work there. As part of the third year of the existing Sandhurst programme, we have been able to reallocate some of the money including to a group called the Compagnie de Marche, which is effectively a mixed group of law enforcement that are brought together and operate for a period of time in the north. They are very proactive, and are achieving many more interventions. There is another group that, in my old policing world, I would have described as a crime-squad team, which is really helping us by intervening where we know that equipment is moving around—going to get close to the final facilitators. We are really keen to support those. We do a lot with them in terms of technology to help them in and around northern France, such as drones and other surveillance technology. We are working with them in relation to that. Two items are particularly worth mentioning. For the taxi-boat tactic, France have gone through a process of refining and developing new maritime tactics that they can use on the water to intervene with the boats before the boats can get going. Clearly, once they are in the water, it is very difficult for land-based officers. They have worked through the process to create a new maritime doctrine in France, and we await that being deployed. I understand that they have to work through various legal processes to ensure that the officers undertaking that intervention are properly covered. As you will understand, any activity in the water is incredibly dangerous. We are all familiar with the previous examples where there have been numbers of fatalities. We are working very closely with them on that. The other specific French element is the UK-France one in, one out agreement, which is a pilot that is currently in its very early stages. Again, that is a really important development with colleagues from France.

We have some questions on one in, one out and so on coming up later, so we will get on to that. I am conscious of the time, and we have quite a lot to get through, so briefer answers would be helpful.

Yes, of course.

You said in a previous answer that earlier this year, as the smuggling gangs lost a grip on the supply chain, if you like—the pipeline—that led to an increase in fatalities. Does that mean that as you start to get more of a grip on disrupting the smugglers, we should expect an increase in fatalities?

It was not about the supply chain of equipment; it was about the migrants who were storming vessels—the people. Their behaviour on the beach was violent, uncontrolled and unstructured because they were not paying. They were basically turning up, hiding, and then mobbing boats as they were launching. That resulted in crush injuries. The vulnerable on those vessels, which is typically women and children, were being injured. That is what drove the fatalities, along with the overloading of the boats. What has now happened, we think, is that rather than getting no money from these people, the crime groups involved are offering a cheaper rate and a controlled loading of these people who are going to try to scupper their enterprise through uncontrolled loading of the boats. Some money is better than none. As in 2022, when we had a lot of Albanians, which drove the numbers right up, what has happened this year is that the Horn of Africa cohort, if you like, through their violent behaviour and then through an accommodation with the smugglers, have driven the numbers up. That is what we are talking about in terms of injuries and fatalities.

To return to the point about France, you alluded to the French maritime review; how have you contributed to that? There has obviously been a bit of political instability in France recently; how is that affecting the maritime review? If it does not go ahead, what are the implications for your objectives?

We have been involved and working with the French throughout the process while they have undertaken that review. The governance arrangements in France are quite different from ours. Although most of the work that I do in France is with the Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for everyone on the land, the French also have a different set-up that deals with anything to do with the sea. They have a secretary-general for the sea—a senior general—and he ultimately has the responsibility around that. We have been working very closely with him and his team as they have developed things. Clearly, it is their process that they are working through. I was over there three weeks ago and met with him in Paris to really press the point about the significance for us of delivering the maritime tactic, because of the taxi-boat scenario. This was referred to by President Macron at the summit in July, when he spoke with the Prime Minister, so it is frustrating that it has taken the time it has taken. On your point about the political instability, clearly that has been a backdrop. What I would say is that my relationships with my interlocutors, whether within the SGMer or with the SGMer himself, and also with the Ministry of Interior, have remained and do remain very strong. In fact, this very afternoon I am planned to meet with my counterpart from over there. You will have picked up that the previous and current Home Secretaries both established good relationships with the Interior Minister, as was—he is not in the new French Government; there is a new Interior Minister. I am sure there will be a plan for the Home Secretary on that. My point would be that despite all that, the close working has continued. I am fairly confident that we are able to intervene and influence where it is appropriate for us to do so.

We have heard about the joint upstream working group with the French. I was a home affairs attaché at the Paris embassy for four years; this does not sound new to me. Is this just what we did with the lorries, but replacing “lorry” with “boat”? Is this a new innovation?

I am not familiar with what it was and how it worked back then. I do not think the concept of working upstream is a new innovation. When I took over the job, there was an upstream working group in place. I was told that the upstream working group was operating at a relatively low level and that it was not something that I particularly needed to get involved with. Then, the French Interior Minister appointed a very senior political figure in France to lead on upstream working in France. That changed my decision. I decided that if there was that kind of heft on the French side, it was worth going. I then went and we held the first renewed meeting in Paris with him. He is called Patrick Stefanini. Patrick Stefanini and I have co-chaired that meeting since then. It looks at the route-based approach that I have adopted. The French have done the same. It brings both sides together so that we understand very clearly what we are doing and what we are not doing in each of those areas and where we can do things together. One of the things we are doing in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, in Albania and in Vietnam is deterrent communications to counter the narrative that the smugglers are providing. We are now doing some of those jointly with the French, and the French have put money in to allow us to do that. I would not go so far as to say that it is a completely new innovation. I would say that the energy that has been put into it, its structure and the clarity of the plan that we are trying to deliver is very different to what it was.

So it is having operational outputs?

Yes.

What do the French ask of the UK? The Government have made a number of announcements recently, such as ID cards and changing refugees’ family reunification rights. Are the French asking those things of us and saying, “This is a pull factor”? Is that where these ideas come from?

I think there are advantages to those ideas in and of themselves, but there is no doubt that in every country that I have been to since I took over this job, there is a narrative around the pull factors. It is definitely a narrative in France. It is the narrative that there are things about the UK that are causing the migrants to want to try to come to the UK in particular. You will all be aware that the numbers of asylum seekers in our major European neighbours are higher than the numbers in the UK. None the less, all will talk about what you describe, and what they would describe, as the pull factors to the UK. A whole range of work is being undertaken primarily, but not exclusively, within the Home Office to identify ways to address that.

We are going to come on to more about the pull factors later.

I have a final question on this point. One of the consequences of Brexit is that we are no longer in the Dublin system. We have been to meet asylum seekers in asylum accommodation here who tell us that they understood that we are not in the Dublin system and they cannot be returned through it, and that was part of their decision making. Did the French Government say that to us as well? What is their perspective on us no longer being in Dublin?

There is no question but that the lack of an ability to return is a factor, so people would say that.

I have been part of designing this since the idea first emerged. It was very much about getting to the point where we had the ability to move people back to France. I have been involved in those processes and the ways in which we have decided to manage this. One of my colleagues within the Home Office, a director general who leads on broader migration, has been leading this so far, and the way in which it will work is that, once the pilot is up and running effectively, it will then come across, and the management and ownership will sit with me as it moves forward. The concept is twofold; it provides a situation where an inadmissible person who has arrived here can be returned to France, which has not existed thus far, and it also opens up a safe and legal route for people who are trying to come over to the UK. That is how we ended up with the concept of one in, one out.

Because it applies to someone who is in France. We have worked to publicise the fact that this treaty exists, and that such a route exists. Somebody in France has the ability to apply for this route to come through the process legally, and they would then go to the visa centre in Paris. Importantly from our perspective, it also allows us to check people before they come into the country, and they would then come over and work through the system once they have arrived in the country. It opens up a route that says to people, “You should not take the incredibly dangerous option of putting yourself into the hands of a smuggler and going on a small boat.”

Not necessarily—it applies as long as they are in France. The system has been very clear to make sure that this applies to people who are in France, but they have to be documented individuals. They need to have documents to prove their identity, and we will then work them through a range of security checks to make sure that we understand precisely who they are.

The really important point is that this is a pilot scheme at the moment—it is very new. Along with France, we are obviously working through making this work, and making it work as effectively as we can. Equally, we also need to make sure that it is publicised and that people understand it. I think it is really important to make it clear that there is a safe and legal route that avoids you getting on a boat. However, it is as important to send the message that, if you come over on a boat illegally, there is the jeopardy that you may well be detained at that stage, taken to an immigration removal centre and sent back to France. I think that is a really important message to be able to get across, and we have not been in that situation previously. We have to get the system working, work it through and get it up and running. Then we can be in a position to scale the system up. However, the reality—and I know I have said this a number of times, but it is an important point—is that there is no one thing that is going to fundamentally stop the situation we face. We have to be doing all those things, and this is an important addition to everything else that we are doing. As we scale it up, it will become ever more important as an addition.

Is it right that we are advertising in France that you can apply for this route?

Yes.

Where are we advertising?

It is on gov.uk. It is also being pushed out through various means, working with France, using NGOs and others that are working there with migrants. There has been a comms campaign that is continuing to develop to make sure that we are able to get the message out, because, as we all know, the way that the smugglers do what they do is largely through social media channels—very open ones, in many respects—so it is not particularly covert. We have a comms plan looking at all the ways we can make sure that the message is getting out to people. There is also the comms opportunity with those who are coming over to the UK, because so much of this is about getting the message out through communities so that people understand that they have the opportunity to come across legally, but equally that there is the jeopardy that you might end up being pushed back if you come over illegally. It is just another tool to try to stop people taking the decision to get in the boats.

When people apply for this safe and legal route—which is interesting, because both the former Home Secretary and the Prime Minister rejected the idea of safe and legal routes when we put it to them previously—are we processing their asylum claim in France and confident that, when they come to the UK, they will be granted asylum? Or are we waiting until they get to the UK, when there is a possibility that they will not be granted asylum?

It is not being granted in France. The process that will take place in France is to ensure that we have done the relevant security checks to then bring them over. When they come over, they will then go into the application process there.

So they will go into asylum accommodation.

Yes, and they will go into an application process there. However, the fact that we have done what we have on the France end, you would imagine, puts you in a position where there is a much higher likelihood.

But there is still a possibility that they will have their asylum claim rejected.

I think that still remains as a possibility.

What does France then do with the ones who are returned to France? Could they just get back on another boat and come over again?

No, I think France—I am just trying to identify the particular area. I will probably need to come back to you on precisely what happens there. I do not want to speak on behalf of the French, to be fair, so I think we will come back and give real clarity on that.

There is clearly a risk. These are people we have not done any checks on, presumably. We just send them straight back to France, and they could get on another boat and be back over before we knew it.

We will have processed them at this end when they first arrived, and we will clearly know that they have been removed back to France. Everybody who arrives on a small boat is processed, so that would be identified very quickly at that stage.

A final question from me on this. We understand that there were 1,000 people in the Home Office working on the Rwanda scheme before it was scrapped, but there are only 12 working on the one in, one out scheme. Is that enough?

They are very different schemes. I was obviously not around at the time of the Rwanda scheme, but they are very different schemes. For those 12 people, this is permanently what they are doing. But clearly, actually making this system work involves all the people who are working when we receive people at Dover and Manston, all our returns—our Immigration Enforcement staff who return people—and all our people who work in visas and passports over in France. So that number is the people, the core group, who are pulling that thing together and pulling the operation together. There are a whole host of other people who clearly are working directly in actually making it happen.

On this small number who might get sent straight back, what criteria are applied as to who you pick from the vast numbers who are not going to be sent back?

One second—sorry, I will come back to that when I can find the point.

There are criteria, though?

Yes, of course there are. Yes, there are criteria. We decide which days we are going to open up a day, when we know there are crossings, because there are number constraints that clearly we have to manage with. So we work that through, and then there will be criteria that are set at this end when people come in.

Which you will tell us about later.

Yes, I’m sure we can. We can find that out.

I am trying to get the theory behind it, because this has been pitched to Parliament and the public as disrupting and changing the business model of the smugglers, but what you are saying to us is that different streams of migrants from different parts of the world are presenting in Calais. So isn’t it the case that if we say, “Okay, we are going to take some from France on a safe and legal route,” and it’s people who might have family connections to the UK or people who pass all our tests, anyone who is not in that category—who does not meet that—has no incentive to apply for the safe and legal route? They can risk the small boats. So how does it completely disrupt the smugglers’ business model, rather than just getting them to look at new markets? You are telling us that new markets of illegal migrants keep cropping up in Calais as the patterns change.

A brief point on the people who do cross. Unfortunately, now, people who potentially could qualify for that are getting small boat crossings. We have seen throughout this, as it has grown, families who have paid significant amounts of money to do that. For those individuals, it obviously does disempower the smugglers, because they are not going to pay if they go this route. So it’s not quite as simple—these cohorts are so unpredictable. There is a crossover between the type of people who could be in the current one-for-one deal and the people who are on small boats. The only observation I would make is that, in the last five years, this is the first time we have had anybody who has arrived on a small boat sent back, and every time that happens is, from where I sit, positive—

It sends a message.

That is money that has been lost; that is money they won’t get back. This is obviously a trial, and you cannot speak to how this would scale up yet, but there are those two brief points in terms of the relevance to the business model. Anybody who goes back is a good thing—and a bad thing for smugglers.

By that you mean going back to France, because obviously we have returned people under returns agreements.

Sorry, yes. We had been unable to achieve that over the last several years.

Is it the case, on that example you used, that if anybody comes over on a small boat who would have been eligible for the legitimate scheme, they invalidate their possibility of staying here and they become eligible to be returned, even though they could have come?

Yes.

But it only disrupts the business model if they are not allowed to get back on a boat again. Presumably, all the smugglers say is, “Well, if that happens to you, don’t worry. We’ll give you a free trip next time.”

There is no evidence of a free trip.

That is what they’ll do, though.

Why would they do that?

Because they don’t want you disrupting the business model.

There is no evidence—

But that is what will happen.

There is no evidence or intelligence that people will say you get a free trip.

It has only just started!

Sure, but there is no evidence of that.

But that is what will happen, surely. They will plan what they are going to do.

People involved in organised crime are not altruistic. They don’t do things for free; they do it for profit.

They do not want you disrupting the business model.

Sure, but there is no evidence that that will happen.

We can provide that.

The treaty is very important. It is an important step change in our arrangements with France, with the potential to return someone who is inadmissible, as I said. It is an important—

I think that is probably a question for Ministers.

Yes. Thank you.

I do not know the details of the legal challenge in France. That is a matter for France to deal with. Certainly, we are carrying on and will carry on as we are, unless the legal challenge changes that.

In terms of not knowing where the individual is?

On the coming back again, as I said, we check everyone who comes over on a small boat, or by any other mechanism. Therefore, if someone is a person we have returned, that would become apparent very quickly.

Can we return them again? Would they qualify? Would you just return them again? Only a limited number can be returned.

We will have to provide that as part of our answer to you, because I am not sure. That is not a particular circumstance that we have looked at.

It is early days, we know.

It really is very early days. Given the fact that we are, for the first time, in a place where someone who is inadmissible can be returned to France, and that we are in a place where there is an ability to offer someone an opportunity to avoid going into a small boat, I think that this is a positive place. It is very early stages in the pilot.

The Bill has four pillars. The first one we covered a little at the beginning. I have had pretty good co-operation and working with all parts of Government and the other agencies, but clearly, as I said at the beginning, the statutory position for my role will make that clearer with its “due regard” element. The important point about the Bill is that it allows me to set the priorities for border security and then to conduct an annual review and bring that review to Parliament. I think those are, in a very personal sense, quite critical to my role. There are some data-sharing powers in there, which are less directly related to the small boats area, and some broader immigration and asylum measures that tidy up some other elements, but the key thing for me is the border security measures, which I think will have a transformational effect in terms of how we can deal with organised immigration crime. I know they have been described as counter-terrorism-type measures, but the real concept of the measures is about introducing a range of OIC offences that we do not currently have, to give us an ability to undertake both better investigative activity and, importantly, earlier investigative activity. It is about having much greater understanding around intelligence and then a capability to take action. Rob might want to talk particularly about the crime side, because there will be largely, but not exclusively, an NCA lead on some of those things.

At the moment, in building a case we are limited to what we have in the Immigration Act 1971—sections 24 and 25—unless we can identify money laundering or other offences. The Bill gives us the opportunity to gather intelligence and evidence—for example, where people are on social media or involved in procuring equipment or advertising services. That allows us to move to an earlier executive action. Where it may have ultimately taken us many months, or even years, to prove the predicate offence of facilitation under section 25, the new offences will give us an earlier opportunity to intervene and be disruptive. That is really the same approach that CT has taken in terms of dual-use items or people who are in the build-up to attack planning. If you hold on to that methodology, this is about acting before the facilitation offences have happened, to prevent crossings and prevent the risk to life and everything that goes with it. So we will welcome the passage of the Bill and it achieving Royal Assent, whenever that happens, and we will go from there. We are looking hard at our current holdings of intelligence and evidence to see how we will use the measures when the Bill lands.

There are two elements to this: the social media companies have some responsibilities around material, under the Online Safety Act, but this is really about us being able to identify the individuals behind the accounts and pursue them. That is the element that is new, following the recent change, and we welcome that.

Yes, it is for law enforcement—for the police and the NCA—to identify those individuals and pursue them.

Once the Bill attains Royal Assent, my ambition is to produce the first report very early in the new financial year. That is the plan.

It is clear that you see the one in, one out and returns arrangements as deterrents, but what further legislative and policy support do you need in respect of those individuals who have crossed on small boats and come from countries to which it is not safe to return people but who are not asylum seekers and are not granted asylum? What do we do with them? Where do they go?

That is one of the real challenges with the situation, particularly when you look at the list of top countries they are coming over from and if people are not granted asylum. Many of those countries will be places where the level of the grant rate will possibly be a bit higher. We have increased the number of returns—there has been quite a significant increase—but one of the real challenges is that there are some countries to which it is incredibly difficult to return people, so a whole host of work is going on in other parts of the Home Office to work through how we can gain new returns agreements. Since I have been in the role, one example is that a month or two ago we signed a returns agreement with the Republic of Iraq. Minister Jarvis and I signed that agreement, and it is a really key one for us. From there, it is about how we work that through. The route-based approach also picks into source countries, because the work we need to be doing internationally with those countries involves identifying ways in which we can work not only with them but with other European countries and with international or European organisations to try to work it through, because this is a challenge we all face. That came through loud and clear yesterday in discussions with all the Interior Ministers from the Balkan region, which has done really well in reducing the number of migrants coming through. There has been some great operational work between countries, with Frontex and with us, and we have provided assets, capability and training. One of the challenges that those Ministers yesterday, and the police chiefs last week, were really pushing was: “That’s great, but where and how do we remove people?” There is a lot of work going on around that, but essentially one of the biggest challenges for the whole area is how we find a way to move people on.

It would be very helpful if the UN, or another international agency, developed a model returns treaty. We have model double tax treaties; why not a model returns treaty?

Precisely—and at the very least with our European partners. A whole host of work has been ongoing with the EU, but in all the EU countries where I have met either other senior officials or law enforcement, everyone has the same challenges and issues. It is about how we can work collectively. You are absolutely right: the ideal would be an umbrella agreement that allows everyone to play into it. It is very challenging when it is individual, which is why the upstream working—to the question Mr Murray asked—is so important, because it is about doing more jointly. We are doing a lot of joint work with France and Italy, and we have a joint action plan with Germany. There is a lot of activity going on, often bilateral and occasionally trilateral, but this problem is global and definitely a European issue. Finding sustainable solutions needs to be done collectively.

My question is about agencies working together; you have said a lot about that this morning. How much of a priority are the small boat crossings for all Departments and agencies? Is there any duplication of work? How high on their list are small boats?

That is a really good question and, as you might imagine, one of the first questions that I was asking when I came in. What I would say—this also answers the questions earlier in the session—is that Border Security Command coming in, and my role coming in, has made a significant difference to that, particularly in respect of the work with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which is obviously key to all the international work we are doing. We are in a very different space in terms of how prioritised dealing with illegal migration is across all Departments. I know how high on the agenda it now is in the Foreign Office, and the fact that the former Home Secretary is now the Foreign Secretary—she was leading on all this in the Home Office—means we are in a different space. I refer again to the stocktake processes around all this, both at the Cabinet Secretary level for officials and at the prime ministerial level for politicians: they have placed a real emphasis. I do not think the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and definitely the Prime Minister could be any clearer on the prioritisation and the expectation. I am really encouraged by how that has improved.

I have no doubt that that is the case with the Prime Minister and the people you have mentioned, but how would you measure the priorities for the actual Departments? You are citing the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary at the very top, but how high up are the small boat crossings at Department level?

Certainly in the FCDO it is very high up. As we speak, they are in the process of reorganising to have a much stronger migration-focused team. It all comes back to the single integrated plan that I mentioned, which is the way that I will be measuring our performance as we go forward. The elements within that plan and the things that we are measuring are not exclusively Border Security Command or Home Office; they are across Government. Different parts of Government will be delivering against that. The other place where I bring all that together departmentally is when the director-general-level individuals from all the Government Departments come into my system leadership board. Once the Bill has achieved Royal Assent, at that point I will formally set the priorities for the border security system, which clearly will be focused around OIC in this instance, and that then will be the other mechanism by which I will be able to measure the level of accountability and the results that are delivered.

Do you think it would need to get to that point before you would be aware of any duplications?

There is always a danger that there is going to be duplication. One of my objectives throughout has been to minimise that and reduce that down. Rob made the point earlier that when something becomes a priority, lots of people want to demonstrate that they are doing something about it, and the danger is that you diffuse the impact. One of the objectives, and I genuinely think one of the advantages, of creating the Border Security Command and the Border Security Commander role is that it focuses that in, and the responsibility is clearly on me to ensure that we eradicate that duplication—that we are not wasting effort. That also takes you to where we want to rationalise lines of command around things, because we need clear accountability, which is really key from my perspective.

Do you think there might there be a danger that because the command has been set up, some parts of the Department are saying, “That’s all right; it’s their job now and we’re off doing our own thing”?

I absolutely think that is a danger, but I genuinely don’t think that is what is happening. From a Home Office migration and borders perspective, I sit on the Home Office executive committee and there is no question but that the others sitting around that table all understand the priority that this has. It is very clear from the Ministers. But you are absolutely right: it is always that challenge—do you create a specialist team or do you require everybody to do this? I think we are doing both those things. We are requiring everybody to recognise that this is one of the very highest political priorities for the country, and at the same time we are creating this role and this organisation that has the responsibility to hold you to account for what you are doing. I very much see it as part of my role to make sure that everybody else recognises where they can make a contribution to the overall effort and the full spectrum of things we need to do to move the situation forward quickly.

I’m thinking back to my time as a Minister, and if I had this as a priority on every submission—“What role is this playing in reducing small boat crossings?”—that would focus minds. Do you think anything like that is happening? Are Ministers insisting that this is front and foremost in everybody’s mind?

Certainly in the Home Office there is no doubt that this is front and foremost, and definitely in the Foreign Office as well. I am not sure whether that goes for others in a less direct position. Again, I do not think there is a lack of clarity about the high level of importance this issue has. Through the way we operate, we are being very clear with people about the full range of things where everybody can play in. For some Government Departments it is not so much that they can do something that is going to put pressure into a scenario, but it may be that they can do something that can be part of the quid pro quo with another country that I am trying to get to take action. In all the agreements I have been involved in we have gone in saying, “It would be really helpful if you can do x or y,” and then the natural expectation is for them to ask, “What is it that the UK can do that is of interest?” The UK-Germany action plan is a really good example of where there are things that we were able to do on both sides. One of the consequences of that action plan is that in the very near future there will be a change of legislation in Germany that will open up all sorts of opportunities for us in equipment and law enforcement. It is very much in everybody’s minds, but it is very much my responsibility at the official level to ensure that it is very clear to my counterparts in all the Departments.

Of course, there is also the possibility that something that another Government Department does increases the pull factor. On that point, I should turn to Paul Kohler.

There is a plethora of push and pull factors.

There is.

Border Security Command obviously has no control over the push factors, and I cannot see it has much control over any of the pull factors either, so how can you smash the gangs? If there is demand, will criminality not always find ways to fulfil it? Are you therefore on a fool’s errand?

No, I don’t think it is a fool’s errand. The point is that we need to undermine the business model. Rob described a number of law enforcement actions—the five lines of effort with which we can make it much harder. Your point is well made. I have spent years working in serious organised criminality, and I could not have summarised it any better than to say that where there is a demand, there will be some criminals who will find a way to service it. We need to be pushing incredibly hard on all those five lines of effort that the NCA, primarily but not exclusively, is tackling. I will touch very briefly on the push factors. As part of the intelligence and assessment work that I have commissioned, we have a pretty clear understanding of the drivers in a lot of the countries and the actual reasons why people are coming over and arriving by small boat. A large part of what we are doing internationally is about trying to deal with some of those where we can. We cannot stop conflict and repressive regimes, but we can absolutely understand them and do what we can to support local leadership and other organisations where we can. On the pull factors, we need to be frank that there are pull factors that no one can control. The English language is a pull factor for some groups that will come over, and there is also the issue of the diaspora community, which is true. These phenomena are familiar in all the other European countries as well. We have to ensure that there is as little as possible in our systems, including our asylum system, that makes this particular place more attractive for someone than somewhere else. The Chair has already referred to the various bits of work going on in other parts of the Home Office, which I have the ability to intervene in or influence to make sure we are doing everything we can to ensure that is not pulling people over. We have to work our way through that. There is a range of other things that we have to consider. While accepting that it is very new, the pilot scheme is another element that will play into that.

On the schemes that are being employed or considered, what assessment have you made of the role of mandatory digital ID?

I have not personally done any direct work—that bit of work is being picked up elsewhere in the Home Office—but clearly I have been involved in the discussions and sessions . There is no doubt that having an ability to make it significantly harder for somebody to work illegally is absolutely key. I probably should have mentioned immediately another element relating to the pull factors. I have referred a couple of times to international taskforces, but we have also created the UK’s domestic organised immigration crime taskforce, which works in this country. It is a combination of the National Crime Agency, policing, immigration enforcement, HMRC and DWP—the range of Government agencies. The domestic OIC taskforce is all about bearing down on illegal working and on those who are in the country illegally, and bearing down on the illicit finance elements that we know add to the draw of people coming over. All that work is critical. We know that the right-to-work legislation has been strengthened, but the concept of a digital ID that makes it even harder for somebody to be in a position to try to work potentially has an advantage, and I think it is going to be really important. There is a consultation process that will begin to work through how that could work and add value to the work we are doing.

France has compulsory ID requirements, yet its black economy is bigger than the UK’s and its per capita number of undocumented immigrants is higher. What does that international comparison tell you?

Obviously, I have no particular detail on the France side. From my perspective, it is about doing everything that is available to be done to prevent someone feeling, and someone being fed the line by a smuggler, that if you get over here, you will be able to work and do what you want to do. Having the regulations and the capability to prevent that and—very importantly—signalling strongly that that will not be acceptable are positive things to do.

Should it not be evidence based rather than, “This looks good”?

I imagine that throughout the consultation process that element will emerge. A consultation process is going to happen, but it feels like it could potentially add value. I do not know the international comparisons specifically around digital ID or any other form of ID.

It is already illegal to employ somebody who is undocumented. Surely a deterrent, or a reduction in the pull factor, would be some very serious and high-profile arrests and fines, and employers being made to pay for this activity. If it is not enforced, it does not really matter if you have a digital ID or not. It is surely the enforcement that matters, and it is already a crime, so why is that not happening?

I agree with that—go on, Rob.

There is activity under way. It is a very good point. Part of the domestic taskforce is police, HMRC and NCA out on the ground. We have seen the first element of that, which was Machinize, which got a lot of publicity because of links to barber shops. Shops appearing in the high street that have a high turnover of cash—engaging in the grey economy—are being targeted more. That is part of applying the pressure with existing legislation. That is a point well made; it is making the most out of the current opportunity to bear down on that. You will see more of that from the domestic taskforce over the next few weeks.

There is also a risk for the vulnerable who are being exploited, who are actually victims of modern slavery. This needs to be joined up and have some very high-profile big fines and big sentences, with victims also being protected.

Precisely that.

Yes.

On the analysis of the pull factors, a lot of information is out there now with social media, the diversity of the flows and modern technology, and a lot of analysis is being done in the private sector. How much of that information threat assessment is getting into the Home Office and affecting, in real time, the decisions that you are taking? Are you confident that on immigration enforcement you have the sophistication to do that in the way that we have in other kinds of organised crime and terrorism in particular?

There is a huge amount of work. Again, one of the things that we have developed since the BSC came in is about pulling all those opportunities and all that information together in a way that we can use to inform our decision making. We have produced a number of those assessments. You are quite right: the open source intelligence is significant as well. That is an area where we are very much working through the process of how you do it—very similarly to what you have just described—in other threat areas, because lots of this exists there in open source. It is also so key because so much of that pull factor is the kind of narrative that is being pushed out there by the smugglers.

It sounds like you are saying that you recognise that it is developing.

It is developing.

And it needs to develop further. Are there plans to do that?

There are plans. Part of our overarching plan is—particularly picking in on the open source side as well—working across all the intelligence-gathering capabilities that we have to bring together the most comprehensive picture that then allows identification. That feeds entirely back into how I am able to look—against the plan, and the range of options or things we are delivering in the plan—at what the outcome is. Therefore, that links me very much back into the finance side as well, because I need to be financing the things we are seeing a direct outcome from. It is that whirring-around process of really understanding where it is having an impact—are we pushing in the right place? We all understand that the organised criminals will constantly adapt. They are incredibly adaptable, and we need to be able to understand that, and we need to be adapting ourselves in terms of the tactics and where we are pushing our effort.

Following on from what the Chair said, I am a firm believer that if a pull factor to the UK is that it will be quite easy to do illegal work—let’s be honest, we are not going to name them, but we would all know who they are—it is about enforcement. What worries me with the ID cards is a narrative beginning to grow for the public that if we bring them in, that will help with the small boat crossings. I don’t know whether Rob has an opinion on this, but I am sure organised crime will work a way round that as we move forward, if we do go forward with that. What do you think?

I will go before Rob. I have said this a number of times, but it is a really key point and a really key element of how I approach this: there is no one thing. I find it quite frustrating. An idea will emerge in the media and get pushed forward as the thing that is going to work. It is very clear that this is sophisticated, organised and adaptable criminality, and it has worked for a long time. It also has demand, as we have already said, so this is about looking at every opportunity that we have to make an impact and to chip away at that criminal business model. Is any one thing happening going to change that entirely? No, but it will make it harder. It is constantly making it harder. Really bearing down on illegal working, so that people see law enforcement activity and people are dealt with very visibly for illegal working—because so much of this is about what is visibly out there in terms of people’s perceptions—is another thing we should be doing, so I do kind of support it.

We have not yet seen anything specifically in terms of organised crime’s response to these proposals. We may start to see that as the consultation gathers pace, and people talk about it more. Fixing identity and crime is generally a good thing, because the reason fake ID cards and fake driving licences and all these things exist is so that people can operate under a different identity to break the law. Things that double down and make that harder are generally a good thing in terms of tackling crime. Time will tell, as the consultation develops and people start to consider this, whether we start to get intelligence around what people think of this.

This is another opportunity for the criminals: they can have a fake digital ID as well.

As I say, I am not directly leading the bit of work that is looking at that. I understand your point—Mr Kohler made that point about France as well. Again, it feels to me that having that ability to put further pressure, particularly around illegal working, is a positive. That then has to be absolutely supported by law enforcement, and that is exactly what we are doing through the UK organised immigration crime taskforce. It needs to work through the consultation process and look exactly at how it will develop.

I am conscious of the time. I know you do not have much longer, and we have an inquiry on the role that digital ID might play, so any evidence you want to submit would be gratefully received. We will obviously take evidence on this in the not-so-distant future.

We will look at that.

I have two more questions. First, there has been a welter of spending announcements. When all else fails, Governments tend to reach for their cheque book and throw some money at the problem. How are you making sure that money is being used strategically and judging the effects of that money spent?

Is it worth me talking through exactly where I am financially from the command, or shall I talk about how I am managing it—

I want to hear how you are actually managing it.

There was a budget identified for Border Security Command when I came in. As I said at the beginning, that budget was then extended to cover 2024/25. We also had the additional £100 million from the reserve in this year. All of that funding is coming in for Border Security Command or for border security. I then distribute out the vast majority of that funding to other parts of the system because that is where the actual delivery takes place. I have a team working for me within Border Security Command that is managing all the finance and financial accountability processes. My processes then work up into the permanent secretary’s accounting officer responsibilities in the Home Office, but, of the core budget’s £175 million, £101 million is going to the NCA for capability and operations—

I don’t need to know where the money is going. I want to understand how you are determining where best to use the money, and how you are making sure that you are getting value for money.

That links precisely into my single, integrated plan. The plan is identifying all those activities that we believe will get us to where we need to get to. The funding, whether it be the core £175 million or the additional £100 million, is allocated to allow us to deliver against the actions in those plans. I then have the team that is working up and managing the finance from my perspective. As I say, most of that money goes out. A significant part of that goes with the NCA, and we have now developed a joint team working to manage that money. You first manage the money, and you then have to manage the output to ensure that you are getting what you are paying for, whether that be technology or people, and that stage of the process is what works within what I have just described.

That is your role?

That is my role, and my team is managing that. I am responsible for that budget, and ultimately the permanent secretary is responsible for that budget as the accounting officer. That is very clear, and it is me ensuring that the money—either within the Home Office, other Departments, the CPS or the NCA—is accounted for and I can see the output. The real challenge, which is where we are doing a lot of work, is taking that to the next stage: identifying the outcome, and making sure that the money I am allocating, and what that is buying, is then having an outcome at the other end. We have been doing a considerable amount of work with the Home Office Analysis and Insight team, which is the statistical side within the Home Office, to really work up the methodology of how we can quantify, in outcome terms, the money that we are spending.

I see from last night’s letter that there are some 5,000 people employed in the border security system.

That is the overall system.

One thousand of them are funded directly by your command—he who pays the piper. Some 80% of the people in the system are not directly funded by the command. How do you actually make sure that you are getting that 80% to do what you want them to?

In reality, I do not think it is a practical way of operating to say that only the people I am paying for are delivering what we need to deliver. With the money that I have been given, it is really about allocating that to the most significant elements that will deliver against my plan. The management of the remainder is done through my governance arrangements, as the border security commander, to make sure that the various parts of the system are delivering what I need them to against the taskings that I am putting out there. I do not think we would ever be in a position where it was based purely on direct funding. The funding that I have needs to be targeted at the most significant things that I am most confident will deliver not only the outputs, but the outcomes. I have to manage the rest of the system through my governance arrangements.

Finally, I want to return to a question that I have asked Mr Jones about in a private session in the past: smashing the gangs. You have been trying to smash the drug gangs for decades and decades, and failed. In a previous session, the director general of the NCA said, “Oh, the difference is the infancy. The infancy of the gangs makes it easier.” As I put to Mr Jones in the past, he has said in The Times that the infancy of the gangs makes it more difficult. Can you explain that conundrum in a public session and convince me this time?

It is very simple; there are two levels to the comparison with the drugs market. First, the drugs market has been established for many years. Drugs really exploded in the ’70s, and the enforcement effort began with the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. That involves hundreds of thousands of people internationally in many different countries, and produces billions. The small boats problem is a subset of people smuggling. We are not saying, “We will stop people smuggling,” just like you are saying, “We haven’t stopped drug smuggling and drug abuse.” We are saying that the most damaging, harmful and egregious breach of border security at the moment is small boats. That part of organised immigration crime is new. It is five years old, which is relatively new in terms of a crime type. It has only really become a problem since 2020, and it involves a much smaller amount of people with bespoke equipment. As a target for law enforcement, that is very different from other targets. There is another comment about the comparison to the drug trade. On one level, the organised crime groups are different, but there is something that is very difficult about the small boats model, which is that most of the equipment is dual use and legal. It is only really now, in the last two years, that we have been trying to criminalise that business model with new legislation. If I have a drug consignment on the road, I can find it, do surveillance on it and anybody in possession of it or connected to it is arrestable—end of story. Small boats equipment is not like that. When I say it is more difficult to seize small boats equipment, that is what I mean, because we need to link that to the criminality behind it. The new measures that come through, which criminalise that business model, will make it easier for us to do it. They are the differences. Regarding what has been said about the immaturity of this model, this is the time to leverage the effort across all the areas we have talked about to push this back, because the longer it goes on, we see what happens, because organised crime copies what works. For many years, organised crime chose to smuggle people in lorries through canalised traffic. That is where we should contest this. That is the place to do it with protective security and protection for migrants. That is the place that it is hardest for organised crime to work, so we need to push it back in that direction and fight it there—not in the English channel, with all the associated risk to people and the opportunities for organised crime. That is the comparison with drugs.

We are coming to our final question, which is about international co-operation. We have covered some of it, but Chris Murray has questions on it.

We have already talked about the international stuff, but I wanted to ask this. The Government have been putting a lot of effort into international agreements and working with upstream partners. First, how important are those to your strategic planning? How much do your plans depend on them working, and what is your assessment of how effective they have been so far?

I have alluded to this, but I think they are absolutely critical. The only way that we can deal with this situation is to work in collaboration with other countries. There is a range of agreements. Since I have come in, the Calais group, which is France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, met in December 2024, when I was relatively new in the role. There were a range of actions and activities that came out of that group, which are effective and are constantly being pushed forward. I have talked about the Germany action plan, which is really key and, particularly once their legislation changes, will make a significant difference, coming to the points that were raised in the last question. There are other international agreements around that are working. When I first arrived, I was in Iraq and Kurdistan with the Home Secretary. Those were broader agreements around the range of serious and organised criminality, but particularly focused in and around organised immigration crime. All of those are really key. I tried to say this earlier, but you need that top-level political engagement to really drive it through with the other country, which I have been absolutely getting on all occasions in the last year. That then opens up the systems to work with the systems, and to be able to deliver. I was in that world when we went through the Brexit process, but I think we retained really good law enforcement to law enforcement co-operation, particularly with European partners. That is incredibly helpful for us.

Did we, though? That was going to be my next question. We do not have access to some of the databases any more, we are not in Europol and Eurojust in the way that we were, the Dublin system—these are all having to be reopened, no?

I will let Rob answer, but I was over in Europol a month or two ago.

We have more people in Europol than we have ever had. We have increased our footprint there. We work more closely with Interpol than we ever did. Yes, things changed after exit, but we have recovered those relationships in terms of law enforcement.

Are you confident that we are back to where we were in law enforcement?

It is a constant effort to keep up with all of the systems that were in use in the EU. We work very effectively with them, and we have mitigated the impact through a variety of methods. One of them is through Interpol and one is through more people on the platform in Europol. We thrive in those multilateral environments and people want to work with us. The exchange of information, joint operations and how we work together are all very positive.

That is interesting to hear, but because it is almost international diplomacy we are talking about with the multilateral institutions we had in the EU, do you find that the co-operation you are looking for gets built into a wider quid pro quo diplomatic discussion? When we are talking about other issues, like fisheries or tech, do you find that your asks are quite discrete, or do they become part of a wider international negotiation on a bilateral basis?

Sometimes they will be discrete. I tried to allude to this earlier: it has been quite a learning experience for me, having come from a law enforcement world, where I dealt with lots internationally but it would normally be case by case or operation by operation. You are absolutely right about this being in a diplomatic space. I think it has actually been quite helpful that you are in a quid pro quo, because there are lots of things that the UK is able to do that are really beneficial to other countries. Where you look at the big agreements, such as those that came out of the summit with France or between the Prime Minister and Chancellor Merz of Germany, there are a number that are clearly cross-governmental, and you will bring in the other factors. It is a mixture really. I will always try to make use of the opportunity that is presented by those bigger set pieces, and quite frankly, there has not been a single one of those since I have been in this job where migration has not been very high on the agenda for all those other countries that we are talking to. Equally, where it is discrete, we are able to have those discrete conversations when we need something specific, particularly around OIC.

I have one final question, because we are pushing our time. What is the next stage of international agreements here? If you could go to the Foreign Office with a shopping list of the treaties you want them to focus on, what countries are you looking at, what kinds of deals and what areas?

We are linked and engaged with all of the key countries that we need to be engaged with. I would go back to the point the Chair made around working collectively with the EU. I have met with people in all of those countries, and they all face this problem to one extent or another—generally fairly significantly in how it manifests itself. For me, getting ourselves into agreements where we are working multilaterally is really helpful. Obviously, we are doing stuff with France. I am doing stuff with France and Kurdistan and with France and Italy. We do the Calais group. We are operating in a range of ways. It seems to me that getting into a space where we are not doing repeated bilateral agreements would be beneficial.

I promise this is my final question. Are there other groups of countries operating together—I am thinking of the EU, but it could be other ones—that we are not in and that you would like to break into? I am not trying to relitigate Brexit; I am just trying to understand if there are other groups of countries that work together that we should be in.

As I say, we are in the Calais group. I was with countries from the Balkan region yesterday. The Balkans Six work really well, but we are very much a part of that. As I said, I was chairing one of the meetings a week ago today. There are none immediately from my perspective. The reason that I have designed these route-based taskforces is that they allow us to work not just individually with a country, but with a group of countries that have a common interest.

Mr Jones, you were very frank about the fact that you have been mitigating the issues post-Brexit. Can either of you point to any examples where Brexit has helped us to control our borders, helped you to do your job or helped us to reduce the issue of undocumented migrants? The answer might be that you cannot.

I cannot think of any immediately. That was not something I was anticipating or thinking about in advance.

Maybe you can write to us if you can think of any.

I will ponder that. I am very prepared to write to you and let you know.

I am not surprised by that answer.

Thank you very much. We have come in just under the time limit. We would appreciate regular updates, and data and metrics in particular, because we want you to succeed. We really do want to solve this problem. You will not find a single person around this table or anywhere else who does not want this to work. Regular updates would be great. I am sure that we will see you again soon. On that note, I will bring things to a close.