New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will only seize the initiative from Nigel Farage on asylum and small boats with a bigger, bolder approach combining ‘control and compassion’, argues a new British Future report. The research draws on international evidence showing that such an approach can work, with new Ipsos polling finding strong public support for a ‘routes and returns’ strategy at scale.
The report argues that a scaled-up ‘routes and returns’ approach, drawing on the US experience and based on the framework of the existing UK-France deal, could reduce Channel crossings by 75% over the next three years.
The report, ‘How we can actually stop the boats,’ analyses an underreported policy breakthrough in the fourth year of the Biden presidency. This reduced irregular crossings at the US-Mexico border by 81% from December 2023 to December 2024. The strategy integrated swift returns of asylum seekers who arrive without authorisation and controlled and capped legal routes offering refugee protection to those who qualify, together with strong international cooperation.
The authors urge the Home Secretary to learn from this example and expand the UK-France ‘one in one out’ deal by a factor of ten or twenty times. This would return to France the vast majority of those who arrive without permission in small boats, while at the same time welcoming a significant number of people with the right to claim asylum via an expanded, regularised route to the UK – undermining the smuggling gangs’ business model.
Former Labour Home Secretary Charles Clarke said:
“Sunder Katwala and Frank Sharry’s approach to ’stopping the boats’ demands serious and urgent consideration by the government. It is constructive, creative and establishes genuine control based on successful practical experience. Theirs is a realistic and humanitarian route to effective action.”
New polling by Ipsos for British Future finds that a majority of the public (55%) supports the proposal that “The UK should agree with France a capped number of people that the UK will admit into the UK each year to claim asylum by authorised routes, in return for France agreeing to take back those who cross the channel without permission.”
Strikingly, the policy is only opposed by 15% of the public, with majorities of Conservatives (64%) and Reform UK voters (53%) supportive, along with 62% of Labour voters and 58% of Lib Dems.
Even when a large number of authorised arrivals, 50,000 each year, is included in the policy proposal, public support still far eclipses opposition by 48% to 18%. Majorities of Conservatives (53%), Lib Dems (57%) and Labour voters (58%) support the proposal that “The UK should agree with France a capped number of people that the UK will admit into the UK each year to claim asylum by authorised routes, up to a maximum of 50,000, in return for France agreeing to take back those who cross the channel without permission”. Only among Reform UK voters does support fall below 50%, with 38% supporting a scheme capped at 50,000 arrivals – around the same as the 36% opposed.
Sunder Katwala, Director of British Future and co-author of the report, said:
“The new Home Secretary needs to seize the initiative on small boats with a real-world plan that is bold enough to have an impact but founded on hard evidence of what works. The foundations are in place in the UK-France deal. The US experience shows what can be achieved when this approach is delivered at scale.
“The public would support this: they want action on Channel crossings but still want Britain to protect refugees in need. Most people would prefer an orderly, controlled and humane system to the populist threat to tear everything up, which appeals only to a vocal minority.”
The authors argue that significantly scaling-up the UK-France scheme would change the behaviour of people seeking asylum and thus undermine the business model of people smugglers. As in the US, people would no longer be willing to pay smugglers for a dangerous border crossing with a high chance of immediate return when there is a safer, regular route available to them.
British Future Associate Frank Sharry, former lead immigration advisor to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign in the US, and co-author of the report, said:
“Many argue that governments cannot deliver the control voters want on immigration unless they rip up treaties and throw refugees under the bus. But the policy lesson from America’s experience last year is clear: a mix of international cooperation, credible deterrence and managed legal pathways produces results. The political lesson is also clear: if Labour is to thwart the populists who weaponise migration in pursuit of power, a humane and workable solution to the small boats crisis is essential.”
Read the ‘How we can actually stop the boats’ report here.
