TRIGGERnometry - ＂I Policed the Border for 40 Years - the System is Broken＂ - Tony Smith CBE

00:00:01.000 I was brought up, really, in quite a tough, you know, enforcement world.

00:00:06.000 This was well after the 1951 conventions were agreed

00:00:10.000 on the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention.

00:00:13.000 And we've gone from that to what we have now where,

00:00:17.000 to a lot of people, Tony, it feels like we don't have a border anymore.

00:00:21.000 What's happened?

00:00:22.000 Asylum trumps border control.

00:00:24.000 Somebody can literally get within the 12-mile zone, 1.00

00:00:28.000 mention the magic word, and we've been 24 or 48 hours

00:00:31.200 be in one of our communities with minimal vetting.

00:00:34.840 The most important thing, though, you should do

00:00:36.720 is break the business model.

00:00:38.200 How do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place?

00:00:41.200 The only way you've got to do that is so you're not going to get in.

00:00:44.360 Sola Braverman, who was here recently,

00:00:46.160 her argument is you can't deal with this until you leave the ECHI.

00:00:50.340 No, you do need to do that,

00:00:52.340 but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that.

00:00:54.760 So even that's not enough?

00:00:56.280 No.

00:00:56.520 put all this international law stuff

00:00:58.180 because it's hopelessly out of date.

00:01:00.060 It's broken. It's completely broken.

00:01:02.380 It's no longer delivering what the asylum system 0.96

00:01:04.700 was meant to deliver in the first place. 1.00

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00:01:30.040 Tony Smith, welcome to Trigonometry

00:01:32.320 Great to have you on the show

00:01:33.780 You had a full 40 year career

00:01:36.720 In handling the immigration 1.00

00:01:38.740 Into this country

00:01:39.900 Particularly border security

00:01:41.040 Eventually rising to be in charge of all of it

00:01:43.160 The border force

00:01:43.860 The question we really want to ask you is

00:01:46.780 What on earth is going on?

00:01:48.520 But before we get to that

00:01:49.940 Talk us through your career

00:01:51.620 Tell us what you learned, what you saw

00:01:54.080 or how you went through what people should know about the border force in this country

00:01:57.840 and the way the borders are managed more broadly?

00:02:00.040 Yeah, OK, so I'm from London.

00:02:02.860 I didn't go to university.

00:02:04.760 I got my A-levels. I didn't know what to do.

00:02:07.140 I went and saw my careers manager, and he said,

00:02:09.240 well, have you thought about the civil service?

00:02:10.600 I didn't really want to join in the police

00:02:12.040 because quite a lot of my relatives were in the police.

00:02:13.760 I thought, I don't really want to do that, but I'd do something a bit different.

00:02:16.160 So they recommended, well, I don't try customs or something like that.

00:02:19.740 So I put my application in.

00:02:21.080 before I knew it, I was appointed to the Home Office as an executive officer. And I started

00:02:26.540 off dealing with extensions of stay from aliens. We used to call them aliens. We had aliens in

00:02:31.420 Commonwealth back then. And there wasn't much control over Commonwealth back then. But the

00:02:35.640 aliens would apply to stay for studies or work or whatever. And you'd stamp their passport with 0.99

00:02:40.240 another year or two years or three years or refuse that. And then once I got into it, I started to

00:02:45.140 realised that actually the real work, the real job was done at the border in the immigration

00:02:50.960 service, so I became an immigration officer, which is a statutory role, actually, which

00:02:56.360 gives you powers, pretty strong powers, actually, to arrest people, detain people, remove people.

00:03:03.080 And I got posted at Heathrow Airport, and I sat on the line there for about five years.

00:03:07.580 You know, people would come up to my desk, and they'd have to show me their passport,

00:03:10.540 their landing card.

00:03:11.920 I'd ask them questions about what you're coming here for,

00:03:14.540 who are you, what you're doing.

00:03:16.600 And, well, if I didn't like the look of them,

00:03:18.620 I just thought if something's funny, I could take them down,

00:03:20.580 do the bags, have a look in there,

00:03:22.300 and then make a judgement call about whether or not

00:03:24.140 they were admissible to the country.

00:03:26.440 And if not, then the power was vested in law,

00:03:29.700 by law, Schedule II Immigration Act, in me,

00:03:32.860 to refuse entry on the authority of my chief.

00:03:36.700 So, well, I don't like the look of this guy.

00:03:38.680 You know, he says he's coming on holiday,

00:03:39.660 but I've just looked in his bag and he's got his waiter's uniform

00:03:42.500 and his alarm clock with him and all his references,

00:03:44.660 so I don't think he's coming on, to be honest.

00:03:47.240 So it was a credibility issue, and if I didn't believe him,

00:03:50.180 I wasn't satisfied, I'd just send him straight back.

00:03:53.060 And so I stayed at the airport for a while,

00:03:55.260 then I moved into London to Immigration Enforcement, 0.99

00:03:57.660 that is to say dealing with people that are already in the country

00:03:59.980 that got through somehow, that might be here illegally,

00:04:03.140 did a lot of work with the police on arresting suspected overstayers,

00:04:07.060 workers in breach illegal entrance a little bit of organized crime stuff and uh same thing really

00:04:12.820 if i found someone in london in the 80s early 80s who who didn't have a passport and couldn't

00:04:17.760 explain how they were in the country i could just like arrest them and detain them and send them

00:04:22.640 back no call which is why the police quite liked us because the police would have to go through the

00:04:27.040 criminal justice system have to prosecute and go get a magistrate and get a recommendation for

00:04:30.760 deportation whereas we had these powers to remove people summarily and uh yeah we we removed people

00:04:36.880 on letters. I'd write a letter to the

00:04:38.840 captain of the aircraft to say this person's illegally

00:04:40.820 in the UK. Please take him back

00:04:42.940 to wherever he was from 0.98

00:04:44.140 and give him a bit of paper

00:04:46.760 with his photo on saying to the chief immigration

00:04:48.960 officer in Delhi Airport,

00:04:50.620 wherever it was, and they would go

00:04:52.660 back. So I was brought up really

00:04:54.600 in quite a tough enforcement

00:04:56.740 world where actually immigration enforcement

00:04:58.780 was really quite powerful. I just

00:05:00.640 remember this was in the 70s and the

00:05:02.660 80s. This was well after the 1951

00:05:05.060 and conventions were agreed on the European Convention on Human Rights

00:05:09.020 and the Refugee Convention, but nobody claimed asylum back then.

00:05:13.300 Nobody claimed human rights. 0.75

00:05:14.680 I mean, mostly they just say, oh, fair enough, now, good cop,

00:05:17.840 can I go and get some money out of the ATM to take home with me

00:05:22.220 and pick up a few bits and pieces, which we're usually trying to accommodate,

00:05:25.240 and then they go back quietly.

00:05:26.640 So I was brought up to believe that I actually had a really powerful role

00:05:31.180 at the border in deciding who came in and who didn't come in,

00:05:34.300 and in country, a really powerful role in who got to stay here

00:05:37.820 and who got deported.

00:05:39.380 So I did all that up until the 80s, and then I started to climb the ladder.

00:05:43.980 I went into headquarters, Immigration Service headquarters,

00:05:47.260 where you run into more sort of home office civil servants,

00:05:50.940 which were dealing with broader home affairs issues

00:05:53.620 and how immigration felt with that.

00:05:55.520 Got promoted to Chief Immigration Officer,

00:05:58.020 then went back into enforcement as a chief,

00:06:01.300 then went up again the next level, inspector,

00:06:03.500 Again, back in the headquarters, back out to operations.

00:06:06.220 So I did quite a bit of operational policy and quite a lot of frontline operations up to inspector.

00:06:11.100 Now, when you get to the next level, that was assistant director.

00:06:13.920 That's a grade seven, which is a civil service generic grade.

00:06:18.080 You know, there wasn't really there was an assistant director immigration, but you were still an assistant director.

00:06:23.000 Everything kind of equalised so people could move around between immigration and other departments, customs, revenue, health, agriculture.

00:06:33.020 But I stayed in it because I thought, well, I've been doing it for 20 years now.

00:06:35.880 And I actually quite know quite a lot about this.

00:06:38.280 I don't really want to be one of these generalists that moves around Whitehall.

00:06:42.280 I want to stay in my swim lane.

00:06:44.340 And then it came to a point in about the late 80s, early 90s,

00:06:51.180 where we started to see a lot of asylum applications coming in.

00:06:54.840 People were arriving mainly on the ferries across from Dover without documents and claiming asylum. 0.82

00:07:01.100 And my immediate, well, we'd send them back to France, right? 1.00

00:07:03.660 I mean, I don't care about them.

00:07:05.380 No, no, but then the lawyers came in, you know, the legal advice came in,

00:07:10.820 the policy makers came in and said, no, no, Tony, you can't do that.

00:07:14.680 Because if they're claiming persecution, they've got a legitimate claim for protection

00:07:19.540 and you have to at least consider the claim.

00:07:22.200 So I said, well, all right, we'll do that then at Dover.

00:07:24.380 You know, we'll put a team down there and we'll process them.

00:07:27.040 And then we'll send them, but no, no, you can't do that either.

00:07:29.300 that has to be referred away from the border into the Home Office.

00:07:32.700 This led to a huge backlog of asylum cases

00:07:35.820 where people were turning up at the border

00:07:37.580 without any documents on the ferries

00:07:39.840 and then claiming asylum and we could send them back.

00:07:43.500 And so I took on something called the Asylum Liaison Unit.

00:07:46.820 They created a whole new department in the Home Office

00:07:49.180 called the Asylum Directorate,

00:07:50.620 who weren't immigration officers but were charged

00:07:53.100 with the duty of considering all these asylum applications.

00:07:55.360 So I did that for a while.

00:07:57.180 I did a lot of stuff on asylum in the late 90s,

00:08:01.380 and then I got selected to go to Canada

00:08:05.080 on an exchange programme with the Canadian immigration.

00:08:08.480 And the idea really was that I was going to learn a little bit more

00:08:11.620 about how they deal with refugees, how they deal with, you know,

00:08:14.940 they are a country of immigration.

00:08:16.980 Their top priority is to take people into Canada.

00:08:18.880 It's a big country, and they want people in the provinces.

00:08:21.720 So I wanted to learn that, but no sooner had I got there,

00:08:24.180 and then 9-11 happened.

00:08:25.200 and that's another story but I mean it's a long story but I was director of ports of entry in

00:08:31.540 Canada which put me right on the front foot of border security in Canada and therefore North

00:08:37.640 America spent a lot of time over after 9-11 talking to the Americans about how we're going

00:08:41.860 to improve targeting checking people coming into the country making sure that they were

00:08:45.820 not coming for you know nefarious reasons terrorism crime whatever built a lot of targeting units

00:08:51.720 there and then i came back my three years were up came back to the uk and they promoted me again to

00:08:57.160 become director of ports of entry in the immigration service which was managing all of the border

00:09:01.880 controls at all of the ports of entry now you know i came back we still had in fact while i'd been

00:09:06.360 away we'd had a massive increase in asylum while i was in canada it went up from about 25 30 000

00:09:12.760 to over 100 000 applications in about 2002 2003 and there was a lot of work going on to by the

00:09:20.520 the government of the day to try and get asylum intake down i walked back into that and the main

00:09:26.060 tactic the government then used was to put the border abroad so we we did agree with the french

00:09:31.780 that we would have what we called the juxtaposed controls we would put our own officers in calais

00:09:36.460 and dunkirk to check passports before people could get on the ferry in the same way as we do with

00:09:40.960 planning so that kind of worked because then they started trying to get in the back of lorries and

00:09:45.300 we agreed with the french we put dog teams out there and surveillance teams and equipment to

00:09:49.060 search the lorries. So we managed to get asylum intake right down from about 100,000 to about

00:09:53.680 25,000 over two years, which was pretty good. That was a main target. That was a target to reduce 0.93

00:09:58.520 asylum intake. And then the UK Border Agency was formed. So everything changed. They abolished the

00:10:05.540 Immigration Service. They created the UK Border Agency. We merged with customs because prior to

00:10:12.020 that, customs did goods and we did people. So, you know, if I had someone at the airport, I'd tap down

00:10:17.200 And customs officer would do the search in case they dealt with the drugs and, you know, the illicit materials and the copyright materials.

00:10:23.380 And we dealt with a person. But then they decide that's a lot of countries have gone that way now and created a single border agency that manages both people and goods.

00:10:31.780 We did that around about 2007, 2008. So we created the UKBA.

00:10:38.060 And then I was put in charge of London and the southeast as a regional director.

00:10:43.400 Now I'm quite a senior at the food chain now, somehow.

00:10:46.540 I've managed to get the right way up to it.

00:10:48.940 So I'm now a senior director in the Home Office

00:10:50.680 with responsibility for asylum casework,

00:10:54.860 asylum removals and enforcement.

00:10:57.060 So between 2007, 2009, 2010,

00:11:00.000 we did a lot of work on asylum removals,

00:11:04.380 which is probably something a lot of people

00:11:05.640 would be really quite interested in these days.

00:11:07.760 And we were able to get asylum removals up

00:11:10.320 very considerably back then.

00:11:11.840 and that was mainly because I ran something called the Third Country Unit

00:11:15.440 and I also ran something called the Detained Fast Track System.

00:11:20.020 And those two systems, although they were national,

00:11:22.480 they were under my command in London and South East. 0.59

00:11:25.340 If people came in from a third country,

00:11:27.680 if we felt the case was manifestly unfounded, 1.00

00:11:31.160 we would keep them detained.

00:11:32.520 We wouldn't release them. We'd keep them locked up.

00:11:34.880 We got an extension in our detention accommodation

00:11:37.320 and we moved the process into the detention centres.

00:11:40.320 So we brought the officers into the detention centre, you know, so that we had caseworkers in there working from there.

00:11:47.160 So they had close contact with the inmates and even appeals courts.

00:11:51.060 We moved in there and that worked quite well between 2007, 2008, 2009.

00:11:55.920 So did a pretty good job on getting asylum removals up, getting asylum, keeping asylum intake down.

00:12:01.700 But then there was always this thing called the Olympics that was coming along in 2012.

00:12:05.220 and what we were finding, Stratford was on my patch

00:12:08.380 and what we were finding was lots and lots of people

00:12:10.560 turning up at Stratford looking for work

00:12:13.960 but they had forged documents, like they had dodgy ID cards

00:12:18.000 so the police called and said, well we don't really want people

00:12:21.700 without the proper credentials working on the Olympic party

00:12:25.360 and I don't know what they might do, do you?

00:12:27.060 So I put a team down there of forgery experts and interviewers

00:12:30.240 so we made sure we did a proper check on anybody

00:12:32.260 who got a job down on the site

00:12:33.600 and that got bigger and bigger and bigger and then we had so in the end my boss said i mean

00:12:38.480 look tony we need someone on the olympics like a full-time we need someone like you

00:12:43.120 yeah bought you to manage all the border security that supports eventually and the inland and the

00:12:47.900 accreditation all the screening and checking because we really really don't want any bad

00:12:52.240 guys coming over here and ruin our olympics right so so i then went full-time onto london 2012

00:12:57.560 senior responsible officer for the border security agenda working with police military other

00:13:04.120 stakeholders and then when it came to the games i was gold command considering every threat every

00:13:09.960 day deciding who got through didn't get through how we managed it and you know that went well

00:13:14.440 actually that was i don't know if you remember london 2012 but it was a fantastic event everybody

00:13:19.320 was looking at what was going on on the track in the field nobody was looking at us and which is

00:13:23.560 what we wanted and uh as a result i was very proud i did a great job not just me a lot of other

00:13:29.960 people i got my um cbe for my majesty and i've done my 40 years 41 years and i thought i said

00:13:35.960 job done good career good life pension that's the end of it but it didn't kind of end there

00:13:41.880 because as i left the home secretary of the day theresa may took me for a drink actually just over

00:13:48.280 in house of commons and said what are you going to do now i said well i don't know really i've

00:13:52.360 I've done my 40 years here, but I don't know.

00:13:53.860 So, well, there's a couple of things you could help with.

00:13:55.160 I mean, you know so much about this.

00:13:57.140 It wouldn't be bad if we could keep in touch with you.

00:13:59.160 If there's any policy issues, Brexit, for example,

00:14:02.720 you know, that you could help us with outside,

00:14:05.500 then that would be good.

00:14:06.220 And also, we haven't really got anyone like you to do media.

00:14:09.400 Like, we've got ex-army veterans if there's a war,

00:14:12.140 and we've got ex-policemen if there's a riot,

00:14:13.980 but we haven't really been like you who could talk about something

00:14:15.920 going wrong at the border, which is what sucked me

00:14:18.500 into the whole media business and and uh international stuff as well i was being invited

00:14:24.420 to go and share conferences around the world on border management border security sharing you know

00:14:28.740 best practice with other countries and i'm still doing that now to this day even though i've so

00:14:34.260 i've been in the borders business really for about 50 years and i've kind of just tried to stay

00:14:39.300 in my swim lane i see a lot of people now who come in and out of this business with lots of

00:14:44.260 ideas and why don't you do that why don't you do that it's not a complicated business actually and

00:14:47.780 I thought, well, I don't really want to go off

00:14:49.060 and tell someone how to police the city.

00:14:50.880 I don't want to tell someone how to fight a war.

00:14:52.540 Actually, that's not my baby.

00:14:54.780 But if you want to know how to run a border,

00:14:56.140 then I'm probably the right bloke to talk to.

00:14:58.020 And so that's why I still do this and I still talk about,

00:15:01.220 I've written a book about borders.

00:15:02.400 I do a lot of media commentary about borders

00:15:05.400 and I'm still really interested in the subject.

00:15:07.240 So thank you for having me on.

00:15:09.040 Well, with that introduction,

00:15:10.740 you're the perfect person to talk to

00:15:12.260 because all we do is talk about this issue

00:15:14.920 quite a lot of the time.

00:15:16.200 and we don't we're not experts you are um and what you described to me is extraordinary because

00:15:23.080 you're not an old man you're and yet in the course of your not just life but your career

00:15:28.240 you we have gone as a country from what you were describing to my even my modern sensibilities in

00:15:35.880 the 80s it was like oh one man on his whim sort of goes oh i don't like the the look of this guy

00:15:40.700 off you go. To our modern sensibilities, that seems almost extreme. And we've gone from that

00:15:46.520 to what we have now, where to a lot of people, Tony, it feels like we don't have a border anymore.

00:15:53.640 What's happened? I'll be honest. If I call a business and get a voicemail that sounds like

00:15:59.060 it was recorded in 2015 by someone who has since emigrated, I hang up. I don't leave a message.

00:16:04.420 Nobody leaves a message anymore. What do I look like, a professional? And here's the uncomfortable

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00:17:19.500 quo.com slash trig. That's Q-U-O dot com slash trig. Yeah. So the Immigration Act 1971 is still

00:17:30.280 enforced believe it or not that was the one that came in 1173 and that's still the main

00:17:34.480 legislation but what's happened is it's been chopped and changed and chopped and changed

00:17:38.760 over generations now yeah generations i suppose if you go to the 80s and 90s the asylum problem

00:17:45.180 was the first thing that i thought i went to say i'm not saying my boss i don't think we

00:17:49.080 cracked this one because we had cracked a lot of stuff we were cracking bogus marriages we were

00:17:53.220 cracking bogus colleges with the police we were doing a lot on immigration crime but when people 0.89

00:17:57.680 started claiming asylum this whole new army of people came along and appeared on the scene

00:18:02.480 you know from from the judiciary and from you know pressure groups and refugee organizations

00:18:08.800 who challenged the whole process that i described to you that i used to operate so well we can't

00:18:12.480 have immigration officers doing this anymore it's not okay because they're not qualified to judge

00:18:17.760 whether or not someone's in fear of persecution and it's in con it's in direct conflict with the

00:18:23.120 the Refugee Convention. And so that's when the asylum thing took, that's what the main

00:18:28.160 watershed was. It was in the late 80s, 90s, we started to get more and more people turning up

00:18:32.600 at the border. And the fact of asylum trumps border control. Asylum is the magic word. I don't

00:18:40.400 know if I'm giving away too many secrets here, but I think it's common knowledge now

00:18:43.580 out there pretty well. Look, if you turn up at the border and you get stopped, claim asylum.

00:18:49.080 Why wasn't that happening before? No one worked out that this was the case?

00:18:53.120 worked it out. And no one even thought that it was relevant, because why would it be relevant?

00:18:56.780 I mean, you know, the powers in Schedule 2 were conferred. I mean, no one questioned the fact

00:19:01.000 that, well, someone, I mean, we did, that's not to say we didn't have refugees that were brought

00:19:04.840 over here. We've always had refugees that were brought over here, you know, going back to

00:19:09.080 Idi Amin. And, you know, so there would be a programme where you could say, well, there is a 1.00

00:19:13.940 cohort of people in that country that we want to legally bring in as refugees. But nobody

00:19:18.320 turned up at the border and just said, oh, I want asylum.

00:19:22.260 This kind of just caught in and took off to a point

00:19:25.620 where people started to realise, well, actually,

00:19:28.000 that's all you've got to do.

00:19:29.120 If you can get here and claim asylum,

00:19:31.140 that at least stops them from removing you instantly,

00:19:34.540 which is what I used to do.

00:19:36.040 Then there's an old judgement called the Hardy Al-Singh judgement,

00:19:38.980 which goes back to the 80s, which said that, yes,

00:19:42.040 we will let the immigration officers detain people

00:19:45.120 for more than 24, 48 hours,

00:19:47.440 but you have to demonstrate you've got a realistic chance

00:19:50.320 of removing this person within a reasonable amount of time, basically.

00:19:53.020 That's what the courts decided.

00:19:54.500 Of course, we couldn't do that anymore

00:19:55.600 because the asylum application would come in

00:19:58.020 and then by the time you got around the interview,

00:19:59.780 there'd be some other evidence that was incidental

00:20:01.440 and then they'd claim something else.

00:20:02.540 And so the process, we got elongated to the point

00:20:05.740 that we couldn't demonstrate to a court

00:20:07.580 that we could remove this person quickly.

00:20:09.100 So you're suddenly now under pressure

00:20:10.740 to grant them temporary admission into the country.

00:20:14.440 And so that's where it began to go wrong

00:20:16.100 is that we were starting to get more and more people turning up,

00:20:18.820 claiming asylum at the border,

00:20:20.680 and getting into a system that kind of grew exponentially

00:20:26.360 with the casework to the point where it became

00:20:28.980 almost unmanageable in the early noughties.

00:20:32.400 And that's why I say the tactics of the government at a day,

00:20:35.740 and I'm going back to early 2003, 2004,

00:20:39.380 was to say this is really important.

00:20:41.820 What we need to do is reduce asylum intake. 0.61

00:20:44.940 That's the movement of the border into France

00:20:46.780 and checking people before they can get on a plane to come here,

00:20:49.440 finding an airline if they brought someone without a passport,

00:20:51.940 you know, to make sure the checks are pushed out, if you like,

00:20:55.020 or push the border out.

00:20:56.300 And for those that are here, start doing things like 0.83

00:20:58.920 the Tainfast Tracks third country unit to get people removed.

00:21:01.540 And the idea was that ultimately we would be able to turn the tide on this

00:21:04.680 and actually get more people going back than the people that were coming in.

00:21:07.920 That was a target of the government back then,

00:21:10.240 and I worked on that for a while.

00:21:11.460 But it never really, we've always had illegal entry.

00:21:15.200 And there was always, the human traffickers, the smugglers won't give up.

00:21:19.040 I mean, because this is lucrative business for them.

00:21:20.900 They're not going to just say, oh, blind man, we'd better stop taking people to the UK.

00:21:24.040 They're still going to look for the markets.

00:21:26.140 So there still was illegal entry going on all through that time.

00:21:29.520 We got it under control, but it was still illegal entry.

00:21:31.800 But they were coming in lorries, coming through the common travel area,

00:21:35.080 sometimes coming on dodgy passports.

00:21:36.620 But we've always had illegal entry.

00:21:37.940 So we would move our, you know, our response teams around to try and deal with those particular problems.

00:21:43.480 But we did keep it under control for quite a while.

00:21:46.060 But I think what happened after that is, and this is after I retired, you know, 2013, 2014,

00:21:51.980 we started seeing more and more asylum applications springing up all over the place in the UK.

00:21:58.780 The numbers, the asylum intake started to creep up again.

00:22:03.200 And fortunately for me, before, you know, before the boat, I was, I'd retired before the boat started coming.

00:22:07.940 I was always told, don't worry about it,

00:22:10.180 because I had a threat assessment every week on the border,

00:22:13.120 and I said, well, what about people coming in small boats?

00:22:15.480 I mean, are we protected?

00:22:17.100 And all the experts would say, don't worry about that, Governor.

00:22:19.480 That's all right.

00:22:19.940 They won't be able to get across there on a little boat.

00:22:21.580 It's too choppy and, you know, major shipping lanes.

00:22:24.120 So it was sort of, it was a risk,

00:22:25.700 but it was never seen as a real problem.

00:22:27.700 And it only really took off in 2018, as you know,

00:22:30.020 when the boat started coming across.

00:22:31.540 And I think this brought it into public focus much more

00:22:34.600 because it's highly visible now.

00:22:36.380 there was always illegal entrants coming in lorries and claiming asylum but you didn't get to see it

00:22:40.280 really because you know sometimes you get pictures of people running off up the motorway or something

00:22:44.160 and police chasing them but not a lot now every day every day really if you see a boat it's going

00:22:49.980 to be on the national media everyone's counting the numbers everyone's looking at the government

00:22:53.320 what you're going to do is a highly highly visible form of of illegal entry and the other bit that

00:22:59.080 i should mention which really worries me is the security element whatever your views are on on

00:23:04.900 immigration and whether or not you think we should allow people you know who come from pretty

00:23:08.940 horrible countries in to claim asylum in this country from France you've really got to screen

00:23:15.100 people properly you have to thoroughly screen I spent most of my life on vetting screening 0.85

00:23:20.200 you don't we haven't got any technology that can tell you what's in someone's mind all you've got 1.00

00:23:26.320 when you're dealing with a newly arrived migrant we're not and that's why they throw their documents 0.99

00:23:30.400 away i mean if you want to throw the passport well because that gives you a story the passport gives 0.99

00:23:35.120 you your name your date of birth your nationality your travel these are all things that we look at

00:23:39.280 at the ports of entry to assess you or when you're applying for a visa that's all gone you've got

00:23:43.920 nothing all you've got is the person's word for what he's doing here that's it you can only talk

00:23:48.960 to the person you can take the biometrics so we do fingerprints and face but there's no global

00:23:53.280 watch list of fingerprints and faces that's not really that's going to spot every criminal every

00:23:58.400 person and even if they haven't got any previous how do you know what they're going to do how do

00:24:02.880 you know how this person is going to behave once they're through the border and in the country if

00:24:07.920 you're going to let them in at all i would like to see hardy l singh reversed i want them detained

00:24:13.920 i want them detained for a lot longer than manston 24 hours is a short-term holding facility you could

00:24:19.680 so you can you get a boatload of 500 in a day you're scrambling to get the cases cleared because

00:24:25.200 you get sued for unlawful detention if you keep them in manston for more than 24 hours now if you

00:24:30.700 haven't got anywhere else to move them to to another immigration detention center and like

00:24:34.540 the prisons they're pretty full you're under pressure to grant temporary admission pretty 0.88

00:24:38.620 quickly and so that's why people are coming into the communities really really quickly

00:24:42.800 there's another team in the home office that are responsible for moving them out of manston and

00:24:47.360 finding them places to stay either in hmos or hotels or wherever it may be in the country but

00:24:52.580 you're not doing the screening to the extent

00:24:55.000 that I would like to see it done.

00:24:56.920 And there was an HMIC report on this a couple of years ago

00:24:59.520 on debriefing, and I would like to see us hold people

00:25:01.880 for a lot, lot longer than that

00:25:04.140 until we're absolutely as certain as we can be

00:25:07.040 that they don't present a threat

00:25:08.880 because some of them clearly do present a threat, don't they?

00:25:12.240 And we know that. We have evidence of that now.

00:25:14.420 So we're not just seeing people coming in blatantly

00:25:17.160 in breach of our immigration laws,

00:25:18.620 and they are illegal entrants, whatever anyone else tells you.

00:25:21.000 they are illegal entrants as defined in section 33 of the immigration act they've come without a

00:25:25.100 passport that's the breach of the immigration law so all other things being they should be

00:25:29.360 removable as a legal entrance but because they claim beside them nonetheless you've got to make

00:25:34.460 sure as best you can to protect your people but you're protecting the border that's your job that's

00:25:39.360 why i lived for to protect the communities and that's what i would be expected my role to be

00:25:43.920 and if something went wrong which quite often it did quite often we let someone prove that we

00:25:47.420 shouldn't have done because someone made a mistake and i used to get beaten up for that

00:25:50.060 quite often there'd be a long queue at the airport

00:25:52.060 and I'd get in trouble for that

00:25:53.200 so you're constantly trying to balance

00:25:56.800 facilitation and control

00:25:58.380 but what really worries me now

00:26:00.000 is this process that we've established

00:26:02.740 where somebody can literally

00:26:04.540 get within the 12 mile zone

00:26:06.460 mention the magic word

00:26:08.140 and within 24 or 48 hours

00:26:09.900 be in one of our communities

00:26:11.240 with minimal vetting

00:26:13.600 now the home office say

00:26:14.280 oh we do thoroughly check

00:26:15.380 they do what they can

00:26:16.300 to be fair to them

00:26:17.120 they do what they can

00:26:18.360 they will interview the person

00:26:19.940 and try and figure out if it's a pilot or if it's evidence he's a facilitator,

00:26:23.400 then we'll prosecute him.

00:26:24.400 But by and large, the majority of them are going to get temporary admission

00:26:28.500 with very limited screening.

00:26:31.060 And then the more you're going to see these stories of, you know,

00:26:34.020 the bad guys, the really bad ones coming in and committing atrocities

00:26:37.160 in this country, then the more people are going to lose faith in our border

00:26:42.020 and say, well, we haven't got control of our border.

00:26:44.740 And that's what we are seeing playing out right now is every day,

00:26:48.300 you know I'm getting bids from the media to go on and say well Tony how come this guy got through

00:26:51.520 and how come why didn't why didn't you send him back when he you know I don't work there anymore

00:26:55.860 but why didn't why didn't they send him back why didn't they stop nothing you know if they could

00:26:59.200 they would you know I stand up at a border for it's one of the reasons I do media the office I

00:27:03.320 know the office says they will do what you know like if they could do what I used to do they would

00:27:07.420 do it but they can't because their hands are tied because of the legislative framework and the

00:27:11.660 operational policy guidelines that we've got in place right now that's the problem we've got

00:27:15.420 ourselves into and that's why I think this has become such a top pocket if not I mean you guys

00:27:19.800 would know better than me probably one of the major talking points in politics these days is

00:27:23.700 border security and a big focus on the small boats because it's so highly visible. Tony there's going

00:27:29.360 to be people listening to this all over the country who quite rightly get very upset and what

00:27:37.080 they think is the system's broken and you've got people coming over who've been prepped on how to

00:27:43.720 game that system. Is that a fair assessment? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. People are right.

00:27:49.580 And people are right to ask questions about it, because that is exactly what's happened.

00:27:53.320 The human smugglers, the first thing they'll tell you to do, and I know this because I've

00:27:56.640 sat in debriefings with them, you know, we're NC, some of them will talk, and say, yeah,

00:28:00.640 I was told to tell you that. I was told to throw my passport away. That's the first rule.

00:28:05.640 Hardly anyone turns up with a passport. Well, where's the passport gone? You're telling

00:28:09.180 me they all fleed war, you know, they got burnt in a war. Now, the passports are around 0.63

00:28:13.380 And quite often we find them they've been brought over by somebody else

00:28:15.640 or it's in the background somewhere, but they haven't got that on them.

00:28:18.320 Most of their mobile devices they've thrown away as well

00:28:21.200 because the smugglers tell them to.

00:28:23.840 Because if I don't know who you are and I don't know where you're from,

00:28:26.820 I don't know your background, all I've got to go on

00:28:29.400 is this story you tell me, right?

00:28:31.360 Now, the story you're going to tell me is you cannot send me back

00:28:34.900 to Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, because it's not safe to send me there.

00:28:43.260 It's really hard for you to say those are safe countries

00:28:45.320 because they're not safe countries.

00:28:47.160 But does that mean because that's not a safe country,

00:28:50.280 I can't send you back there?

00:28:51.380 You chose to get in a small boat and come here, right,

00:28:54.960 without a passport, which is a criminal offence.

00:28:58.200 That's your...

00:28:59.400 You should then be taking a risk

00:29:01.100 that you might end up being sent back to your own country.

00:29:03.860 But we don't because the legal framework we've got

00:29:06.300 is based on safety.

00:29:08.540 And if you haven't come from a safe country,

00:29:10.280 and I mean let's leave the third country France thing out for a minute we can talk about if you

00:29:14.220 like but if you can persuade us you are from one of those countries and quite often they are

00:29:18.980 it's really hard to say well I don't believe that you wouldn't be safe if sent back there

00:29:23.980 when you look at things that are going on in that home country about people are treated you know by

00:29:27.880 the way if they happen to have certain you know like if you evade military service in Eritrea

00:29:33.600 you're going to get quite badly punished for that oh if you get back to Afghanistan and you know

00:29:37.360 you've basically said something that you shouldn't have done 0.64

00:29:39.240 and the Taliban are probably going to come. 1.00

00:29:40.440 So those are probably what you would say legitimate claims for asylum

00:29:44.160 to say, well, actually, I need protection.

00:29:46.840 But this is where the balance comes in.

00:29:49.360 At what point do we say, well, I'm sorry about all that,

00:29:52.900 but you chose to come over multiple countries to France

00:29:56.360 where you could and should have claimed asylum,

00:29:58.200 but you chose not to because you want to come here. 1.00

00:30:01.460 You're going back to the country,

00:30:03.920 and I'm really sorry if you get persecuted,

00:30:06.020 and, you know, we'll put all kinds of red lights and warning notices

00:30:09.060 and drop leaflets in Calais, if you like, 1.00

00:30:11.240 but you will go back to that country

00:30:12.920 or you will be removed to some other place. 0.85

00:30:14.780 But there is no way you're going to get into the UK.

00:30:17.760 We have yet to see any legal framework been introduced, 0.99

00:30:23.080 policy introduced to enable that to happen.

00:30:25.620 And Tony, we'll get onto the legal framework

00:30:27.120 and the policy in a moment.

00:30:28.540 I really want to focus on the gangs

00:30:30.380 because, number one, how do they operate?

00:30:33.620 What do they do?

00:30:35.220 And the second part of the question is going to be,

00:30:38.200 well, Keir Starmer said he was going to smash the gangs, quote-unquote.

00:30:41.260 I mean, they are very much unsmashed.

00:30:44.260 Yeah, so you're never going to be able to smash

00:30:46.000 international organised criminal gangs.

00:30:47.840 You know, that's cloud cookie land.

00:30:50.580 You can mitigate the risk.

00:30:53.140 You can try and disrupt their activities.

00:30:55.360 But this is international organised crime.

00:30:57.560 It's like drug smuggling.

00:30:58.820 You're never going to be able to stamp it out.

00:31:00.620 There's too much money in it.

00:31:01.840 There's too big of a market.

00:31:03.360 There's too many networks.

00:31:04.660 So it goes right the way back to source countries, actually.

00:31:08.340 I chair conferences around the world in various places.

00:31:10.660 I've been to the Philippines, I chair conferences there.

00:31:12.980 Africa, I'm chairing a conference there next month

00:31:15.120 where there are some good people working for governments.

00:31:17.780 UK, UK, China, smash the gangs, if you like, to try and identify.

00:31:21.720 But it's really, really hard because some of this is so lucrative

00:31:25.960 that it's almost lost in business as usual, right?

00:31:29.300 So people are being trafficked, they are being smuggled out.

00:31:32.400 People will pay money to a middleman to say,

00:31:35.220 now, you know, right, first stage, 0.71

00:31:37.060 going to get you out of this country and into that country, right? 1.00

00:31:39.180 That's where you're going to go. 1.00

00:31:40.120 You're going to go over land from this country to that country.

00:31:42.880 That's where you're going to...

00:31:43.520 And that's where you're going to meet the next,

00:31:44.780 which is the level two smuggler, right?

00:31:46.820 He's the middleman.

00:31:47.680 He's got a stage in-house for you.

00:31:49.300 And you get moved exponentially through the food chain

00:31:52.540 right the way up to the French border.

00:31:54.200 So it's a massive network.

00:31:56.500 Now, you have had some successes, to be fair,

00:31:58.440 at the National Crime Agency.

00:31:59.540 I know those blokes as well.

00:32:00.580 I mean, they're trying their best, you know?

00:32:02.380 But these are things that are going on miles away from here,

00:32:05.000 miles away from here, where you can't really penetrate

00:32:07.300 the government and the enforcement agencies in those countries.

00:32:10.060 All you can do is do whatever intelligence you can.

00:32:12.860 So I would say that to say you're going to smash the gangs

00:32:15.220 is a little bit naive, I'm afraid.

00:32:17.240 I think, you know, Keir Starmer, it seems when he came in,

00:32:19.880 he's clearly come from a criminal justice background.

00:32:23.320 Criminal justice systems don't work against illegal immigration.

00:32:26.840 There's no point taking a bit of the court. 0.70

00:32:28.260 There's no point trying to prosecute them, I mean,

00:32:29.800 because you won't even find out who they are.

00:32:31.080 And even if you do, what's going to happen at court?

00:32:33.280 What you've really got to do is take out the supply chain.

00:32:35.480 You've got to take out the money.

00:32:36.480 The most important thing, though, you should do is break the business model.

00:32:40.260 What is the business?

00:32:41.260 Why do they do it?

00:32:42.420 Why do you think smugglers operate?

00:32:44.500 They're the money.

00:32:45.700 There's money in there.

00:32:46.560 They wouldn't bother.

00:32:47.560 So how do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place?

00:32:52.280 The only way you've got to do that is so you're not going to get in

00:32:55.060 because it ain't going to work. 0.99

00:32:58.820 That's why I supported the Rwanda plan.

00:33:01.080 is actually what we would have been able to say

00:33:02.940 if we could ever get that through would be

00:33:04.880 that it doesn't follow you're going to get in to stay in England, 1.00

00:33:06.980 you're going to end up living in Rwanda. 1.00

00:33:09.760 You can still come if you like, but we're going to send you back to Rwanda. 1.00

00:33:11.780 I think that would have had a deterrent effect. 1.00

00:33:14.140 So I think there are removals is the key.

00:33:16.820 You've got to get back to removers.

00:33:19.340 And they will tell you they're removing more people than ever before.

00:33:22.580 Yes, they are.

00:33:23.300 But they're not removing boat arrivals.

00:33:25.300 Only about 4% of boat arrivals get removed

00:33:27.460 because you've got the asylum, ECHR,

00:33:30.200 all of those problems and they come from countries where it's really hard to remove people to so

00:33:34.640 so long as that business model prevails the smugglers will continue to draw down profits

00:33:40.180 so long as they draw down profits there's going to be a gang you take one gang out it's like

00:33:44.460 whack-a-mole another gang will spring up because there's big money in this and there's networks

00:33:48.760 going around right around the world so really you can't rely necessarily on being able to disrupt

00:33:55.520 international smuggling networks to stop the boats.

00:33:58.760 It will have an impact, and I think there has been some impacts

00:34:01.620 in changes of tactics we've seen recently,

00:34:03.940 where some of the smaller boats are harder now,

00:34:06.800 but they've moved to bigger boats and they've moved to other routes,

00:34:09.880 and they will continue to move their operation.

00:34:12.520 In my experience of dealing with them, it's like a game of chess.

00:34:15.120 When they make a move, you've got to make a move as well.

00:34:17.200 You've got to try and stay ahead of the game,

00:34:18.660 but you're never going to win the game unless you can actually

00:34:21.260 break the business model, and that's what we've not been able to do.

00:34:23.800 Tony, you talked about third country, which is France.

00:34:26.340 So this is one thing that... 1.00

00:34:27.880 I'm going to ask you a bunch of stupid questions 1.00

00:34:29.780 because we all have them, I guess. 1.00

00:34:31.760 Things that will be obvious to you,

00:34:33.640 but maybe not obvious to the ordinary person.

00:34:35.960 Why can't we just tow the boats back to France?

00:34:40.060 Probably because people will drown when you do that.

00:34:43.440 I mean, I went out on the boats a couple of years ago

00:34:45.060 with a border force, and these boats are not sea-worthy.

00:34:48.380 Even the big ones aren't really sea-worthy.

00:34:50.000 I mean, they're bobbling around in the ocean,

00:34:51.680 and there's people.

00:34:53.240 So what would be the first thing that would be?

00:34:54.700 What are you going to do?

00:34:55.220 Throw a tow rope out there to the boat and start towing it?

00:34:58.040 It will probably overturn.

00:34:59.540 People are going to water.

00:35:00.480 Someone will die.

00:35:01.420 Whose fault is that going to be?

00:35:02.700 What do you think will be happening

00:35:03.700 when you have the steward's inquiry back here?

00:35:05.860 A board of force out there with a rope trying to turn back?

00:35:08.480 So I would protect the officers.

00:35:09.900 I'd say, wait a minute,

00:35:10.560 are you saying that my officers would be culpable with homicide

00:35:13.160 if we cause a drowning by an act like that?

00:35:16.520 So I think that's...

00:35:17.700 So what the Australians did, because I did study...

00:35:19.840 That's what I was going to ask you about.

00:35:20.680 Yeah, so I did study that.

00:35:21.840 I went down there, and I know some of the guys

00:35:23.500 that worked on sovereign borders.

00:35:25.520 Great guys, great guys.

00:35:28.200 They actually interdicted on the high seas,

00:35:30.240 but they didn't push the boats back.

00:35:32.380 What some of those boats that were doing,

00:35:33.780 that were coming out of Indonesia,

00:35:34.960 well, they were actually drilling holes in the bottom of the boat.

00:35:36.520 They were scuttling the boats.

00:35:37.500 Yeah, they were scuttling them.

00:35:38.620 And so that says, you have to rescue me.

00:35:41.660 This is all based on the law of the sea and rescue, right,

00:35:44.200 which is a sensible law when you think about it.

00:35:46.380 You don't want people drowning, do you?

00:35:49.240 Not really, no, not really.

00:35:50.580 So preservation of life is paramount,

00:35:52.540 therefore you've got to do something to rescue them.

00:35:53.940 So when they're scuttling the boats,

00:35:55.060 well, the Australians said, 0.99

00:35:56.280 well, OK, so we can't take them back on that boat, 0.85

00:35:58.360 we'll create our...

00:35:59.120 So they built their own boats, purpose-built boats,

00:36:01.920 to take them back, to escort them back.

00:36:04.380 And because they were in the high seas, they could.

00:36:06.360 And there wasn't the political pressure to get here,

00:36:07.980 so the Indonesians said, well, it's not very...

00:36:11.020 it doesn't look good.

00:36:11.660 So they even adapted the boats

00:36:13.820 to make them look like fishing boats,

00:36:15.320 so it didn't become so visible to the Indonesian population.

00:36:18.560 But they took them off the boat they were on

00:36:21.400 and put them on another boat, which was fit for return.

00:36:25.480 So if we're going to do returns, that's what I would say.

00:36:27.780 Well, that's what I've been saying to politicians we've had on the show.

00:36:30.380 But everyone says, why can't we do that?

00:36:32.260 Why is that impossible?

00:36:33.120 You could do that.

00:36:33.860 You could say, well, you can do that.

00:36:35.000 Well, wait a minute, you do that anyway, right?

00:36:36.400 I mean, what are you doing when you come alongside a dinghy?

00:36:38.540 The first thing you're doing is pulling them out of the water,

00:36:40.200 putting them on your boat.

00:36:41.120 Right.

00:36:41.440 Now they're on your boat.

00:36:42.980 Your boat can go wherever you want it to go.

00:36:44.660 Right.

00:36:44.880 So you could, no, the problem you've got then is,

00:36:46.920 well, will the French allow a border force vessel to dock in France?

00:36:51.140 So the binome office people have been over there and talked to them.

00:36:53.660 And the answer is no, they won't.

00:36:55.100 They say, no, you can't bring that boat back here.

00:36:57.700 This is where the fight has now become.

00:36:59.620 Well, you could, under international law,

00:37:02.180 I wrote something about this when this all started.

00:37:03.980 Under international law, it's OK in a contiguous zone.

00:37:07.280 Contiguous zones means that you've got two territorial waters

00:37:10.240 colliding with one another, so it's a contiguous 24-mile zone.

00:37:13.540 Come to an agreement with the country on the other side. 0.82

00:37:15.460 That's perfectly permissible.

00:37:16.920 under the law of the sea and international law so we could come to an agreement with the french if 0.94

00:37:20.920 they were up for it so well you could put people on our boats if you like and we'll put people on

00:37:24.520 your boats and we could have joint boats it don't matter but as a matter of principle if we can show

00:37:29.320 that there's no risk of what they call refoulement in other words if you're taken back to that

00:37:33.480 country you're going to face immediate return to you know we could talk about france right so that

00:37:39.240 would be the ideal solution is the french would say yes okay why don't we have a you know we'll

00:37:43.000 We'll have an agreement with the Brits, Brits and French.

00:37:45.160 We'll have joint patrols.

00:37:46.320 The first thing, we'll make them safe, right?

00:37:48.340 Because that's what everyone's worried about, people drowning.

00:37:50.200 Let's make them safe so wherever they get them brought on. 1.00

00:37:52.320 Because they don't want to be rescued by the French. 0.75

00:37:54.620 They'll resist rescue by the French because they know what's going to happen.

00:37:58.000 You know, they've even been holding, like, babies over the water line

00:38:00.640 when the French have gone near them.

00:38:01.880 They say, look, we're going to drop this kid in the water.

00:38:03.660 That's how brutal it is out there, all right?

00:38:06.160 So the French tactics is, well, we don't want to drown them either.

00:38:10.660 we're going to make sure they're safe

00:38:12.800 and just in case they go in the water

00:38:14.720 then we will, but if they're not in the water

00:38:16.100 and then we take over and bring them ashore

00:38:18.560 that is the business model they rely on

00:38:20.280 but we could if we had agreement

00:38:21.980 that's a big if, if we had agreement with the French

00:38:24.460 we could have joint patrols and take them back to France 1.00

00:38:26.940 which would be the perfect solution

00:38:28.220 the problem we've got is we don't have that agreement with France 0.99

00:38:30.760 Well the French don't want that 0.94

00:38:31.860 and what if we were to start taking 1.00

00:38:36.260 because I think the Australians 1.00

00:38:38.140 they put them on these new boats 0.82

00:38:40.100 they gave them enough fuel to get back,

00:38:42.160 but not enough fuel to get to Australia, right?

00:38:45.280 What if we just did that? 0.98

00:38:47.520 I mean, what are the French going to do, start shooting us? 0.96

00:38:59.520 The French, this will become a diplomatic route,

00:39:02.420 because I've seen the reform proposal, right?

00:39:04.600 The reform, the latest reform proposal,

00:39:06.440 which says, well, we're going to, whether or not,

00:39:08.960 Whatever your question, what are the French going to do?

00:39:12.380 What if we get a purpose-built vessel which is capable of a beach landing 0.71

00:39:17.380 rather than having a dock in a harbour and we simply transfer them

00:39:21.400 from the dinghies onto one of them and sail them back towards France? 0.88

00:39:26.300 What will the French... I don't know what the French would do about that,

00:39:29.880 but it would create a diplomatic route because the French are saying,

00:39:32.780 well, you can't just come into our waters and land a bunch of people

00:39:37.580 anywhere you like. You know, this is, this is our territory. But that is where the, that is where

00:39:42.580 the rubber hits the road. Yeah. What are we going to do? But if I'm a British person, Tony, what I'm

00:39:47.640 thinking is how come sending tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to us that you are allowing 1.00

00:39:53.740 through your country, allowing to get on a boat and allowing to sail across the English Channel 0.71

00:39:58.580 to our country. That's not a diplomatic row. But when we try and want to send one boat back,

00:40:04.200 that's immediately diplomatic rally where is the balance in this relationship here yeah i know i

00:40:08.600 agree with that and i think we do need and to be fair to the french you know i work with the french

00:40:13.080 quite a lot actually the french police and they don't like human smugglers either really no of

00:40:16.840 course and and and so we have got some good operational activities going on with the french

00:40:20.840 at the ports of entry the problem is they've said look you know you can't i'd have had border

00:40:25.560 force out on their beaches with them and you know we would have been there but they won't have that

00:40:28.920 they said no this is out this is our land you can't come in and exercise your powers on our territory

00:40:34.200 So the French have taken a position which is basically not a helpful position that the French have taken with this government.

00:40:41.600 And, you know, the one-in-one-out scheme's not worked.

00:40:43.640 The problem we've got in that border force is we have to comply with the law.

00:40:47.660 That's the problem we've got.

00:40:49.120 Whatever law you propose or whatever policy you change, it has to be translated to an operational defensible instruction from my officers out there on the boats.

00:40:57.280 Now, if you had those powers and authorities, then they would do it, no doubt about it in my mind.

00:41:01.040 But you don't, because once they're in a 12-mile zone,

00:41:03.600 that's all they have to be, once they're in territorial waters

00:41:05.920 and they mention the magic word, even though they're not on land,

00:41:09.540 you're in breach of the Convention if you start turning them around

00:41:11.940 and you will face a lawsuit,

00:41:14.200 because you will put the Home Secretary in contempt of court.

00:41:16.560 There will be an injunction and you'll be in trouble for breaching the law.

00:41:19.760 So you've got to change the law.

00:41:21.080 Which brings us very much to the core of this.

00:41:24.740 We've had various former politicians on, Boris Johnson,

00:41:27.880 and Soella Bravman, a bunch of people

00:41:29.380 who all have a different perspective on these things.

00:41:32.280 Soella Bravman, who was here recently,

00:41:34.620 her argument is you can't deal with this

00:41:37.080 until you leave the ECHR.

00:41:38.780 Is that your view or do you think that's wrong?

00:41:40.800 No, you do need to do that,

00:41:42.780 but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that.

00:41:45.300 So even that's not enough?

00:41:46.780 No.

00:41:47.480 So the ECHR, we have to leave

00:41:49.980 for us to be able to enforce our border?

00:41:52.580 Yeah, because what you've got to do

00:41:53.900 is redefine the relationship

00:41:55.580 between our laws and international laws.

00:41:59.200 That's where I came in.

00:42:00.440 I told you, when I started,

00:42:02.500 we didn't take any notice of the human rights. 0.99

00:42:05.700 I mean, I just sent people back.

00:42:07.820 But now, because the lawyers have crept in

00:42:09.840 and they call it judicial overreach because of judgements,

00:42:13.400 you've got to, if you're running a country,

00:42:15.660 you've got to change that relationship

00:42:17.200 between ourselves and international law.

00:42:19.420 That means looking again at our relationship with the ECHR.

00:42:22.860 The Refugee Convention has got a get-out clause already.

00:42:25.580 unit which is in article 31 because article 31 of the refugee convention says you must be in

00:42:30.540 immediate fear of persecution to claim asylum so that was brought in 20 years ago when i was there

00:42:35.340 we said well you're coming from france you're not in immediate fear of persecution that's how we did

00:42:39.260 the third country removal so that's what the tories relied on for the rwanda plan right that's what

00:42:43.580 this lot relied on for the one-to-one scheme right you could go to your court and say well he's not

00:42:47.820 in immediate phase in france yeah so there is already there's nothing in the echl that allows

00:42:52.060 that there's nothing in the modern so why doesn't that work why doesn't that carve out apply now

00:42:57.180 why can't we because it's because you then lodged an application for human rights

00:43:01.980 so you logically can't okay so this is what the last government did on the on the rwanda plan is

00:43:06.460 they they stacked up a lot of cases and served them all we noticed when they came off to say

00:43:10.460 right you're not an immediate purpose you're not going to admit you into the asylum system at all

00:43:14.220 but they hadn't got the route out to rwanda and then whilst that was going on the lawyers

00:43:18.060 They said, well, all right, then we're going to claim human rights.

00:43:20.520 You know, we've got family life or we've got human or degrading treatment.

00:43:23.840 So then what were you going to do about all those human rights applications

00:43:26.660 that were coming in whilst they were in limbo?

00:43:29.280 You've still got... 0.99

00:43:29.980 Now, you could have said, well, all right, we'll still remove them to Rwanda 0.99

00:43:33.280 and we'll consider the human rights application. 1.00

00:43:35.560 If you win it, we'll bring you back from Rwanda. 1.00

00:43:38.280 You don't really want to do that.

00:43:39.500 What you really want is a law that says you can't claim human rights at all.

00:43:43.480 You can't claim anything.

00:43:44.360 You can't claim modern slavery, human rights, or asylum 0.78

00:43:48.960 if you come from France without a document. 0.76

00:43:52.100 That's what I would like to see. 0.96

00:43:53.720 I'm not a policy wonk, but that's what my instruction would be,

00:43:57.600 a policy made.

00:43:58.480 Write a policy, write a legislation that's watertight enough.

00:44:01.140 It's going to get challenged, as the Rwanda plan was.

00:44:03.800 It's going to get challenged in the courts.

00:44:05.380 It's going to get challenged in the lords, and they don't rush.

00:44:08.960 They are quite happy to take their time.

00:44:10.480 So the Rwanda plan, you know, was first mooted like two years before the election when Boris first, and I was down there at Lid when he announced it. I thought, well, it's got a good idea. I wonder if this is going to work or not. But the government of the day, that's his government, and the Sunak government did not go far enough on this human rights issue. That's why Suella Braverman and Rob Jenwick both resigned from the Conservatives because they were in that government. They were there at the time, but they could see this was happening.

00:44:36.920 And I said, well, this ain't going to work, is it?

00:44:38.120 I mean, we've got to go further on the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

00:44:43.160 And the Tory party didn't.

00:44:45.760 They would not go any further with some of those amendments.

00:44:48.060 That's why they both left in the end.

00:44:50.340 And so you've still got this.

00:44:51.680 And then, of course, the next government came in with a vowed intent to abolish Rwanda.

00:44:57.180 I mean, I remember Starmer standing on the cliffs of Dover a couple of weeks before. 1.00

00:45:00.540 So the first thing I'm going to do is abolish this Rwanda plan, 1.00

00:45:04.040 which I thought, oh, my God, my head was in my hands. 0.99

00:45:06.340 I said, well, you can do that.

00:45:07.340 Smash the gangs.

00:45:09.120 So I knew that wasn't going to work and it didn't work.

00:45:12.560 And you've got to get back to basics and you've got to get back to a position I was in in the 70s and the 80s.

00:45:19.040 Vest the power in law in your immigration officers, border force officers at the border to make a decision on somebody and to allow them to remove that person from the country.

00:45:27.760 You've got to get that somehow through this tension between international law and domestic law empowered so that we can get back to the future.

00:45:35.700 And we can start doing the things that I was doing when I was an immigration officer and put all this international law stuff because it's hopelessly out of date.

00:45:42.560 It's broken. It's completely broken. It's no longer delivering what the asylum system was meant to deliver in the first place.

00:45:49.080 It's actually completely being misused by smugglers and illegal migrants to get into the country.

00:45:54.320 And it's causing mayhem.

00:45:55.960 Tony, you know, I'm listening to this and.

00:46:00.620 What you're doing is providing a forensic analysis, which is brilliant.

00:46:05.020 There's a part of me that's really cynical here, going,

00:46:08.020 do you know what, the people smugglers, 0.86

00:46:09.800 they're making an arse bit of quid out of this,

00:46:11.880 but you know what, so are the NGOs, so are the lawyers.

00:46:15.140 This is just one massive industry, isn't it?

00:46:19.260 Yeah, well, we need to be careful what we say,

00:46:20.960 because people will be watching and lawyers will be looking

00:46:22.780 and seeing what you're saying, and you've got to be very careful.

00:46:25.200 I mean, I've been stung a few times about,

00:46:27.480 well, you've got to be really, really careful what you say,

00:46:29.900 because what you say and what you do could be used in evidence against you.

00:46:33.520 So I think that, yes, I think that there is an industry out there

00:46:38.300 that is actually close to facilitating illegal entry

00:46:43.440 without mentioning any particular names or, you know.

00:46:46.380 I think there is a network of NGO support for the boat's business.

00:46:56.520 I did go to Calais. I went and saw Care for Calais.

00:46:59.720 I saw what they're doing there.

00:47:01.560 They will say, I don't know if you can get them on,

00:47:03.760 I mean, what they will say to you, if you can get them on here,

00:47:06.320 is, well, we need to look after these poor people in Calais

00:47:08.760 because they've got nowhere to live and they've got no food now.

00:47:10.400 So they'll take them down to the supermarket and give them food parcels

00:47:13.240 and give them tents and anorex and stuff like that.

00:47:15.660 That's what they'll say they're doing.

00:47:17.820 Which you could say, well, fair enough, that's probably a reasonable cause

00:47:20.300 because the French government aren't looking after them

00:47:21.980 and somebody, a charity, needs to look after them.

00:47:23.720 But when you get into sort of bringing people from the camps to the beaches,

00:47:28.260 when you get into some of the literature about,

00:47:31.180 well, this is what to say if you get to the UK,

00:47:33.540 this is how you can get asylum.

00:47:34.940 I think that's getting very close to the wind, really.

00:47:37.580 But either way, to defeat all of that,

00:47:39.700 you still come back to the basic point.

00:47:41.620 They are thriving on a legal framework

00:47:43.300 that we've developed over the years.

00:47:45.060 If that legal framework wasn't there,

00:47:46.400 they wouldn't be able to do any of that stuff

00:47:47.420 because it wouldn't matter.

00:47:48.300 You'd still be sending people back, right? 0.83

00:47:50.300 No, it's a good point.

00:47:51.420 But also as well, look, Constance and I

00:47:52.820 always have this conversation of,

00:47:54.640 do we live in a country which is very socially progressive, woke, et cetera, et cetera?

00:48:02.640 And we've got to be honest, Tony, when you operated, when you were doing, you know,

00:48:07.280 when you were on the ground, it was a different country politically, culturally.

00:48:11.940 And to a lot of people, the way that you go, well, if something seemed a bit dodgy,

00:48:17.100 I sent them back. There'd be a lot of people, even on the right, who'd be like, well,

00:48:21.540 I don't know if I'm comfortable with that.

00:48:23.240 Isn't that also part of the problem?

00:48:25.300 I don't know.

00:48:26.160 I'm not a politician, you know.

00:48:27.920 I don't want to get involved in politics

00:48:29.700 because I'll get myself into trouble if I do that as well.

00:48:32.140 I'm an expert commentator and I'll try and stick to my business knowledge

00:48:35.780 as a border security expert.

00:48:37.980 But there is, in my view, something fundamentally wrong

00:48:40.640 if you can get into the territory without a document and get admitted.

00:48:46.120 There's just something fundamentally wrong with that.

00:48:48.280 You must get a document and you must get your permission sorted out

00:48:51.060 before you come here these days, right?

00:48:52.660 So everybody else, you know, 0.98

00:48:54.100 who wants to come here from a different country, 1.00

00:48:55.620 they have to get a permission,

00:48:57.000 either a visa or an electronic traveller authority

00:48:59.520 or demonstrate if it's you guys,

00:49:01.520 your British passport, your Irish passport

00:49:03.980 to get into our country. 0.98

00:49:05.920 You should do that as a rule of thumb.

00:49:08.380 If you're coming in by some other nefarious means

00:49:10.720 without a passport, for me,

00:49:12.740 you shouldn't be allowed to get in.

00:49:14.100 It's as simple as that.

00:49:15.280 But you are allowed in because, as I said to you,

00:49:17.320 asylum, human rights, modern slavery, 0.96

00:49:19.020 all of these applications supported by

00:49:20.780 where a very robust legal profession and a very significant number of lobby groups

00:49:25.680 say that you must do, because that's the way international law should operate.

00:49:30.200 So when you're looking at the politics of all this, what you're looking at,

00:49:32.920 well, who agrees with me?

00:49:34.800 Who thinks that we should actually go back to the future and say, all bets are off.

00:49:40.320 If you come here without a passport, that's your choice. 0.51

00:49:43.160 From a safe third country, that's your choice. 0.65

00:49:45.800 You chose to do that.

00:49:47.500 You're taking a big risk now because you might find yourself,

00:49:51.500 well, you're certainly going to find yourself detained.

00:49:53.240 You're not going to be getting into our communities for as long as it takes. 0.69

00:49:56.800 And you might find yourself either back in your own country, right, 0.99

00:50:01.660 if we can possibly get you there, or in some other country like Rwanda. 0.98

00:50:05.960 That's what's going to happen to you, right?

00:50:08.160 Now, which parties are advocating that and which parties are not advocating that?

00:50:13.640 So we've heard lots of different rhetoric.

00:50:15.620 I've followed the media a lot.

00:50:16.600 I'm on the media a lot.

00:50:17.520 I follow a lot of them.

00:50:18.340 I talk to quite a lot of them as well.

00:50:19.940 But for me, that is a fundamental principle.

00:50:22.200 If you're talking from a border security point of view and your job, if you're into border security and a border force or the border security command, as it now is, your role is to try and protect the community in the same way as the police do and the military do.

00:50:36.600 That's what I felt my job was.

00:50:38.100 I'm very patriotic like that.

00:50:39.760 And I broke my heart when I see I see what happens now at the border.

00:50:44.240 And I think that if they were able to talk to you,

00:50:47.940 a lot of the officers out there would say the same thing.

00:50:50.400 It's not allowed to talk to you.

00:50:52.020 If you work in an office,

00:50:53.440 it won't be tied to you if you speak to the media,

00:50:54.820 you'll be sacked, right?

00:50:56.360 So that's why I do it.

00:50:57.780 I want to be able to...

00:50:58.940 I don't represent them because there's probably some of them

00:51:01.060 that disagree with what I'm saying,

00:51:02.160 but my view, having been in this business for this long,

00:51:05.160 is that they really want to protect the border 0.54

00:51:07.000 and they don't like the idea of people coming here

00:51:09.400 without permissions and being admitted within 24 hours

00:51:11.700 any more than you and I do.

00:51:13.040 They are stuck with the operational framework they've got.

00:51:15.580 The only way you're going to change that is you need a government

00:51:18.160 that's got the political will to do some of the things I'm talking about.

00:51:21.980 So let's go back to the 1971 Act, as it was originally drafted, 1.00

00:51:25.760 get rid of all this asylum stuff and human rights stuff 1.00

00:51:28.300 and all this other stuff and say, no, we're going to reinstitate the powers

00:51:31.500 in the border force officer to detain you indefinitely, if necessary.

00:51:35.320 You can always make a voluntary departure, you know, if you want to.

00:51:38.620 That's your get-out-of-jail card.

00:51:39.740 If you want to come up with a passport that suddenly appears,

00:51:43.460 your next visitor brings your passport in and you've got permission, go.

00:51:46.660 We're not going to keep you here against your will, 1.00

00:51:48.640 but if you're insistent on coming into this country, 1.00

00:51:50.700 you will stay detained until such time as we can remove you from the territory.

00:51:53.620 Well, Tony, let's talk about the solution to all of this

00:51:56.100 because leaving the ECHR, you know what?

00:51:59.700 We've had lots of people, including former politicians,

00:52:02.400 civil servants, et cetera, on the show,

00:52:03.660 and truthfully, I still have not understood why it is

00:52:08.960 we haven't already left the ECHR. Even Suella, when you say to her, why did your cabinet

00:52:13.660 colleagues refuse to do this when you were home secretary? She says something like,

00:52:19.640 well, you know, the Rishi Sunak or the other ministers, they just thought, well, that if we

00:52:24.020 leave the ECHR, we'd be like Belarus and Russia, you know, we'd be a bad country, quote unquote.

00:52:28.980 But that's not an argument. That's just like, that's not an argument. And by the way,

00:52:34.260 No one, I think, is saying we should leave the ECHR, not replace some of its provisions with a British bill that does provide for human rights and actual refugees and all of this other stuff.

00:52:45.400 But you said leaving the ECHR is not enough.

00:52:49.600 What else do the people in power need to do?

00:52:53.160 So you've got to adjust your own.

00:52:56.460 Leaving the ECHR is one thing.

00:52:58.000 You've got to adjust your own domestic legislation, which includes the Human Rights Act mainly.

00:53:01.820 You know, a lot of that's going to have to be looked at

00:53:03.740 and probably repealed, the HRA as well. 0.85

00:53:06.920 You've got to look at modern slavery and the modern slavery system

00:53:10.060 and is it OK that someone who comes in and says,

00:53:11.940 well, I'm a victim of modern slavery, should be allowed in or not?

00:53:15.560 At the moment you are, because that's another route into...

00:53:18.740 So that's also...

00:53:20.060 And then you've got to look again at, let's say,

00:53:21.700 the 51 Convention does give you a get-out

00:53:23.880 if you've come from a third country.

00:53:25.480 So you need a law that actually covers all of those bases to start off with,

00:53:29.080 not just leaving the HSR.

00:53:30.340 You've got to put in place a domestic law which would cover all of that and make it crystal clear to the courts that actually you can't come here on a small boat and claim any form of international protection.

00:53:44.240 And the border force will be empowered to detain you indefinitely, if necessary, until such time as they can remove you from the country.

00:53:54.760 That means you've got to reverse Hardy El-Singh, the judgment I told you about. 0.89

00:53:58.160 So, well, actually, yes, we can detain people indefinitely. 0.54

00:54:01.760 It sounds really bad, doesn't it?

00:54:02.820 But, yeah, we need the power.

00:54:05.660 Then if you've got all those powers,

00:54:06.960 assuming you've got all those laws and powers in place,

00:54:08.940 which is a big ask, right?

00:54:10.840 Why is it a big ask?

00:54:11.680 Well, because you need a political majority to get that through.

00:54:15.200 This is what I was going to ask you.

00:54:16.200 Sorry to jump in, but I want to understand this.

00:54:18.660 Do you have any insight why, you know,

00:54:21.580 the way you've told the story throughout your career

00:54:23.940 is actually the Blair government and the Brown government

00:54:26.320 were keen to deal with this, and effective.

00:54:28.160 in your own telling, dealing with asylum.

00:54:31.440 So then you have a conservative government

00:54:33.600 who you'd think, I mean, the nasty party, 0.86

00:54:36.800 anti-immigration, they're all racist apparently, etc. 0.90

00:54:40.500 Yet they haven't done this.

00:54:44.120 A lot of people in the country will be saying, why?

00:54:47.160 Why haven't they done these things?

00:54:48.440 Because the way you tell it is it's quite clear.

00:54:50.980 And I imagine, I don't want to put words in your mouth

00:54:53.020 and I don't want to make this political,

00:54:54.460 but you would have told this to the politicians

00:54:56.360 who've wanted to speak to you, right?

00:54:57.780 Yeah, no, whatever government, I would tell them that.

00:54:59.860 Right.

00:55:00.400 So why haven't they done it already?

00:55:02.480 I don't know. You'd have to ask them that.

00:55:04.060 I mean, I think it's a question of political will

00:55:05.920 and a question of taking on the really difficult decisions

00:55:09.140 and the very, very strong lobby groups that are in this country.

00:55:11.720 What lobby groups?

00:55:12.480 Well, refugee action, refugee legal groups,

00:55:16.440 all kinds of left-wing groups that will challenge you.

00:55:20.540 I think the House of Lords is predominantly anti-enforcement.

00:55:25.660 If you look at the passage of the Rwanda,

00:55:28.460 the Illegal Migration Act and the debates in the Lords,

00:55:32.540 a very, very large number of Lords were against it,

00:55:35.380 sent it back a number of times.

00:55:37.000 Why?

00:55:37.580 Well, because they just simply don't like the principle

00:55:39.720 that you should be allowed to detain somebody indefinitely

00:55:42.460 and you're taking no notice of that person's individual human rights

00:55:46.420 or their individual claims or whatever else.

00:55:48.420 They just don't agree with that as a matter of principle.

00:55:51.220 So I've had arguments on panels by this

00:55:53.220 where I've been called a racist

00:55:55.060 and I've been called a, you know,

00:55:57.120 all kinds of things of some right wing.

00:55:58.880 I'm not a right wing.

00:56:01.480 I'm just telling you, as a border force,

00:56:03.740 an ex-immigration officer, as a border force officer,

00:56:05.580 with 50 years experience in this business,

00:56:07.500 if you really, really want to stop the boats,

00:56:09.120 these are the things you're going to have to do.

00:56:10.460 You don't have to be a right wing nutcase to do that.

00:56:13.040 You just need to be prepared to do that.

00:56:15.080 And none of the governments I've worked for so far

00:56:17.840 have gone that far.

00:56:18.920 And you're right, the Blair government did go a very long way.

00:56:21.840 They were tough as a...

00:56:23.000 They were one of the toughest governments I worked for on asylum.

00:56:26.620 You know, they were the ones that did the juxtaposed controls.

00:56:28.760 They tripled the home office budget in three years

00:56:30.860 to get more caseworkers in there.

00:56:32.560 They really wanted to take on...

00:56:34.080 But at the same time, it's that same government

00:56:35.680 that opened up a lot of legal routes just before that

00:56:38.260 through the managed migration routes.

00:56:39.840 Suddenly, now they've admitted that was a mistake.

00:56:42.320 So I think a lot of mistakes have been made in the past,

00:56:44.900 and we can look at different governments

00:56:46.240 and criticise different what they did or didn't do.

00:56:48.740 The question is, how are they going to fix this problem now?

00:56:50.880 Who's going to fix it and how are they going to go about it?

00:56:53.040 Well, this is why I...

00:56:54.220 The only reason I brought up the Labour government is

00:56:56.620 I don't understand why this has become a political issue

00:56:59.600 because within the living memory of all of us,

00:57:04.420 as you and I are talking about,

00:57:07.140 the left and right used to agree

00:57:08.740 that what you were talking about is the normal state of things.

00:57:13.360 And I'm an immigrant myself to this country,

00:57:15.540 but to me it's self-evident that actually,

00:57:18.560 like to me almost the defining feature of a country is a set of borders that it protects

00:57:24.540 that that's how that's what a country is isn't it well i think so yeah yeah and we do by and large 0.93

00:57:31.780 i mean to be fair look you know the small boats issue is a huge problem yeah let's not underestimate

00:57:36.100 the scale of the intensity of the public debate about small boats and i said it's massive

00:57:40.300 but you're talking about 20 30 000 pound 30 30 000 people a year now something like that coming in

00:57:45.480 Now, if you look at the way the UK border operates, it's pretty good.

00:57:50.280 It is pretty good in that the numbers of people that would probably want to come here if they could is in the millions.

00:57:57.500 And they don't. And the reason they don't is because we've got a robust visa system.

00:58:01.520 You can't get on a plane to get here unless you've got the right paperwork.

00:58:05.040 You know, we've got the border in France.

00:58:07.620 And we've got pretty good. We're up there with the border five on what we're doing behind the scenes on intelligence, data analytics, biometrics.

00:58:13.800 There's a lot of stuff. I do a lot of stuff on, you know, future borders and how borders are going to operate.

00:58:18.920 And so I don't think we should just say we've got such a really horrible border because we haven't.

00:58:23.540 We've got a pretty good border and a pretty good risk assessment framework in my book.

00:58:27.740 But hold on, Tony. Hold on. Hold on.

00:58:30.040 Look, you're the expert, so I defer to your judgment.

00:58:33.820 But as a normal person, here's what I'd say to you.

00:58:36.620 Like most people, I want more energy, better focus and to still be sharp and strong years from now.

00:58:42.100 But every time I've gone in for my annual checkup, it's the same thing.

00:58:45.940 Wait weeks to get an appointment, sit in a waiting room, and then you're in and out in 10 minutes.

00:58:50.520 Everything looks fine, they say. Drink more water, sleep a bit more.

00:58:53.780 No real insight, no plan, just vibes.

00:58:56.360 That's why every time I visit the US, I use superpower.

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00:59:53.860 Hold on, hold on.

00:59:55.160 Look, you're the expert, so I defer to your judgment.

00:59:58.940 But as a normal person, here's what I'd say to you.

01:00:01.160 When I came here in 1996, net legal immigration was 55,000 a year.

01:00:07.200 And now we're asking the British people to accept half of that coming here illegally every year?

01:00:12.980 I don't see why that's good. 0.95

01:00:15.920 I don't see why the British people would think that we should accept that.

01:00:20.200 I don't think you accept it.

01:00:21.220 No, I mean...

01:00:23.000 This is without having a go at your former colleagues.

01:00:25.040 No one is doing that here.

01:00:25.900 Look, managing a border is a bit like an iceberg, right?

01:00:28.460 What you see above the water is what you see above the water.

01:00:30.720 That's what we're talking about, the bit you can see about the water.

01:00:32.640 What you don't see below the water is an awful lot of really,

01:00:35.460 really good work going on behind the scenes by a lot of agencies.

01:00:39.100 I told you about London 2012 Olympics.

01:00:41.100 Yeah, yeah, of course.

01:00:41.880 The threat level here was severe.

01:00:44.260 I bet.

01:00:44.880 Severe.

01:00:45.440 I bet.

01:00:45.780 We were told a terrorist attack is highly likely.

01:00:48.680 We worked round the clock on checking every single last little detail,

01:00:52.800 and not just me, the military, the police,

01:00:54.680 we all pulled together to get that over the line.

01:00:57.380 So that terrorist attack never happened.

01:00:58.980 It could have done, it might have done, if it hadn't been for us.

01:01:02.440 And we've still got mechanisms like that in place,

01:01:05.240 is what I'm saying to you. 0.99

01:01:06.200 So let's not just say, oh, we're just useless, we're rubbish, 0.97

01:01:09.000 because we're not. 0.97

01:01:10.060 We're pretty good, we're up there,

01:01:11.340 and I do a lot of international stuff as well.

01:01:13.360 I can tell you, there's a lot of good work going on

01:01:15.140 with the Americans and the Canadians, Border 5,

01:01:17.940 and even the EU, actually, are behind the scenes on security

01:01:21.520 to try and keep real nasty, and the IOM, the UNODC.

01:01:26.860 I could go on.

01:01:27.500 There's a lot of work below the surface that we probably don't want.

01:01:30.900 But what you see is that...

01:01:32.280 I totally get it, Tony.

01:01:33.140 Before Francis jumps in, let me just explain why I'm saying this.

01:01:36.820 I have no doubt that what you're saying is true.

01:01:39.700 I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands

01:01:43.160 of hard-working people protecting our borders.

01:01:46.080 And in the round, they're doing a good job.

01:01:49.740 Because, as you say, this is a very desirable country to come to.

01:01:52.820 There will be loads of people.

01:01:53.920 I have family coming to visit from abroad.

01:01:55.820 They get checked very thoroughly.

01:01:57.500 I know that. And that's how it should be. That's how it should be. But what I think I'm trying to

01:02:02.640 say is, in terms of the public feelings about this issue, I am trying to tell you how a very

01:02:09.560 significant portion of the public feel about it, which you already know without me telling you.

01:02:13.780 The public can't understand why we found ourselves in this position. They really can't. And I think

01:02:19.640 they're right not to, because the failure of the political framework that you talk about

01:02:24.480 is mind-boggling to people.

01:02:26.260 And that's what I'm getting at.

01:02:27.340 This is not casting any shade at all

01:02:30.140 on the hard-working officers in the Border Force.

01:02:33.260 Good. Well, I'm glad you said that

01:02:34.520 because I'm still one of them, really.

01:02:36.380 I mean, it's a bit like the military or the police.

01:02:38.540 You get a DNA, and it's still there.

01:02:40.700 And I believe it still is there

01:02:41.800 in the next generation of officers.

01:02:43.280 And I said to you, I think if the Border Force...

01:02:44.880 I don't like seeing articles in the press

01:02:47.680 saying, oh, the Border Force are a bunch of lefties

01:02:50.520 that are only really interested in taxi...

01:02:52.340 But they're not, actually.

01:02:53.620 They are trying to do the best job they can.

01:02:55.660 Don't get paid that much.

01:02:56.960 Actually, they're out there in pretty dangerous conditions 24-7,

01:02:59.780 but they are instructed, you know,

01:03:02.100 that if someone is a dinghy, little dinghy there,

01:03:04.160 that's in your territorial waters,

01:03:06.660 your job is to bring them on shore without anyone drowning.

01:03:09.240 That's your first role, and make them safe.

01:03:10.940 And so we take the proper life action, bring them on board.

01:03:13.840 First, paramount safety of life.

01:03:16.400 That's what they are bound by.

01:03:19.000 And then the next step after that,

01:03:20.280 I've told you all about the next step after that,

01:03:21.880 is that once they're on board, they're in territorial waters,

01:03:25.220 they can pull all of these levers that the Border Force can't pull back again

01:03:29.080 until such time as, you know, there is an opportunity of ever

01:03:33.000 to remove them from the country.

01:03:34.600 That's the problem.

01:03:35.920 And that's the problem.

01:03:36.960 So you're right in speaking to all these politicians,

01:03:38.840 whether they're past, present or future politicians,

01:03:40.680 this is the problem that they've got.

01:03:42.480 The question is, who's going to do it?

01:03:44.560 Who's actually going to do it?

01:03:45.820 Right, I'm going to pull those levers back in a different direction

01:03:49.040 and now, with effect from next year or whenever it's going to be,

01:03:52.880 the Border Force will be in power to take those people

01:03:54.960 on board that boat and either take them straight back to France

01:03:57.600 or, if they can't do that, take them straight into detention

01:04:00.540 where they will stay.

01:04:01.880 And they will stay there until we can remove them 0.94

01:04:04.140 either to France or some other country or their own country.

01:04:06.920 And that takes real political courage

01:04:08.980 and I just don't know if we've got that.

01:04:12.640 So, Tony, let's say I become Prime Minister.

01:04:16.360 There's a worrying possibility.

01:04:19.040 And the camera people, and the people of our production team,

01:04:22.100 Billy's looking absolutely thrilled.

01:04:23.440 He knows I'd get it sorted.

01:04:24.780 And I pointed you, and I said, Tony, you're my man.

01:04:28.360 We need to, this legal framework, this legal system, it doesn't work.

01:04:33.660 People are coming here.

01:04:34.780 To put it, not to find a point on it, they're taking the piss. 0.88

01:04:37.940 We all know they are.

01:04:39.040 It needs urgent reform.

01:04:41.140 From beginning to end, how long do you see that process taking,

01:04:46.380 and what are going to be the challenges involved in it?

01:04:48.420 It depends what sort of a majority you've got.

01:04:51.540 And if you've got the backing of your, you know,

01:04:54.900 you've got enough people in the House of Commons

01:04:56.620 to actually talk like you are.

01:04:59.320 Yeah.

01:05:01.540 Whether I take the job or not,

01:05:03.120 depending on whether I believe you or not,

01:05:04.680 because a lot of politicians have offered a lot of people jobs

01:05:07.200 on the promise, and people I know who have become casualties

01:05:10.440 because it's become all their fault and one of the politicians' fault.

01:05:13.180 So I think you need that real trust between your political masters

01:05:17.760 Now you can trust me.

01:05:21.160 No comment.

01:05:29.320 You do need that trust, but the answer is you can't just rely on me.

01:05:36.200 I need to bring in a bunch of my mates who have got skills I don't have,

01:05:40.300 particularly really, really good lawyers,

01:05:43.380 Really, really good legal draftsmen,

01:05:46.320 people who can actually make this stick

01:05:48.040 because I don't want to write a law for you

01:05:49.360 and then it gets boshed in the office of laws

01:05:50.860 because there's a procedural improvised.

01:05:53.040 There are people out there that I could point you

01:05:55.400 in the right direction of who would be supportive

01:05:57.280 and there's a number of reports in the policy exchange

01:05:59.420 from others that I've participated in,

01:06:01.100 but you need not just me.

01:06:02.580 You need a team around you

01:06:04.060 that can actually deliver what you want.

01:06:06.420 So I could deliver what you want operationally,

01:06:08.540 but I would say to you the real first thing you've got to do

01:06:10.720 is you've got to find someone

01:06:11.860 that's going to write that law for you i can put you in the right direction i can't write laws i'm

01:06:15.520 not a lawyer you need someone that's going to write that law for you and and give you all the

01:06:19.380 risk assessments all the red amber greens on every clause in that law about how you're going to get

01:06:23.700 that through parliament how you're going to get through the courts how you're going to and what

01:06:26.360 you're going to face along the way which becomes a project really a project plan how long would

01:06:30.800 that take that it's not going to happen overnight so no you can't do this overnight you get politics

01:06:34.660 oh well you know within the first 10 days 100 days or whatever mate it don't work like that

01:06:39.020 Well, you've got to do that bit in opposition.

01:06:40.980 You've got to do that bit in opposition.

01:06:42.540 You've got to accept, I'm afraid,

01:06:46.380 that even if you're in power right now

01:06:48.180 and that's what you want to happen,

01:06:49.400 it ain't going to happen overnight.

01:06:50.900 And I will tell you that before you give me the job.

01:06:53.200 And then you get someone else in

01:06:54.860 and he'll tell you,

01:06:55.300 all right, I'm going to do it for you.

01:06:56.280 I mean, that's what President Trump does.

01:06:57.840 I mean, I know guys that have been casual as it is over there

01:07:00.940 who said, well, actually, you know, Mr. President,

01:07:03.240 you can't do that.

01:07:04.240 And he's fired.

01:07:04.820 And then someone else is brought in

01:07:05.820 and then you get a yes man in there

01:07:07.080 who actually don't deliver anyway.

01:07:08.900 And that's even worse.

01:07:10.160 So I think you need a reality check, you know,

01:07:12.120 if you're going to be the Prime Minister about what is and isn't achievable.

01:07:15.080 And then you need to surround yourself with a team of people

01:07:17.900 that are absolutely committed to your cause.

01:07:21.100 And that's why I'm a little bit nervous about civil service,

01:07:23.460 actually, in this country.

01:07:24.520 You know, I like the old Northcott Trevelyan idea

01:07:26.480 that we've got an impartial civil service, but I don't think we have.

01:07:29.440 Now, over in the States, if you get above a certain level,

01:07:31.400 you have to go political.

01:07:32.320 You have to become a politically appointee.

01:07:34.300 So I am then witted to what you want to do, politically.

01:07:37.040 I'm aligned to what you want to do.

01:07:38.200 I'm not an impartial advisor anymore.

01:07:40.120 And I think you need that at the top of some of these organisations,

01:07:42.580 particularly in the Home Office.

01:07:43.840 So I would stand or fall with you.

01:07:45.480 If you got, you know, elected out, then we'd all get booted out with you.

01:07:49.780 That's the way it works in America,

01:07:51.160 because that's the way you've got to get that trust built

01:07:53.620 between yourself and your senior officials to say,

01:07:56.340 look, we're all pulling on the same end of the rope here.

01:07:58.700 Because there is a bit of Yes Minister out there, definitely.

01:08:01.820 Yes Minister was a great programme.

01:08:03.320 I don't know if you've ever watched it, but it's a fantastic programme,

01:08:05.380 and I've seen that happen in reality.

01:08:07.540 And I think there are people who actually don't really agree

01:08:09.720 with what you want to do.

01:08:10.780 And they will point out all the risks and difficulties.

01:08:12.900 I don't want to say it's going to be easy,

01:08:14.360 but there is a way to get government moving quickly.

01:08:18.400 And I think the only way you're going to do that

01:08:19.700 is to get absolute political buy-in

01:08:21.820 and empower those people around you to make it happen.

01:08:26.460 And my worry is, Tony, is I'm looking at the trajectory.

01:08:30.560 I think that is only really going to happen

01:08:32.800 when something really, really bad happens.

01:08:36.300 like there's a major terrorist incident and it's linked to one of the boat people and then people

01:08:42.180 going to wake up and go oh right actually there was this huge terrorist attack and it was because

01:08:46.620 one of the main reasons was because we weren't vetting people at all or hardly vetting them or

01:08:52.200 unable to vet them at the border that's my concern and how sad is that how sad is that because i feel

01:08:59.440 the same way as you do i think that that is a real risk i think there is a real risk that something

01:09:05.060 awful. I've lived through awful

01:09:06.940 incidents. No-one thought 9-11 was

01:09:09.100 going to happen. My God.

01:09:10.680 We shut the airspace for a week.

01:09:12.880 Nothing could cross the border at all. I mean, everyone went

01:09:15.040 into panic mode, lockdown mode. And then

01:09:17.000 when we had 7-7 with the bombs on the London

01:09:18.860 Underground, it was terrible. We didn't think that

01:09:20.700 people living, British people, would be blowing 1.00

01:09:23.000 our own country up. These are landmark 1.00

01:09:25.280 media. You don't want to wait for

01:09:26.980 a landmark moment like that to change things, right?

01:09:29.440 You've got to try and get there.

01:09:30.900 And that's where you guys come in. You know, you guys are

01:09:32.860 commentators. You're out there

01:09:34.220 spreading the word there is a real risk i'm telling you of border security in this country

01:09:39.720 in my view there is a real threat and a real risk and i would be saying to you look what i'm worried

01:09:45.320 about before we start getting it and sending them all back are we thoroughly checking them have can

01:09:50.540 can you just give me a prison somewhere put them in governor or a couple of prisons or something

01:09:55.240 someone got no prisons someone else i mean i've got no prison no spaces but you've got to be able

01:10:00.300 to detain people and you've got to bring in really, really good debriefers

01:10:03.620 and you've got to bring in really, really good risk assessors

01:10:05.840 and you've got to take, this is a severe threat in my view, right?

01:10:09.760 You know, it's highly likely that at least some of these people

01:10:12.520 are going to go on to perpetrate really dangerous acts.

01:10:15.280 That's the risk level we had under the Olympics.

01:10:17.360 You've got to change your business model and say,

01:10:19.140 well, if this is a bigger risk, as some commentators are saying,

01:10:22.720 this is a border security risk, not an immigration risk.

01:10:26.180 You've got to adapt your response mechanism.

01:10:28.260 And I don't think we're equipped to do that

01:10:29.680 because we haven't got the detention facilities,

01:10:31.580 we haven't got the legal powers to do it,

01:10:33.220 but I would want to see a lot more people detained securely,

01:10:36.620 not putting a camp, an accommodation centre in some village somewhere

01:10:41.620 where the locals are absolutely, oh, my God, what's this?

01:10:45.080 They can wonder, no.

01:10:47.260 You've got to keep them detained.

01:10:48.780 And that's the only way, that's the first point I would say to you.

01:10:51.820 The first thing you can do is you can keep them detained

01:10:54.000 for as long as you possibly can, get away with the courts

01:10:56.500 and you'll get all the legal challenges away, but lock them up.

01:10:59.160 That's the first thing.

01:11:00.120 And then once they're detained, you can start to pacify the public

01:11:03.180 and then you can start thinking about, well, are we going to send them to?

01:11:05.480 Are we going to get rid of them?

01:11:06.280 But letting them through in 24 hours, 48 hours, 1.00

01:11:10.320 into our communities, largely unvetted, undocumented young men, 1.00

01:11:14.740 to me, mate, you know, I think it's a real worry 1.00

01:11:19.520 and I would be really, really worried if it was my job to do it,

01:11:22.500 which is why I might not take the job with you in the first place.

01:11:24.980 but Tony there's also the concern of like these young men and the potential crimes and something

01:11:31.800 awful happening which you know could very well happen but there's also what we're seeing which

01:11:37.640 is now people are going well you're not going to protect the borders I will and we're seeing that

01:11:45.800 happen more and more and that's another concern of mine whereby people are now feeling emboldened

01:11:50.700 to actually go and, inverted commas, protect the borders.

01:11:54.120 And we saw an incident with one particular individual

01:11:57.180 stabbing boats in order to sink it.

01:12:00.740 Yeah, I think this is a really difficult problem,

01:12:02.840 but, you know, this is a difficulty you've got.

01:12:04.980 When you lose control of something like this

01:12:07.180 and you get this sort of wave of public discontent about it,

01:12:10.520 there will be people that will go to extremes.

01:12:12.980 Now, I mean, what I've said about what's happened down there

01:12:16.100 in Portsmouth and what these groups are doing is, look,

01:12:19.140 But be very, very careful in terms of how you behave and what you do.

01:12:23.940 Be very, very careful.

01:12:25.600 By all means, make your voice heard.

01:12:27.580 You know, use channels like this to get your voice

01:12:29.640 and get your political opinion out there.

01:12:31.460 And I think you've got a lot of political support.

01:12:33.860 The other thing I can tell you is that, you know,

01:12:35.840 save for these last few beach landings,

01:12:38.440 anyone who comes in will be arrested.

01:12:40.320 They're all arrested, all of that lot.

01:12:41.960 They're brought in by the other night.

01:12:43.200 They will be arrested.

01:12:44.060 Please say they're just a...

01:12:45.120 No, they will be arrested. 1.00

01:12:46.480 They're under arrest because they're illegal immigrants. 1.00

01:12:48.100 so they're not going to wander around your street just coming up the beach right they will be 0.89

01:12:52.220 arrested and they will be taken into custody all right and they will be screened and vetted so you

01:12:57.040 know you don't have to go and do that yourself because they will be what your concern is going

01:13:00.880 to be is after that because after 24 48 hours they're being released into your community that's

01:13:05.460 the worry so getting down on a sharp end and say well we're going to do something down there well

01:13:09.100 what are you going to do then i mean you know you can't you're going to put yourself in danger

01:13:12.240 if you're going out there trying to stop protect take the law into your own hands so

01:13:15.820 So I can understand the public mood and the frustration,

01:13:20.760 but the only way to fix this is through the political system.

01:13:23.880 You can't take the law into your own hands because you won't win.

01:13:27.320 You can't win that way, but it is a signal, I think,

01:13:30.440 the protests that we're seeing from people who are not all...

01:13:33.620 From what I've seen here, I don't think they're all right-wing thugs at all.

01:13:36.880 I think these are genuinely concerned people who are rightfully worried

01:13:40.780 that we are admitting undocumented men,

01:13:43.920 Even if the numbers are down, we are still admitting undocumented men

01:13:48.620 who are being admitted into our community, by and large, within 24, 48 hours 0.99

01:13:52.380 and are probably going to get to stay, are being brought into this country

01:13:55.980 and being allowed freedom to actually, you know, live within our communities

01:14:02.880 and expect them to integrate with the local community and be accepted by them.

01:14:07.620 It's cloud cuckoo land. That's not going to happen.

01:14:09.720 And wherever you put them, whether you put them in HMOs

01:14:11.620 or whether you put them in disused military sites

01:14:13.400 or whether you put them in hotels, people won't like it

01:14:16.600 because this is actually disrupting my community

01:14:18.740 and I don't feel safe.

01:14:20.720 I don't feel safe.

01:14:22.780 And that's what I keep coming back to.

01:14:24.060 Your job in government, surely, primarily,

01:14:27.100 whatever colour government you are, your people must feel safe.

01:14:31.360 If I don't feel safe, then obviously they're going to protest about it.

01:14:34.440 So it is a serious problem.

01:14:36.340 But I do urge people, anyone watching this,

01:14:38.780 please don't. By all means, you know, protest peacefully, stand outside here with a placard

01:14:45.640 and get coverage from people like you about the level of concern, because that is a form

01:14:52.600 of political lobbying. But please don't take the law into your own hands, because it's not going

01:14:57.700 to work. You're not going to stop the boats by doing that. And actually, you're probably going

01:15:01.240 to put yourself in danger. Tony, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you

01:15:05.580 bringing your expertise to this issue. These are really important conversations for our country

01:15:09.400 and your voice is really, really important. So thanks for coming on. Before we head over

01:15:13.420 to our supporters, they've submitted a bunch of questions for you. The way we always end

01:15:17.640 our interviews is by asking what's the one thing we're not talking about that you think we should

01:15:21.660 be on. Just topple, free hip, whatever you think.

01:15:27.720 I don't think we've spoken

01:15:29.360 much about the actual border system itself and the

01:15:33.380 entry exit systems that we have and that we haven't actually got a biometric entry exit system in this

01:15:38.020 country which they have now got in america they've got in singapore they've got in dubai in other

01:15:41.800 words we will know exactly when you enter the country and when you left the country because

01:15:45.340 we'll take a photograph when you come in we do that now with the gates and we we could get the

01:15:50.220 airlines to do it or we could do it on outbound wouldn't cost the earth but then you would know

01:15:53.620 exactly how many people are staying here who's entering instead of relying on these ons statistics

01:15:58.980 which are made up a lot of time because they're done by survey you would have an electronic

01:16:03.300 system which would monitor every single person coming in, including Brits and Irish people,

01:16:07.400 as well as foreign nationals, you would know how many people are overstaying in this country,

01:16:11.260 who's leaving, who's entering. We don't have any exit checks in this country to speak of.

01:16:16.020 And once you've got that, you've got a much better control over actually how many people

01:16:20.080 are actually in this country, how many people are overstaying in this country,

01:16:23.480 and where to focus your resources on looking at another big problem that we haven't spoken about,

01:16:27.540 which isn't asylum seekers coming by back, which is overstayers who are coming into this country,

01:16:31.300 getting permission to enter for six months electronically by an e-gate 0.93

01:16:34.480 and then probably just staying and working and delivering your pizza.

01:16:37.400 Now, if that's not a problem, well, don't worry about it.

01:16:39.080 But I would like to see something done about that.

01:16:40.820 And I think the only way to do that is to put more technology on our borders.

01:16:44.460 Tony, thank you so much for coming on.

01:16:45.980 Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where Tony is going to answer your questions.

01:16:51.900 Was there ever a politician who actually wanted your advice

01:16:55.100 and was willing to follow it rather than what I suspect you will explain happened?

01:17:01.300 We'll see you next time.

01:17:31.300 You

TRIGGERnometry - October 21, 2026

＂I Policed the Border for 40 Years - the System is Broken＂ - Tony Smith CBE

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