THE Channel small boats crisis is the result of French membership of the EU, according to Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
He told GB News: “This is one of I suppose the byproducts of France’s membership of the EU. So a lot of border control policy, a lot of migration policy is held at EU level.
“Of course, the individual EU member states have a role to play and they have something to say, but much of this is done at EU level.
“And we will continue, of course, to work with the EU, in terms of the border enforcement that is done by French officials and therefore, of course, it is in our interest to work with France.
“We know that France gets a higher number of illegal migrants than the UK, so this is not just a UK problem. This is a Europe-wide problem.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Stephen Dixon and Ellie Costello on GB News, he said: “Both France and the UK have a shared interest in resolving this issue and this is why the negotiations have been held, I think in a real positive spirit.
“There’s a real desire to coordinate and we are really pushing both the French and the British authorities are really pushing to see what we can do to seriously reduce the numbers of people making those illegal journeys both through France and across the channel to the UK.”
He continued: “The French have already played a very important part in preventing a significant number of attempted crossings.
“And of course, we will be negotiating with them about what more we can do together to prevent people crossing the Channel.
“And through the legal migration bill, we of course, are looking to find ways of returning people back to their countries of origin or another safe country to demonstrate to the both of people smugglers themselves and those people who have put themselves in the hands of people smugglers that it is it is not worth the the money or the effort or the risk to try and illegally come to the UK.”
Mr Cleverly added: “The French authorities have stopped around half of the attempted crossings but we are seeing unprecedented numbers of people who are migrating through continental Europe, often through France attempting to get to the UK.
“It is in our collective interests to get a grip of this. The French authorities and the British authorities have been working together. We want to find ways of being able to do more together to be more effective together.
“The money that we have been spending with the French authorities has made a difference.”
