2 days ago
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Home secretary says Starmer’s visit part of ‘pursuing Britain’s interests’ but says Albania-style scheme not an option ‘at the moment’
Good morning. Rishi Sunak had a good relationship with Giorgia Meloni, the leader of a far-right party who became PM in Italy around the same time he did in the UK, and he took a very close interest in what her government is doing to stop irregular migration into her country by back. Keir Starmer has abandoned Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, but not everything has changed in Whitehall and today he is in Italy for talks with Meloni and to see if he can learn anything that might help Labour reduce small boat crossings.
In a press release about the trip, Downing Street said:
As part of the visit Keir Starmer will discuss with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni her country’s success in tackling irregular migration. Italy has seen a 60 per cent drop in irregular migration by sea over the past year thanks to tough enforcement and international cooperation.
Well, we’ve always worked with other democratically elected countries, including those led by political parties that we’re not aligned with. The last Labour government did that. Other governments have done that. That’s just always been the case. It’s part of making sure that we are pursuing Britain’s interests, working internationally with other governments.
The areas that I think are important in terms of working with Italy are particularly around tackling organised immigration crime, the smuggler and the trafficking gangs. Italy has been doing this, they have made some significant progress on doing this.
The Italian arrangement with Albania is not yet up and running, and we will be interested to see how that develops. We’ve always said we would look at what works. It is a very different kind of programme from the Rwanda one.
The Rwanda scheme was run for two and a half years by the Conservatives. They spent £700m on sending four volunteers to Rwanda. That is not a workable programme.
It’s not in place at the moment, so no. As we’ve always said, we will look at anything that works. But no, that’s not the scheme that we’re looking at at the moment. What we’re looking at at the moment is developing new Europol taskforces.
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