“Stopping the boats” carrying illegal migrants across the Channel to Britain is on Rishi Sunak’s list of “five key priorities for 2023.” But a leaked government memo suggests the crisis could last until 2028 and beyond.
The document, reported in The Daily Telegraph, has been released amid chaotic attempts to reduce the £6 million a day cost of housing tens of thousands of migrants in hundreds of hotels by moving them to mass accommodation centres. The Telegraph said that while ministers have publicly declared they only have planning permission for these centres for up to one year, the memo reveals these could be needed for the next half-decade.
Officials added that unless the centres are used for longer than previously expected, they could end up costing more than the hotels in which migrants are already residing.
More than 16,000 migrants have already crossed the Channel this year. Officials predict numbers will this year reach another record high, with possibly 65,000 individuals making the journey—up from 45,756 in 2022.
The Tory government has spoken loudly about a range of new initiatives it claims will bring the issue to an end, but these have mostly fallen flat. Alp Mehmet, chairman of the Migration Watch UK think tank, said that government “delusion” will instead result in illegal migration getting “worse.” He told The European Conservative:
It isn’t clear what leads officials to conclude that the ‘migrant crisis’ will last another five years. If they are expecting the backlog to be cleared in that time and illegal boat crossings to end, they are engaging in self-delusion. There is little happening that will bring to an end the current crisis, which will not only continue into the foreseeable future but also get worse.
The home office provided an expectedly evasive response to the Telegraph’s request for comment on its report.
