PM plots Italy-style migrant deals with Kurdistan, Turkey and Vietnam

Labour is plotting a series of Italy-style migrant deals with governments in Kurdistan, Turkey and Vietnam in a bid to tackle the small boats crisis.

The push comes weeks after Sir Keir Starmer met with Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome to discuss how to tackle illegal migration.

Italy has been a key protaganist in EU deals struck with north African countries Tunisia and Libya to stop migrant boats arriving on European shores.

The PM and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper want to copy the model of paying countries hundreds of millions of pounds for them to do more to stop crossings.

As reported by the Sunday Times, Ms Cooper is in talks with governments in Kurdistan - a semi-autonomous region of Iraq, Turkey and Vietnam.

The 'co-operation and security' agreements are expected to be finalised before the end of the year.

Cabinet minister Louise Haigh this morning confirmed that Labour is seeking 'international solutions' to tackle the Channel migrant crisis 'upstream'.

But she denied that Labour's proposals were similar to the Tories' Rwanda plan to stop small boat crossings.

Although she refused to say how much Labour's deals would cost British taxpayers, Ms Haigh did not deny it would amount to hundreds of millions of pounds. 

The Transport Secretary told Sky News: 'The PM and the Home Secretary have made no secret that this is an international problem that needs international solutions.

'That is why both of them have been working with our counterparts across Europe and across the world to make sure we have deals and agreements in place that can tackle this issue.

'We can't tackle it on our own at the border, that's why the PM was at Interpol recently talking about exactly this issue. We need to tackle the problem upstream.'

Sir Keir scrapped the Tories' Rwanda plan - which would have seen asylum seekers sent to the African country to have their claims processed - as soon as he took office.

But Ms Haigh denied Labour is seeking to revive those plans through partnerships with governments in Kurdistan, Turkey and Vietnam.

'Rwanda was a failed gimmick that managed to solve absolutely nothing,' she said.

'Rwanda wasn't working well before we scrapped it before coming into office, it was costing the taxpayer a fortune.

'It clearly wasn't working as a deterrent and it wasn't resolving the issue at source. What we're talking about is resolving the issue upstream.'

Tory shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Labour's planned migration deals will not 'work as a deterrent' but are a 'constructive step'.

He told Sky News: 'They are not proposing, as far as I can see, to have a returns agreement with those countries.

'They're proposing to work with those countries to prevent departures in the first place.

'Now that's all well and good. I'm perfectly happy to support that, but it's not going to work as a deterrent.

'To deter people, they need to know that if they illegally and dangerously cross the English Channel, they're going to be immediately removed somewhere else.

'And that's what Rwanda did. These deals don't do that.'

He added: 'The Rwanda scheme never actually started.

'It was due to start on the 24 July and it would have saved us a lot of money had it been started, because the deterrent would have stopped people crossing the English Channel.

'We know that because it worked in Australia.'

Ms Meloni has hailed the success of her hardline policies and Italy's interior ministry claimed a 62 per cent fall in irregular migrant arrivals in the first seven months of 2024.

Ahead of his talks with the Italian PM in September, Sir Keir said he 'wanted to understand' how Ms Meloni had achieved 'dramatic reductions' of small boat arrivals.

He said this was likely due to Italy's 'upstream' work to tackle illegal migration, adding: 'I've always made the argument that preventing people leaving their country in the first place is far better than trying to deal with those that have arrived in any of our countries.'

So far this year more than 32,000 people have arrived in the UK having made the journey across the English Channel by boat, according to Home Office figures.

Sir Keir recently hailed the arrest of a 44-year-old Turkish man suspected of being a supplier of small boats was a 'significant piece of the jigsaw' in tackling Channel crossings.

The suspect was detained at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam on Wednesday after a joint investigation by Dutch and Belgian authorities and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA).

He is suspected of shipping dinghies and engines from Turkey and storing them in Germany, before they are moved to northern France for crossings.

The PM said: 'Criminal gangs have been getting away with this for far too long.

'I want to thank the UK National Crime Agency, along with their Dutch and Belgian counterparts, for all their hard work and their crucial role in this investigation.

'It's exactly what we want to see and it shows that our approach of working with international partners to smash the people smuggling gangs is bearing fruit.'