Starmer to meet Meloni for advice on tackling small-boat migration

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Sir Keir Starmer will on Monday hold talks with Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni to learn from her tough stance on irregular migration, as he named a senior police officer as the UK’s border security chief.

Martin Hewitt will head the new Border Security Command, which Starmer claims will have the legal and coordinating clout to tackle the criminal networks smuggling migrants across the English Channel. Eight people died trying to make the crossing on Sunday.

The appointment is intended to signal Starmer’s robust approach to migration, with Downing Street saying he wants to learn how Meloni cut irregular sea crossings to Italy by migrants by 60 per cent in a year.

Just 44,675 irregular migrants have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year, down sharply from 125,800 in the same period last year, and from 65,500 in the first eight-and-a-half months in 2022 when Mario Draghi was still in office as prime minister.

Starmer has said he is open to processing asylum claims offshore — an idea Meloni is working on with Albania. “We will do whatever works,” said a senior British official. But other aspects of Meloni’s approach are attracting more UK interest.

Starmer is particularly interested in the success of the so-called Rome Process adopted by Meloni last year, which saw Italy forge deals with North African countries including Tunisia to tackle people-smuggling gangs in countries where they operated, and return migrants.

Two people briefed on Starmer’s thinking said there were aspects of the scheme that his government was drawing on as part of efforts to “smash the gangs” of people smugglers bringing people across continents towards Britain.

Hewitt, a police chief with 30 years of experience in national security and tackling serious crime also co-ordinated police enforcement of Britain’s Covid response. He will travel to Rome with Starmer, who will hold talks with Meloni on migration as part of his wider attempt to improve relations with EU capitals.

Downing Street claimed that Hewitt, who will be charged with working with European partners to break smuggling gangs, would have the ability to bring together police, intelligence services and government bodies to tackle the problem.

Starmer said: “No more gimmicks. This government will tackle the smuggling gangs who trade the lives of men, women and children across borders.  

“Martin Hewitt’s unique expertise will lead a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system.”  

In Rome, Starmer and Hewitt will visit Italy’s National Coordination Centre for Migration and hold talks with Italian business leaders ahead of a UK investment summit next month.

The Italian premier had a strong personal rapport with Starmer’s Conservative predecessor Rishi Sunak, who came to Rome last December as a star guest — along with Elon Musk — at a political festival organised by Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party. 

Meloni came to power promising to curb the inflow of irregular migrants arriving in Italy without permission from across the Mediterranean — a hot-button issue for her party and its core supporters. 

Since then, Italy has increased financial support to Tunisia and Libya for a crackdown on human traffickers and intercepting migrant boats setting out to cross the Mediterranean.

Her government has also restricted the activities of humanitarian groups such as Medicin Sans Frontiers that rescue migrants at risk of drowning at sea. These actions included even impounding the charities’ rescue vessels — for weeks or months at a time — 23 times since taking power. 

A year ago, Meloni also unveiled a controversial deal with Albania for the construction and operation of two migrant holding centres, where Italian authorities will hold and quickly process the asylum claims of up to 36,000 irregular migrants rescued by Italy’s own coastguard from precarious situations at sea each year. 

Though the Albania deal echoes the previous UK government’s flagship Rwanda plan, Meloni’s scheme is fundamentally different, as those deemed to have valid asylum claims will be brought to Italy as refugees, while the others will be held at the Albanian centres until they can be deported. Under the Rwanda plan, successful asylum seekers would have had to remain in Rwanda. 

The Albanian plan — which is already running behind schedule and over budget — has been fiercely criticised by the Council of Europe, human rights organisations, and Italy’s opposition as a costly piece of political theatre that will do little to deter people from trying to reach Europe, while leading to potential human rights violations, including a lack fairness to asylum seekers.

Prosecutors are pushing for Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini to spend six years in prison for barring a humanitarian boat carrying nearly 150 migrants from docking in Italy for nearly three weeks.

But though the Albanian centres have not yet started to function, Meloni’s approach generated interest elsewhere in Europe, including in Brussels. Other European leaders are also looking at how they could hold migrants outside their own borders while they process their asylum claims.

A person briefed on Starmer’s trip to Italy said the Albania plan was not on the agenda for discussion with Meloni on Monday as it is “not something we’re looking at”.