Rishi Sunak has pledged to push for reform of global refugee rules as he warned that failing to tackle illegal migration would “destroy the public’s faith” in politicians and governments.
In a speech in Italy, the Prime Minister said that insufficient action would lead to growing numbers which will “overwhelm our countries and our capacity to help those who need our help most.”
He also warned that malign states were deliberately “driving people to our shores to try and destabilise our societies.”
Mr Sunak was speaking at a festival hosted by Giorgia Meloni’s populist Brothers of Italy party in Rome, as he attempts to persuade the Conservative Right and Tory voters that his Rwanda legislation would be sufficient to start deportation flights and deter future illegal Channel crossings.
Citing a need for world leaders to apply “Thatcher’s radicalism and drive” in tackling illegal migration, Mr Sunak said that both he and Ms Meloni, the Italian prime minister, were “determined to break the business model” of these criminal gangs involved in people trafficking.
He added: “If that requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, we must do that.
“Because if we don’t fix this problem now, the boats will keep coming and more lives will be lost at sea.”
Mr Sunak and Ms Meloni, who has defended Britain’s deal with Rwanda, have been working together to campaign for a crackdown on illegal migration. Mr Sunak sees Rwanda-style deals to process asylum claims in third countries as key to reducing illegal arrivals, along with returns deals such as the one struck between the UK and Albania to speed up the deportation of illegal migrants.
In his speech on Saturday, Mr Sunak said: “Our opponents just want to ignore this issue. They want to put their heads in the sand and hope it goes away. Well, let me tell them, it won’t.”
Mr Sunak said that in the event of a failure to act, “our enemies will see how unable we are to deal with this and so will increasingly use migration as a weapon: deliberately driving people to our shores to try and destabilise our societies.”
Finland, which shares an 800-mile border with Russia, has accused Moscow of deliberately sending Middle Eastern migrants into the European Union to destabilise the bloc.
In the past, Poland has accused Belarus of encouraging migrants from the Middle East and Africa to cross into Europe in revenge for Western sanctions on Alexander Lukashenko’s government.
Mr Sunak added: “If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow. It will overwhelm our countries, and our capacity to help those who need our help most.
“The costs of accommodating these people will anger our citizens, who won’t understand why their money should have to be spent on dealing with the consequences of this evil trade. It will destroy the public’s faith not just in us as politicians but in our very systems of government.”
Mr Sunak’s intervention comes after Suella Braverman, while still Home Secretary, used a speech in the US to warn that as many as 780 million people will be eligible to claim asylum without radical reform of global refugee rules.
Speaking in September, Mrs Braverman said that the threshold for asylum claims under the United Nations Refugee Convention had been lowered in the courts.
She warned that “simply being gay, a woman or fearful of discrimination” is now effectively enough to qualify for protection, with refugee rights extended to up to 780 million people.
Number 10 said that after their talks on Saturday, Mr Sunak and Ms Meloni had agreed to co-fund a project that would see the two countries “promote and assist the voluntary return” of migrants currently stuck in Tunisia.
Tunisia neighbours Italy just across the Mediterranean and attracts many migrants from several African countries who begin their journey to Europe there.