"I Policed the Border for 40 Years - the System is Broken" - Tony Smith CBE

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So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. I was brought up, really, in quite a tough, you know, enforcement world. This was well after the 1951 conventions were agreed on the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. And we've gone from that to what we have now where, to a lot of people, Tony, it feels like we don't have a border anymore. What's happened? Asylum trumps border control. Somebody can literally get within the 12-mile zone, mention the magic word, and within 24 or 48 hours be in one of our communities with minimal vetting. The most important thing, though, you should do is break the business model. How do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place? The only way you've got to do that is say, well, you're not going to get in. Sola Bravman, who was here recently, her argument is you can't deal with this until you leave the ECHI. No, you don't. You do need to do that, but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that. So even that's not enough? No. Put all this international law stuff. Because it's hopelessly out. It's broken. It's completely broken. It's no longer delivering what the asylum system was meant to deliver in the first place. Do you like annoying people just by taking a sip of coffee or the clothes you're wearing? Then head over to our merch store, where you'll be able to buy hoodies, T-shirts, caps, prints, stickers, poses, and, of course, the world-famous Trigonometry mug. Go to shop.triggerpod.co.uk. That's shop.triggerpod.co.uk. And become part of the show. Tony Smith, welcome to Trigonometry. Great to have you on the show. You had a full 40-year career in handling the immigration into this country, particularly border security, eventually rising to be in charge of all of it, the border force. The question we really want to ask you is what on earth is going on? But before we get to that, talk us through your career. Tell us what you learned, what you saw, how you went through it, and what people should know about the border force in this country and the way the borders are managed more broadly. Yeah, okay, so I'm from London. I didn't go to university. I got my A-levels. I didn't know what to do. I went and saw my careers manager, and he said, what have you thought about the civil service? I didn't really want to join in the police because quite a lot of my relatives were in the police. I thought, I don't really want to do that. I thought I'd do something a bit different. So they recommended, well, I don't try customs or something like that. So I put my application in. Before I knew it, I was appointed to the Home Office as an executive officer. And I started off dealing with extensions of stay from aliens. We used to call them aliens. We had aliens in Commonwealth back then. And there wasn't much control over Commonwealth back then. But the aliens would apply to stay for studies or work or whatever, and you'd stamp their passport with another year or two years or three years or refuse that. And then once I got into it, I started to realize that actually the real work, the real job was done at the border in the immigration service. So I became an immigration officer, which is a statutory role, actually, which gives you powers, pretty strong powers. I was actually to arrest people, detain people, remove people. And I got posted at Heathrow Airport, and I sat on the line there for about five years. You know, people would come up to my desk, and they'd have to show me their passport, their landing card. I'd ask them questions about what you're coming here for, who are you, what you're doing. And, well, if I didn't like the look of them, I just thought it was something funny, I could take them down and do their bags, have a look in there, and then make a judgment call about whether or not they were admissible to the country. And if not, then the power was vested in law. And, you know, by law, Schedule 2 Immigration Act in me to refuse entry on the authority of my chief. So, well, I don't like the look of this guy. You know, he says he's coming on holiday, but I've just looked in his bag, and he's got his weight as a uniform and his alarm clock with him and all his references. So I don't think he is coming on holiday, really, to be honest. So it was a credibility issue. And if I didn't believe him, I wasn't satisfied, I'd just send him straight back. And so I stayed at the airport for a while. Then I moved into London to immigration enforcement, that is to say, dealing with people that are already, in the country, that got through somehow, that might be here illegally. Did a lot of work with the police on arresting, you know, suspected overstayers, workers in breach, illegal entrants, a little bit of organised crime stuff. And same thing, really. If I found someone in London in the 80s, early 80s, who didn't have a passport and couldn't explain how they were in the country, I could just, like, arrest them and detain them and send them back. No call. Which is why the police quite liked us. Because the police would have to go through the criminal justice system, they'd have to prosecute and go and get a magistrate and then get a recommendation for deportation. Whereas we had these powers to remove people summarily. And, yeah, we removed people on letters. I'd write a letter to the captain of the aircraft to say this person's illegally in the UK. Please take him back to wherever he was from and give him a bit of paper with his photo on, so to the chief immigration officer in Delhi Airport, wherever it was, and they would go back. So I was brought up really in quite a tough, you know, enforcement world, where actually immigration enforcement was really quite. Powerful. Now, just remember, this was in the '70s and the '80s. This was well after the 1951 conventions were agreed on, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. But nobody claimed asylum back then. Nobody claimed human rights. I mean, mostly they'd just say, oh, fair enough. Now, good cop, gov, can I go and get some money out of the ATM to take home with me and pick up a few bits and pieces, which we'd usually try and accommodate. And then they'd go back quietly. So I was brought up to believe that, actually, I had a really powerful role at the border in deciding who came in and who didn't come in, and in country, a really powerful role in who got to stay here and who got deported. So I did all that up until the '80s, and then I started to climb the ladder. I went into headquarters, immigration service headquarters, where you run into more sort of home office civil servants, which were dealing with broader home affairs issues and how immigration fit with that, got promoted to chief immigration officer, then went back to enforcement as a chief, then went up again the next level, inspector, again, back in the headquarters, back out to operations. So I did quite a bit of operational policy and quite a lot of frontline operations up to inspector. Now, when you get to the next level, that was assistant director. That's a grade seven, which is a civil service generic grade. There was an assistant director, immigration, but you were still an assistant director. Everything kind of equalized so people could move around between immigration and other departments. So you had to be a civil service director. in it because i thought well i've been doing it for 20 years now and i actually quite know a lot quite know quite a lot about this i don't really want to be one of these generalists that moves around whitehall i want to i want to stay in my swim lane and then um it came to a point in a about the early late 80s early 90s where we started to see a lot of asylum applications coming in, people were arriving mainly on the ferries across from Dover without documents and claiming asylum. And my immediate response was, "What were you saying about France? I don't care about them." But then the lawyers came in, the legal advice came in, the policy makers came in and said, "No, no, Tony, you can't do that. Because if they're claiming persecution, they've got a legitimate claim for protection, and you have to at least consider the claim." So I said, "Well, well all right we'll do that then at Dover you know we'll put a team down there and we'll process them and then we'll send them but no no you can't do that either it has to be referred away from the border into the home office this led to a huge backlog of asylum cases where people were turning up at the border without any documents on the ferries and and then claiming asylum and we could send it back and so I took on something called the asylum liaison unit they created a whole new department in home office called the asylum directorate who weren't immigration officers but were charged with the duty of considering all these asylum applications. So I did that for a while. I did a lot of stuff on asylum in the late 90s. And then I got selected to go to Canada on an exchange program with the Canadian Immigration. And the idea really was that I was going to learn a little bit more about how they deal with refugees, how they deal with, you know, they are a country of immigration. Their top priority is to take people into Canada, big country and they want people in the provinces so i wanted to learn that but no sooner had i got there and then 9 11 happened and uh that's another story but i mean it's a long story but i was director of ports of entry in canada which put me right on the front foot of of of border security in canada and therefore north america spent a lot of time over after 9 11 talking to the americans about how we're going to improve targeting checking people coming in the country making sure that they were not coming for you know nefarious reasons terrorism crime whatever built a lot of targeting units there and then i came back my three years were up came back to the uk which was managing all of the border controls at all of the ports of entry now you know i came back we still had in fact while i've been away we'd had a massive increase in asylum while i was in canada it went up from about 25 30 000 to over 100 000 applications in about 2002 2003 and there was a lot of work going on to by the government of the day to try and get asylum intake down i walked back into that and the main tactic the government then used was to put the border abroad so we we did agree with the french that we would have what we called the juxtaposed controls we would put our own officers in calais and dunkirk to check passports before people could get on the ferry in the same way as we do with planes and that kind of worked because then they started trying to get in the back of lorries and we agreed with the french we put dog teams out there and surveillance teams and equipment to search the lorries so we managed to get asylum intake right down from about 100 000 to about 25 000 over two years which was pretty good that was a main target that was a target to me and that was to reduce asylum intake and and and then the uk border agency was formed so everything changed they abolished the immigration service they created the uk border agency we merged with customs because prior to that customs did goods and we did people so you know if i had someone at the airport i tapped down customs officer would do the search in case they felt that they dealt with the drugs and you know the illicit materials and the copyright materials and we dealt with a person but then they decided that that's a lot of countries have gone that way now and created a single border agency that manages both people and goods we did that around about 2007 2008 so we created the ukba and then um i was put in charge of london in the southeast as a regional director now i'm quite a senior at the food chain now somehow i've managed to click you know get the right way up to us so i'm now a senior director in home office with responsibility for um asylum uh casework asylum removals and enforcement so between 2007 2009 2010 we did a lot of work on uh asylum uh removals which is probably something a lot of people be really quite interested in these days and we were able to get asylum removals up very considerably back then and that was mainly because i ran something called the third country unit and i also ran something called the detained fast track system uh and those two systems although they were national they were under my command in london southeast if people came in from a third country uh if people uh we felt the case that was manifestly unfounded we would keep them detained we wouldn't release them we'd keep them locked up we got an extension in our detention accommodation and we moved the process into the detention centers so like we brought the officers into the detention center you know so that we had caseworkers in there working from there so they had close contact with the inmates and even appeals courts we moved in there and that worked quite well between 2007 2008 2009 so did a pretty good job on getting asylum removals up getting asylum keeping asylum intake down but then there was always a thing called the olympics that was coming along in 2012 and what we were finding stratford was on my patch and what we were finding was lots and lots of people turning up at stratford looking for uh work but they had forged documents like they were dodgy id cards so the you know police called us in well we don't really want people with without the proper credentials working on on the olympic park you never know what they might do do you so i put a team down there of forgery experts and interviews so we made sure we did a proper check on anybody who got a job down on the site and that got bigger and bigger and bigger and then we had so in the end my boss said to me look tony we need someone on the olympics like a full-time we need someone like you you know brought you to manage all the border security that supports the entry and the inland and the accreditation all the screening and checking because we really really don't want any bad guys coming over here and ruining our olympics right so so i then went full-time onto london 2012 senior responsible officer for the border security agenda working with police military other stakeholders and then when it came to the games i was gold command considering every threat every day deciding who got through who didn't get through how we managed it and you know that went well actually that was i don't know if you remember london 2012 but it was a fantastic event everybody was looking at what was going on on the track in london and a lot of the people were looking at what we wanted nobody was looking at us and which is what we wanted and uh as a result i i was very proud i did a great job not just me a lot of other people i got my um cbe for my majesty and i've done my 40 years 41 years and i've always had a job done good career good life pension that's the end of it but it didn't kind of end there because as i left the home secretary of the day theresa may took me for a drink actually just over said what are you going to do now i don't know really i've done my 40 years here but i don't know so well there's a couple of things you could obviously i mean you know so much about this it wouldn't be bad if we could keep in touch with you if there's any policy issues brexit for example you know that you you could help us with outside then that'd be good and also we haven't really got anyone like you to do media like we've got ex-army veterans if there's a war and we've got ex-policemen if there's a riot but we were really like you who could talk about something going wrong at the border which is what sucked me into the whole media business and and uh international stuff as well i was being invited to go and check conferences around the world on border management border security sharing you know best practice with other countries and i'm still doing that now to this day even uh though so i've been in the borders business really for about 50 years and i've kind of just tried to stay in my swim lane i see a lot of people now who come in and out of this business with lots of ideas and why don't you do that why don't you do that it's not complicated business actually and i thought well i don't really want to go off and tell someone how to police a city i don't want to tell someone how to fight a war actually that's not my that's not my baby but if you want to run a border then i'm probably the right bloke to talk to and so that's why i still do this and i still talk about i've written a book about borders i you know i do a lot of media commentary about borders and i'm still really interested in the subject so thank you for having me on well with that introduction you're the perfect person to talk to because all we do is talk about this issue quite you know a lot of the time and we don't we're not experts you are um and what you described to me is extraordinary because you're not an old man you're and yet in the course of your not just life but your career you've we have gone as a country from what you were describing to my even my modern sensibilities in the 80s it was like oh one man on his whim so it goes i don't like the look of this guy off you go so our modern sensibilities that seems almost extreme from that to what we have now where to a lot of people tony it feels like we don't have a border anymore what's happened i'll be honest if i call a business and get a voicemail that sounds like it was recorded in 2015 by someone who has since emigrated i hang up i don't leave a message nobody leaves a message anymore what do i look like a professional and here's the uncomfortable bit your customers are doing exactly that to you today's episode is brought to you by quo spelled q u o the business phone system built so you will never miss a call what quo actually does is straightforward every call text and voicemail lands in one place so whoever on your team looks at it can see the full exchange and pick it up from there instead of starting cold several years into running trigonometry i've learned the most operational problems aren't solved by hiring more people they're solved by better systems this is why quo stands out to me it's a business phone system built to set up in minutes and doesn't require anyone on the team to become an i.t person overnight and when nobody on your team is free to pick up an ai agent takes a call answers the obvious questions and can book someone in immediately the league doesn't sit overnight going cold which is usually when you lose a business there's a reason quo is the number one rated business phone system on g2 with over 90 000 businesses relying on it money's on the line always say hello with quo try quo for free plus 20 off your first six months when you go to quo dot com slash trig that's q u o dot com slash trig yeah so the immigration act 1971 is still in force believe it or not that was the one that came in 1173 and that's still the main legislation but what's happened is it's been chopped and changed and chopped and changed over generations now yeah generations i suppose if you go to the 80s the 90s the asylum problem was the first thing that i thought i went to i'm not saying my boss i don't think we cracked this one because we had cracked a lot of stuff we were cracking bogus marriages we were cracking bogus colleges with the police we were doing a lot on immigration crime but when people started claiming asylum this whole new army of people came along and appeared on the scene you know from from the judiciary and from you know pressure groups and refugee organizations who challenged the whole thing and they were saying well we can't have immigration officers doing this anymore it's not okay because they're not qualified to judge whether or not someone's in fear of persecution and it's in con it's in direct conflict with the refugee convention and so that's when the asylum thing took that's what the main watershed was it was in the late 80s 90s we started to get more and more people turning up at the border and the fact of asylum trumps border control asylum is the magic word i don't know if i'm giving away too many secrets here but i think it's common knowledge now out there pretty well look if you turn up at the border and you get stopped claim asylum why wasn't that happening before no one worked out that this was the case no no one had worked it out and no one even thought that it was relevant because why would it be relevant i mean you know the powers in schedule two were conferred i mean no one question the fact that, well, someone, I mean, that's not to say we didn't have refugees that were brought over here. We've always had refugees who were brought over here, you know, going back to Idi Amin and, you know, so there would be a programme where you could say, well, there is a cohort of people in that country that we want to legally bring in as refugees. But nobody turned up at the border and just said, oh, I want asylum. This kind of just caught and took off to a point where people started to realise, well, actually, that's all you've got to do. If you can get here and claim asylum, that at least stops them from removing you instantly, which is what I used to do. Then there's an old judgment called the Hardy-El-Singh judgment, which goes back to the 80s, which said that, yes, we will let the immigration officers detain people for more than 24, 48 hours, but you have to demonstrate you've got a realistic chance of removing this person within a reasonable amount of time, basically. That's what the courts decided, because we couldn't do that anymore. Because the asylum application would come in, and then by the time you got around the interview, there'd be some other evidence that was issued, and then they'd claim something else. And so the process, we got elongated to the point that we couldn't demonstrate to a court that we could remove this person quickly. So you're suddenly now under pressure to grant them temporary admission into the country. And so that's where it began to go wrong, is that we were starting to get more and more people turning up, claiming asylum at the border, and getting into a system that kind of grew exponentially with the casework, to the point where it became almost unmanageable in the early noughties. And that's why, say, the tactics of the government at the day, and I'm going back to early 2003, 2004, was to say, this is really important. What we need to do is reduce asylum intake. That's the movement of the border into France, and checking people before they can get on a plane to come here, finding an airline if they brought someone without a passport, to make sure the checks are pushed out, if you like, or push the border out. And for those that are here, start doing things like detain fast tracks, third country unit, to get people removed. And the idea was that ultimately, we would be able to turn the tide on this, and actually get more people going back than the people that were coming in. That was a target of the government back then, and I worked on that for a while. But it never really, we've always had illegal entry, and there was always, the human traffickers, the smugglers won't give up. I mean, because this is lucrative business for them. They're not going to just say, oh, blimey, we'd better stop taking people to the UK. They're still going to look for the markets. So there still was illegal entry going on all through that time. We got it under control, but it was still illegal entry. But they were coming in lorries, coming through the common travel area, sometimes coming on dodgy passports, but we've always had illegal entry. So we would move our response teams around to try and deal with those particular problems. But we did keep it under control for quite a while. But I think what happened after that is, and this is after I retired, you know, 2013, 2014, we started seeing more and more asylum applications springing up all over the place in the UK. The numbers, the asylum intake started to creep up again. And fortunately for me, before, you know, before the boat, I was, I retired before the boat started coming. I was always told, don't worry about, because I had a threat assessment every day, every week on the border. And I said, well, what about people coming in small boats? I mean, are we protected? And all the experts would say, don't worry about that, Governor, that's all right. They won't be able to get across there on a little boat. It's too choppy. And, you know, major shipwrecks and all that sort of thing. And, you know, we had a lot of problems. And, you know, it was sort of, it was a risk, but it was never seen as a real problem. And it only really took off in 2018, as you know, when the boat started coming across. And this, I think this brought it into public focus much more, because it's highly visible now. There was always a legal entrance coming in lorries and claiming asylum, but you didn't get to see it really. It was, you know, sometimes you get pictures of people running off up the motorway or something and police chasing them, but not a lot. Now, every day, every day, really, if you see a boat, it's going to be on the national media. Everyone's counting the numbers. Everyone's looking at the government, what you're going to do. It's a highly, highly visible form of illegal entry. And the other bit that I should mention, which really worries me, is the security element. Whatever your views are on immigration, and whether or not you think we should allow people, you know, who come from pretty horrible countries into claim asylum in this country from France, you've really got to screen people properly. You have to thoroughly screen. I spent most of my life on vetting, screening. You don't, we haven't got any technology that can tell you what's in someone's mind. All you've got when you're dealing with a newly arrived migrant, and that's why they throw their documents away. Why they throw their passport? Well, because that gives you a story. The passport gives you your name, your date of birth, your nationality, your travel. These are all things that we look at at the ports of entry to assess you, or when you're applying for a visa. That's all gone. You've got nothing. All you've got is the person's word for what he's doing here. That's it. You can only talk to the person. You can take the biometrics, so we do fingerprints and face, but there's no global watch list of fingerprints and faces, not really, that's going to spot every criminal, every person. And even if they haven't got any previous, how do you know what they're going to do? How do you know how this person is going to behave once they're through the border and into the country? If you're going to let them in at all, I would like to see Fardiyal Singh reversed. I want him detained. I want him detained for a lot longer than, Manston, 24 hours is a short-term holding facility. So you can, you get a boatload of 500 in a day. You're scrambling to get the cases cleared because you get sued for unlawful detention. If you keep them in Manston for more than 24 hours. Now, if you haven't got anywhere else to move them to, to another immigration detention centre, and like the prisons, they're pretty full. You're under pressure to grant temporary admission pretty quickly. And so that's why people are coming into the communities really, really quickly. There's another team in the home office that are responsible for moving them out of Manston and finding them places to stay, either in HMOs or hotels or wherever it may be in the country. But you're not doing the screening to the extent that I would like to see it done. And there was an HMIC report on this a couple of years ago on debriefing. And I would like to see us hold people for a lot, lot longer than that until we're absolutely as certain as we can be that they don't present a threat because some of them clearly do present a threat, don't they? And we know that we have evidence of that now. So what we're not just seeing people coming in blatantly in breach of our immigration laws and they are illegal entrants, whatever anyone else tells you, they are illegal entrants as defined as Section 33 of the Immigration Act. They've come without a passport. That's a breach of the immigration law. So all other things being, they should be removable as illegal entrants, but because they claim asylum, nonetheless, you've got to make sure as best you can to protect your people. You're protecting the border. That's your job. That's what I lived for, to protect the communities. And that's what I would be expected my role to be. And if something went wrong, which quite often it did, quite often we let someone prove that we shouldn't have done because someone made a mistake and I used to get beaten up for that. Quite often there'd be a long queue at the airport and I'd get in a trouble for that. So you're constantly trying to balance facilitation and control. But what really worries me now is this process that we've established where somebody can literally get within the 12 mile zone, mention the magic word, and within 24 or 48 hours be in one of our communities with minimal vetting. Now, the Home Office say, "Oh, we do thoroughly check." They do what they can, to be fair to them. They do what they can. They will interview the person, try and figure out if it's a pilot or there's evidence he's a facilitator. They will prosecute him. But by and large, the majority of them are going to get temporary admission with very limited screening. And then the more you're going to see these stories of, you know, the bad guys, the really bad ones coming in and committing atrocities in this country, then the more people are going to lose faith in our border and say, "Well, we haven't got control of our border." And that's what we are seeing playing out right now, is every day, you know, I'm getting bids from the media to go on and say, "Well, Tony, how come this guy got through? And how come, why didn't you send him back?" You know, I don't work there anymore, but why didn't they send him back? Why didn't they stop nothing? You know, if they could, they would. You know, I stand up for the border force. One of the reasons I do media, the office, I know the officers, they will do what, you know, like, if they could do what I used to do, they would do it. But they can't because the hands are tied because of the legislative framework and the operational policy guidelines that we've got in place right now. That's the problem we've got ourselves into. And that's why I think this has become such a top pocket. If not, I mean, you guys would know better than me, probably one of the major talking points in politics these days is border security and a big focus on the small boats because it's so highly visible. Tony, there's going to be people listening to this all over the country who quite rightly get very upset. And what they think is the system's broken and you've got people coming over who've been prepped on how to gain that system. Is that a fair assessment? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. People are right. And people are right to ask questions about it because that is exactly what's happened. The human smugglers, the first thing they'll tell you to do, and I know this because I've sat in debriefings with them, you know, we're NC, some of them will talk and say, yeah, I was told to tell you that. I was told to throw my passport away. That's the first rule. Hardly anyone turns up with a passport. Well, where's the passport gone? You're telling me they've all fleed war, you know, they've got burnt in a war. Now, they've got, their passports are around. Quite often we find them, they've been brought over by somebody else, or it's in the background somewhere, but they haven't got that on them. Most of their mobile devices they've thrown away as well, because the smugglers tell them to, because if I don't know who you are and I don't know where you're from, I don't know your background, all I've got to go on is this story you tell me, right? Now, the story you're going to tell me is you cannot send me back to Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, because it's not safe to send me there. It's really hard for you to say those are safe countries because they're not safe countries. But does that mean because that's not a safe country, I can't send you back there? You chose to get in a small boat and come here, right, without a passport, which is a criminal offence. That's your, should then be taking a risk that you might end up being sent back to your own country but we don't because the legal framework we've got is based on safety and if you haven't come from a safe country and i mean let's leave the third country france thing out for a minute we can talk about if you like but if you can persuade us you are from one of those countries and quite often they are it's really hard to say well i i don't believe that you wouldn't be safe if sent back there when you look at things that are going on in that home country about people are treated you know by the way if they happen to have certain you know like if you evade military service in eritrea you're going to get quite badly punished for that oh if you get back to afghanistan and you know you've basically said something you shouldn't have done then the taliban are probably going to come so so those are probably what you would say legitimate claims for asylum to say well actually i need i need protection but this is where the balance comes in at what point do we say well i'm sorry about all that but you chose to come over multiple countries to france where you could and should have claimed asylum but you chose not to because you want to come here you're going back to the country and and i'm really sorry if you get persecuted and you know we'll put all kinds of red lights and warning notices and drop leaflets in calais if you like but you will go back to that country or you will be removed to some other place but there is no way you're going to get into the uk we have yet to see any uh legal framework been introduced policy introduced to enable that to happen and tony we'll get on to the legal framework and the policy in a moment i really want to focus on the gangs because number one how do they operate what do they do and the second part of the question is going to be well kia sarma said he was going to smash the gangs quote unquote i mean they are very much unsmashed yeah so you're never going to be able to smash international organized criminal gangs you may be trying to you know actually this is cloud cookie land you can you can mitigate the risk you can try and try and disrupt their activities but this is international organized crime it's like drug smuggling you're never going to be able to stamp it out there's too much money in it there's too big of a market there's too many networks so it goes right the way back to source countries actually i chair conferences around the world in various places i've been to the philippines jet conferences there africa i'm chairing a conference there next month where there are some good people working for governments uk you are trying to smash the gangs if you like to try and identify but it's not going to work because some of this is so lucrative that it's almost lost in business as usual right so people are being trafficked they are being smuggled out people will pay money to a middleman to say now you know like first stage i'm going to get you out of this country and into that country right that's where you're going to go you're going to go overland from this country to that country that's where you're going to and that's where you're going to meet the next which is the level two smuggler right he's the middleman he's he's got a stage in house for you and you get moved exponentially through the food chain right the way up to the bottom of the food chain and to the french border so it's a massive network now you have had some successes to be fair a national crime agency i know those blokes as well i mean they're trying their best you know but these are things that are going on miles away from there miles away from here where you can't really penetrate the government and the enforcement agencies in those countries all you can do is do whatever intelligence you can so i would say that to say you're going to smash the gangs is a little bit naive i'm afraid i think you know kia starmer it it seems when he came in he's clearly come from criminal justice systems don't work against illegal immigration there's no point taking people to court there's no point trying to prosecute them i mean because you won't even find out who they are and even if you do what's going to happen at court what you've really got to do is take out the supply chain you've got to take out the money the most important thing though you should do is break the business model right what is the business why do they do it why do you think smugglers operate you know the money there's money in there they wouldn't bother so well how do you stop how do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place the only way you've got to do that is so well you're not going to get in because it ain't going to work so soon as you that's why i supported the rwanda plan is actually what we would be able to say if we could ever get that through would be that it doesn't follow you're going to get into stay in england you're going to end up living in rwanda it still comes if you like but we're going to send you back to rwanda i think that would have had a deterrent effect so i think there are removals is the key you've got to get back to removers and they will tell you they're removing more people than ever before which they are but they're not removing boat arrivals only about four percent of boat arrivals get removed because you've got the asylum echar all of those problems and they come from countries where it's really hard to remove people too so so long as that business model prevails the smugglers will continue to draw down profits so long as they draw down profits there's going to be a gang you take one gang out it's like whack-a-mole another gang will spring up because there's big money in this and there's networks going around right around the world so really you can't rely necessarily on being in to to disrupt international smuggling networks to stop the boats you can it will have an impact and with i think there has been some impacts in changes of tactics we've seen recently where you know that some of the smaller boats are harder now to to but they've moved to bigger boats and they've moved to other routes and they will continue to move their operation in my experience of dealing with them it's like a game of chess you know where they make a move you've got to make a move as well you've got to try and stay ahead of the game but you're never going to win the game unless you can actually break the business model and that's what we've not been able to do tony you talked about third country which is france so this is one thing that and i'm going to ask you a bunch of stupid questions because we all have them i guess things that will be obvious to you but maybe not obvious to the ordinary person why can't we just tow the boats back to france probably because people will drown when you do that i mean i went out in the boats a couple years ago with a border force and these boats are not see whatever even the big ones aren't really they're bubbling around in the ocean and they're people so what would be the first thing that you what you can do throw a tow rope out there to the boat and start towing it it will probably overturn people are going to water someone to die whose fault is that going to be what do you think will be happening when you have the stewards inquiry back here the border force out there with a rope trying to turn back so i would protect the officers i said wait a minute are you saying that my officers would be culpable with homicide if we cause a drowning by an act like that so i think that's so so what the australians did because i did study that's why i was going to ask you yeah so i did study that i went down there and i know some of the guys that worked on sovereign borders great guys great guys um they actually interdicted on the high seas but they didn't push the boats back what some of those boats that were doing that were coming out of indonesia well they were actually drilling holes in the bottom of the boat yeah they were scuttling and and so that says you have to rescue me this is all based on the law of the sea and rescue right which is a sensible law when you think about it if you you don't want people drowning do you really so so preservation of life is paramount therefore you've got to do something to rescue them so when they're scuttling the boats well the australians said well okay so we can't talk about that boat we'll create our so they built their own boats purpose-built boats to take them back to escort them back because they were in the high seas they could and it wasn't the political pressure get here so the indonesians said well it's not very good so they even adapted the boats to make them look like fishing boats so it didn't become so visible to the indonesian population but the boat they were on and put them on another boat which was fit for return so if we're going to do returns that's what i would say well that's what i've been saying to politicians we've had on the show but but everyone says why can't we do that why is that impossible you could do that you could say well you can't do that well you do that anyway right i mean what are you doing when you come alongside a dinghy the first thing you're doing is pulling them out of the water putting them on your boat right now they're on your boat your boat can go wherever you want it to go right so you could no the problem you've got then is well will the french allow a border force vessel france so the so they've been home office people been over there talking about the answer is no they won't okay they said no you can't bring that boat back here you're not gonna this is where the fight has now become this well you could under international i wrote something about this when this all started under international law it's okay in a contiguous zone contiguous zones means that you've got two territorial waters colliding with one another so it's contiguous 24 mile zone come to an agreement with the country on the other side that's perfectly permissible under the law of the sea and international law so we could come to an agreement with the french if they were up for it so well you could put people on our boats if you like and we'll put people on your boats and we could have joy boats it don't matter but as a matter of principle if we can show that there's no risk of what they call refoulement in other words if you're taken back to that country you're going to face immediate return to you know we could take that france right so that would be the ideal solution is the french would say yes okay why don't we have a you know we'll have an agreement with the brits brits and french they have joint patrols well the first thing we'll make them safe right because that's what everyone's made them safe so whether they're getting brought on because they don't want to be rescued by the french they'll resist rescue by the french because they know what's going to happen you know they've even been holding like babies over the water line when the french have gone near them they say look we're going to drop this kid in the water that's how brutal it is out there all right so so the french tactics is that well they won't look we don't want to drown them either we're going to make sure they're safe and just in case they go in the water then we will but if they're not in the water and then we take over and bring them ashore that is the business model they rely on but we could if we had agreement that's a big if if we had agreement with the french we could have joint patrols and take back to france which would be the perfect solution the problem we've got is we don't have that agreement with france well the french don't want that yeah and what what what if we were to start taking just because i think the australians did they turn they put them on these new boats they gave them enough fuel to get back but not enough fuel to get to australia right what if we just did that i mean what are the french going to do start shooting us and we're going to be able to get back to australia and we're going to be able to get back to france to hear about it first. Hillsdale College's new free online course is taught by Professor Stephen Smith. It's not a highlight reel, and it's not Homer for beginners. It's a proper walk through the text. Honor, courage, leadership, friendship, sacrifice, and what it means to live a noble life. You come away understanding why Achilles' real fight isn't with the Trojans, it's with himself. This is one of more than 40 free courses Hillsdale offers on the Constitution, the Roman Republic, the American founding, Genesis, the Second World War, and more. All billed the same way, taught properly, and not dumbed down. I couldn't recommend Hillsdale courses more highly. Go to hillsdale.edu/trigger to enroll for free. That's hillsdale.edu/trigger. The French, this will become a diplomatic round 'cause I've seen the reform proposal, right? Yeah. The reform, the latest reform proposal, which says, well, we're gonna, whether or, whatever, your question, what are the French gonna do? What if we get a purpose-built vessel which is capable of a beach landing rather than having to dock in a harbor, and we simply transfer 'em from the dinghies onto one of them and sail 'em back towards France? What will the, I don't know what the French would do about that, but it would create a diplomatic round because the French are saying, well, you can't just come and, you know, come into our waters and land a bunch of people anywhere you like. You know, this is, this is our territory. But that is where the, that is where the rubber hits the road. Yeah. What are we gonna do? But if I'm a British person, Tony, what I'm thinking is, how come sending tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to us that you are allowing through your country, allowing to get on a boat and allowing to sail across the English Channel to our country, that's not a diplomatic row. But when we try and send one boat back, that's immediately a diplomatic rally. Where is the balance in this relationship here? Yeah, I know, I agree with that. And I think we do need, and to be fair to the French, you know, I work with the French quite a lot, actually the French police, and they don't like human smugglers either, really. No, of course. And so we have got some good operational activities going on with the French at the ports of entry. The problem is they've said, look, you know, you can't, I'd have had border force out on their beaches with them. And, you know, we'd have been there, but they won't have that. They said, no, this is our, this is our land. You can't come here and exercise your powers on our territory. So the French have taken a position which is basically not, it's not a helpful position that the French have taken with this government. And, you know, the one-in-one-out scheme's not worked. The problem we've got in the border force is we have to comply with the law. That's the problem we've got. Whatever law you propose or whatever policy you change, it has to be translated to an operational, defensible instruction from my officers out there on the boats. Now, if you had those powers and authorities, then they would do it, no doubt about it in my mind. But you don't, because once they're in the 12-mile zone, that's all they have. They have to be, once they're in territorial waters, and they mention the magic word, even though they're not on land, you're in breach of the convention if you start turning them around, and you will face a lawsuit, because you will put the Home Secretary in contempt of court. There will be an injunction, and you'll be in trouble for breaching the law. So you've got to change the law. Which brings us very much to the core of this. We've had various former politicians on, Boris Johnson, Sweller-Briveman, a bunch of people who all have a different perspective on these things. Sweller-Briveman, who was here recently, her argument is, you can't deal with this until you leave the ECHR. Is that your view, or do you think that's wrong? No, you do need to do that, but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that. No. So the ECHR, we have to leave for us to be able to enforce our border? Yeah, because what you've got to do is redefine the relationship between our laws and international laws. That's where I came in. I told you, when I started, we didn't take any notice of it. I mean, I just sent people back, right? But now, because the lawyers have crept in, and they call it judicial overreach because of these judgements, you've got to, if you're running a country, you've got to change that relationship between ourselves and international law. That means looking again at our relationship with the ECHR. The Refugee Convention has got a get-out clause already in it, which is in Article 31. Because Article 31 of the Refugee Convention says you must be in immediate fear of persecution to claim asylum. Well, that was brought in 20 years ago when I was there. We said, well, you're coming from France. You're not in immediate fear of persecution. That's how we did the third country removals. That's what the Tories relied on for the Rwanda plan. That's what this lot relied on for the one-to-one scheme. You could go to your court and say, well, he's not in immediate fear. He's in France. So there is already, there's nothing in the ECHR that allows that. There's nothing in the modern. So why doesn't that work? Why doesn't that carve out apply now? Why can't we use that? Because you then lodge an application for human rights. Well, this is what the last government did on the Rwanda plan is they stacked up a lot of cases and served them all with notice when they came off to say, well, you're not in immediate fear of persecution. We're not going to admit you into the asylum system at all. But they hadn't got the route out to Rwanda. And then whilst that was going on, the lawyers said, well, all right, then we're going to claim human rights. You know, he's got family life or he's got impugning or degrading treatment. So then what were you going to do about all those human rights applications that were coming in whilst they were in limbo? You've still got. Now, you could have said, well, all right, we'll still remove them to Rwanda or consider the human rights application. If you win it, we'll bring you back from Rwanda. You don't really want to do that. What you really want is a law that says you can't claim human rights at all. You can't claim anything. You can't claim modern slavery, human rights or asylum if you come from France without a document. That's what I would like to see. I'm not a policy wonk, you know, but that's what my instruction would be. Policy-making. Write a policy, write a legislation that's watertight enough. It's going to get challenged, as the Rwanda plan was. It's going to get challenged in the courts. It's going to get challenged in the Lords. And they don't rush. They are quite happy to take their time. So the Rwanda plan, you know, was first mooted, like, two years before the election, when Boris first. I was down there at Lyd when he announced it. I thought, that's quite a good idea. I wonder if this is going to work or not. But the government of the day, that's his government and the Sunak government, did not go far enough on this human rights issue. That's why Suella Braverman and Rob Jenwick both resigned from the Conservatives, because they were in that government. They were there at the time. But they could see this was happening and say, well, this isn't going to work, is it? I mean, we've got to go further on the Illegal Migration Act 2023. And the Tory party didn't. They would not go any further with some of those amendments. That's why they both left in the end. And so you still got this. And then, of course, the next government came in with a vowed intent to abolish Rwanda. I mean, I remember Starmer standing on the cliffs of Dover a couple of weeks before. So the first thing I'm going to do is abolish the Rwanda. The Rwanda plan, which I thought, oh, my God, my head was in my hands. I said, well, you can do that. Smash the gangs. So I knew that wasn't going to work. And it didn't work. And you've got to get back to basics. And you've got to get back to a position I was in in the '70s and the '80s. Vest the power in law in your immigration officers, border force officers at the border to make a decision on somebody and to allow them to remove that person from the country. You've got to get that somehow through this tension between international law and domestic law. You've got to get that empowered so that we can get back to the future and we can start doing the things that I was doing when I was an immigration officer and put all this international law stuff. Because it's hopelessly out of date. It's broken. It's actually completely being misused by smugglers and illegal migrants to get into the country. And it's causing mayhem. Tony, you know, I'm listening to this. And what you're doing is providing a forensic analysis. Which is brilliant. There's a part of me that's really cynical here. Going, do you know what? The people smugglers, they're making a nice bit of quid out of this. But you know what? So are the NGOs. So are the lawyers. This is just one massive industry, isn't it? Yeah. Well, we need to be careful what we say because people will be watching and lawyers will be looking and seeing what you're saying. And you've got to be very careful. I mean, I, you know, been stung a few times about, well, you've got to be really, really careful what you say because what you say and what you do could be used in evidence against you, right? So I think that, yes, I think that there is an industry out there that is actually close to facilitating illegal entry without mentioning any particular names or, you know, I think there is a network of NGO support for the boat, for the boat's business. I did go to Calais. I went and saw Care for Calais. I saw what they're doing there. They will say, have you can get them on? I mean, what they will say to you, if you can get them on here, is, well, we need to look after these poor people in Calais because they've got nowhere to live and they've got no food now. So they'll take them down the supermarket and give them food parcels and, you know, give them tents and anoraks and stuff like that. That's what they say they're doing. Which you could say, well, fair enough, that's probably a reasonable cause because the French government aren't looking after them and somebody, a charity, needs to look after them. But when you get into sort of bringing people from the camps to the beaches, when you get into some of the literature about, well, this is what to say if you get to the UK, this is how you can get asylum. I think that's getting very close to the wind, really. But either way, to defeat all of that, you still come back to the basic point. They are thriving on a legal framework that we've developed over the years. If that legal framework wasn't there, they wouldn't be able to do any of that stuff because it wouldn't matter. You'd still be sending people back, right? No, it's a good point. But also as well, look, Constance and I always have this conversation of, do we live in a country which is very socially progressive, woke, et cetera, et cetera? And we've got to be honest, Tony, when you operated, When you were on the ground, it was a different country politically, culturally. And to a lot of people, the way that you go, well, if something seemed a bit dodgy, I sent them back. There'd be a lot of people, even on the right, who'd be like, well, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. Isn't that also part of the problem? I don't know. I'm not a politician. You know, I don't want to get involved in politics because I'll get myself into trouble if I do that as well. I'm an expert commentator and I'll try and stick to my business knowledge as a border security expert. But there is, in my view, something fundamentally wrong if you can get into the territory without a document and get admitted. There's just something fundamentally wrong with that. You must get a document and you must get your permission sorted out before you come here these days. So everybody else, you know, who wants to come here from a different country, they have to get a permission, either a visa or an electronic travel authority or demonstrate. If it's you guys, British. Your British passport, your Irish passport to get into our country. You should do that as a rule of thumb. If you're coming in by some other nefarious means without a passport, for me, you shouldn't be allowed to get in. It's as simple as that. But you are allowed in because, as I said to you, asylum, human rights, modern slavery, all of these applications supported by a very robust legal profession and a very significant number of lobby groups say that you must do because that's the way international law should operate. So when you're looking at the politics of all this. That's what you're looking at. Well, who agrees with me? Who thinks that we should actually go back to the future and say all bets are off. If you come here without a passport, that's your choice. From a safe third country, that's your choice. You chose to do that. You're taking a big risk now because you might find yourself, well, you're certainly going to find yourself detained. You're not going to be getting into our communities for as long as it takes. And you might find yourself either back in your own country. Right. If we can. If we can possibly get you there or in some other country like Rwanda, that's what's going to happen to you. Right. Now, which parties are advocating that and which parties are not advocating that? So we've had lots of different rhetoric. I follow the media a lot. I'm on the media a lot. I follow a lot of them. I talk to quite a lot of them as well. But for me, that is a fundamental principle. If you're talking from a border security point of view and your job, if you're into border security and a border force or the border security command, as it now is, your role is to try to get you there. command as it now is your role is to try and protect the community in the same way as the police do and the military do that's what I felt my job was I'm very patriotic like that and I broke my heart when I see I see what happens now at the border and I it just it's and I think that if if they were able to talk to you a lot of the officers out there would say the same thing it's not allowed to talk to you yeah if you work in an office won't be tied you if you speak to media you'll be sacked all right so that's why I do it I want to be able to I don't represent them because there's probably some of them that disagree with what I'm saying but my view having been in this business for this long is that they really want to protect the border and they don't like the idea of people coming here without permissions and being admitted within 24 hours any more than you and I do they are stuck with the operational framework they've got the only way you're going to change that is you need a government that's got the political will to do some of the things I'm talking about. So let's go back to the 1971 Act as it was originally drafted, get rid of all this asylum stuff and human rights stuff and all this other stuff and say, no, we're going to reinstate the powers in the Border Force officer to detain you indefinitely if necessary. You can always make a voluntary departure, you know, if you want to. That's your get out of jail card. If you want to come up with a passport, it suddenly appears. The next visitor brings your passport in and you've got permission and you can go. We're not going to keep you here against your will. but if you're insistent on coming into this country, you will stay detained until such time as we can remove you from the territory. Well, Tony, let's talk about the solution to all of this, because leaving the ECHR, you know what? We've had lots of people, including former politicians, civil servants, et cetera, on the show, and truthfully, I still have not understood why it is we haven't already left the ECHR. Even Suella, when you say to her, why did your cabinet colleagues refuse to do this when you were Home Secretary? She says something like, well, you know, the Rishi Sunak or the other ministers, they just thought, well, that if we leave the ECHR, we'd be like Belarus and Russia. You know, we'd be a bad country, quote unquote. But that's not an argument. That's just like that's not an argument. And by the way, no one, I think, is saying we should leave the ECHR and not replace some of its provisions with a British bill that does provide for human rights and actual refugees and all of this other stuff. But you said leaving the ECHR is not enough. What else do the people in power need to do? So you've got to adjust your own. I mean, leaving the ECHR is one thing. You've got to adjust your own domestic legislation, which includes the Human Rights Act mainly. A lot of that's going to have to be looked at and probably repealed, the HRA as well. You've got to look at modern slavery and the modern slavery system. And is it okay that someone who comes in and says, well, I'm a victim of modern slavery, should be allowed in or not? at the moment you are, because that's another route into, so that's also, and then you've got to look again at, let's say the 51 Convention does give you a get out if you've come from a third country. So you need a law that actually covers all of those bases to start off with, not just leaving the HSR, you've got to put in place a domestic law, which would cover all of that and make it crystal clear to the courts that actually, you can't come here on a small boat and claim any form of international protection and the border force will be empowered to detain you indefinitely if necessary until such time as they can remove you from the country that means you've got a reverse hardy i'll sing the judgment i told you about so well actually you you can't yes we can detain people indefinitely sounds really bad doesn't it but yeah we we we need the power then if you've got all those powers assuming you've got all those laws and powers in place which is a big ask right but why is it a big ask well because you need a political majority to get that through this is what i was going to ask you sorry to jump in but i want to understand this do you have any insight why you know the way you've told the story throughout your career is actually the blair government and the brown government were keen to deal with this and effective but in your own telling it dealing with asylum so then you have a conservative government who you'd think i mean you know the nasty party you know anti-immigration they're all racist apparently etc yet they haven't done this a lot of people in the country will be saying why why haven't they done these things because the way you tell it is it's quite clear and i imagine i don't want to put words in your mouth and i don't want to make this political but you would have told this to the politicians who wanted to speak to you right yeah whatever government i would tell them that right so why haven't they done it already i don't know you'd have to ask them that i mean i think it's a question of political will and a question of taking on the really difficult decisions and the very very strong lobby groups that are in this country what lobby well refugee action refugee uh legal groups all kinds of um left-wing groups that will challenge you i think the house of lords is predominantly anti um enforcement uh if you look at the passage of the rwanda the illegal migration act and and and the debates in the lords a very very large number of lords were against it sent it back a number of times why Well, because they just simply don't like the principle that you should be allowed to detain somebody indefinitely and you're taking no notice of that person's individual human rights, of their individual claims or whatever else. They just don't agree with that as a matter of principle. So I've had arguments on panels like this where I've been called a racist and I've been called a, you know, all kinds of things of some right wing. I'm not a right wing. I'm just telling you, as a border force, an ex-immigration officer, as a border force officer with 50 years experience in this business if you really really want to stop the boats these are the things you're going to have to do you don't have to be a right wing nutcase to do that you just need to be prepared to do that and and none of the governments I've worked for so far have gone that far and you're right the Blair government did go a very long way they were tough as they were the one of the toughest governments I worked for on asylum you know they were the ones that did the juxtaposed controls they tripled the home office budget in three years to get more caseworkers in there they really wanted to take on but at the same time it's that same government that opened up a lot of legal routes just before that through the managed migration routes so suddenly that then now they've admitted that was a mistake yeah i think a lot of mistakes have been made in the past and we can look at different governments and criticize different what they did or didn't do the question is how are they going to fix this problem right who's going to fix it and how are they going to go about it well this is why i i the only reason i brought up the labour government is i don't understand why this has become a political issue Because within the living memory of all of us, as you and I are talking about, the left and right used to agree that what you're talking about is the normal state of things. And I'm an immigrant myself to this country, but to me, it's self-evident that actually, like, to me, almost the defining feature of a country is a set of borders that it protects. That's what a country is, isn't it? Well, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And we do by and large. I mean, to be fair, you know, the small boats issue is a huge problem. Yeah. Let's not underestimate the scale of the intensity of the public debate about small boats. And I'll say it's massive. But you're talking about 20, 30,000, 30,000 people a year now, something like that coming in. Now, if you look at the way the UK border operates, it's pretty good. It is pretty good in that the numbers of people that would probably want to come here if they could is in the millions, and they don't. And the reason they don't is because we've got a robust visa system. You can't get on a plane to get here unless you've got the right paperwork. We've got the border in France. And we've got pretty good. We're up there with a border five on what we're doing behind the scenes on intelligence, data analytics, biometrics. There's a lot of stuff. I do a lot of stuff on future borders and how borders are going to operate. And so I don't think we should just say we've got such a really horrible border, because we haven't. We've got a pretty good border and a pretty good risk assessment framework in my book. But. Hold on, Tony. Hold on. Hold on. Look, you're the expert, so I defer to your judgment. But as a normal person, here's what I'd say to you. Like most people, I want more energy, better focus, and to still be sharp and strong years from now. But every time I've gone in for my annual checkup, it's the same thing. Wait weeks to get an appointment, sit in a waiting room, and then you're in and out in 10 minutes. Everything looks fine, they say. Drink more water, sleep a bit more. No real insight, no plan, just vibes. That's why every time I visit the US, I use superpower. 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When I illegal immigration was 55 000 a year and now we're asking the british people to accept half of that coming here illegally every year i i don't i don't see why why that's good i i don't see why the british people would think that that's a we should accept that i don't think you accept it no i mean this is without having to go at your former colleagues no one is doing that here well look managing a border is a bit like an iceberg right you what you see above the water is what you see above the water that's what we're talking about the bit you can see about what you don't see below the water is an awful lot of really really good work going on behind the scenes by by a lot of agencies you know i told you i told you about london 2012 olympics yeah yeah of course so the threat level here was severe i bet severe we were told a terrorist attack is highly likely we worked round the clock on checking every single last little dl and then that's me the military the police we all pulled together to get that over the line so did that terrorist attack never happened it could have done it might have done if it hadn't been for us and and we've still got mechanisms like that in place is what i'm saying to you so let's not just say oh we're just useless we're rubbish because we're not we're pretty good we're up there and i do a lot of international stuff as well i can tell you you know there's a lot of good work going on with the americans and canadians border five and and even the eu actually are behind the scenes on security to try and keep you know real nasty tour and and the iom eu and odc i could go on there's a lot of work below the surface that we probably don't want but what you see is that i totally get it before francis jumps in let me just explain why i'm saying this uh i have no doubt that what you're saying is true i have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of hard-working people protecting our borders and oh in the round they're doing a good job um because as you say this is a very desirable country to come to there'll be loads of people i have family coming to visit from abroad they get checked very thoroughly i know that and that's how it should be that's how it should be but what i think i'm trying to say is in terms of the public feelings about this issue i am trying to tell you how a very significant portion of the public feel about it which you already know without me telling you the public can't understand why we found ourselves in this position they really can't and i think they're right not to because the failure of the political framework that you talk about is much more important than the fact that you're talking about is much more important than the fact that you're talking about it's mind-boggling to people and that's what i'm getting at this is no no not casting any shade at all on the hard-working officers in the border force good well i'm glad you said that because i i'm still one of them really i mean it's a bit like you know the military or the police you get a dna and it's still there and i believe it still is there in this the next generation of officers and i said to you i think if the border force you know i did i i don't like seeing you know articles in the press people saying oh the border force are a bunch of you know lefties that are only really interested in taxi but they're not actually they are trying to do the best they can to protect the best job they don't get paid that much actually they're out there in pretty dangerous conditions 24 7 but they are instructed you know that if someone is a dinghy little dinghy there that's you know look that's in your territorial waters your job is to bring them on shore without anyone drowning that's your first role and make them safe and so we take the proper life jacket and bring them on board first paramount paramount safety of life that's what they are bound by and then the next step after that i've told you all about the next step after that is that once they they're on board they're in territorial waters they can they can pull all of these levers that the border force can't pull back again until such time as you know there is a an opportunity if ever to remove them from the country that's the problem and that's the problem so you're right in speaking to all these politicians whether they're past present or future politicians this is the problem that they've got the question is who's going to do it who's actually going to die right i'm going to pull those levers back in a different direction and now from it we affect from next year or whenever it's going to be the border force will be empowered to take those people on board that boat and either take them straight back france or if they can't do that take them straight into detention where they will stay and they will stay there until we can remove them either to france or some other country or their own country and that takes real political courage and i just don't know if if we've got that so tony let's say i become prime minister the constant there's a worrying possibility yeah and the camera people look and then people are production team billy's looking at absolutely thrilled he knows i'd get it sorted and i pointed you and i said tony you're my man we need to this legal framework this legal system it doesn't work people are coming here to put it not to find a point on it they're taking the piss we all know they are we need it needs urgent reform from beginning to end how long do you see that process taking and what are going to be the challenges involved in it depends what sort of a majority you've got and if you've got the backing of your you know you've got enough people in the house of commons to actually talk and like you are yeah uh whether i'll take the job or not depending on whether i believe you or not because a lot of politicians have offered a lot of people jobs on the promise that things this and people i know who have become casualties because it become all their fault and one of the politicians so i think you need that real trust between your political masters now you can trust me no comment you do need that trust and then but look but the answer is you can't just rely on me i need to bring in a bunch of my mates who have got skills i don't have particularly really really good lawyers really really good legal draftsmen people who can actually make this stick because i don't want to write a law for you and then it gets botched in the house of laws because there's a procedure in place and i don't want to write a law for you and then it gets botched in the house there are people out there that i could point you in the right direction of who would be supportive and there's a number of reports and a policy exchange from others that i've participated in but you need not just me you need a team around you that can actually deliver what you want so i could deliver what you want operationally but i would say to you the real first thing you've got to do is you've got to find someone that's going to write that law for you i can point you in the right direction i can't write laws i'm not a lawyer you need someone that's going to write that law for you and and give you all the risk assessments all the red amber greens on every clause in that law about how you're going to get that through parliament how you're going to get through the courts how you're going to and what you're going to face along the way which becomes a project really a project plan how long would that take that's not going to happen overnight so like you can't do this overnight you get politics oh well you know within the first 10 days 100 days or whatever mate it don't work like that well you've got to do that you've got to do that you've got to you've got to you've got to accept i'm afraid that even if you're in power right now and that's what you want to happen it ain't going to happen overnight and i will tell you that before you give me the job and if then you get someone else in here tell you all right i'm doing i mean that's what president trump does i mean i know guys that have been casualties over there over there who said well actually you know mr president you can't you can't do that and he's fired and then someone else is brought in and then you get a yes man in there who actually don't deliver anyway and that's even worse so i think you need a reality check you know if you're going to be the prime minister about what is and isn't achievable and then you need to surround yourself with a team of people that are absolutely committed to your cause and and that's why i'm a little bit nervous about civil service actually in this country you know i like the old north court trevelyan idea that we've got an impartial civil service but i don't think we have so over in the states if you get above a certain level you have to go political you have to become a politically appointed so you i am then wedded to what you want to do politically i'm aligned to what you want to do i'm not an impartial advisor anymore and i think you need that at the top of some of these organizations particularly in the home office so that i would stand or fall with you if you if you got you know elected out then we'd all get booted out with you that's the way it works in america because that's the way you've got to get that trust built between yourself and your senior officials to say that we're all pulling on the same end of the rope here because there is a bit of yes minister out there definitely yes minister was a great program i never watched it but it's a fantastic program and i've seen that happen in reality and i think there are people who actually don't really agree with what you want to do and they will point out what a risk and difficult is obviously i thought it was going to be easy but they will there is there is a way to get government moving quickly and i think the only way you're going to do that is to get absolute political buy-in and empower those people around you to make it happen and my worry is tony is i'm looking at the trajectory i think that is only really going to happen when something really really bad happens like there's a major terrorist incident and it's linked to one of the boat people and then people are going to wake up and go oh right actually there was this huge terrorist attack and it was because one of the main reasons was because we weren't vetting people at all or hardly vetting them or unable to vet them at the border that's my concern and how sad is that how sad is that because i feel the same way as you do i think that you that is a real risk i think there is a real risk that something awful i've lived through awful incidents i lived for no one thought 9-11 was going to happen my god no no we shut the airspace for a week right nothing could cross the border at all i mean everyone went into panic mode lockdown mode and then when we had 7-7 with the bombs on the london underground that was terrible we didn't think that people living british people would be blowing our own country up these are landmark you don't want to wait for a landmark moment like that to change things right you've got to try and get and that's where you guys come in and that's where you guys come in and that's where you guys come in you know you guys are commentators you're out there spreading the word there is a real risk i'm telling you of border security in this country in my view there is a real threat and a real risk and i would be saying to you look what i'm worried about before we start getting it and sending them all back are we thoroughly checking them have can can you just give me a prison somewhere put them in governor or a couple of prisons or something you said we've got no prisons someone else i mean we've got no prison no no spaces but you've got to be able to detain detain people and you've got to bring in really really good debriefers and you've got to bring in really really good risk assessors and you've got to take this is a severe threat in my view right you know it's highly likely that at least some of these people are going to go on to perpetrate really dangerous acts that's the risk level we had under the olympics you've got to change your business model and say well this is that bigger risk as some commentators are saying at some point this is a border security risk not an immigration risk you've got to adapt your response mechanism and i don't think we're equipped to do that because we haven't got the detention facilities we haven't got the legal powers to do it but i would want to see a lot more people detained securely not put in a you know a camp an accommodation center in some village somewhere where the the locals are absolutely oh my god what's this they can wonder no you've got to keep them detained and that's the only way that's the first point i would say to you the first thing you can do is you can keep them detained as long as you possibly can get away with the courts and you'll get all the legal challenge away but lock them up that's the first thing and then once they're detained you can start to pacify the public and then you can start thinking about what we're going to send them to how are we going to get rid of them but letting them through in 24 hours 48 hours into our communities largely unfettered undocumented young men to me mate you know i think it's a real worry and i would be really really worried if it was my job to do it which is why i might not take the job with you in the first place but tony there's also the concern of like these young men and the potential crimes and something awful happening which you know could very well happen but there's also what we're seeing which is now people are going well you're not going to protect the borders i will and we're seeing that happen more and more and that's another concern of mine whereby people are now feeling emboldened to actually go and inverted commas protect the borders and we saw an incident with one particular individual stabbing boats in order to sink hey ryan reynolds here from mint mobile now i don't know if you've heard but mint's premium wireless is 15 a month but i'd like to offer one other perk we have no stores that means no small talk crazy weather we're having no it's not it's just weather it is an introvert's dream give it a try at mintmobile.com switch upfront payment of 45 for three month plan fifteen dollars per month of equivalent required new customer offer first three months only then full price plan options available taxes and fees extra cementmobile.com yeah i think this is a really difficult problem but you know this is the difficulty you've got when you lose control of something like like this and you get this sort of wave of public discontent about it there will be people that will go to extremes now i mean what i've said about what's happened down there in portsmouth and what's what these groups are doing is look be very very careful right in terms of how you behave and what you do be very very careful by all means make your voice heard you know use channels like this to get your voice and get your political opinion out there and i think you've got a lot of political support the other thing i can tell you is that you know save for these last few beach landings anyone who comes in will be they're all arrested all of that lot they're brought in by the other night they will be arrested please register no they will be arrested they're under arrest because they're illegal immigrants so they're not going to wander around your streets just coming up the beach right they will be arrested and they will be taken into custody all right and they will be screened and vetted so you know you don't have to go and do that yourself because they will be what your concern is going to be is after that because after 24 48 hours they're being released into your community that's the worry so getting down on a sharp end and say well we're going to do something down there what are you going to do then i mean you know you can't you're going to put yourself in danger if you're going out there trying to stop the take the law into your own hands so i can understand the public mood and the public and the and the frustration but the only way to fix this is through the political system you can't take the law into your own hands because you won't win you can't win that way but it is a signal i think the protests that we're seeing from people who are not all in from what i've seen i don't think they're all right-wing thugs at all i think these are genuinely concerned people who are rightfully worried that we are admitting undocumented men even if the numbers are down we are still admitting undocumented men who are being admitted into our community by and large within 24 48 hours and are probably going to get to the top of the list they're going to get to the top of the list they're going to get to the top of the list they're going to get to the top of the list they're being brought into this country and and and being allowed freedom to actually you know live within our communities and expect them to integrate with the local community and be accepted by it's cloud cuckoo land that's not going to happen wherever you put them whether you put in hmos or whether you put them in disused military sites or whether you put them in hotels people won't like it because this is actually disrupting my community and i don't feel safe i don't feel safe and that's why i'm back to your job in government surely primarily whatever color government you are your people must feel safe if i don't feel safe then obviously you're gonna they're gonna protest about it so it is a serious problem but i i do urge people anyone watching this please don't by all means you know protest peacefully stand outside here with a placard and and and get coverage from people like you about the level of of concern because that is a former political lobby but please don't take the law into your own hands because it's not going to work you're not going to stop the boats by doing that and actually you're probably going to put yourself in danger tony thank you so much for coming on we really appreciate you bringing your expertise to this issue these are really important conversations for our country and your voice is really really important so thanks for coming on before we head over to our supporters they've submitted a bunch of questions for you the way we always end our interviews is by asking what's the one thing we're not talking about that you think we should be and it's just total free hip whatever you think um i don't think we've spoken much about the actual uh border system itself and the entry exit systems that we have and that we haven't actually got a biometric entry exit system in this country which they have now got in america they've got in singapore they've got in dubai in other words we will know exactly when you enter the country and when you left the country because we'll take your photograph when you come in we do that now with the gates and we we could get the airlines to do it or we could do it on outbound it wouldn't cost the earth but then you would know exactly how many people are staying here who's entering instead of relying on these ons statistics which are made up a lot of time because they're done by survey you would have an electronic system which would monitor every single person coming in including brits and irish people as well as a foreign nationals you would know how many people are overstaying in this country who's leaving who's who's entering we don't have any exit checks in this country to speak of and and once you've got that you've got a much better control over actually how many people are actually in this country how many people are overstaying in this country and where to focus your resources on looking at another big problem we haven't spoken about which isn't asylum seekers coming by back which is overstayers who are coming into this country getting permission to enter for six months electronically by an egay and then probably just staying and working and delivering your pizza now if that's not a problem well don't worry about but i would like to see something done about that and i think that the only way to do that is to put more technology on our borders tony thank you so much for coming on head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where tony's going to answer your questions was there ever a politician who actually wanted your advice and was willing to follow it rather than what i suspect you will explain happened thanks for joining us we hope you enjoyed this video and we'll see you in the next one thank you for watching Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. 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