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When it comes to immigration, the story that has been grabbing the headlines in recent years is the increase in migrants entering the UK illegally by crossing the English Channel.
Rishi Sunak’s plan to tackle the issue is to push ahead with his Rwanda scheme, while Labour would scrap the scheme entirely, to pay for a new Border Security Command, with hundreds of new investigators, intelligence officers, and cross-border police officers.
The Lib Dems have said they would also cancel the Rwanda scheme, and invest the savings in clearing the asylum backlog, while Reform UK said they would create a new Department of Immigration, and pick illegal migrants out of boats and take them back to France.
But what is the best course of action? And how much do these crossings impact the overall immigration picture in the UK?
In this episode of The Standard podcast Madeleine Sumption, the Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, discusses the current state of immigration on the whole in the UK.
She also explains how migrant numbers impact the economy, and why evidence suggests the Rwanda scheme might not be an effective deterrent against illegal migration.
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