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

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Tony Smith argues that asylum rules and legal constraints have weakened border enforcement, and says reform must include domestic law and operational powers.

- Show: TRIGGERnometry
- Hosts: [Konstantin Kisin](https://realalpha.app/people/konstantin-kisin/) & [Francis Foster](https://realalpha.app/people/francis-foster/)
- Guest: [Tony Smith CBE](https://realalpha.app/people/tony-smith-cbe/) is a former senior UK border official.
- Published: Oct 21, 2026
- Length: 1 h 18 m

## The best minutes

- [22:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1374) [Why Tony Smith says arrivals need longer screening](https://realalpha.app/s/why-tony-smith-says-arrivals-need-longer-screening/) (4 min)
- [30:28](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1828) [Why Tony Smith says deterrence matters more than gang arrests](https://realalpha.app/s/why-tony-smith-says-deterrence-matters-more-than-gang/) (4 min)
- [34:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2061) [Tony Smith says safe returns need suitable vessels and French consent](https://realalpha.app/s/tony-smith-says-safe-returns-need-suitable-vessels-and/) (4 min)

## Also worth watching

- [6:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=405) [Tony Smith says French checks cut asylum intake](https://realalpha.app/s/tony-smith-says-french-checks-cut-asylum-intake/) (3 min)
- [17:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1041) [Tony Smith says asylum delays led to temporary admission](https://realalpha.app/s/tony-smith-says-asylum-delays-led-to-temporary-admission/) (4 min)
- [41:19](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2479) [Tony Smith says leaving the ECHR would not be enough](https://realalpha.app/s/tony-smith-says-leaving-the-echr-would-not-be-enough/) (5 min)
- [1:04:14](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3854) [Tony Smith says border reform needs legal drafters](https://realalpha.app/s/tony-smith-says-border-reform-needs-legal-drafters/) (4 min)

Skip the career chronology, the extended debate about political will and party positions, and the closing discussion of public protests.

## Summary

Smith spent 40 years in UK immigration and border enforcement, working as an immigration officer and later in senior Home Office roles, including director of ports of entry and responsibility for London 2012 border security. After retiring, he stayed involved in border policy and media commentary and says he has written a book about borders.

Smith argues that asylum claims, human-rights applications and limits on detention have narrowed officers' ability to refuse entry or remove people quickly. He says small-boat arrivals create screening and security concerns, and that disrupting smuggling gangs will not stop crossings unless policy breaks the business model through returns or deterrence. He calls for changes to domestic law and the UK's relationship with international law, alongside detention capacity and political backing; Kisin and Foster press him on the feasibility and public consequences. Smith also says the UK maintains effective border controls in other areas and advocates biometric entry-exit tracking to identify overstayers.

### Minute by minute

- [1:25](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=85) **Smith traces his enforcement career.** Smith says he joined the Home Office after A-levels, first processing extensions of stay, then became an immigration officer at Heathrow with authority to refuse entry, arrest and detain. He recalls moving into London enforcement and later taking operational and senior Home Office roles.
- [6:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=414) **Smith links asylum claims to changed controls.** Smith says asylum claims in the late 1980s and 1990s ended the earlier practice of returning claimants immediately, as their cases had to be assessed away from the border. He recalls applications rising from about 25,000 to 30,000 to over 100,000 around 2002–03, then says checks in Calais and Dunkirk helped reduce intake to about 25,000 over two years.
- [17:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1041) **Smith says asylum claims constrained enforcement.** Smith says legal challenges changed how immigration officers could handle asylum claims, and that claimants could no longer be removed immediately. He argues that prolonged casework and detention limits led to more people being admitted temporarily while their cases continued.
- [21:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1314) **Smith warns of gaps in boat-arrival screening.** Smith says small-boat arrivals are difficult to screen because many people arrive without passports or phones, leaving officers to rely heavily on interviews and biometrics. He argues that 24 hours at Manston is too short for thorough checks and says limited detention capacity pushes people into communities quickly.
- [27:28](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1648) **Smith describes smugglers' advice to migrants.** Smith says people he encountered in debriefings told him smugglers advised them to discard passports and phones. He says claimants may then cite risks in countries such as Sudan, Eritrea or Afghanistan, and argues that the system struggles to return people when their accounts establish a risk of persecution.
- [30:16](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1816) **Smith says deterrence must break the business model.** Smith argues that international smuggling networks are too lucrative and widespread to eliminate through prosecutions alone. He says removals are central to deterrence, supports the Rwanda plan as a possible deterrent, and says about 4% of boat arrivals are removed.
- [34:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2061) **Smith outlines the obstacles to boat returns.** Smith says towing unseaworthy boats could put lives at risk and expose officers to legal consequences. He describes Australia's use of separate, purpose-built vessels and says returns to France would require French cooperation; he argues joint patrols could make that possible.
- [41:19](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2479) **Smith says leaving the ECHR is not enough.** Smith says the UK would also need to revise domestic laws, including the Human Rights Act and rules relating to modern slavery and asylum. He argues that legislation would need to limit claims made after small-boat arrivals and give officers authority to detain people until they could be removed.
- [45:57](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2757) **Smith describes NGO support as an enforcement concern.** Smith says some NGO activity in Calais supports people with food and shelter, while other activity, such as explaining how to claim asylum, comes close to facilitating illegal entry. He cautions against naming groups and argues that the legal framework, rather than any one organisation, enables the system.
- [51:47](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3107) **Smith says reform needs political backing.** Smith says a reform package would need domestic legislation covering asylum, human rights and modern-slavery claims, as well as authority to detain people until removal. Asked why governments have not enacted it, he points to political will and opposition from advocacy groups and members of the House of Lords; he says the Blair government adopted tougher measures, including juxtaposed controls and more caseworkers.
- [57:16](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3436) **Smith says the wider border remains robust.** Smith says the visible small-boat problem should not obscure visa screening, intelligence and other security work, which he considers strong. Kisin contrasts his recollection of 55,000 net legal migrants in 1996 with what he describes as illegal arrivals at half that level per year; Smith says he does not think the public should accept the crossings.
- [1:04:03](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3843) **Smith says reform needs a dedicated legal team.** Smith says a prime minister would need a parliamentary majority, trust between political leaders and senior officials, and specialist lawyers to draft defensible legislation. He warns that the work would not happen overnight and says a team would need to assess how each clause could pass Parliament and withstand court challenges.
- [1:08:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4101) **Smith urges detention and peaceful protest.** After the hosts raise the risk of a major attack, Smith says he sees a real security concern and argues for secure detention, debriefers and risk assessors rather than releasing people after 24 or 48 hours. When the hosts raise people taking border enforcement into their own hands, Smith urges peaceful protest and says people should leave enforcement to the political system.
- [1:15:04](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4504) **Smith calls for biometric entry-exit checks.** Smith says the UK lacks a biometric entry-exit system that would record who arrives and leaves, and argues that it could identify overstayers and help target resources. He also says some visitors admitted electronically for six months may stay and work after their permission expires.

## Transcript

TRIGGERnometry, hosted by Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, with Tony Smith CBE.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[0:04](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4) 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, mentioned 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 load more stuff as well as that.

[0:52](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=52) So even that's not enough? No. Put all this international law stuff because it's hopelessly out of date. 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? And head over to our merch store where you'll be able to buy hoodies, T-shirts, caps, prints, stickers, posters, and of course, the world-famous trigonometry mug. Go to shop. 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 some, you know what you learned what you saw how you went through what people should know about the border force in this country and the way the borders are managed more broadly yeah okay so um i'm from london uh i didn't go to university i got my a levels i didn't know what to do

[2:04](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=124) 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 thought i don't really want to do that but i do something a bit different so they recommended the world hr customs or something like that so i put my application in before i 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.

[2:33](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=153) 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 realise 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 the powers uh you know pretty strong powers 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.

[3:10](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=190) 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 if something's funny, I could take them down, do the bags, have a look in there and then make a judgement call about whether or not they were admissible to the country. And if not, then the power was vested in law. by law, Schedule 2 Immigration Act in me, to refuse entry on the authority of my chief. So I don't like the look of this guy. He says he's coming on holiday, but I've just looked in his bag and he's got his waiter's uniform and his alarm clock with him and all his references, so I don't think he's coming on holiday, really, to be honest.

[3:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=225) 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, and 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 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 arrest them and detain them and send them back.

[4:20](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=260) No call, which is why the police quite liked us, because the police would have to go through the criminal justice system, have to prosecute and go 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. Police take him back to wherever he was from and give him a bit of paper with his photo on saying 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 enforcement world where actually immigration enforcement was really quite powerful.

[4:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=298) 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, 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 usually try and accommodate, and then they go back quietly. So I was brought up to believe that I actually 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.

[5:37](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=337) 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 felt with that. Got promoted to Chief Immigration Officer. Then went back into enforcement as a Chief. Then went up again the next level, Inspector. Again, back into 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.

[6:11](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=371) That's a Grade 7, which is a civil service generic grade. You know, there wasn't really, there was an assistant director at immigration, but you were still an assistant director. Everything kind of equalised so people could move around between immigration and other departments, customs, revenue, health, agriculture. But I stayed in it because I thought, well, I've been doing it for 20 years now. And I actually 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 stay in my swim lane. And then it came to a point in about the late 80s, early 90s, where we started to see a lot of asylum applications coming in.

[6:52](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=412) People were arriving mainly on the ferries across from Dover. and claiming asylum. And my immediate response would send them back to France, right? I mean, I don't care about them. No, no. But then the lawyers came in, you know, 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, 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.

[7:27](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=447) 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 fairies 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 the home office called the asylum director 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 programme with the Canadian immigration.

[8:06](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=486) 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. It's a 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 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 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 into the country, making sure that they were not coming for, you know, nefarious reasons, terrorism, crime, whatever.

[8:48](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=528) Built a lot of targeting units there. And then I came back, my three years were up, came back to the UK and they promoted me again to become Director of Ports of Entry in the Immigration Service, 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'd been away, we'd had a massive increase in asylum while I was in Canada. It went up from about 25,000, 30,000 to over 100,000 applications in about 2002, 2003. And there was a lot of work going on by the government of the day to try and get asylum intake down. I walked back into that.

[9:23](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=563) The main tactic the government then used was to put the border abroad. So 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 planning. 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.

[9:48](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=588) **Tony Smith CBE:** So we managed to get asylum intake right down from about 100,000 to about 25,000 over two years, which was pretty good.

[9:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=594) That was a main target. That was a target to reduce asylum intake. 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 they dealt with the drugs and you know the illicit materials and the copyright materials and we dealt with a person but then they decide that's 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 and the southeast as a regional director now i'm quite a senior at the food chain now somehow i've managed to 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 case work asylum removals and enforcement so between 2007 2009 2000 And we did a lot of work on asylum removals, which is probably something a lot of people would be really quite interested in these days.

[11:05](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=665) 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. And those two systems, although they were national, they were under my command in London and South East. If people came in from a third country, if we felt the case 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 centres. So we brought the officers into the detention centre, so we had caseworkers in there working from there, so they had close contact with the inmates and even appeals courts we moved in there.

[11:49](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=709) and that worked quite well between 2007, 2008, 2009 so did a pretty good job on getting asylum removals up keeping asylum intake down but then there was always this 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 work but they had forged documents like they had dodgy ID cards so the police called and said well, we don't really want people without the proper credentials working 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.

[12:32](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=752) 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 full-time. We need someone like you. Borchardt to manage all the border security that supports eventually 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 ruin 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 didn't get through how we managed it and you know that went well actually that was i I don't know if you remember London 2012, but it was a fantastic event.

[13:17](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=797) Everybody was looking at what was going on on the track in the field. Nobody was looking at us, which is what we wanted. And as a result, I was very proud. I did a great job, not just me, a lot of other people. I got my CBE for My Majesty, and I'd done my 40 years, 41 years, and I thought, that's the 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 in House of Commons and said, what are you going to do now? I said, well, I don't know really. I've done my 40 years here, but I don't know.

[13:51](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=831) She said, well, there's a couple of things you could help. 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, that you could help us with outside, then that would be good. And also, we haven't really got anyone like you to do media. 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 international stuff as well. I was being invited to go and share conferences around the world on border management, border security, sharing best practice with other countries.

[14:28](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=868) And I'm still doing that now to this day, even though 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 a complicated business actually. And I thought, well, I don't really want to go off and tell someone out to police the city. I don't want to tell someone out 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.

[14:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=898) I still talk about, I've written a book about borders, 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 a lot of the time. And we don't, we're not experts, you are. And what you described to me is extraordinary, because you're not an old man, 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 sort of goes oh i don't like the the look of this guy off you go to our modern sensibilities that seems almost extreme 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.

[15:51](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=951) 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.

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[17:09](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1029) 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.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 and 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.

[17:49](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1069) 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 the judiciary and from, you know, pressure groups and refugee organisations who challenged the whole process that I described to you, that I used to operate, said, well, we can't have immigration officers doing this anymore. It's not OK, because they're not qualified to judge whether or not someone's in fear of persecution. And it's in direct conflict with the Refugee Convention.

[18:22](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1102) 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?

[18:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1134) I mean, you know, the powers in Schedule 2 were conferred. No one. question the fact that, well, someone, I mean, we did, that's not to say we didn't have refugees that were brought over here. We've always had refugees that 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 in 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 al-sing judgment which goes back to the 80s which said that yes this we we will let the immigration officers detain people for more than a set 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 you get

[19:56](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1196) By the time you got around the interview, there'd be some other evidence that was in, and then they'd claim something else.

[20:00](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1200) **Tony Smith CBE:** 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.

[20:12](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1212) 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 I say the tactics of the government at a 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, you know, to make sure the checks are pushed out, if you like, or push the border out.

[20:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1254) And for those that are here, start doing things like detain fast track 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 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, Brian, 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 of 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 you know 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 is 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

[21:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1318) intake started to creep up again and um fortunately for me before you know before the boat i was i've retired before the boat started coming i was always told don't worry about because i was at a threat assessment every every week on the border and i said well what about people coming and small boats, I mean, and 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 shipping lanes. So 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.

[22:29](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1349) 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 is a highly highly visible form of 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 in to 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. We haven't got any technology that can tell you what's in someone's mind.

[23:23](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1403) 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 away, because that gives you a story.

[23:32](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1412) **Tony Smith:** The passport gives you your name, your date of birth, your nationality, your travel.

[23:36](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1416) 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 to face, but there's no global watch list of fingerprints and faces that's 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's going to behave once they're through the border and in the country if you're going to let them in at all i would like to see hardy al-sing reversed i want them detained i want them detained for a lot longer than manston 24 hours is a short-term holding facility.

[24:17](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1457) So 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 find it in 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.

[24:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1494) 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 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 in Section 33 of the Immigration Act. They've come without a passport. That's the breach of the immigration law.

[25:25](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1525) So all other things being, they should be removable as illegal entrants, but because they claim aside them, 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 expecting 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 trouble for that.

[25:51](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1551) 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 his evidence is a facilitator, they will prosecute him. But by and large, the majority of them are going to get temporary admission with very limited screening.

[26:28](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1588) 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 it back? When he, you know, I don't work there anymore, but why didn't they send it back? Why didn't they stop? And I think, you know, if they could, they would.

[26:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1618) You know, I stand up at the border. It's one of the reasons I do media, the office. I know the office says 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 their 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.

[27:25](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1645) 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 game 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, where NC, some of them will talk, and say, yeah, I was told to tell you that. I was told to throw my passport away.

[28:02](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1682) 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, the 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, like, just tell them to. Because if I don't know who you are, and I know where you're from, I know your background, all I've got to go on is this story you tell me. 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.

[28:41](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1721) 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... You 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... I mean, let's leave the third country, France, thing out for a minute. We can talk about it if you like.

[29:12](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1752) 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 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 who 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 that you shouldn't have done and the Taliban are probably going to come. So those are probably what you would say legitimate claims for asylum to say, well, actually, I need protection.

[29:44](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1784) 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 I'm really sorry if you get persecuted and 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 legal framework been introduced introduced, policy introduced to enable that to happen.

[30:23](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1823) And Tony, we'll get onto 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, Keir Starmer 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 organised criminal gangs. You know, that's cloud cuckoo land. You can mitigate the risk. You can try and disrupt their activities. But this is international organised crime. It's like drug smuggling. You're never going to be at it.

[30:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1858) 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, I chair conferences there. Africa, I'm chairing a conference there next month where there are some good people working for governments. UK, UK are trying to smash the gangs, if you like, to try and identify. But it's really, really hard because some of this is so lucrative that it's almost lost in business as usual. So people are being trafficked. They are being smuggled out.

[31:30](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1890) People will pay money to a middleman to say, now, you know, first stage, going to get you out of this country and into that country. That's where you're going to go. You're going to go overland from this country to that country. And that's where you're going to meet the next, which is the level two smuggler. He's the middleman. He's got a staging house for you. And you get moved exponentially through the food chain right the way up to the French border. So it's a massive network. Now, you have had some successes, to be fair, at the National Crime Agency, I know those blokes as well. I mean, they're trying their best, you know.

[32:00](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1920) But these are things that are going on miles away from here, 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, Keir Starmer, it seems when he came in, he's clearly come from a criminal justice background. Criminal justice systems don't work against illegal immigration. There's no point in taking a bit of a court. There's no point trying to prosecute them, I mean, because you won't even find out who they are.

[32:29](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1949) 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.

[32:34](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1954) **Tony Smith:** The most important thing, though, you should do is break the business model, right?

[32:38](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1958) What is the business? Why do they do it? Why do you think smugglers operate? They're the money. There's money in there. They wouldn't bother. So how do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place? The only way you've got to do that is so you're not going to get in because it ain't going to work. So as soon as you... That's why I supported the Rwanda plan, is actually what we would have been able to say if we could ever get that through, would be that it doesn't follow you're going to get in to stay in England, you're going to end up living in Rwanda. You can still come if you like, but we're going to send you back to Rwanda.

[33:09](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=1989) 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. Yes, they are, but they're not removing boat arrivals. Only about 4% of boat arrivals get removed because you've got the asylum, ECHR, all of those problems. And they come from countries where it's really hard to remove people too. 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.

[33:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2025) And there's networks going right around the world. So, really, you can't rely necessarily on being able to disrupt international smuggling networks to stop the boats. It will have an impact, and I think there has been some impacts in changes of tactics we've seen recently, where, you know, some of the smaller boats are harder now, 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, when 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.

[34:18](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2058) 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... 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 on the boats a couple of years ago with a border force, and these boats are not seaworthy. Even the big ones aren't really seaworthy. i mean they're they're bobbling around in the ocean and there's people so what would be the first thing that i mean what you can do throw a tow rope out there to the boat and start towing it it will probably overturn people are going In the water, someone will die. Whose fault is that going to be?

[35:00](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2100) What do you think will be happening when you have the steward's inquiry back here? A border force out there with a rope trying to tie them back? So I would protect the officers. I said, wait a minute, are you saying that my officers will be culpable with homicide if we cause a drowning by an act like that? So I think that's... So what the Australians did, because I did study... That's what 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. 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 they were scuttling the boats and so that says you have to rescue me this is all based on the law of the sea and rescue which is a sensible law when you think about it you don't want people drowning do you?

[35:47](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2147) not really, no, not really so preservation of life is paramount therefore you've got to do so out of rescue so when they're scuttling the boats Well, the Australians said, well, OK, so we can't take them back on that boat. We'll create our... So they built their own boats, purpose-built boats, to take them back, to escort them back. And because they were in the high seas, they could. And there wasn't the political pressure to get here. So the Indonesians said, well, it's not very... it doesn't look 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.

[36:16](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2176) But they took them off 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 everyone says, why can't we do that? Why is that impossible? You could do that. You could take... You can't do that. Well, wait a minute, you do that anyway, right? I mean, what are you doing when you come alongside a dinghy?

[36:36](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2196) **Tony Smith:** The first thing you're doing is pulling them out of the water, putting them on your boat.

[36:39](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2199) Right. Now they're on your boat. Your boat can go wherever you want it to go. Right. So you could... Now, the problem you've got then is, well, will the French allow a Border Force vessel to dock in France? So they've been home office, people have been over there and talked to them, and the answer is no, they won't. They say, no, you can't bring that boat back here. You're not going to... This is where the fight has now become. Well, you could, under international law, I wrote something about this when this all started, under international law, it's OK in a contiguous zone. Contiguous zones means that you've got two territorial waters colliding with one another, so it's a contiguous 24-mile zone.

[37:11](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2231) 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 joint 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 back to France, right? So that would be the ideal solution, is the French would say, yes, OK, why don't we have a, you know, we'll have an agreement with the Brits, Brits and French, we'll have joint patrols.

[37:44](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2264) The first thing, we'll make them safe, right, because that's what everyone's worried about people drowning let's make 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 to say that 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 so 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.

[38:16](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2296) 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 them straight back to France, which would be the perfect solution. The problem we've got is we don't have that agreement with France. The French, this will become a diplomatic route because i've seen the reform proposal yeah the reform the latest reform proposal which as well we're going to whether or whatever what your question what are the french going to do what if we get a purpose-built vessel which is capable of a beach landing rather than having a dock in a harbor and we simply transfer them from from from the dinghies onto one of them and sail them back towards france what will the front i don't know what the french would do about that but it would create a diplomatic row because the french is 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 going to do but if i'm a british person tony what i'm thinking is how come sending tens of thousands

[39:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2385) 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 want to send one boat back, that's immediately 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've worked with the French quite a lot, actually, the French police, and they don't like human smugglers either, really. 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...

[40:19](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2419) 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 land. You can't come here and exercise your powers on our territory. So the French have taken a position which is basically not a... 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 that border force is we have to comply with the law. That's the problem we've got. or 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.

[40:51](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2451) 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 a 12-mile zone, that's all 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, Suela Braverman, a bunch of people who all have a different perspective on these things.

[41:27](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2487) Suela Braverman, 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. So even that's not enough. 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 human rights. sent people back. But now, because the lawyers have crept in, and they call it judicial overreach because of 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. So 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 removal so that's what the tories relied on for

[42:37](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2557) the rwanda plan right that's what this lot relied on for the one-to-one scheme right you could go to your court and say well he's not in immediate phase in france yeah so there is already there's nothing in the echl that allows that there's nothing in the model so why doesn't that work why doesn't that carve out apply now why can't we because it's because you then lodged an application for human rights. So you logically can't... So 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, right, you're not an immediate purpose.

[43:06](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2586) 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, we've got family life or we've got infealming 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 alright, we'll still remove them to Rwanda and we'll consider the human rights application, if you win it we'll bring you back from Rwanda, how do you

[43:33](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2613) **Tony Smith CBE:** 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

[43:39](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2619) 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, but that's what my instruction would be at 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. And I was down there at Lid when he announced it.

[44:13](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2653) I thought, oh, 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 SUNAT 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. They said, 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.

[44:42](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2682) That's why they both left in the end. And so you've 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 this 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.

[45:22](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2722) You've got to get that somehow through this tension between international law and domestic law 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 completely broken. It's no longer delivering what the asylum system was meant to deliver in the first place. 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.

[45:59](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2759) There's a part of me that's really silly. Nicole 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've 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.

[46:28](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2788) 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's business. I did go to Calais. I went and saw Care for Calais. I saw what they're doing there. Now, they will say, even if 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 to the supermarket and give them food parcels and, you know, give them tents and anorexies and stuff like that.

[47:10](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2830) That's what they'll 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.

[47:39](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2859) 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, etc, etc. And we've got to be honest, Tony, when you operated, when you were doing, you know, 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.

[48:17](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2897) 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 who wants to come here from a different country, they have to get a permission, either a visa or an electronic traveller authority, or demonstrate your British passport, your Irish passport, to get into our country.

[49:00](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2940) 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, 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?

[49:34](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=2974) 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 possibly get you there or in some other country like Rwanda that's what's going to happen to you all right now which parties are advocating that and which parties are not advocating that so we've heard lots of different rhetoric i've followed 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 and protect the community in the same way as the police do and a 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 they were able to talk to you

[50:42](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3042) 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 the media you'll be sacked 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 reinstitate 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 you know a passport suddenly appears when your next visitor brings your

[51:39](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3099) passport in and you've got permission you 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?

[52:11](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3131) She says something like, well, you know, the Rishi Sunak or the other ministers, they just thought, well, 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, and I mean, leaving the ECHR is one thing, you've got to adjust your own domestic legislation, which includes the Human Rights Act mainly.

[52:56](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3176) You know, 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 OK 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.

[53:38](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3218) 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 to reverse Hardy Al-Sing, the judgment I told you about. So, well, actually, you can't. Yes, we can detain people indefinitely. It sounds really bad, doesn't it? But, yeah, we need the power. Then if you've got all... Assuming you've got all those laws and powers in place, which is a big ask, right? 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.

[54:13](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3253) 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, 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've wanted to speak to you, right?

[54:52](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3292) 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 groups? Well, refugee action, refugee legal groups, all kinds of left-wing groups that will challenge you. I think the House of Lords is predominantly anti-enforcement. If you look at the passage of the Rwanda, the Illegal Migration Act and the debates in the lords a very very large number of lords were against it sent it back a number of times why uh 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 but they just don't agree with that as a matter of principle so i've had arguments on panels by this where i've been called i've been called a racist and I've been called all kinds of things of some right wing.

[55:53](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3353) I'm not a right wing. I'm just telling you, 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 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 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.

[56:27](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3387) They really wanted to take on... But at the same time, this is that same government that opened up a lot of legal routes just before that through the managed migration routes. Suddenly, now they've admitted that was a mistake. So I think a lot of mistakes have been made in the past, and we can look at different governments and criticise different what they did or didn't do. The question is, how are they going to fix this problem now? Who's going to fix it? and how are they going to go about it? Well, this is why 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.

[57:08](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3428) 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 that's how 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 look 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 said it's massive but you're talking about 20 30 000 pound 30 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.

[57:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3465) It is pretty good in 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. You know, we've got the border. in France so 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 you know 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 hold on hold on well let 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.

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[59:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3585) Tell them Trigonometry sent you to support the show. Hold on, hold on. Well, look, you're the expert so i defer to your judgment but as a normal person here's what i'd say to you when i came here in 96 net legal 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 don't i mean this is without having a go at your former colleagues no one is doing that Managing a border is a bit like an iceberg.

[1:00:23](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3623) 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 above the water. What you don't see below the water is an awful lot of good work going on behind the scenes by a lot of agencies. I told you about London 2012 Olympics. Yeah, of course. The threat level here was severe. I bet. Severe. I bet. We were told a terrorist attack is highly likely. We worked round the clock on checking every single last little detail. That's me, the military, the police. we all pulled together to get that over the line. So did that terrorist attack never happen.

[1:00:53](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3653) It could have done, it might have done, if it hadn't been for us. 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 the Canadians, Border 5, and even the EU, actually, are behind the scenes on security to try and keep, you know, real nasty, and the IOM, the UNODC. I could go on. There's a lot of work below the surface that we probably don't want.

[1:01:25](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3685) But what you see is that... I totally get it, Tony. Before Francis jumps in, let me just explain why I'm saying this. 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 in the round, they're doing a good job. because, as you say, this is a very desirable country to come to. There will 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...

[1:02:01](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3721) 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 mind boggling to people. And that's what I'm getting at. This is no, no, not casting any shade at all on the hardworking officers in the border force. Good. Well, I'm glad you said that because 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.

[1:02:35](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3755) And I believe it still is there in the next generation of officers. And I said to you, I think if the Border Force... You know, I don't like seeing 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 job they could. Don't get paid that much. Actually, they're out there in pretty dangerous conditions 24-7. But they are instructed, you know, If someone is a dinghy, little dinghy there that's in your territorial waters, your job is to bring them on shore without anyone drowning.

[1:03:03](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3783) That's your first role and make them safe. And so we take the proper life jacket and bring them on board. First, 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're on board, they're in territorial waters, they can pull all of these levers that the border force can't pull back again until such time as, you know, there is 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.

[1:03:37](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3817) The question is, who's going to do it? Who's actually going to say, right, I'm going to pull those levers back in a different direction and now, from what we expect 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 to 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 we've got that.

[1:04:07](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3847) So, Tony, let's say I become Prime Minister. There's a worrying possibility. And the camera people, and the people of our production team, Billy's looking absolutely thrilled. He knows I'd get it sorted. And I appointed 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. 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 like you are.

[1:04:54](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3894) Yeah. Whether I 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, that, and people I know who have become casualties because it become all their fault and wasn't a politician's fault. So I think you need that real trust between your political masters. Now you can trust me. Oh, yeah? Come on. No comment. You do need that trust. 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 boshed in the house of lawyers because there's a procedural impropriety.

[1:05:47](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3947) 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,

[1:06:03](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3963) **Tony Smith CBE:** 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.

[1:06:08](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=3968) 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 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 it through the courts, 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 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 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 then you get someone else in there tell you all right i'm doing i mean that's what president trump does i mean i know guys that have been casual as it is 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

[1:07:05](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4025) 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 cotrevellian idea that we've got an impartial civil service but i don't think we have though over in the states if you get above a certain level you have to go political you have to become a politically appointee 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 look we're all pulling on the same end of the rope here because there is a bit of yes minister out there definitely The US Minister was a great programme.

[1:07:58](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4078) I don't know if you've ever watched it, but it's a fantastic programme 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 difficulty is. I don't want to say it's going to be easy, but 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.

[1:08:31](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4111) 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 that is a real risk. I think there is a real risk that something awful... I've lived through awful incidents. I've lived through... No-one thought 9-11 was going to happen.

[1:09:04](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4144) My God. No, no, we shut the airspace for a week. 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 land work moment like that to change things, right? You've got to try and get... 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.

[1:09:35](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4175) 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? Can you just give me a prison somewhere to put them in, Governor? Or a couple of prisons or something. And you'll say, well, I've got no prisons. Someone else, I mean, I've got no prisons, no spaces. But you've got to be able to 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. 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 as some but 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 putting a you

[1:10:32](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4232) know a camp an accommodation centre 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 for 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 are we going to send them to how we're going to get rid of them but letting them through in 24 hours 48 hours into our communities largely unvetted 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

[1:11:43](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4303) 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 yeah i think this is a really difficult problem but you know this this is a 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 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.

[1:12:21](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4341) 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 arrested. They're all arrested, all of that lot. They're brought in by the other night. They will be arrested. Police are there just a... No, they will be arrested. They're under arrest because they're illegal immigrants. So they're not going to wander around your street just coming up the beach, right? They will be arrested and they will be taken into custody, all right?

[1:12:48](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4368) 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. Well, 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, take the law into your own hands. So I can understand the public mood and the public and the frustration, but the only way to fix this is through the political system.

[1:13:16](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4396) 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... 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 stay, are being brought into this country 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 what i keep coming 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

[1:14:26](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4466) they're going to protest about it. So it is a serious problem, but I do urge people, anyone watching this, please don't. By all means, protest peacefully, stand outside here with a placard and get coverage from people like you about the level of concern because that is a form of political lobbying. 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.

[1:15:04](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4504) 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 on. Just top it, free hip, whatever you think. I don't think we've spoken much about the actual 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 entered the country and when you left the country because we'll take a photograph when you come in. We do that now with the gates and we could get the airlines to do it or we could do it on outbound.

[1:15:45](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4545) 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 the 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 foreign nationals. You would know how many people are overstaying in this country, who's leaving, who's entering. We don't have any exit checks in this country to speak of. 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 that 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 e-gate and then probably just staying and working and delivering your pizza.

[1:16:30](https://realalpha.app/v/lpUVkk2nxhk/?t=4590) Now, if that's not a problem, well, don't worry about it. But I would like to see something done about that. And I think 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 is 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? We'll see you next time.