Sir Keir Starmer is ready to move Channel migrants to former military barracks to ward off the threat posed by Nigel Farage.
The Prime Minister has told his reshuffled Cabinet to ‘go up a gear’ after making sweeping changes to his ministerial ranks following Angela Rayner’s resignation on Friday.
It comes as the numbers crossing the Channel continued to soar, with an estimated 1,000 people arriving in the UK on small boats yesterday.
There have also been protests at hotels housing asylum seekers across the country this summer, amid public anger over Labour’s record on tackling the issue.
Defence Secretary John Healey today signalled Sir Keir is poised to take a harder line on immigration in the wake of Labour’s panicked reshuffle.
He confirmed the Government is looking at plans to move asylum seekers to military sites.
But Mr Healey insisted the PM would not look to remove Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as part of efforts to halt Channel crossings.
The Defence Secretary said his department is ‘looking at the potential use of military and non-military use sites for temporary accommodation for the people who come across on these small boats that may not have a right to be here or need to be processed rapidly’.
According to The Telegraph, asylum seekers in hotels will be moved into barracks on former military bases under plans to be unveiled within weeks.
It also reported that ministers are close to agreeing on a ‘one in, one out’ migrant returns deal with Germany, having already sealed one with France.
Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria pictured arriving today for a church service at Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral, Scotland
The PM was in Scotland following a frantic couple of days during which he made sweeping changes to his ministerial ranks following Angela Rayner’s resignation
Mr Healey said, together with the Home Office, he was ‘putting military planners into their border command and into their planning for the future’.
Speaking to Sky News about potentially moving migrants to military sites, the Defence Secretary added: ‘Those are decisions we haven’t taken yet, but it’s work we’re doing at the moment And we’re doing it jointly with the Home Office.
‘I’m looking really hard at it. I’m looking at it with the Home Office. I recognise that the loss of confidence of the public over recent years in Britain’s ability to control it borders needs to be satisfied.
‘We have to deal with this problem with the small boats.’
Mr Healey also revealed Sir Keir had instructed his reshuffled Cabinet to ‘go up a year’ after a ‘really tough’ first year in power.
‘We’re starting to renew, and what Keir Starmer has done is put a new team in place and said to us all, ‘you’ve got to go up a gear to demonstrate that Government can deliver for people’,’ the Defence Secretary said.
Sir Keir’s reshuffle was prompted by Ms Rayner departing as Deputy PM, Housing Secretary and Labour’s deputy leader after her tearful admission that she didn’t pay enough tax on the purchase of her new flat.
Among his changes, Sir Keir switched Yvette Cooper from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary and replaced her in the Home Office with Shabana Mahmood – alongside a clear-out of junior ministers in that department.
Defence Secretary John Healey revealed Sir Keir is looking at plans to move asylum seekers to military sites after a summer of protests outside migrant hotels
The PM and Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, are poised to take a harder line on immigration to ward off the threat of Nigel Farage
A French police vessel looks on as a dinghy laden with people prepares to cross the English Channel near Gravelines, northern France
The scale of the challenge facing Ms Mahmood, the former justice secretary, in her new Home Office role was illustrated by another mass of arrivals across the Channel on Saturday – her first full day in the job.
One Government source said ‘nothing is off the table’ for Ms Mahmood as she assumes her new brief, which puts her in charge of borders and asylum policy.
She has previously signalled a willingness to look at human rights reform within domestic law.
A Labour insider told The Sunday Times that Ms Mahmood was likely to want to overhaul the ECHR.
They claimed she would be far more radical than her predecessor, Ms Cooper, and would ‘start with the unthinkable and work backwards’.
But Mr Healey this morning insisted Sir Keir and Ms Mahmood would not look to completely quit the ECHR, warning such a move would leave Britain in the company of countries like Russia and Belarus.
‘Keir Starmer has already said that we’re reviewing the interpretation of the convention,’ the Defence Secretary said.
‘But what he has said also is we won’t pull out because it underpins so many important, wider agreements.
‘And if we pulled out, that would mean we were the only nation in NATO not to be signed up to the convention. And it would put us in the club with Russia and Belarus.’
Among his changes, Sir Keir has switched Yvette Cooper from Home Secretary to Foreign Secretary and replaced her in the Home Office with Ms Mahmood (pictured)
More than 1,000 migrants are thought to have crossed the English Channel on Saturday
The figure of more than 1,000 yesterday is the biggest daily total since May, in which more than 1,195 migrants arrived in the UK in a single day
Saturday’s arrivals takes the total number of Channel arrivals so far this year to more than 30,000
Mr Farage used Reform’s conference in Birmingham this weekend to pledge his party would stop the boats within two weeks of passing new legislation if they win power.
He has vowed to quit the ECHR and deport 600,000 asylum seekers within five years of a Reform government.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to make a similar pledge to leave the ECHR at her party’s conference next month.
As part of Sir Keir’s clear-out of the Home Office, ex-borders minister Angela Eagle and ex-policing minister Diana Johnson were shifted to other departments.
Ex-industry minister Sarah Jones is now policing minister, a brief she held in opposition, as part of Ms Mahmood’s new-look team along with Mike Tapp, the Dover MP from Labour’s 2024 intake, and Alex Norris.
Sir Keir said on Saturday: ‘The new ministers will drive forward our growth agenda with a relentless focus.
‘Phase two of this Government is about delivery and this is a Government that will renew Britain and deliver the change people voted for.’
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones had earlier denied that the Government was in crisis.
He insisted Sir Keir now has the ‘strongest team’ in place around the Cabinet table following Ms Rayner’s departure.
He ruled out the prospect of an early general election amid opposition claims that the upheaval could open up splits within Labour and collapse the PM’s authority.
Speaking to broadcasters on Saturday, Mr Jones dismissed suggestions that the reshuffle could delay the PM’s self-described ‘phase two’ of Government by moving senior figures to unfamiliar briefs.
‘It’s not instability insofar as the outcomes that we’re delivering are the same,’ Mr Jones, who is also the newly-appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told BBC Breakfast.
He rejected the idea Ms Cooper had been moved out of the Home Office because she was failing to control immigration, adding she would be ‘brilliant’ in her new role as Foreign Secretary.
But Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said the reshuffle looked like ‘moving deck chairs on Titanic’ and ‘creating a London elite’.
‘The Labour Party is a broad church this is certainly not represented with this reshuffle,’ she said.
