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Keir Starmer’s government has signed a deal with Iraq to tackle people smugglers across Europe as new figures showed that net migration to the UK hit a record high of nearly a million in a period covering Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak’s tenures as prime minister.
The agreement will mean close cooperation with Iraqi intelligence and police to tackle organised crime networks, a faster return of refused asylum seekers and the formation of a new taskforce, according to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper.
At least £800,000 of UK government money would be spent on training, support for the Kurdistan regional government and on disruption of organised crime, the government said.
Smuggling networks operating out of Iraq and Kurdistan have been responsible for trafficking thousands of people including across the Channel to the UK, according to the Home Office .
The deal will be of concern to human rights organisations, after reports of torture of detainees by Iraqi security forces and unlawful executions. Corruption has been described by the LSE’s Middle East Centre as “the lifeblood of politics in Iraq”.
The Iraq deal follows Starmer’s praise for the hard-right Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, for making “remarkable progress” in cutting irregular migration across the Mediterranean.
Italy reached an agreement with Albania in November to host two centres where people would be housed while their asylum claims are processed.
Meloni’s government has also signed a deal with Tunisia, granting it aid in exchange for greater efforts to stop Italy-bound refugees who leave the north African country to cross the Mediterranean.
Revised figures show that the number of people entering the UK minus those leaving reached 906,000 in the year ending June 2023, according to updated estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This has been revised upwards from a previous estimate of 740,000.
The net immigration record was formerly thought to be 764,000 for the year ending December 2022. This estimate has also been revised and now stands at 872,000.
However, the most recent figures show that net immigration is falling and is down by 20% to 728,000 for the year ending June 2024.
The figures come a day after the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, admitted that her party had failed on migration.
Downing Street said the statistics “show that the government inherited a situation from the previous government where they had effectively run Britain as an experiment in open borders” and this happened “due to the policies and decisions taken by the last government”.
Cooper visited Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) this week to seal a series of cooperation deals, the Home Office said.
The UK, Iraq and KRI would act in accordance with international and humanitarian law and commitments to international human rights standards, the Home Office said.
Cooper said: “There are smuggler gangs profiting from dangerous small boat crossings whose operations stretch back through Northern France, Germany, across Europe, to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and beyond. Organised criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too.”
The total for net immigration in the year to June 2023 has been revised upwards by 166,000 from the initial estimate of 740,000, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures published on Thursday.
A similar change has been made to the estimate for net immigration in the year to December 2023, which was initially estimated to be 685,000, and is now thought to be 866,000 – an increase of 181,000.
The ONS said that while remaining high by “historic standards”, net immigration was now “beginning to fall”.
Government spending on asylum in the UK was £5.38bn in 2023-24, up 36% from £3.95bn in 2022-23, Home Office figures show.
The ONS has continued to review its net immigration figures as more complete data becomes available and has improved how it estimates the migration behaviour of people arriving in the UK from outside the EU.
Better analysis of the number of people coming to the UK amid the conflict in Ukraine has also been taken into account.
A statement from the ONS said: “Estimates in this release have been updated back to YE [the year ending] June 2021. For example, net migration has been revised upwards by 166,000 for YE June 2023 and by 181,000 for YE December 2023. Reasons for these revisions include: more available data, more information on Ukraine visas and improvements to how we estimate migration of non-EU nationals.”
