Hundreds of police officers will be deployed across Europe to stop people smugglers as part of Sir Keir Starmer’s new UK Border Security Command.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced on Sunday the first steps in setting up the command by kickstarting the search from Monday for a former police, military or intelligence chief to head it.
It will also see up to 1,000 extra officers recruited by the National Crime Agency (NCA), Border Force and MI5 specifically to target smuggling gangs.
A “significant number” will be based across Europe working with Europol and European police forces.
Ms Cooper told Graeme Biggar, the head of the NCA, on Sunday that she wants to start deploying the extra officers to “break the business model” of the gangs as soon as possible, with the summer months set to bring a surge in Channel crossings.
The new command will be funded by the money saved by scrapping Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, which is expected to generate some 75 million pounds in the first year.
The officers will bolster those already based in “transit” and “border” countries including France, Belgium, Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy and Greece, as well as places such as Kurdistan, where some of the people smuggling networks originate.