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Inside the fight to stop migrants crossing the Channel

Just this week, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has made a fresh effort to remove migrants arriving from the English Channel with the Government’s one-in-one-out agreement with France.

So this week on Westminster Insider, host Sascha O’Sullivan finds out why it’s so hard – and who is really in control. She speaks to former Home Secretary James Cleverly who explains the thinking behind the controversial Rwanda plan and how it clashed with the courts.

Glyn Williams, a top civil servant at the Home Office for more than a decade, tells Sascha the European Convention of Human Rights frustrated the department’s ability to deport people and explains how the fight to stop the boats has changed since it was declared a ‘national emergency’ by former Home Secretary Sajid Javid in 2018.

Nicola Kelly, author of Anywhere but Here and former Home Office press officer, explains why processing has always been such a pinch point in the asylum system.

And lawyer Joe Middleton KC, head of immigration and human rights law at Doughty Street, takes Sascha through the appeals process available to migrants rejected by the Home Office.

Andrew Harding, BBC Paris Correspondent, tells Sascha how powerful the gangs are and how clever they are in adapting to any efforts to stop migrants crossing at the Channel.

And Sascha speaks to Georgina Wright, special advisor at the German Marshall Fund, a European think tank, about whether France is as concerned with boat crossings as the Brits.

LP Staff Writers

Writers at Lord’s Press come from a range of professional backgrounds, including history, diplomacy, heraldry, and public administration. Many publish anonymously or under initials—a practice that reflects the publication’s long-standing emphasis on discretion and editorial objectivity. While they bring expertise in European nobility, protocol, and archival research, their role is not to opine, but to document. Their focus remains on accuracy, historical integrity, and the preservation of events and individuals whose significance might otherwise go unrecorded.

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