New funding announced for border security

The government is set to announce an extra £75 million of funding to boost border security.

The boost will bring the total investment in the Border Security Command over the next two years to £150 million.

The prime minister will make the announced at a meeting of the INTERPOL General Assembly in Glasgow - INTERPOL’s supreme governing body and comprises senior ministerial and policing leads from the 196 member states. This is the first time the Assembly has been hosted in the UK for over 50 years.

Keir Starmer plans to draw on his experience of bringing together agencies to tackle international terrorist and drug smuggling gangs during his time as Director of Public Prosecutions to dismantle the people smuggling gangs.

His speech will set out how the £150 million will provide additional specialist investigators and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment.

Initially the funding will be directed towards a range of enforcement and intelligence activity. This includes investing heavily in NCA technology and capabilities, delivering advanced data exploitation and improvements to technologies to boost collaboration with European partners to investigate and break people smuggling networks.

There will be 300 staff for the new Border Security Command, tasked with strengthening global partnerships, delivering new legislation and leading the system through investment and strategy. There will also be 100 specialist investigators and intelligence officers for the NCA, dedicated to tackling criminals who facilitate people smuggling.

A new specialist OIC Intelligence Source Unit will be created which will cohere intelligence flows from key police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service’s ability to deliver charging decisions more quickly will be boosted.

In his speech, the PM will say: “The world needs to wake up to the severity of this challenge.  I was elected to deliver security for the British people. And strong borders are a part of that. But security doesn’t stop at our borders.  

“There’s nothing progressive about turning a blind eye as men, women and children die in the Channel.

“This is a vile trade that must be stamped out – wherever it thrives. So we’re taking our approach to counter-terrorism - which we know works, and applying it to the gangs, with our new Border Security Command.

“We’re ending the fragmentation between policing, Border Force and our intelligence agencies.”

Ahead of the announcement, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Criminal smuggler gangs profit from undermining our border security and putting lives at risk and they have been getting away with it for far too long.

“Our new Border Security Command, with the investment set out today, will mean a huge step change in the way we target these criminal gangs. People smugglers and traffickers operate in networks across borders, that’s why we have launched a major boost to our cooperation with international partners including other European countries, the G7 and Europol, and why we are so pleased to be hosting the INTERPOL conference on tackling international crime in Glasgow today.”