TRIGGERnometry - "I Policed the Border for 40 Years - the System is Broken" - Tony Smith CBE

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

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We make Chevrolet vehicles, but what you do with them makes them so much more. You make them mobile offices, your kids' personal taxi, a concert shuttle, your hockey equipment locker, your recording studio. We make a Chevrolet, but you make it a Chevy. Discover yours at Chevrolet.ca. I was brought up really in quite a tough, you know, enforcement world. This was well after the 1951 conventions were agreed on European. Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention. And we've gone from that to what we have now where to a lot of people, Tony,

it feels like we don't have a border anymore. What's happened? Asylum trumps border control. Somebody can literally get within the 12-mile zone, mention the magic word, and within 24 48 hours being one of our communities with minimal vetting. The most important thing though you should do is break the business model. How do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place? place. The only way you've got to do that is so, well, you're not going to get in.

Sola Brabman, who was here recently, her argument is you can't deal with this until you leave the ECHI. No, you do need to do that, but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that. So is that even that's not enough? No. Put all this international law stuff because it's hopelessly out of date. It's broken. It's completely broken. It's no longer delivering what the asylum system was meant to deliver in the first place. Do you like annoying people just by taking a sip of coffee or the clothes? you're wearing and head over to our merch store where you'll be able to buy hoodies, t-shirts,

caps, prints, stickers, posters, and of course, the world-famous Trigonometry mug. Go to shop.triggerpod.com.uk.uk. That's shop.trigapod.com.com. .anduK.k.k.k.m. And become to Trigonometry. Great to have you on the show. You were, you had a full 40-year career

in handling the immigration into this country, particularly border security, eventually rising to be in charge of all of it, the border force. The question we really want to ask you is what on earth is going on. But before we get to that, talk us through your career, tell us what you learned, what you saw, how you went through, what people should know about the border force in this country and the way the borders are managed more broadly. Yeah, okay.

So I'm from London. I didn't go to university. I got my A-levels. I didn't know what to do. I went and saw my career's manager and he said, well, if you thought about the civil service. I didn't really want to join in the police because quite a lot of my relatives were in the police. I thought, I don't really want to do that. But I do something a bit different.

So they recommended, well, I don't try customs or something like that. So I put my application in it. Before I knew it, I was appointed to the Home Office as an executive officer. And I started off dealing with extensions of stay from aliens. We used to call them aliens. We had aliens in Commonwealth back then. And there wasn't much control over Commonwealth back then. But the aliens would apply to stay for studies or work or whatever.

and you'd stamp their passport with another year or two years or three years or reviews that. And then once I got into it, I started to realise that actually the real work, the real job was done at the border in the immigration service. So I became an immigration officer, which is a statutory role, actually, which gives you the powers, you know, pretty strong powers actually to arrest people, detain people, remove people. And I got posted at Heathrow Airport and I sat on the line there for about five years. you know people would come up to my desk and they'd have to show me their passport their landing card i'd ask them questions about what you're coming here for who are you what you're doing and well if i didn't like the look of them i just thought of something funny i could take them down and do the bags have a look in there and then make a judgment call about whether or not they were admissible

to the country and if not then the power was vested in law by you know by law scheduled to immigration in me to to refuse entry on the authority of my chief so so I don't like to look at this guy, you know, he says he's coming on holiday, but I've just looked in his bag and he's got his waiters, a uniform, and his alarm clock with him and all his references. So I don't think he is coming on, really, to be honest. I say it was a credibility issue, and if I didn't believe him, I wasn't satisfied, I'd just send them straight back.

And so I stayed at the airport for a while. Then I moved into London to immigration enforcement, that is to say, dealing with people that are already in the country that got through somehow, that might be here illegally, did a lot of work with the police on arresting, you know, suspected overstayers, workers. in breach, illegal entrance, a little bit of organised crime stuff. And same thing, really. If I found someone in London in the 80s, early 80s who didn't have a passport and couldn't

explain how they were in the country, I could just arrest them and detain them and send them back. No call, which is why the police quite likes us, because the police would have to go through the criminal justice system, and have to prosecute and go get a magistrate and get a recommendation for deportation, whereas we had these powers to remove people summarily. and yeah, we remove people on letters. I'd write a letter to the captain of the aircraft to say this person's illegally in the UK,

please take him back to wherever he was from and give him a bit of paper with his voter one saying to the chief immigration officer in Delhi airport, wherever it was, and they would go back. So I was brought up really in quite a tough enforcement world where actually immigration enforcement was really quite powerful. I just remember this was in the 70s and the 80s. This was well after the 1951 conventions were agreed on the European Convention on Human Rights

and the Refugee Convention, but nobody claimed asylum back then. Nobody claimed human rights. I mean, mostly they just say, oh, fair enough, now, good cop, go and get some money out of the ATM to take home with me and pick up a few bits and piece, which is you trying to accommodate, and then they go back quietly. So I was brought up to believe that actually had a really powerful role at the border in deciding who came in and who didn't come in and in country, a really powerful role in who got to stay here and who got deported. So I did all that up until the 80s and then I started to climb the ladder.

I went into headquarters, immigration service headquarters where you run into more sort of home office, civil servants which were dealing with broader home affairs issues and how immigration felt with that, got promoted to chief immigration officer, then went back into enforcement as a chief, Then went up again the next level inspector, again back into head court, was back out to operations. So I did quite a bit of operational policy and quite a lot of frontline operations up to inspector. Now when you get to the next level, that was assistant director. That's a grade seven, which is a civil service generic grade. You know, there wasn't really, there was an assistant director immigration, but you were still an assistant director. Everything kind of equalized.

So people could move around between immigration and other departments, customs, revenue health agriculture but i stayed in it because i thought well i've been doing it for 20 years now and i actually quite know a lot quite know quite a lot about this i don't really want to be one of these generalists that moves around the white hall i want to i want to stay in my swim lane and then um it came to a point in about the early late 80s early 90s where we started to see a lot of asylum applications coming in people were arriving mainly on the ferries across from Dover without documents and claiming asylum. And my immediate risk, well, we're saying about France, right?

I mean, I don't care about them. No, no, then, but then the lawyers came in, you know, the legal advice came in, the policy makers came in and said, no, no, Tony, you can't do that. Because if they're claiming persecution, they've got a legitimate claim for protection and you have to at least consider the claim. So I said, well, all right, we'll do that. Then at Dover, you know, we'll put a team down there and we'll process them and then were sent them, no, no, you can't do that either. It has to be referred away from the border

into the home office. This led to a huge backlog of asylum cases where people were turning up at the border without any documents on the ferries and then claiming asylum and we could send a back. And so I took on something called the asylum liaison unit. They created a whole new department in home office called the asylum director who weren't immigration officers but were charged with a duty of considering all these asylum applications. So I did that for a while. I got, did a lot of stuff on asylum in the late 90s and then, and then I got selected to go to Canada on an exchange program with the Canadian immigration. And the idea really was that I was going to learn a little bit more about how they deal with refugees, how they deal with, you know, they are a country of immigration. Their top priority is to take people into Canada's a big country and they want people in the provinces.

So I wouldn't have learned that, but no sooner when I got there and then 9-11 happened. And that's another story, but I mean, it's just a long story, but I was director at ports of entry in Canada, which put me right on the front foot of border security in Canada and therefore North America. Spent a lot of time over after 9-11 talking to the Americans about how we're going to improve targeting, checking people coming in the country, making sure that they were not coming for, you know, nefarious reasons, terrorism, crime, whatever, built a lot of targeting units there. And then I came back, my three years were up, came back to. the UK and they promoted me again to become director of ports of entry and the immigration

service which was managing all of the border controls at all of the ports of entry now you know I came back we still had the fact while I've been away we'd had a massive increase in asylum while I was in Canada it went up from about 25 30,000 to over 100,000 applications in about 2002 2003 and there was a lot of work going on to by the government of the day to try and get asylum intake down I walk back into that The main tactic the government then used was to put the border abroad. So we did agree with the French that we would have what we called the juxtapose controls. We would put our own officers in Calais and Dunkirk to check passports before people could get on the ferry.

In the same way as we do with planes. And that kind of work because then they started trying to get in the back of lorries. And we agreed with the French. We put dog teams out there in surveillance teams and equipment to search the lorries. So we managed to get asylum intake right down from about 100,000 to about 25,000 over two years. which was pretty good. That was a target. That was a target to reduce asylum intake.

And then the UK border agency was formed. So everything changed. They abolished the immigration service. They created the UK border agency. We merged with customs because prior that, customs did goods and we did people. So, you know, if I had someone at the airport, I tapped down customs, obviously, would do the search case.

They dealt with the drugs and, you know, the illicit materials and the copyright materials and we dealt with a person. but then they decide that a lot of countries have gone that way now and created a single border agency that manages both people and goods. We did that around about 2007, 2008, so we created the UKBA. And then I was put in charge of London and the South East as a regional director. Now I'm quite a senior at the food check now somehow. I'd managed to get the right way up to us.

So I'm now a senior director in the home office with responsibility for asylum casework. asylum removals and enforcement. So between 2007, 2009, 2010, we did a lot of work on asylum removals, which is probably something that a lot of people would be really quite interested in these days. And we were able to get asylum removals up very considerably back then. And that was mainly because I ran something called the third country unit. And I also ran something called the Detained Fast Track System. And those two systems, although they were national, they were under my command in London and South East, if people came in from a third country, if people, we felt the case that was manifestly unfounded, we would keep them detained.

We wouldn't release them. We'd keep them locked up. We got an extension in our detention accommodation. And we moved the process into the detention centres. So like we brought the officers into the detention centre, you know, so that we had caseworkers in there, working from there. So they had close contact with the inmates and even appeals courts. We moved in there.

And that worked quite well between 2007, 2008, 2009. So did a pretty good job on getting asylum removals up, keeping asylum intake down. But then there was always a thing called the Olympics that was coming along in 2012. And what we were finding, Stratford was on my patch. And what we were finding was lots and lots of people turning up at Stratford looking for work. But they had forged documents. Like they had dodgy ID cards.

So the police called us in, well, we don't really want people. without the proper credentials working on the Olympic Park. You never know what they might do, do you? So I put a team down there of forgery experts and interview. So we made sure we did a proper check on anybody who got a job down on the site. And that got bigger and bigger and bigger. And then we had, so in the end, my boss said to me, look, Tony, we need someone on the Olympics like a full time.

We need someone like you. You know, Bortchard to manage all the border security that supports of entry and the inland and the accreditation, all the screening and checking. because we really, really don't want any bad guys coming over here and ruin our Olympics, right? So I then went full-time onto London 2012, senior responsible officer for the border security agenda, working with police, military, other stakeholders, and then when it came to the Games, I was Gold Command, considering every threat every day, deciding who got through, didn't get through, how we managed it. And, you know, that went well, actually.

I don't know if you remember London 2012, but it was a fantastic event. everybody was looking at what was going on on the track in the field. Nobody was looking at us and which is what we wanted. And as a result out, I was very proud. I did a great job, not just me, a lot of other people. I got my CBE from my Majesty and I've done my 40 years, 41 years, and I thought I set a job done. Good career, good life, pension, that's the end of it. But it didn't kind of end there because as I left the Home Secretary of the Day, Theresa May, took me for a drink actually just over in House of Commons and said, what are you going to do now?

I said, well, I don't know, really. I've done my 40 years here, but I don't know. So, well, there's a couple of things you could obviously. I mean, you know so much about this. It wouldn't be bad if we could keep in touch with you. If there's any policy issues, Brexit, for example, you know, that you could help us with outside, then that would be good. And also, we haven't really got anyone like you to do media.

Like, if we've got ex-army veterans if there's a war, and we've got ex-policemen if there's a riot. But we don't really like you who could talk about something, going wrong at the border, which is what sucked me into the whole media business and international stuff as well. I was being invited to go and share conferences around the world on border management, border security, sharing best practice with other countries. And I'm still doing that now to this day, even though so I've been in the borders business

really for about 50 years. And I've kind of just tried to stay in my swim lane. I see a lot of people now who come in and out of this business with lots of ideas and why don't you do that, why don't you do that? It's not a complicated business, actually. And I thought, well, I don't really want to go off and tell someone out of police or city. I don't want to tell someone out a fight of war. Actually, that's not my, that's not my baby, but if you want to now run a border, then I'm probably the right bloke to talk to. And so that's why I still do this, and I still talk about, I've written a book about borders. I do a lot of media commentary

about borders, and I'm still really interested in the subject. So thank you for having me on. Well, with that introduction, you're the perfect person to talk to you because all we do is talk about this issue quite a lot of the time and we don't we're not experts you are and what you described to me is extraordinary because you're not an old man you're and yet in the course of you're not just life but your career you've we have gone as a country from what you were describing to my even my modern sensibilities in the 80s was like one man on his whim so goes I don't like the look at this guy off you go to our modern sensibilities that seems almost extreme. And we've gone from that to what we have now where, to a lot of people,

Tony, it feels like we don't have a border anymore. What's happened? I'll be honest. If I call a business and get a voicemail that sounds like it was recorded in 2015 by someone who has since emigrated, I hang up. I don't leave a message. Nobody leaves a message anymore. What do I look like a professional? And here's the uncomfortable bit. Your customers are doing exactly that to you. Today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the business phone system built, so you will never miss a call. What Quo actually does is straightforward. Every call, text and voicemail lands in one place.

So whoever on your team looks at it can see the full exchange and pick it up from there instead of starting cold. Several years into running trigonometry, I've learned that most operational problems aren't solved by hiring more people. They're solved by better systems. is why a quote stands out to me. It's simple enough to set up in minutes and doesn't require anyone on the team to become an IT person overnight. And when nobody on your team is free to pick up, an AI agent takes a call, answers the obvious questions and can book someone in immediately.

The league doesn't sit overnight going cold, which is usually when you lose a business. There's a reason, quote, is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 90,000 businesses is relying on it. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free plus 20% off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash trig. That's QUO.com slash trig. Yeah. So the Immigration Act 1971 is still enforced, believe it or not. That was the one that came in 1173 and that's still the main legislation. But what's happened is it's been chopped and changed and chopped and changed over generations. Yeah, generations, I suppose.

If you go to the 80s, the 90s, the asylum problem, was the first thing that I thought I went to, I'm not saying my boss, I don't think we'd crack this one, because we had cracked a lot of stuff. We were cracking bogus marriages, we were cracking bogus colleges, we were the police, we were doing a lot on immigration crime. But when people started claiming asylum, this whole new army of people came along,

who appeared on the scene, you know, from the judiciary and from, you know, pressure groups, groups and refugee organisations who challenged the whole process that I described to you, that I used to operate, said, well, we can't have immigration officers doing this anymore. It's not okay because they're not qualified to judge whether or not someone's inferior of persecution. And it's in direct conflict with the refugee convention. And so that's when the asylum thing took, that's what the main watershed was. It was in the late 80s, 90s, we started to get more and more people turning up at the border. And the fact of asylum, Trump's,

border control. Asylum is the magic word. I don't know if I'm giving away too many secrets here, but I think it's common knowledge now out there pretty well. Look, if you turn up at the border and you get stopped, claim asylum. Why wasn't that happening before? No one worked out that this was the case? No, no one had worked it out. And no one even thought that it was relevant, because why would it be relevant? I mean, you know, the powers in Schedule 2 were conferred. No one questioned the fact that, well, someone, I mean, that's not to say we didn't have refugees that were brought over here. We've always had refugees that were brought over here,

you know, going back to Idi Amin. And, you know, so there would be a program where you could say, well, there is a cohort of people in that country that we want to legally bring in as refugees. But nobody turned up at the border and just said, oh, I'll want asylum. This kind of just caught and took off to a point where people started to realize,

well, actually, that's all you've got to do. If you can get here and claim asylum, that at least stops them from removing you, which is what I used to do. Then there's an old judgment called the Hardy-R-Sing judgment, which goes back to the 80s, which said that, yes, we will let the immigration officers detain people for more than a set 24, 48 hours. But you have to demonstrate you've got a realistic chance of removing this person within a reasonable amount of time, basically. That's what the court's decided, because we couldn't do that anymore.

Because the asylum application would come in, and then you get, by the time you got around the interview, there'd be some other evidence that was incident, and then they claim something else. else. And so the process we got elongated to the point that we couldn't demonstrate to a call that we could remove this person quickly. So you're suddenly now under pressure to grant them champion admission into the country. And so that's where it began to go wrong, is that we were starting to get more and more people turning up, claiming asylum at the border, and getting into a system that kind of grew exponentially with the casework to the point where it became almost unmanageable in the early noughties.

And that's why I say the tactics of the government at a day, and I'm going back to early 2003, 2004, this is really important. What we need to do is reduce asylum intake. That's the movement of the border in France and checking people before they can get on a plane to come here, fine in an airline if they brought someone without a passport, you know, to make sure the checks are pushed out, if you like,

or push the border out. And for those that are here, start doing things like detained fast track third country unit to get people removed and the idea was that ultimately that we would be at a turn the tide on this and actually get more people going back than the people that were coming in that was a target of the government back then and I worked on that for a while but it never really we've always had illegal entry and it there was all the the human traffickers the smugglers won't give up I mean because this is lucrative business for them they're not going to just say oh

blind but we better stop going to take people to the UK they're still going to look for the markets so there still was illegal entry going on all of that time. We got it under control, but it was still illegal entry, but they were coming in lorries, coming through the common travel area, sometimes coming on dodgy passports, but we've always had illegal entry. So we would move our, you know, our response teams around to try and deal with those particular problems, but we did keep it under control for quite a while. But I think what happened after that is, and this is after I retired, you know, 2013, 2014, we started seeing more and more asylum applications springing up all over the place in the UK, the numbers, the asylum intake

started to creep up again. And fortunately for me, before the boat, I've retired before the boat started coming. I was always told, don't worry about, because I had a threat assessment every week on the border and I said, well what about people come in and personal boats? I mean, and we protected. And all the experts would say, don't worry about that, Governor, that's all right, they won't be able to get across there on a little boat. It's too choppy and, you know, major shipping lane so it was sort of it was a risk but it was never seen as a real problem and it only really took off in 2018 as you know when the boat started coming across and this i think this brought it into public focus much more because it's highly visible now there was always a legal entrance coming in lorries

and claiming asylum but you didn't get to see it really it was you know sometimes you get pictures of people running off up the motorway or something and police chasing them but not a lot now every day every day really if you see a boat it's going to be on the national media everyone's counting the numbers everyone's looking at the government what you're going to do is a highly highly visible form of illegal entry and the other bit that I should mention which really worries me is the security element whatever your views are on immigration and whether or you think we should allow people you know who come from pretty horrible countries into claim asylum in this country from France you've really

got to screen people properly you have to thoroughly screen us about most of my life on vetting screening you don't we haven't got anything technology that can tell you what's in someone's mind. All you've got when you're dealing with a newly arrived migrant, and that's why they throw their documents away. I mean, they want to throw the passport or well because that gives you a story. The passport gives you your name, your date of birth, your nationality, your travel. These are all things that we look at the ports of entry to assess you or when you're applying for a visa. That's all gone. You've got nothing. All you've got is the

person's word for what he's doing. That's it. You can only talk to the person. You can take the biometrics. So we do think of a face. But there's no global watch list of fingerprints and faces. Not really that's going to spot every criminal, every person. And even if they haven't got any previous, how do you know what they're going to do? How do you know how this person is going to behave once they're through the border and in the country?

So if you're going to let them in a tool, I would like to see Hardial Singh reversed. I want them detained. I want them detained for a lot longer than Manston 24 hours is a short-term holding facility. So you get a boatload of 500 and a day. you're scrambling to get the cases cleared because you get sued for unlawful detention if you keep them in Manston for more than 24 hours. Now if you haven't got anywhere else to

move them to to another immigration detention centre and like the prisons they're pretty full. You're under pressure at a grant temporary admission pretty quickly. And so that's why people are coming into the communities really, really quickly. There's another team in the home office that are responsible for moving them out of Manston and finding them places to stay either in HMOs or hotels or wherever it may be in the country. but you're not doing the screening to the extent that I would like to see it done. And there was an HMIC report on this a couple of years ago on debriefing, and I would like to see us hold people for a lot, lot longer than that

until we're absolutely as certain as we can be that they don't present a threat because some of them clearly do present a threat, don't they? And we know that. We have evidence of that now. So what we're not just seeing people coming in blatantly in breach of our immigration laws, and they are illegal entrance, whatever anyone else tells you, They are illegal entrants as defined in Section 33 of the Immigration Act. They've come without a passport. That's a breach of the immigration law.

So all other things being they should be removable as illegal entrance, but because they claim aside them, nonetheless, you've got to make sure as best you can to protect your people. You're protecting the border. That's your job. That's why I lived for to protect the communities. And that's what I would be expected my role to be. And if something went wrong, which quite often it did.

Quite often we let someone prove that we shouldn't have done because someone made a mistake, and I used to get beaten up for that. Quite often there'd be a long queue at the airport and I'd get in trouble for that. So why is people, you know, so you're constantly trying to balance facilitation and control. But what really worries me now is this process that we've established where somebody can literally get within the 12 mile zone, mention the magic word, and within 24 of 48 hours being one of our communities with minimal vetting. Now, the home will say, oh, we do thoroughly check. They do what they can to be fair to them. They do what they can.

They will interview the person, try and figure out if it's a pilot or his evidence he's a facilitator, they will prosecute him. But by and large, the majority of them are going to get temporary admission with very limited screening. And then the more you're going to see these stories, you know, the bad guys, the really bad ones coming in and committing atrocities in this country, then the more people are going to lose faith in our border and say, well, we haven't got control of our border. And that's what we are seeing playing out right now. is every day, you know, I'm getting bids from the media,

go on and say, well, Tony, how come this guy got through? And how come, why didn't you send it back? Like, when he, you know, I don't work there anymore, but why didn't they send him back? Why didn't they stop nothing? You know, if they could, they would. You know, I stand up at the border falls. One of the reasons I do media, the office,

I know the offices, they will do what, you know, like, if they could do what I used to do, they would do it. But they can't because the hands are tied because of the legislative framework and the operational policy guidelines that we've got in place right now. That's the problem we've got ourselves into, And that's why I think this has become such a top pocket. If not, I mean, you guys would know better than me.

Probably one of the major talking points in politics these days is border security and a big focus on the small boats because it's so highly visible. Tony, there's going to be people listening to this all over the country who quite rightly get very upset. And what they think is the system's broken and you've got people coming over who've been prepped on how to game that system. Is that a fair assessment? Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. People are right. And people are right to ask questions about it because that is exactly what's happened. The human smugglers, the first thing they'll tell you to do. And I know this because I've sat in debriefings with them. You know, we're enduced some of them will talk and say, yeah, I was told to tell you that.

I was told to throw my passport away. That's the first rule. Harding anyone turns out with a passport. Well, where's the passport gone? You tell them they've all fleed war. You know, they got burnt in a war. Now, the passports are around. Quite often we find them they've been brought.

over by somebody else or it's in the background somewhere, but they haven't got that on them. Most of their mobile devices, they've thrown away as well. Because the, just tell them to. Because if I don't know who you are and I know where you're from, I know your background, all I've got to go on is this story you tell me, right? Now, the story you're going to tell me is you cannot send me back to Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, because it's not safe to send me there. It's really hard for you to say those.

are safe countries because they're not safe countries. But does that mean because that's not a safe country? I can't send you back there. You chose to get in a small boat and come here, right, without a passport, which is a criminal offence. That's your, you should then be taking a risk that you might end up being sent back to your own country. But we don't because the legal framework we've got is based on safety. And if you haven't come from a safe country, and I mean, let's leave the third country France thing out for a minute. We can talk about it if you like. But if you can persuade us, you are from one of those countries. And quite often they are, it's really hard to say, well, I don't have believed that you wouldn't be safe if sent back there.

When you look at things that are going on in that home country about people who are treated, you know, by the way, if they happen to have certain, you know, if you evade military service in there, a tray, you're going to get quite badly punished for that. Oh, if you get back to Afghanistan and, you know, you've basically said something that you shouldn't have done, and then the Taliban are probably going to come. So those are probably what you would say, legitimate claims for asylum, to say, well, actually, I need protection. But this is where the balance comes in. At what point do we say, well, I'm sorry about all that,

but you chose to come over multiple countries to France where you could and should have claimed asylum, but you chose not to because you want to come here. You're going back to the country, and I'm really sorry if you get persecuted, and we'll put all kinds of red lights and warning notices and drop leaflets in Calais. if you like, but you will go back to that country or you will be removed to some other place,

but there is no way you're going to get into the UK. We have yet to see any legal framework been introduced, policy introduced to enable that to happen. And Tony, we'll get onto the legal framework and the policy in a moment. I really want to focus on the gangs, because number one, how do they operate? What do they do? And the second part of the question is going to be, well, Kyrsahama said he was going to smash the gangs, question. quote unquote. I mean, they are very much unsmashed. Yeah. So you're never going to be out of smash international organized criminal gang gangs. You may, you know, it's Cloud Cookie Land. You can mitigate the risk.

You can try and disrupt their activities. But this is international organized crime. It's like drug smuggling. You're never going to be at a stamp it out. There's too much money in it. There's too big of a market. There's too many networks. So it goes right the way back to source countries. Actually, I chair conferences around the world in various places. I've been to the Philippines, JET conferences there, Africa. I'm chairing a conference there next month where there are some good people working for governments, UK. You are trying to smash the gangs, if you like, to try and identify.

But it's really, really hard because some of this is so lucrative that it's almost lost in business as usual, right? So people are being trafficked. They are being smuggled out. People will pay money to a middleman to say, now, you know, like first stage, I'm going to get you out of this. country and into that country, right? That's where you're going to go. You're going to go over land from this country to that country. That's where you're going to, and that's where

you're going to meet the next, which is the level two smuggler, right? He's the middle man. He's got a staging house for you and you get moved exponentially through the food chain right the way up to the French border. So it's a massive network. Now you have had some successes, to be fair, a national crime agency. I know those blokes as well. I mean, they're trying their best, you know, but these are things that are going on miles away from here, miles away from here, where you can't really penetrate the government and the enforcement agencies in those countries. All you can do is do whatever intelligence you can. So I would say that to say you're going to smash the gangs is a little bit naive, I'm afraid.

I think, you know, Kirstama, it seems to when he came in, he's clearly come from a criminal justice background. Criminal justice systems don't work against illegal immigration. There's no point taking a bit of the court. There's no point like to prosecute them, I mean, because you won't even find out who they are. And even if you do, what's going to happen at court, what you've really got to do is take out the supply chain. you've got to take out the money, the most important thing now you should do is break the business model, right? What is the business? Why do they do it? Why do you think smuggers operate? You're the money. There's money in there. They wouldn't bother. So, well, how do you stop?

How do you stop people wanting to come here in the first place? The only way you've got to do that is so, well, you're not going to get in because it ain't going to work. So as soon as you, that's why I supported the Rwanda plan is actually what we would be at say if we could ever get that through, it doesn't follow you're going to stay in England, you're going to end up living in Rwanda. It still comes if you like, but we're going to send you back to Rwanda. I think that would have had a deterrent effect. So I think there are removals is the key. You've got to get back to removers. And they will tell you they're removing more people than ever before, which they are. But they're not removing boat arrivals. Only about 4% of boat

arrivals get removed because you've got the asylum, ECHR, all of those problems. And they come from countries where it's really hard to remove people to. So long as that business model prevails, the smugglers will continue to draw down profits. So long as they draw down profits, there's going to be a gang. You take one gang out, it's like whack-a-malt, another gang will spring up because there's big money in this, and there's networks going right around the world. So really, you can't rely necessarily on being to disrupt international smuggling networks to stop the boats. It will have an impact, And I think there has been some impacts in changes of tactics we've seen recently

where some of the smaller boats are harder now. But they've moved to bigger boats and they've moved to other routes. And they will continue to move their operation. It might as well as well. It's like a game of chess. You know, where they make a move, you've got to make a move as well.

You've got to try and stay ahead of the game. But you're never going to win the game unless you can actually break the business model and that's what we've not been out to do. And Tony, you talked about third country, which is France. So this is one thing that, and I'm going to ask you a bunch of stupid questions,

because we all have them, I guess, things that will be obvious to you, but maybe not obvious to the ordinary person. Why can't we just tow the boats back to France? Probably because people will drown when you do that. I mean, I went out in the boats a couple of years ago with a border force, and these boats are not seaworthy, even the big ones aren't really seaworthy. I mean, they're bobbing around in the ocean and there's people. So what would be the first thing that would.

What you can do? Throw a tow rope out there to the boat and start towing it. It will probably overturn. people are going to water, someone to die. Who's false that going to be? What do you think will be happening when you have the steward's inquiry back here? The border force out there with a rope trying to time back.

So I would protect the officers. I said, wait a minute. Are you saying that my officers would be culpable with homicide if we cause a drowning by an act like that? So I think that's, so what the Australians did? Because I did study. That's why I was going to ask you about. Yeah, so I did study that.

I went down there. I know some of the guys that works on sovereign board is great guys, great guys. they actually interdicted on the high seas but they didn't push the boats back what some of those boats that were doing that were coming out of Indonesia well they were actually drilling holes in the bottom of the boat

they were scuttling the boats yeah they were scuttling and so that says you have to rescue me this is all based on the law of the sea and rescue which is a sensible law when you think about it if you don't want people drown India not really no not really so preservation of life is paramount therefore you've got to do so rescue them so when they're scuttling

the boats well the Australian said well okay so we can't talk about that boat we'll create our so they built their own boats purpose built boats to take them back to escort them back and because they were in the high seas they could and there wasn't the political pressure get here so the indonesians are well it's not very good well so they even adapted the boats to make them look like fishing boats so it didn't become so visible to the indonesian population but they took them off the boat they were on and put them on another boat which was fit for return so if we're going to do returns that's what I would say well that's what I've been saying to politicians we've had on the show but but everyone says why can't we do

that why is that impossible you could do that you could say what you can't do well wait you do that anyway right I mean what what you're doing when you come alongside of Dingy the first thing you're doing is pull them out the water putting him on your boat right now they're on your boat can go wherever you want it to go right so you could now the problem you've got that is well will the French allow a border force vessel a dock in France so to so they've been home office people have been over there talks about the answer is no they won't They said, no, you can't bring that boat back here.

You're not going to... This is where the fight has now become. It's, well, you could, under international law, I wrote something about this when that's all started. Under international law, it's okay in a contiguous zone. Contiguous zones means that you've got two territorial waters colliding with one another, so it's contiguous, 24-mile zone. Come to an agreement with the country on the other side.

That's perfectly permissible under the law of the sea and international law. So we could come to an agreement with the French if they were up for it. So, well, you could put people on our boats, if you like. And we'll put people on your boats. and we could have joint boats. It don't matter, but as a matter of principle, if we can show that there's no risk of what they call refoulement, in other words, if you're taken back to that country, you're going to face immediate return to, you know, we could take that France, right? So that would be the ideal solution, is the French would say, yes, okay, why don't we have,

you know, we'll have an agreement with the Brits, Brits and French, we'll have joint patrols. Well, the first thing, we'll make them safe, right? Because that's what everyone's worried about people drowning. Let's make them safe, so wherever they're getting brought on, because they don't want to be be rescued by the French. They'll resist rescued by the French because I know what's going to happen. You know, they've even been holding like babies over the water line when the French have gone near them. They say, look, we're going to drop this kid in the water. That's how brutal it is out there. So the French tactics is that, well, they won't, look, we don't want to drown them either. We're going to make sure they're safe and just in case they go in the water, then we will,

but if they're not in the water, and then we take over and bring them a sure. That is the business model they rely on, but we could if we had agreement. That's a big if. If we had agreement with the French, we could have joint patrols and take back to France, which would be the perfect solution. The problem we've got is we don't have that agreement with France. Well, the French don't want that. Yeah. And what if we were to start taking just because I think the Australians did they turn,

they put them on these new boats, they gave them enough fuel to get back, but not enough fuel to get to Australia, right? What if we just did that? I mean, what are the French going to do? Start shooting us? The French, this will become a diplomatic round, I've seen the reform proposal, right? The reform, the latest reform proposal, which says, well, we're going to, whether or whatever, your question, what are the French going to do?

What if we get a purpose-built vessel, which is capable of a beach landing rather than having a dock in a harbour, and we simply transfer them from the dinghies onto one of them and sailing back towards France? What will the front, I don't know what the French would do about that, but it would create a diplomatic route because the French, saying, well, you can't just come and, you know, come into our waters and land a bunch of people anywhere you like. You know, this is our territory. But that is where the rubber hits the road. Yeah. What are we going to do? But if I'm a British person, Tony, what I'm thinking is, how come sending tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to us that you are allowing through

your country, allowing to get on a boat, and allowing to sail across the English Channel to our country, that's not a diplomatic row. But when we take... try and send one boat back, that's immediately diplomatic rally. Where is the balance in this relationship here? Yeah, I know, I agree with that. And I think we do need, and to be fair, to the French, I want to, you know, I work with the French quite a lot, actually, the French police, and they don't like humans smugglers either, really. And so we have got some good operational activities going on with the French at the ports of entry. The problem is they've said, look, you know, you can't, I'd have had borderfalls out on their beaches with them. And,

you know, we'd have been there, but they won't have that. They said, no, this is our land. You can't come here and exercise your powers on our territory. So the French have taken a position, which is basically not a, it's not a helpful position that the French have taken with this government. And, you know, the one in one out scheme's not work. The problem we've got in that border force is we have to comply with a law. That's the problem we've got. Whatever law you propose or whatever policy you change,

it has to be translated to an operational defensible instruction from my officers out there on the boats. Now, if you had those powers and authorities, then they would do it, no doubt about it in my mind, but you don't. Because once they're in a 12-mile zone, that's all they have to be, once they're in territorial waters, and they mention the magic word,

even though they're not on land, you're in breach of the convention if you start turning them around, and you will face a lawsuit because you will put the Home Secretary in contempt of court. There will be an injunction, and you'll be in trouble for breaching the law. So you've got to change the law.

Which brings us very much to the core of this. We've had various former politicians on Boris Johnson, Swel Obrowman, a bunch of people who all have a different perspective on these things. Soela Bravman, who was here recently, her argument is you can't deal with this

until you leave the ECHR. Is that your view, or do you think that's wrong? No, you do need to do that, but you need to do a load more stuff as well as that. So even that's not enough? No. So the ECHR, we have to leave for us to be able to enforce our border.

Yeah, because what you've got to do is we redefine the relationship between our laws and international laws. That's where I came in. I told you, when I started, we didn't take any notice of the human rights. I just sent people back, right? But now, because the lawyers have crept in,

and they call it judicial overreach because of these judgments, you've got, if you're running the country, you've got to change that relationship between ourselves and international law. That means looking again at our relationship with the ECHR. The refugee convention has got to get out clause already in it, which is in Article 31.

Because Article 31 of the Refugee Convention says you must be in immediate fear of persecution to claim asylum. So that was brought in 20 years ago when I was there. We said, well, you've coming from France, you're not in immediate fear of persecution. That's how we did the third country removals. That's what the Tories relied on for the Rwanda plan. That's what this lot relied on for the one-to-one scheme. You could go to your court and say, well, he's not in immediate fear. He's in France.

So there is already, there's nothing in the ECHL that allows that. There's nothing in the modern people. So why doesn't that work? Why doesn't that carve out apply now? apply now why can't we because of because you then lodging applications for human rights so you logic so this what the last government did on the on the Rwanda plan is they they stacked up a lot of cases and so of them all we noticed when they came off to say right you're not an immediate purpose you're not going to admit you into

asylum system at all but they hadn't got the route out to Rwanda and then whilst that was going on the lawyers said well well we're going to claim human rights you know we've got family life or he's got in human or degrading treatment so then what were you going to do about all those human rights applications that were coming in whilst they were in limbo, you've still got, now you could have said, well, all right, we'll still remove them to Rwanda and we'll consider the human rights application.

If you win it, we'll bring you back from Mawanda. You want to do that. What you really want is a law that says you can't claim human rights adult. You can't claim anything. You can't claim modern slavery, human rights or asylum if you come from France without a document. That's what I would like to see. I'm not a policy wonk.

But that's what my instruction would be policy made. Write a policy, write a legislation, it's watertight enough. It's going to get challenged. As the Rwanda plan was, it's going to get challenged in the courts. It's going to get challenged in the Lords. And they don't rush. They are quite happy to take their time. The Rwanda plan was first mooted like two years before the election

when Boris first. And I was down there at Lid when he announced it. I thought it's quite a good idea. I wonder if this is going to work or not. But the government of the day, that's his government, and the SUNAC government did not go far enough on this human rights issue. That's why Suella Braberman and Rob Jenwick both resigned from the Conservatives because they were in that government.

They were there at the time. But they could see this with APN. And so, well, this isn't going to work, is it? I mean, we've got to go further on the Illegal Migration Act, 2023, and the Tory party didn't. They would not go any further with some of those amendments. That's why they both left in the end. And so you still got this.

And then, of course, the next government came in with a, I've vowed intent to abolish Rwanda. I mean, I remember Stama standing on the cliffs of Dover, a couple of weeks before, so I'm first thing I'm going to do is abolish this Rwanda plan, which I thought, oh my God, my head was in my hands. I said, what will you can do then? Smash the gangs. So I knew that wasn't going to work, and it didn't work,

and you've got to get back to basics, and you've got to get back to a position. I was in in the 70s and the 80s. Vest the power in law in your immigration officers, border force officers at the border to make a decision on somebody, and to allow them to remove that person from the country. You've got to get that somehow through this tension between international law and domestic law

empowered so that we can get back to the future and we can start doing the things that I was doing when I was an immigration officer and put all this international law stuff because it's hopelessly out of date. It's broken. It's completely broken. It's no longer delivering what the asylum system was meant to deliver in the first place.

It's actually completely being misused by smugglers and illegal migrants to get into the country and it's causing mayhem. Tony, you know, I'm listening to this and what you're doing is providing a forensic analysis, which is brilliant. There's a part of me that's

really cynical here going, do you know what? The people smugglers, they're making a nice bit of quid out of this, but you know what, so are the NGOs, so are the lawyers. This is just one massive industry, isn't it? Yeah, well, we need to be careful what we say because people be watching and lawyers will be looking

and seeing what you're saying, You've got to be very careful. I mean, I, you know, been stung a few times about, well, you've got to be really, really careful what you say because what you say and what you do could be used in evidence against you, right? So I think that, yes, I think that there is an industry out there that is actually close to facilitate in illegal entry without mentioning any particular names or, you know, I think there there is a network of NGO support for the, for the, for the, um, for the, um, the boat for the boat's business. I did go to Calais. I went and saw Care for Calais. I saw

what they're doing there. They will say, if you can get them on, I mean, what they will say to you, if you can get them on here, is, well, we need to look after these poor people in Calais because they've got nowhere to live and they've got no food now. So they'll take them down a supermarket and give them food parcels and, you know, give them tents and an interaction and stuff like that. That's what they say they're doing. Which you could say, well, fair enough, that's probably a reasonable cause because the French government aren't looking after them. somebody at charity needs to look after them. But when you get into sort of bringing people from the camps to the beaches, when you get into some of the literature about, well, this is what

to say if you get to the UK, this is how you can get asylum. I think that's getting very close to the wind, really. But either way, to defeat all of that, you still come back to the basic point. They are thriving on a legal framework that we've developed over the years. If that legal framework wasn't there, they wouldn't be at doing any of that stuff, because it wouldn't matter. You'd still be sending people back, right? No, it's a good point, but also as well. Constan and I always have this conversation of do we live in a country which is very socially progressive, woke, et cetera, et cetera. And we've got to be honest, Tony, when you operated, when you were doing, you know, when you were on the ground, it was a different country, politically, culturally.

And to a lot of people, the way that you go, well, if something seemed a bit dodgy, I sent them back, there'd be a lot of people. even on the right who'd be like, well, I don't know if I'm comfortable with that. Isn't that also part of the problem? I don't know. I'm not a politician. You know, I don't want to get involved in politics because I'll get myself into trouble if I do that as well. I'm an expert commentator and I'll try and stick to my business knowledge as a border security expert. But there is, in my view, something fundamentally wrong if you can get into the territory without a document and get admitted. There's just something fundamentally wrong with that.

you must get a document and you must get your permission sorted out before you come here these days. So everybody else who wants to come here from a different country, they have to get a permission, either a visa or an electronic traveller authority, or demonstrate if you're your British passport, your Irish passport, to get into our country. You should do that as a rule of thumb. If you're coming in by some other nefarious means without a passport, for me, you shouldn't be allowed to get in.

It's as simple as that. But you are allowed in because, as I said to you, asylum, human rights, modern slavery, all of these applications, and supported by a very robust legal profession and a very significant number of lobby groups say that you must do, because that's the way international law should operate. So when you're looking at the politics of all this, what you're looking at, well, who agrees with me?

Who thinks that we should actually go back to the future and say, all bets are off? If you come here without a passport, that's your choice. From a safe third country, that's your choice. You chose to do that. you're taking a big risk now because you might find yourself, well, you're certainly going to find yourself detained. You're not going to be getting into our communities for as long as it takes,

and you might find yourself either back in your own country, right, if we can possibly get you there or in some other country like Rwanda. That's what's going to happen to you, right? Now, which parties are advocating that and which parties are not advocating that? So we've heard lots of different rhetoric. I've followed the media a lot. I'm on the media a lot. I'll follow a lot of them.

I talk to quite a lot of them as well. But for me, that is a fundamental principle. If you're talking from a border security point of view and your job, if you're into border security and a border force or the border security command as it now is, your role is to try and protect the community in the same way as the police do and the military do. That's what I felt my job was.

I'm very patriotic like that. And I broke my heart when I see what happens now at the border. And I just, it's, and I think that if, If they were able to talk to you, a lot of the officers out there would say the same thing. It's not allowed to talk to you. If you work in an office, won't be tired of you, if you speak to a media, you'll be sacked. So that's why I do it. I want to be able to, I don't represent them because there's probably some of them that disagree with what I'm saying.

But my view, having been in this business for this long, is that they really want to protect the border. And they don't like the idea of people coming here without permissions and be admitted within 24 hours any more than you and I do. They are stuck with the operational framework they've got. The only way you're going to change that is you need a government that's got the political will to do some of the things I'm talking about. So let's go back to the 1971 Act, as it was originally drafted, get rid of all this asylum stuff and human rights stuff and all this other stuff and say, no, we're going to reinstate the powers in the border force officer to detain you indefinitely if necessary. You can always make a voluntary departure, you know, if you want to, that's your get out of jail card. If you want to come up with a, you know, a passport suddenly appears when your next visitor brings your passport in and you've got from me.

mission and you can go. We're not going to keep you your ear against you will. But if you're insistent on coming into this country, you will stay detained until such time as we can remove you from the territory. Well, Tony, let's talk about the solution to all of this because leaving the ECHR, you know what, we've had lots of people including former politicians, civil servants, etc. on the show. And truthfully, I still have not understood why it is we haven't already left the ECHR.

Even Soella, when you say to her, why did your cabinet colleagues refuse to do this when you were Home Secretary. She says something like, well, you know, the Rishi Sunak or the other ministers, they just thought, well, that if we leave the ECHR, would be like Belarus and Russia, you know, we'd be a bad country, quote, unquote. But that's not an argument. That's just, like, that's not an argument. And by the way, no one, I think, is saying we should leave the ECHR not replace some of its provisions with a British bill that does provide for human rights and actual refugees and all of this other stuff.

But you said leaving the ECHR is not enough. What else do the people in power need to do? So you've got to adjust your own, leaving the ECHI is one thing. You've got to adjust your own domestic legislation, which includes a human rights act mainly. You know, a lot of that's going to have to be looked at and probably repealed the HRA as well.

You've got to look at modern slavery and the modern slavery system, and is it okay that someone who comes in says, well, I'm a victim of modern slavery should be allowed in or not at the moment you are, because that's another route into. So that's also, and then you've got to look again at, say, the 51 Convention does give you a get-out if you've come from a third country. So you need a law that actually covers all of those bases to start off with, not just leaving the HSR. You've got to put in place a domestic law, which would cover all of that and make it crystal clear to the courts

that actually you can't come here on a small boat and claim any, form of international protection and the border force will be empowered to detain you indefinitely if necessary until such time as they can remove you from the country that means you've got a reverse hardy i'll sing the judgment i told you about so well actually you can't yes we can detain people indefinitely sounds really bad didn't it but yeah we we need the power then if you've got all those powers assuming you've got all those laws and powers in place which is a big ask Right? Why is it a big ask?

Well, because you need a political majority to get that through. This is what I was going to ask you. Sorry to jump in, but I want to understand this. Do you have any insight why, you know, the way you've told the story throughout your career is actually the Blair government and the Brown government were keen to deal with this and effective by in your own telling it, dealing with asylum? So then you have a conservative government who you'd think, I mean, the nasty party, you know, anti-immigration, they're all racist apparently, etc.

etc. Yet they haven't done this. A lot of people in the country will be saying why. Why haven't they done these things? Because the way you tell it is it's quite clear. And I imagine, I don't want to put words in your mouth and I don't want to make this political, but you would have told this to the politicians who wanted to speak to, right? Yeah, no, whatever government, I would tell them that. Right. So why haven't they done it already? I don't know. You'd have to ask them that. I mean, I think it's a question of political will and a question of taking on the the really difficult decisions and the very, very strong lobby groups at our owners' country. What lobby groups?

Well, refugee action, refugee legal groups, all kinds of left-wing groups that will challenge you. I think the House of Lords is predominantly anti-enforcement. If you look at the passage of the Rwanda, the Illegal Migration Act and the debates in the lords, a very, very large number of lords were against it, sent it back a number of times. Why? Well, because they just simply don't like the principle that you should be allowed to detain somebody indefinitely and you're taking no notice of that person as individual human rights of their individual claims or whatever else.

They just don't agree with that as a matter of principle. So I've had arguments on panels by this where I've been called, I've been called a racist and I've been called a, you know, all kinds of things of some right wing. I'm not right of right. I'm just telling you as a border full, an ex-immigration officer, as a border force officer, 50 years experience in this business if you really really want to stop the boats these are the things you're going to have to do right you don't have to be a right wing nutcase right do that you just need to be prepared to do that and and none of the

governments I've worked for so far have gone that far and you're right the Blair government did go a very long way they were tough as they were the tough one of the toughest governments I worked for on asylum you know they were the ones that did the juxtapose controls they tripled the home office budget in three years to get more caseworkers in there they really wanted to take on but at the same time this is that same government that opened up a lot of legal routes just before that through the managed migration routes. So suddenly that now they've admitted that was a mistake.

So I think a lot of mistakes have been made in the past. And we can look at different governments and criticize different of what they did or didn't do. The question is, how are they going to fix this problem now? Who's going to fix it and how are they going to go about it? Well, this is why the only reason I brought up the Labour government is I don't understand why this has become a political issue. Because within the living member of all of us, as you, as you, as you, you know, you and I are talking about, the left and right used to agree that what you were talking about is the normal stay of things. And I'm an immigrant myself to this country, but to me, it's

self-evident that actually, like, to me, almost the defining feature of a country is a set of borders that it protects. That's what a country is, isn't it? Well, I think so, yeah. And we do, by and large, I mean, to be fair, the small boats issue is a huge problem. Yeah. Let's not underestimate the scale of the intensity of the public debate about small boats. And I'll say it's massive. But you're talking about 20, 30,000 people a year now, something like that coming in. Now, if you look at the way the UK border operates, it's pretty good. It is pretty good in the numbers of people that would probably want to come here if they could is in the millions. And they don't. And the reason they don't is because we've got a robust visa system. You can't get on a plane to get here unless you've got the right paperwork. You know, we've got the border in France.

And we've got pretty good. We're up there with a border five on what we're doing behind the scenes on intelligence, data analytics, biometrics. There's a lot of stuff. I do a lot of stuff on, you know, future borders and how borders are going to operate. And so I don't think we should just say we've got such a really horrible border because we haven't. We've got a pretty good border and a pretty good risk assessment framework in my book. But hold on, hold on, hold on. Look, you're the expert, so I defer to your judgment.

but as a normal person, here's what I'd say to you. Like most people, I want more energy, better focus, and to still be sharp and strong years from now. But every time I've gone in for my annual checkup, it's the same thing. Wait weeks to get an appointment, sit in a waiting room, and then you're in and out in 10 minutes. Everything looks fine, they say. Drink more water, sleep a bit more.

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Look, you're the expert. So I defer to your judgment, but as a normal person, here's what I'd say to you. When I came here in 96, net legal immigration was 55,000 a year. And now we're asking the British people to accept half of that coming here illegally every year. I don't see why that's good. I don't see why the British people would think that we should accept that. I don't think you accept it. No, I don't.

This is without having to go at your former colleagues. No one is doing that here. Well, look, managing a border is a bit like an iceberg, right? What you see above the water is what you see above the water. That's what we're talking about, a bit you can see above the water. You don't see below the water is an awful lot of really, really good work going on behind the things by a lot of agencies. You know, I told you about London 2012 Olympics. Yeah, yeah, of course.

So the threat level here was severe. I bet. Severe. We were told a terrorist attack is highly likely. We worked round the clock on checking every single last little detail. And that's me, the military, the police, we all pulled together to get. that over the line. So did that terrorist attack never happened. It could have done. It might have done if it hadn't been for us. And we've still got mechanisms like that in place, is what I'm saying to you.

So let's not just say, oh, we're just useless. We're rubbish because we're not. We're pretty good. We're up there and I do a lot of international stuff as well. I can tell you, you know, there's a lot of good work going on with the Americans, Canadians, Border 5, and even the EU, actually, are behind the scenes on security to try and keep, you know, real nasty tour and the IOM. me, UNODC. I could go on. There's a lot of work below the surface that we probably don't want. Before France, I totally get it tonne. Before Francis jumps in, let me just explain why I'm saying this. I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. I have no doubt that there are thousands upon thousands of hardworking people protecting our borders. And in the round, they're doing a good

job. Because as you say, this is a very desirable country to come to. There will be loads of people. I have family coming to visit from abroad. They get checked very thoroughly. I know that. And that's how it should be. That's how it should be. But what I think I'm trying to say is, in terms of the public feelings about this issue, I am trying to tell you how a very significant portion of the public feel about it,

which you already know without me telling you. The public can't understand why we found ourselves in this position. They really can't. And I think they're right not to because the failure of the political framework that you, you talk about is mind-boggling to people. And that's what I'm getting at. This is not casting any shade at all on the hard-working officers in the Border Force. Good.

Well, I'm glad you said that because I'm still one of them, really. I mean, it's a bit like, you know, the military or the police, you get a DNA. And it's still there. And I believe it still is there in the next generation of officers. And I said, shoot, I think if the Border Force, you know, I don't like seeing, you know, out of course in the press, people are saying, oh, the Border Force are a bunch of, you know, lefties that are only really interested in taxi. but they're not actually they are trying to do the best job they go don't get paid that much

actually they're out there in pretty dangerous conditions 24-7 but they are instructed you know that if someone is a dingy little dingy there that's you know look that's in your territorial waters your job is to bring them on shore without anyone drowning that's your first role and make them safe and so we take the look proper life jacks and bring them on board first paramount parameh safety of life that's what they are bound by and then the next step after that I've told you all about the next step after that, is that once they're on board, they're in territorial waters, they can pull all of these levers

that the border force can't pull back again until such time as, you know, there is an opportunity of ever to remove them from the country. That's the problem. And that's the problem. So you're right in speaking to all these politicians, whether they're past, present or future politicians. This is the problem that they've got.

The question is, who's going to do it? Who's actually going to day, right, I'm going to pull those levers back in a different direction. and now we affect from next year or whenever it's going to be, the border force will be empowered to take those people on board that boat and either take them straight back to France or if they can't do that, take them straight into detention

where they will stay. And they will stay there until we can remove them either to France or some other country or their own country. And that takes real political courage. And I just don't know if we've got that. So Tony, let's say I become Prime Minister. There's a worrying possibility. And the camera people, and the people are production team, Billy's looking absolutely thrilled.

He knows I'd get it sorted. And I pointed you and I said, Tony, you're my man. We need to, this legal framework, this legal system, it doesn't work. People are coming here to put it not to find a point on it. They're taking the piss. We all know they are. It needs urgent reform. From beginning to end, how long do you see that process taking and what are going to be the challenges involved in it?

Depends what sort of a majority you've got. And if you've got the backing of your, you know, you've got enough people in the House of Commons to actually, who talk like you are. Yeah. Whether I take the job or not, depending on whether I believe you or not, because a lot of politicians have offered a lot of people jobs on the promise

that think this, and people I know who have become casualties because it become all their fault and want the politicians for all. So I think you need that real trust between your political masters. You can trust me. No comment. You do need that, trust. But the answer is you can't just rely on me. I need to bring in a bunch of my mates

who have skills I don't have, particularly really, really good lawyers, really, really good, legal draftsmen, people who can actually make this stick. because I don't want to write a law for you and then it gets botched in the office of laws because there's a procedure of improvised. There are people out there

that I could point you in the right direction of who would be supportive and there's a number of reports and a policy exchange from others that I participated in. But you need not just me. You need a team around you that can actually deliver what you want.

So I could deliver what you want operationally but I would say to you, the real first thing you've got to do is you've got to find someone that's going to write that law for you. I can't write that law for you. I can't write laws. I'm not a lawyer.

You need someone that's going to write that law for you and give you all the risk assessments, all the red amber greens on every clause in that law about how you're going to get that through Parliament, how you're going to get through the courts, how you're going to and what you're going to face along the way, which becomes a project, really, a project plan. How long would that take that? It's not going to happen overnight. So you can't do this overnight. You get politics, oh, well, you know, within the first 10 days, 100 days or whatever, mate, it don't work like that. Well, you've got to do that bit in opposition. You've got to do that bit in opposition. You've got to, you've got to accept, I'm afraid, that even if you're in

power right now and that's what you want to happen. It ain't going to happen overnight. And I will tell you that before you give me the job. And then you get someone else in and you tell you, all right, I'm doing it for you. I mean, that's what President Trump does. I mean, I know guys that have been casualty as it is over there who said, well actually, you know, Mr. President, you can't, you can't do that. And he's fired and then someone else is brought in. And then you get a yes man in there who actually don't deliver anyway. And that's even worse. So I think you need a reality check, you know, if you're going to be the prime minister about what is and isn't achievable. And then you need to surround yourself with a team.

of people that absolutely committed to your cause. And that's why I'm a little bit nervous about civil service, actually, in this country. You know, I like the old North Cottrovelian idea that we've got an impartial civil service, but I don't think we have. So over in the States, if you get above a certain level, you have to go political, you have to become a politically point of appointing. So I am then willing to what you want to do politically. I'm aligned to what you want to do.

I'm not an impartial advisor anymore. And I think you need that at the top of some of these organisations, particularly in the home office. So that I would stand or fall with you, if you've got, you know, you know, really elected out, then we don't get booted out with you. That's the way it works in America, because that's the way you've got to get that trust built between yourself and your senior officials to say, look, we're all pulling on the same end of the rope here. Because there is a bit of a yes minister out there, definitely. Yes minister was a great program. I don't if you have watched it, but it's a fantastic program and I've seen that happen in reality.

And I think there are people who actually don't really agree with what you want to do. And they will point out what the risk and difficulties. I don't know, I'm saying it's going to be easy, but there is a way to get government moving quickly. And the only way you're going to do that is to get absolute political buy-in and empower those people around you to make it happen. And my worry is, Tony, is I'm looking at the trajectory. I think that is only really going to happen

when something really, really bad happens. There's a major terrorist incident and it's linked to one of the boat people and then people are going to wake up and go, oh, right, actually, there was this huge terrorist attack, and it was because one of the main reasons was because we weren't vetting people at all, or hardly vetting them or unable to vet them at the border.

That's my concern. And how sad is that? How sad is that? Because I feel the same way as you do. I think that that is a real risk. I think there is a real risk that's something awful. I've lived through awful incidents. I live through, no one thought 9-11 was going to happen.

My God. No, no, we shut the airspace for a week. Nothing could cross the border at all. I mean, everyone went in the panic mode, lockdown mode. And then when we had 7-7 with a bombs on the London underground, that was terrible. We didn't think that people living, British people would be blowing our own country on. These are landmark.

You don't want a wait for a land work moment like that to change things, right? You've got to try and get that, and that's where you guys come in. You know, your guys are commentators, you're out there spreading the world. There is a real risk, I'm telling you, of border security in this country, in my view. There is a real threat and a real risk. would be saying to you, look, what I'm worried about, before we start getting it and sending them all back, are we thoroughly checking them? Can you just give me a prison somewhere, put them in, Governor? Or a couple of prisons or something. You said, I weren't got no prisons.

Someone else, I'm not going to have prison, no spaces, but you've got to be able to detain people and you've got to bring in really, really good debriefers and you've got to bring in really, really good risk assessors, and you've got to take, this is a severe threat in my view, right? You know, it's highly likely that at least some of these people are going go on that perpetrate really dangerous acts. That's the risk level we had under the Olympics. You've got to change your business model and say, well, this is that bigger risk. As some commentators are saying, as some places, it's a border security risk, not an immigration risk. You've got to adapt your response mechanism. And I don't think we're equipped to do that because we haven't got the detention facilities.

We haven't got the legal powers to do it. But I would want to see a lot more people detained securely, not put in a, you know, a camp, an accommodation centre in some village somewhere where the locals are absolutely, oh my God, what's this? They can wonder, no, you've got to keep them detained. And that's the only way, that's the first point, I would say to you, the first thing you can do is you can keep them detained, as long as you possibly can get away with with the courts and you'll get all the legal challenges away, but lock them up.

That's the first thing. And then once they're detained, you can start to pacify the public, and then you can start thinking about, what, are we going to send them to? Are we going to get rid of them? But letting them through in 24 hours, 48 hours, into our communities, largely unfetted, undocumented young men. To me, you know, I think it's a real worry. And I would be really, really worried if it was my job to do it,

which is why I might not take the job with you in the first place. But Tony, there's also the concern of, like, these young men and the potential crimes and something awful happening, which, you know, could very well happen. But there's also what we're seeing, which is now people are going, well, you're not going to protect the borders. I will. And we're seeing that happen more and more. And that's another concern of mine, whereby people are now feeling emboldened to actually go and inverted commerce protect the borders.

And we saw an incident with one particular individual stabbing boats in order to sink it. Yeah, I think this is a really difficult problem. But, you know, this is the difficulty you've got. control of something like this and you get this sort of wave of public discontent about it there will be people that will go to extremes now i mean what i've said about what's happened down there in portsmouth and what's what these groups are doing is look be very very careful right in terms of how you behave and what you do be very very careful by all means make your voice heard you know use channels like this to get your voice and get your political opinion out there and i think

you've got a lot of political support the other thing i can tell you is that that, you know, save for these last few beach landings, anyone who comes in, will be arrested, they're all arrested, all of that lot. They're brought in body over there, they will be arrested. They will be arrested. They're under arrest because they're illegal immigrants. So they're not going to wander around your street just coming up the beach, right? They will be arrested and they will be taken into custody, right?

And they will be screened and vetted. So, you know, you don't have to go and do that yourself because they will be. What your concern is going to be is after that, because after 24, 48 hours, they're being released into your community. to worry. So getting down on a sharp end and say, well, we're going to do something down and what are you going to do then? I mean, you know, you're going to put yourself in danger if you're going out there trying to stop, take the law into your own hands. So I can understand the public mood and the public and the frustration, but the only way to fix this is

through the political system. You can't take the law into your own hands because you won't win. You can't win that way. But it is a signal, I think, the protests that we're seeing from people who are not all in, from what I've seen here, I don't think they're all right wings, folks, at all. I think these are genuinely concerned people who are rightfully worried that we are admitting undocumented men, even if the numbers are down, we are still admitting undocumented men who are being admitted into our community, by and in large, within 24, 48 hours and are probably going to get to stay, are being brought into this country and being allowed freedom to actually, you know, live within our communities and expect them to integrate with a

local community and be accepted by it's cloud cuckoo land that's not going to happen wherever you put them whether you put in hMOs or whether you put them in disused military sites or whether you put them in hotels people won't like it because this is actually disrupting my community and i don't feel safe i don't feel safe and that's what i keep coming back to your job in government surely primarily whatever color government you are your people must feel safe if i don't feel safe then obviously they're going to they're going to protest about it so it is a serious problem, but I do urge people, anyone watching this, please don't. By all means, you know, protest peacefully, stand outside here with a placard and get coverage

from people like you about the level of concern because that is a former political lobbying, but please don't take the law into your own hands because it's not going to work. You're not going to stop the boats by doing that. And actually, you're probably going to put yourself in danger. Tony, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate you bringing your expertise to this issue. These are really important conversations for our country, and your voice is really, really important. So thanks for coming on.

Before we head over to our supporters, they've submitted a bunch of questions for you. The way we always end our interviews is by asking, what's the one thing we're not talking about that you think we should be? And it's just top or free hip, whatever you think. I don't think we've spoken much about the actual border system itself and the entry-exit systems that we have and that we haven't actually got a biometric entry-exit system in this country, which they have now got in America, they've got in Singapore, they've got in Dubai. In other words, we will know exactly when you enter the country

and when you left the country, because we'll take your photograph. When you come in, we do that now, with the gates, and we could get the airlines to do it, or we could do it on outbound. Wouldn't cost the earth, but then you would know exactly how many people are staying here, who's entering, instead of relying on these ONS statistics, which are people made up a lot of the time, because they're done by survey,

you would have an electronic system which would monitor every single person coming in, including Brits and Irish people, as well as foreign nationals. You would know how many people are overstaying in this country, who's leaving, who's entering. We don't have any exit checks in this country to speak of. And once you've got that, you've got a much better control over actually how many people are actually in this country, how many people are overstaying in this country, and where to focus your resources on looking at another big problem, what we haven't spoken about, which isn't asylum seekers coming by back, which is overstays who are coming

in this country, getting permission to enter for six months electronically by an EGate and and then probably just staying and working and delivering your pizza. Now, if that's not a problem, well, don't worry about it, but I would like to see something done about that. And I think that the only way to do that is to put more technology on our borders. Tony, thank you so much for coming on. Head on over to triggerpod.uk. Where Tony is going to answer your questions.

Was there ever a politician who actually wanted your advice and was willing to follow it rather than what I suspect you will explain happen?