Skills Minister Baroness Smith says the Government is taking action to reduce Channel crossings, including faster asylum decisions, more National Crime Agency staff, a deal with France to return arrivals, and new legislative powers. Report by Etemadil. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
00:00It's clearly an enormous problem that there were larger numbers, for example, back in 2022, but that is far too many, which is why we've already taken action to improve the asylum system so that decisions are made much more quickly, to remove more people from the country, to put in place more staff in the National Crime Agency, for example, to be able to get to the criminals who are the ones who are profiting from this trade.
00:28And of course, how groundbreaking deal with France, we've already detained people who've come here illegally, and we'll be returning them to France. All of those things, as well as new powers that we're taking in legislation, will help us, are helping us to make a difference. But it's an enormously difficult problem that was allowed to embed deeply over the last years of the last government.
00:52So it won't be solved quickly, but we're absolutely determined to do what's necessary to solve that problem.
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