Italy's plan to cut migration may prove a costly chimera

Keir Starmer is looking to Meloni for answers on how to stop the boats - but she may not have them

-  Andy Gregory

Sir Keir Starmer has claimed that Britain can learn lessons from Italy on how to reduce migration, after far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration saw small boat arrivals fall by more than 60 per cent this year.

Ahead of a visit to Rome, Sir Keir hailed Italy’s “dramatic” drop in unregulated migration and expressed interest in Ms Meloni’s proposed asylum processing scheme in Albania, just months after scrapping the Tories’ controversial Rwanda scheme.

Later, at a press conference following their meeting, he claimed that his talks with Ms Meloni had marked a return to “British pragmatism”. Sir Keir also praised Italy’s “upstream work” in north Africa, saying: “I have always made the argument that preventing people leaving their country in the first place is far better than trying to deal with those that have arrived.”

Reducing the number of perilous small-boat crossings across the Channel is a political priority for the Labour government, which has announced its intention to “smash” people-smuggling gangs but has stopped short of opening safe alternative routes for asylum seekers to travel to Britain to have their claims heard.

The prime minister is now looking to Italy’s example, where the country’s interior ministry reported a 62 per cent fall in migrant arrivals on Italian coasts over the first seven months of 2024. Frontex, the EU’s border force, has calculated a 64 per cent fall in the number of people arriving from north Africa to Italy and Malta.

Hardline immigration policies

Italy has long struck a hard line against migration, with deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini having tightened asylum seekers’ access to support and public services. He could now face six years in jail for preventing a boat carrying more than 100 people from docking in Italy in 2019.