The Week 8 November 2024

There is no escaping the big news this week: the return of Donald Trump as President of the United States. Observers rightly attribute his remarkable comeback to the?cost of living ,?quality of life ?and the?economy . But there is also no getting away from the omnipresent policy issue that continues to perplex leaders worldwide: illegal migration.

Aside from being a political vulnerability, illegal migration is a huge policy vulnerability. It is a complex combination of domestic and international policing, intelligence, criminal justice capacity, international relations, weather, social and economic developments in the countries of origins, and smuggling networks.

The day before the US election, we got our first real insight into what the Labour Government’s approach to illegal migration might look like via a speech by the Prime Minister to the?Interpol General Assembly. ?In addition to improving the NHS, immigration will be a big test for this Government in the eyes of the?public . The abolition of the Rwanda scheme was, up until now, their clearest policy position.

Labour, rather than creating a relocation scheme – and therefore a deterrent – to potential migrants, want to focus on reducing crossings by tackling criminal smuggling networks at the source. This is getting a substantial ￡150 million investment into the Border Security Command and is going on a long list of?interventions . From sending British investigators abroad to Iraq and Vietnam and deploying online ads in Iraq to deter illegal migration, to new surveillance equipment for a new intelligence unit and fast-tracking prosecutions (similar to the riot prosecutions), the approach is multi-pronged.

At?Reform?we are generally averse to throwing money at a problem to endlessly increase capacity without changing the operating model that seems unable to deal with it. But these policies seem to be injecting new energy into the approach, and that is instinctively a good thing. But evidence from all other areas of crime indicates the sheer adaptability of criminals, making the effectiveness of these policies difficult to predict. So as ever in policy, the key metrics for determining a policy’s success (chiefly effectiveness, efficiency and deliverability) remain to be seen.

Onto the read of the week…

Fuelled by sensationalist headlines citing ‘death by bureaucracy’, managers in the NHS have long been maligned. Yet these views have been routinely discredited in recent years. In addition to?Reform , there is a growing consensus across major policy outfits, including the?Institute for Government ?and the?NHS Confederation , that the NHS is under managed.

These views are starting to hit the mainstream with?Camilla Cavendish ?making the case this week in the?FT. “The NHS would never improve until it realised that managing complex organisations is a serious business”, says Gerry Robinson, who made a programme about the six months he spent trying to bring down waiting lists at Rotherham General Hospital. This government need to prove they will be different on the NHS: changing the narrative, and getting serious about management, is one place to start.