Here with me, as you can see, is Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Angela Eagle. Very good morning to you. Thanks so much for coming in today. As we were saying there, your boss, Yvette Cooper, is convening this summit today. She's described it as a landmark operational summit involving cabinet ministers as well as law enforcement agencies. What of substance do you expect to get out of today?

Well, the summit today is about bringing together the operational people, intelligence, the National Crime Agency, some of the prosecutorial authorities with senior cabinet ministers, so we can take a holistic look at how we disrupt and defeat the smuggling gangs who are putting so many lives at risk for massive profits. This is a cross-border trade. It's very sophisticated, but we have ways of tackling it if we cooperate across borders with other authorities to try to disrupt what they're doing and ensure that those people aren't being put at risk in the way they are at the moment.

So today is about information gathering. Am I right in saying that?

It's certainly that. It's about taking a very close look at what we know, and there is quite a lot that we know. So for example, just in the last couple of weeks, the National Crime Agency has disrupted and confiscated 40 boats in their engines, which would have put nearly 2,500 lives at risk by an operation it's doing. There are over 70 operations around the globe dealing with this supply chain of human misery. It's about having senior cabinet ministers from relevant authorities in the room so that we can decide how to focus the resources we have, which are considerable and going up, to try to tackle this problem.

Okay, so how soon can we expect results from your plans? How soon can we expect the number of small boat crossings to reduce?

Well, we're certainly hoping we can bear down on this, but this is a sophisticated operation. But give us a time frame, because people can only measure your success by those results. Yes, of course. That's why we're being open about what we're doing. It's not going to happen tomorrow because this is a mature operation that's taken years to put in place, and it's industrialized crossings. It's going to take us time to dismantle that. It's going to take us some time to begin to cooperate more effectively with colleagues colleagues across Europe and across the world. We will make a difference with this. We've got 100 extra National Crime Agency people doing the intelligence work. We've then got to deal with our counterparts in other countries to make sure that they help us along the way. It's not going to be tomorrow. There are no easy answers to this, but we will bear down on it and we will stop this happening.

Of course, the summit comes in a week that saw the death of 12 12 people in a small boat crossing this week. That's the deadliest crossing tragedy so far this year. Absolutely. Why if it's... Absolutely. If it is such an urgent issue, though, why is it that the head of the government's new border security command has not yet been being named. You talked about having a rapid recruitment process when you came into government, but you've been in for two months and they still haven't been appointed.

We're very close to making that appointment, and you have to go through certain processes to make sure you get the right person, give people time to apply. You can't waive a magic wand, but there'll be announcements about that very shortly.

In the next week?

I'm not going to say in the next week, but there'll be announcements. They are coming along very shortly.

Refugee groups, meanwhile, are warning that the tougher border security that you're talking about, the key to your plan, may actually force migrants to take longer and more dangerous routes to try to get to this country. How worried are you that your policies could actually risk more deaths in the channel?

We want to stop deaths US in the channel. The issue is however people get to the country, we cannot allow smuddling gangs to decide who comes to the country. We have to get control of our borders so that we decide who comes to the country, and they come for particular reasons in particular contexts. What we can't do is have illegal traders making those decisions for us. That's why I think everybody recognizes we have to tackle criminality at the border of this kind.

Do you need more safe routes? There are charities, respected labor figures like Lord Dubs have pointed out that the reason that so many people are fleeing war and torture from countries like Syria or Sudan is because there aren't any viable alternatives.

But not everybody who's fleeing torture or collapse in their own country would ever have a right to come to the UK. We can only take so many people, and we do actually-Do we need more safe routes? Well, there is a safe route system. I I think 30,000 people have come in the last 10 years that way. But I think whatever we were to decide on that at any time in the future, we've got to get control of the borders and smash the smuggling gangs. We cannot allow criminals to decide who comes across our border with impunity. We've got to deal with that as a security and a law and order issue, and that is what we are determined to do.

We're told today it's possible that Germany could use the asylum facilities in Rwanda originally intended for the UK's migration scheme that you've now abandoned. The UK spent millions on this. You've abandoned a plan that others clearly feel is workable.

It wasn't workable. It was a gimmick. We spent £700 million, the last government, spent £700 million to get four people to voluntarily go to Rwanda, and they were gearing up to spend literally billions more. I think if that plan was going to work, it would have worked before we had to abandon it. It simply wasn't working. It prevented the Home Office from doing the day jobs, so they weren't doing any processing of applications in the UK. There was an infinitesimally small potential chance that somebody might end up in Rwanda, and the four people for £700 million who did end up in Rwanda volunteered to go there.

If If your company does end up using the facilities, will you try and get that money back?

I think that the German people have to decide what to do, but my warning to them would be that the Rwanda scheme was an expensive gimmick, and it won't work.

Okay. Reports today that Estonia is offering to rent out its spare prison capacity to the UK. Will you take them up on that offer?

Well, not directly my ministerial responsibility, but what's true is that we've inherited an absolute crisis in our prison system with very few places remaining there. Now, the government, I think, is going to come out with a prison building announcement soon, but the last government closed loads of prison places and didn't replace any of them. So I think that colleagues in the MOJ will be considering anything that they can to alleviate the problem. What we cannot have is people who are convicted of perhaps violent or serious crimes not being able to be in jail.

So you'll consider farming out prisoners, consider it, farming out prisoners to Australia, but not- I'm sure that colleagues are considering all sorts of actions to deal with the crisis that we've been left by the previous government in prison places and in the prison service and the criminal justice system, generally. Okay, well, Angela, we appreciate your time this morning. Thanks very much indeed for coming in.Thanks a lot.Thanks..