BEFORE the new year started, I told The Sun this Government would not rest until we had broken the business model of the vile small boats gangs, fixed the chaos in our asylum system and restored strength and security to borders. This is all a crucial part of the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change. For years, these small boats gangs have been allowed to take an ever-deepening hold along the Channel, making multimillion-pound profits from undermining our border security and putting lives at risk.

They cannot be allowed to get away with these terrible crimes any longer. So in just over six months since the election, we have established the new Border Security Command, strengthened co-operation with key partners such as France, Germany, Italy and Iraq, and surged enforcement action to tackle illegal working and remove those with no right to be in the UK. In that time, we returned 16,400 people — the highest rate since 2018 — including the four biggest charter flights in our country’s history.

We made clear that the rules must be respected and enforced. As a result, returns, illegal working raids, deportation of foreign criminals and arrests of gang members across Europe have all risen, and we are determined to keep that pressure on. So this week we have introduced new, game-changing legislation to protect our borders. Similar to the counter-terror laws we use to keep our nation safe from extremist plots, the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will transform our capabilities to go after the organised crime gangs behind this lethal trade.

For too long, some of the biggest figures in those gangs have been able to escape prosecution by ensuring they are never present when the money changes hands, or when the small boats set off. But we will end their impunity by creating a new offence specifically targeted at the criminals who are pulling the strings behind the smuggler gangs, and by using new Interim Serious Crime Prevention Orders to curb their activities even before conviction.

We will introduce new laws to prosecute the possession and supply of equipment used in people-trafficking and other serious organised crime. This includes the vehicle concealments that smugglers use to hide their illicit cargoes of human beings, cash, drugs and guns, and the templates for 3D- printed firearms that we know are used by gangsters to avoid firearm controls. At the same time, we will give law enforcement the power to seize and download mobile phones of those arriving on small boats, in order to trace the smugglers they were in contact with.

We will strengthen the law against endangering lives of others at sea, so there are tougher penalties for those who put other people’s lives at risk as they pile into overcrowded, flimsy boats or refuse rescue even when children are being crushed to death or drowning. Tackling organised immigration crime is not just about small boats. We’ve seen awful cases of gangs jamming migrants into tiny spaces in the backs of lorries and trailers, kept in small spaces for hours or days, even without proper access to air or water.

So we will bolster data-sharing by the DVLA and Customs to give law enforcement more up-to-the-minute data on lorry trailers coming into our country, who they belong to and what they are supposed to contain. Perhaps most importantly of all, as we strengthen our own laws and enforcement action, we are signing new agreements with other countries to do the same. As a result of our work since the election, Germany is changing its law so it can go after the warehouses where boats are being stored.

Iraq is strengthening its law so it can take more action against the Iraqi-Kurdish gangs that operate across Europe, and France and Belgium are strengthening their enforcement operations along the coast. The system we inherited from the last government was broken, ineffective and underpowered. We could have responded to the Tories’ failed gimmicks with some new ones of our own. But we knew that would not work and was not something Keir Starmer or I were prepared to do.

We know that there is no alternative to hard graft, even though it takes time and relentless determination. But we were elected to turn our country around and fix the problems that have built up over 14 years. That can only be done through a serious and determined plan for change, be it on our borders, the cost of living or our NHS. It is time for serious action to strengthen our borders and restore order to the system, laying a new and stable groundwork for Britain’s future.