Top UK civil servant Sir Matthew Rycroft CBE has spent the past few days meeting with senior mandarins responsible for Australia’s security and justice portfolios as part of an annual dialogue.
The permanent secretary for the UK’s Home Office was in Melbourne last Friday, and Canberra on Monday and Tuesday.
He will travel on to fellow Five Eyes members New Zealand and Canada for similar information exchanges before returning to England later this month.
Speaking to The Mandarin, Rycroft said the meetings were part of an annual strategic dialogue with Australia’s Home Affairs and Attorney-General’s departments.
The values and interests Australia and the UK shared were strong, he added, making the tenor of information exchange optimistic and practical.
“All of the issues are common, really. All the stuff that we deal with is global in nature, and the responses that Australia in the UK have are very aligned,” Rycroft said.
“Sometimes when you do these trips, it’s about resolving a particular problem or having a difficult negotiation.
“Whereas when you come to Australia, if you’re British, you feel as though the values are totally aligned and so the job is to sort of accelerate the cooperation if you can — try and use our two countries as a motor that will drive forward cooperation that could then involve other countries as well.”
The mission of the UK Home Office has three core themes — migration and border control, policing and reducing crime, and homeland security (equivalent to counter-terrorism).
The permanent secretary explained that across each theme he believed Australia and the UK had a shared agenda.
“On migration, this is a global phenomenon. There are more people on the move around the world than I think ever before,” Rycroft said.
“So countries like Australia and the UK can learn from each other about what works and what doesn’t in terms of our responses to that migration.”
The opening lines of the latest Home Office’s annual report include the phrase “stop the boats” and make direct reference to the Sunak government drawing inspiration from the hardline Australian policy to deter asylum seekers.
When asked how Australia’s particular offshore processing policy for illegal migrants (more commonly known as Operation Sovereign Borders) was applicable to the UK context, Rycroft said geography was one of a small number of differences.
Overall, he said, the experience for both nations was remarkably similar.
“Even on geography, if the issues are global, then the geographic distance is no barrier to outstanding cooperation,” Rycroft said.
The UK has introduced a number of tough measures to deter illegal migration including border security laws known as the Illegal Migration Act, returns agreements with other nations and a new deal with France.
The UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership (MDEP) – which was loosely modelled on Sovereign Borders and will divert ‘illegal’ UK asylum applications to be heard in Rwanda – is another initiative designed to send a clear signal that the British system is not available to those seeking to jump the queue.
The permanent secretary went on to outline how most of the UK’s flow of illegal migrants in the last six years was via small boat crossings from northern France to southern England.
Rycroft said the journey was perilous and people were losing their lives every month in an attempt to illegally get into the UK via this route.
“All of the problems for the UK and for many others in Europe, and I think around the world, are to do with illegal or irregular migration — that is, people who are usually paying people traffickers or other criminal gangs to beat the queue, and to come into our country without the right to be there,” Rycroft said.
“The [UK] government is determined to stop the boats and we have been learning from Australia how your Sovereign Borders program worked a few years ago.
“Of course, not all of that is applicable because the distances from Indonesia to Australia are many, many, many times the distance from France in the UK… But we have been creating a Sovereign Borders program of our own.”
The Sunak government still needs to pass the final aspect of its bill for the UK-Rwanda MDEP through parliament before the program gets underway. It wants the first flight transporting asylum seekers to Rwanda to set off by July.
Last November, the UK Supreme Court ruled the policy was unlawful due to safety concerns in Rwanda.
