Mahmood to meet Five Eyes for border talks in first major Home Office job

Shabana Mahmood will host the Five Eyes security alliance for talks on how to stop people-smuggling after small boat crossings in the Channel reached a record high.

The newly appointed Home Secretary will meet counterparts from the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand in London as Sir Keir Starmer seeks to use his reshuffle to tighten the Government’s grip on immigration.

It comes after some 1,097 people arrived in the UK in 17 boats on Saturday, bringing the total in 2025 so far to 30,100, according to Home Office figures.

This is up 37% on this point last year (22,028) and 37% higher than at this stage in 2023 (21,918), according to PA news agency analysis.

It is the earliest point in a calendar year at which the 30,000 mark has been passed since data on Channel crossings was first reported in 2018.

Ms Mahmood said the numbers were “utterly unacceptable” and that she expected migrant returns under a deal agreed last month with France to begin “imminently”.

She said the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing pact would “agree new measures to protect our border” after it emerged ministers are also looking at moving asylum seekers from hotels into military barracks.

She will be joined at the talks by US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Canadian public safety minister Gary Anandasangaree, Australian home affairs minister Tony Burke and New Zealand minister Judith Collins.

The group will also discuss new measures to tackle child sexual abuse online and the spread of deadly synthetic opioids, the Home Office said.

Sir Keir carried out a major reshuffle over the weekend, including wide-ranging changes at the Home Office, in a bid to draw a line under the fallout from Angela Rayner’s resignation and a difficult summer dominated by criticism of the small boats crisis.

The Prime Minister has told his new-look Cabinet to “go up a gear” in delivering on Labour’s agenda, part of which now involves a toughened immigration policy as he faces pressure in the polls from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The Government is now considering using defence sites as temporary asylum accommodation as ministers seek to speed up plans to end the use of hotels after they became a focal point for demonstrations in recent weeks.

One Government source said “nothing is off the table” for Ms Mahmood as she assumes her new brief and she has also signalled a willingness to look at human rights reforms within domestic law.

Campaigners criticised the move to expand the use of military sites, saying the policy had been a failure.

“The solution is faster, fairer decisions and safe housing in communities, so refugees can work, study and rebuild their lives,” chief executive of the Refugee Council Enver Soloman said.