When it comes to tackling the migration crisis in the English Channel, the focus tends to be on expensive enforcement. It’s well-established that Britain pays France close to half a billion pounds to boost border security, but that’s only a small chunk of the whopping £5.4 billion spent on asylum support, resettlement, and accommodation each year. A repeated criticism is that when small boats arrive in Dover, they often contain people seeking to earn money rather than flee persecution. I myself have spoken to a small boat migrant who came to Britain with five friends for that reason.

He’d even written on the form handed to him by the Home Office on arrival that he’d come here for economic reasons before fleeing the hotel he was housed in. Identifying those motivated by money is not always as easy as that, especially if they don’t say that’s why they’ve come. But one easy change Rachel Reeves could make that would massively help is to impose heavy taxes on the cash flowing out of the country from migrants.

The last official estimate showed the amount of money sent through remittances from the UK to countries of origin each year totals £9.3 billion (2023), the World Bank estimates that in real terms the figure is three times higher.

Slapping a large tax on money that leaves the UK, through services like Western Union or Remitly, would have two likely outcomes.

It would discourage people from taking dangerous journeys to come to Britain for the purposes of making money. If you know that half of what you earn goes into the taxman’s pocket, you’ll reconsider coming to Britain.

Those unperturbed by having to pay this fee will swell the treasury’s coffers, potentially covering the expenses related to enforcement or, at a minimum, freeing up cash to spend on the NHS or some other underfunded area.

Of course, I should add that this only works if you crack down heavily on black market work and punish any company benefiting from illegal workers with draconian punishments.

There are many things in this country that would help weed out economic migrants (Image: Getty)

My personal suggestion is that the senior management of any business found to have been employing those who don’t have the right to work in Britain be held criminally liable.

I’d take a top-down approach to avoid the blame being lumped on small subcontractors by the big companies that benefit but might not directly hire illegal workers.

So, for example, if it was discovered that a building site was filled with labourers who didn’t have the right to work, the agency that’d hired them wouldn’t be facing jail; it would be the developers’ directors behind bars.

Guilty firms would have to pay massive fines, which would fund a whistleblower scheme that offered £500 for every proved illegal worker, in addition to legal immunity.

There is an old journalistic expression about ‘following the money’ if you really want to find out who benefits from a scandal. Well, my advice to Rachel Reeves is: follow the money then hit them in the pocket.