Yvette Cooper has repeatedly refused to set a deadline to reduce dangerous small boats crossings in the channel.
The home secretary described the numbers making the journey as “too high” but claimed it would have been “thousands” higher under the last Conservative government’s approach.
Some 34,880 people have arrived in Britain on small boats so far this year, up 20 per cent on this time last year but down 22 per cent on 2022.
Ms Cooper repeatedly declined to say when the public could expect to see the number of small boat crossings fall.
She told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “These levels are far too high, this is dangerous what’s happening. Of course we want to continue to progress, of course we want to see the boat crossings come down as rapidly as possible.” Ms Cooper conceded that remaining under 2022’s record high would be “no comfort” to people while numbers continue to rise.
But she suggested the figures could have been as much as 50,000 under the Tories.
She said: “What we inherited from the first half of this year… record high levels of boat crossings – had that continued we were on track really for the worst year ever for small boat crossings.
“Had that continued we would have had many thousands more crossings over the course of the summer and through the autumn.
“As it is, we’re around a quarter lower than 2022, that was the peak year.
“But look, that is no comfort when you still have these small boat crossings, where we’ve got lives being put at risk and huge numbers of lives being lost, and also these criminal gangs are profiting from undermining our border security.”
Speaking during a visit to Italy this week, where she was due to meet the country’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni, she said there was a “moral” reason to try to tackle boat crossings, as well as due to the impact on British services.
“We have a responsibility, a moral responsibility to go after those gangs who are putting lives at risk,” she said.
“When you see these flimsy boats, the way that it’s women and kids who get put in the middle of the boats, so when the boat folds, they are the people who get crushed, who end up drowning.”
Ms Cooper also reiterated the government’s refusal to rule out using a third country to process asylum claims, saying she will look at “whatever works’‘.
Unlike the Conservative’s much criticised Rwanda scheme this would not be a one way ticket. A similar scheme between Italy and Albania has been designed so genuine asylum seekers would still be able to go to Italy.
Asked on Sky News how long it will be before the public see the number of channel crossings come down, Ms Cooper’s Angela Eagle said: “I’m not going to sit here and give you a date”.
Meanwhile, Labour grandee Harriet Harman called for a Royal Commission on immigration. She said: “I think they are being very diligent the government. But I think we need a bit of a wider conversation with the public about this in terms of what people actually want and what is achievable.”
She also hit out at claims by previous Conservative governments that they could cut immigration to the tens of thousands, saying it was “very dangerous to democracy” to offer people something that could not be delivered.
Ms Cooper received the backing of the Labour mayor of greater Manchester Andy Burnham, who said he had “great confidence” in her.
The shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Labour has been “foolish” to scrap the Rwanda deterrent scheme for migrants, blaming it for the rise in the number of small boat crossings this autumn.
He told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “That’s a significant increase, and the reason those illegal and dangerous small boat crossings have gone up under Labour is they scrapped the Rwanda deterrent before it had even started”.