Robert Largan column: ​We’re making progress now in tackling small boats crisis

After many months and over 100 votes on the Bill, Monday night was the final stage of the legislation.

Over these last few months, I’ve been working hard to pass the new laws, battling with Labour MPs and members of the House of Lords repeatedly attempting to wreck the legislation.

I've been pleased to report that we won every vote in the House of Commons and have now defeated Labour's repeated attempts to weaken or block the new laws.

The legislation has now passed Parliament and will be enacted into law this week.

We all know about the small boats crisis in the English Channel. It has been talked about endless over the last few years. We're all fed up talking. Action is required.

The Government have been working hard to break the criminal gangs operating in the channel. We are making real progress, with the number of arrivals down by a third (while numbers have gone up by 80 per cent across the rest of Europe).

We've put huge resources into border enforcement. We're closing down migrant hotels. Locally, we were successful in officially defeating the University of Derby's proposals for an asylum dispersal centre in Buxton town centre too.

But to stop the boats, we need an effective deterrent. The Albanian Return agreement shows that deterrents work. Albanian arrivals are now down by over 90 per cent.

This Bill will deliver an effective deterrent. It will also reaffirm that the British Parliament is sovereign, not a foreign court.

I have no doubt that Labour and other vested interests will continue to try and block it again by other means. They lost in Parliament but no doubt they’ll try and block it in the courts now.

Labour have no plan to stop the boats. Labour don't want to stop the boats.

This is very simple. We need to have control of our own borders. We must stop the boats.