Yvette Cooper was unable to say when Labour’s plan to stop small boat migrant Channel crossings will start to work. 

The Home Secretary said she wanted to make progress “as fast as possible” but she would not set a target date for crossing numbers to fall.

It came as Sir Keir Starmer meets with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, in Rome today to discuss how best to tackle illegal migration. 

Labour has set up a new Border Security Command unit tasked with “smashing” people smuggling gangs. 

Asked when crossing numbers would fall, Ms Cooper told BBC Breakfast: “We need to make progress as fast as possible because no one should be making these dangerous boat crossings. But look, this is hard graft and this is going to be step by step , pursuing the investigations, going after the [small boat] engines…”

Asked again if she could set out a target date, she said: “We need to keep making progress and we want to go as fast as we possibly can because nobody should be making these dangerous boat crossings.” 

Pushed once more, Ms Cooper said that “nobody wants to see any boat crossings”. 

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