"A year ago, as researchers from the universities of Liverpool, Nottingham, Sheffield and York, we set out to build a deeper understanding of private sector involvement on the Channel border. ...The information was not easily accessible. ...We did, however, manage to find £3.5bn worth of government contracts distributed to firms to manage people arriving in the UK by small boats between 2017 and 2024. On top of this, we also uncovered over £1bn available in open tenders as of December 2024. We have now released all of this data in a publicly available spreadsheet as well as a report detailing all we believe we’ve learned." https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/exclusive-government-hands-private-firms-3bn-in-bid-to-stop-the-boats/
During the last Labour government (which seems so long ago, yet many of its architects are back in power today), I went around the UK and other countries screening documentary footage I put together covering how the Blairite Big Brother police state on an island of increasingly controlled borders meant more money for private contractors at home just as the "War on Terror" did overseas. Destabilisation of other countries, poverty, oppression, and the climate crisis all cause displacement, and those stopping boats carrying people seeking a life less miserable are the same ones causing it. #NoBorders#NoNations#StopDeportations