Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood Says Nearly Every Woman Crossing the Channel Has Been Raped

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told The Rest Is Politics podcast that nearly every woman who reaches northern France hoping to cross the Channel in a small boat has "probably been raped along the journey." She made the comment in an interview with former Conservative minister Rory Stewart and former Tony Blair adviser Alastair Campbell, according to The Guardian.

Her exact words: "The sifting of the people that end up in the north of France and are about to get on a dinghy is done by criminal gangs who are also, by the way, people traffickers. You can almost guarantee that every woman that's in the north of France has probably been raped along the journey. Some of the men too, they've certainly been abused and threatened."

Mahmood's point was that smuggling gangs, not the British government, decide who ends up on a dinghy headed for Dover. "We're not in control of this border," she said. That line of argument, carried by BBC and Brit Brief alike, is the foundation for her push to reopen safe and legal routes instead of relying solely on enforcement.

The policy behind the admission

The Home Office confirmed the UK Resettlement Scheme will reopen immediately after stopping new applicants in December 2024, according to the BBC. Officials expect about 25% of new arrivals to be Afghan women and girls and Palestinians, with a five-year path to permanent settlement. Three new community sponsorship routes, letting universities, companies and community groups host refugees, are set to launch next year. The government has not yet set the annual cap on numbers.

Mahmood also told Labour's conference that resettlement must be "capped and controlled," and separately told Rest Is Politics she's pursuing "return hubs" in Europe, third countries where failed asylum seekers would be sent to deter the crossing in the first place. That push comes after Labour's one-in, one-out returns deal with France fell apart. Officials admitted only around 1,500 small boat arrivals were sent back under the scheme while just under 1,500 people moved the other way, according to Brit Brief.

Crossing numbers are down this year. More than 18,500 people crossed the Channel in small boats in 2026 so far, compared with more than 32,000 over the same period in 2025, per BBC figures.

Reaction

Imran Hussain, director of the Refugee Council, welcomed Mahmood's acknowledgment of sexual violence against refugee women, according to ua.news, but argued the government made the problem worse by closing family reunification, a legal route used mostly by women and children, last year. Jon Featonby, the Refugee Council's chief policy analyst, told the BBC safe routes "only work if they operate at scale" after what he called a "drastic reduction" over the past year. If the goal is reducing exploitation on the journey, cutting the main legal route for women and children before announcing a replacement scheme runs counter to the stated aim, even as the government argues the new scheme will eventually cover more ground.

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp called the resettlement reopening an attempt to appease Labour's internal critics, per the BBC. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage went further, saying the UK is "not obligated to take in more migrants" and that a Reform government would not let people arriving under Labour's schemes stay. Farage also pointed to a Sunday Times report on a former Hamas bodyguard who secured UK asylum and citizenship years ago and now faces extradition to Germany over an alleged plot against Jewish people in Europe, using it to question the asylum system's vetting broadly, though that case predates Mahmood's current proposals.

Where coverage diverges

The Express framed Mahmood's comments as an admission that "dangerous rapists are crossing the Channel in small boats." That is not what she said. Her quote describes women as victims of rape and abuse inflicted during the journey, at the hands of traffickers and others controlling the route, not a claim that male migrants arriving are confirmed rapists. The Express report does carry separately-reported, legitimate context: a Home Office leaflet telling migrants that domestic abuse and sex with anyone under 16 is illegal in the UK, which the paper used to argue the government is managing a serious abuse problem among arrivals rather than preventing it at the source.

Mahmood's interview also touched on Palestine Action. She told Rest Is Politics she considers herself "part of the pro-Palestinian cause" and feels "very uncomfortable" that Merseyside police arrested 82 people at Labour's conference under section 13 of the Terrorism Act for supporting the banned group, while still defending the ban's enforcement. She separately said masked, far-right activists would "kill" her or "kick me out of my own country" if given power, calling them people who "hate the fact that I'm a Muslim." No evidence of a specific threat was cited in connection with that statement.

No government figure for how many women arriving by small boat have actually reported rape, and no study backing the "almost every woman" estimate, appears in any of the available reporting. Mahmood's number is a personal assessment, not a cited statistic. The Home Office has not announced the eventual annual cap for the reopened resettlement scheme, leaving the scale of the "safe and legal" alternative still undefined.