Illegal workers held in raids on nail bars and takeaways

Raids took place across the country - including at a car wash in south London

Hundreds of migrants were arrested in January as part of a UK-wide crackdown on illegal working, the government has said.

Enforcement teams raided 828 premises including nail bars, car washes, and restaurants and made 609 arrests - a 73% increase on the previous January.

Home Office Minister Dame Angela Eagle told the BBC the decision to release footage of the arrests was to send a message about the realities of working illegally and she defended the government's approach as "compassionate".

Later on Monday, MPs will debate the government's immigration bill. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has called it a "weak bill that won't stop the boats".

Vape shops in Cheshire and a grocery warehouse in south London were among the places raided.

Those arrested made the journey to the UK through a mix of routes, including by crossing the Channel and by overstaying legitimately-granted visas.

Despite having won a landslide election victory seven months ago, senior Labour strategists are already increasingly worried about losing voters concerned about immigration to Reform come the next election.

• Chris Mason's analysis: Ministers want to show toughness on immigration

Party figures believe that merely describing the arrests and deportations is not enough – hence the decision to release footage today of them taking place, allowing people to see with their own eyes.

But there are others in the Labour Party who fear that focusing on illegal immigration only increases the salience of an issue where they could never and would never want to adopt as hardline an approach as Reform.

Some Labour MPs, particularly on the left of the party, believe the government should do more to establish safe and legal routes for people to come to the UK and talk about the benefits of immigration.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Dame Angela was asked if releasing footage of the raids aligned with Sir Keir Starmer's previous pledge to create an immigration system "based on compassion and dignity".

"I don't believe for one minute that enforcing the law and ensuring that people who break the law face the consequences of doing that, up to and including deportation, arrest, is not compassionate," she said.

She added that it is "important that we show what we are doing and it's important that we send messages to people who may have been sold lies about what will await them in the UK if they get themselves smuggled in".

The government also intends to reduce the number of hotels housing asylum seekers, Dame Angela said.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Monday, she said there were plans to close nine of the 218 hotels currently in use by the end of March.

From the start of the Labour government in July up to 31 January, 3,930 arrests were made over 5,424 visits by immigration enforcement officers, the Home Office said.

A total of 1,090 civil penalty notices were also issued, with employers facing a fine of up to £60,000 per worker if found liable.

During the same period, four of the "biggest return flights in the UK's history" were also carried out, the Home Office said, returning more than 800 people.

But Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described the new figures released by the government as feeble, compared with the numbers that had entered the country.

Across the 31 days of January, there were 1,098 people who arrived in the UK illegally on small boats.

The government said it launched a social media campaign in Vietnam in December and Albania in January discouraging people from making the journey to the UK.

The adverts highlight stories from migrants who entered the UK illegally "only to face debt, exploitation and a life far from what they were promised", the Home Office said.

Dame Angela said this campaign was introduced to counter "quite sophisticated ads" placed online by people smugglers, which "tell lies about the situation in Britain, about how easy it is to get jobs".

People who come to the UK illegally are "more likely to be living in squalid conditions, being exploited by vicious gangs", she said.

Later, the government's Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill will be debated in the House of Commons in its second reading.

The bill aims to introduce a raft of new offences and counter terrorism-style powers to clamp down on people smugglers bringing migrants across the Channel.

But Labour ministers have not provided a specific target on when a drop in small boat crossings could be expected.

The Conservatives said they had put forward an amendment to the immigration bill in a bid to include their own immigration proposals: to double how long it takes migrants to get indefinite leave to remain and, after that, require them to wait five years rather than one before they can apply for citizenship.

Philp added that "an effective removals deterrent is needed" to stop small boat crossings, something he said Labour had scrapped, a reference to the former government's plan to send illegal migrants to Rwanda.