Starmer in Italy to talk migration policy with Meloni

The Prime Minister has been on a fact-finding mission to Rome, with migration top of the agenda in his talks with his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni.

Italy has seen a 60 percent drop in arrivals by sea in the last year after numbers spiked the year before. But overall asylum claims rose by a third and it’s been criticised for deals with controversial regimes in Tunisia and Libya.

Sir Keir Starmer said he was interested in its deal to send migrants to Albania for processing, but particularly in how to tackle migration “upstream”.