UK PM Starmer meets Italy's Meloni for illegal immigration talks

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends a welcome ceremony with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, right, on the occasion of his visit, at Villa Doria Pamphilj, in Rome, Monday, Sept. 16, 2024

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Monday to discuss tackling illegal immigration, a day after another Channel migrant shipwreck claimed eight lives.

Starmer, whose centre-left Labour Party was elected with a crushing parliamentary majority in July, has vowed to fight illegal immigration, a hot-button topic in British politics for years.

"Here, there's been some quite dramatic reduction (in migrant arrival numbers) so I want to understand how that came about," Starmer said in Rome ahead of his meeting with Meloni.

He was speaking while touring a national immigration coordination centre with Italy's interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi.

Starmer was received with a welcome ceremony at 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) at Rome's Villa Doria Pamphili before his meeting with Meloni.

Far-right riots shook cities and towns across England and Northern Ireland shortly after Starmer's election, the U.K.'s worst unrest since 2011, with mosques and migrant accommodation centres often targeted.

The perilous cross-Channel journeys migrants attempt from northern France have posed a fiendishly difficult problem to solve for successive British prime ministers.

Eight migrants died on Sunday after their overcrowded boat capsized in the Channel between France and England, bringing to 46 the number of people who have lost their lives this year trying to reach British shores.

Around 800 people crossed the Channel on Saturday, the second-highest figure since the start of the...