Britain can stop small boats crossing the Channel without leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), says the man who slashed Sweden’s migrant wave.

Sweden is expected to receive only 4,200 asylum seekers this year, its lowest number since 1984.

Since the Right-wing coalition government took power in 2022, deportations have increased by 60 per cent and asylum claims have dropped by 75 per cent.

Johan Forssell, the minister for migration, said cutting migrant benefits, deporting criminals and forcing asylum seekers to live in reception centres had helped cut arrivals to record lows.

“If you come to Sweden, you need to learn Swedish, you need to find a job, you cannot commit crimes. That is not an extreme view, is it?” he told The Telegraph.

He said the people-smugglers’ boats and the tens of thousands of migrants storming the Spanish exclave of Ceuta last week were a warning.

“There are so many Leftists nowadays saying the migrant crisis is over. The situation in the UK has taught everyone that migration is still a very explosive topic, and the crisis is not over. And that is the same lesson that Europe learned last weekend with Spain […] we need to secure our borders.”

During the 2015 European migrant crisis, Sweden received more than 162,000 asylum applications in a single year – the highest per capita rate in the European Union.

In 2024, the government reported net emigration, more people leaving than arriving, for the first time in over 50 years.

Mr Forssell said that it was possible to cut illegal immigration and boost deportations without leaving the ECHR but warned that the treaty needed reform.

He said: “We are fully committed to doing things by the book. But we have seen some cases, especially regarding criminals, where these conventions have protected them, the criminals, rather than the victims of crime, and that will not stand.”

Mr Forssell said Tory and Reform UK threats to quit the Council of Europe and its Strasbourg court were a “consequence of a system that has been working in favour of criminals rather than in favour of their victims”.

“A criminal saying, ‘I don’t want to go back home’ is not a reason for still being in the country,” he said, adding that the ECHR was “absolutely outdated”.

Sweden is involved in the push to reform the ECHR, which Sir Keir Starmer’s government also supported. It also backs EU moves to set up Rwanda-style offshore detention camps for failed asylum seekers.

“It is possible to reduce asylum-related migration, and to do that in a short period of time and in full accordance with international law and human rights,” Mr Forssel told The Telegraph.

“There is no silver bullet, but what we have done is that we have been looking at every piece of legislation, trying to make it strict and firm.”

He said: “If you come to Sweden, you know there will be no more benefits for people not wanting to learn Swedish or find a job. You know there also has to be an asylum application and if you commit a crime, we will make sure you will be deported.

“We are very clear today that you need to go back home if that is the decision. If that is the decision, you must follow it. There will be no more benefits. You cannot move freely around Sweden any longer. You cannot work.”

The coalition is led by Ulf Kristersson, prime minister and leader of the centre-Right Moderates. It is propped up by the hard-Right, anti-migrant Sweden Democrats, which remained formally outside of government despite coming second in 2022.

Its fingerprints were all over the government’s crackdown on illegal immigration, which came after an election dominated by a crime epidemic blamed on gangs with immigrant backgrounds

It included laws ensuring all asylum seekers lived at government-run reception centres and not in private housing. If claims are denied, they are moved to tougher detention centres.

The law was changed to allow the authorities to check migrants’ smartphones at airports for digital evidence of destroyed papers.

The government introduced laws to make claiming citizenship more difficult and deporting criminals easier, as well as tougher family reunification rules.

Accepted refugees are also no longer granted permanent residence as a matter of course. Instead, their claim is reviewed every three years.

Sweden has elections in September, with polls showing the Left-wing Social Democrats leading the Sweden Democrats in second and the Moderates in third.

The Moderates said they are willing to break the taboo of entering into a formal coalition with the Sweden Democrats, which was founded by Nazi sympathisers, to stay in power.

Mr Forssell rejected calls for his resignation last year after it emerged that his son had links to white supremacist groups, from which the 16-year-old has since distanced himself.

He denied his government’s crackdown had normalised racist policies or paved the once-shunned Sweden Democrats’ rise to power.

Speaking from his campaign bus, he said: “We can co-operate with them without doing anything that is extreme. Very many people have voted for them. They are not racist, so I think it’s important to respect democracy and listen to them.”

If Sweden’s traditional parties had not changed their policies of “open borders” 15 years ago, the Sweden Democrats would already be in power, he said.

“For many years it was more or less impossible to say you need to have control over migration in Sweden without being framed as a racist,” Mr Forssell said, adding the government was working to boost high-skilled labour migration.

“But I am convinced the average guy on the street in Sweden thinks we have done very well on migration. It is not the hot topic it was four years ago. We have done what we said we would do.”