New United Kingdom Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood arrived for a cabinet meeting in London, England, on Sept. 2. Photo by Andy Rain/EPA

Sept. 8 (UPI) — The United Kingdom’s new home secretary said the country may suspend visas to countries that do not take back asylum-seekers after their failed asylum applications.

Shabana Mahmood said she would go “further and faster” than her predecessor Yvette Cooper and do “whatever it takes” to stop small boat crossings, The Guardian reported.

She called the number of migrants arriving in the U.K. on small boats “utterly unacceptable.” This year’s number of crossings of the English Channel have passed 30,000.

Mahmood’s comments came as she hosted ministers from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group, which includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States Monday.

“We think there is interesting space for collaborating, particularly on how we deal with countries who do not take their citizens back — so making sure we are able to return out of our countries people who have no right to be in our countries and send them back to their home countries,” the BBC reported she told the gathering.

“For countries that do not play ball, we have been talking about taking much more coordinated action between the Five Eyes countries. And for us that means the possibility of cutting visas in the future to say we do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you have to take them back.”

She didn’t say which countries she meant.

Madeleine Sumption, director of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said there are “quite a few countries where returns of refused asylum seekers are low and demand for U.K. visas is also high.” She cited India, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Nepal as examples.

“How these countries would respond to threats to reduce visa access might depend on how much they care about visa options for their citizens,” she told BBC.

Shadow home secretary and Conservative Member of Parliament Chris Philp said it was “about time this Labour government now stopped talking tough and started acting tough,” and said the U.K. should also cut aid to countries not taking back its citizens, BBC reported.