Small boat Channel crossings continue after migrant total reaches 150,000
Small boat crossings have continued in the English Channel on Saturday despite the morning’s foggy conditions.
Pictures showed the Dungeness lifeboat bringing a number of people, thought to have been picked up from a small boat in the Channel, into the port at Dover.
The latest arrivals follow crossings made on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and December 27 – the first time since 2018 small boats have made the journey on all of those dates.
Official government figures show 305 people arrived in the UK via small boat on Friday, bringing the total for the week to 1,163.
The 407 arrivals on December 26 meant more than 150,000 people had made the crossing from France since records began on January 1 2018, prompting a political blame game over responsibility for the numbers.
A Home Office source sought to blame the previous government, saying they had left “an appalling legacy of broken border security”, while Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp blamed Labour’s decision to scrap the Tories’ Rwanda scheme.
‘Appalling failure’
After Saturday’s update to the figures, Philp said the numbers represented “Labour’s appalling failure” and were “an insult to the British people”.
He said: “In 2023, Conservatives cut the numbers crossing the channel by a third. But now, it’s all moving the other way.
“These rising numbers are the predictable outcome of Starmer scrapping many Conservative measures to tackle this issue, like scrapping the Rwanda deterrent before it even started.
“We know from the experience in Australia that a deterrent would have stopped the boats if it had been allowed to start as planned in late July.
“The British people deserve better than a government that can’t, or won’t, deal with illegal channel crossings.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has put international co-operation with law enforcement agencies in Europe at the heart of his bid to cut the number of arrivals, having promised to “smash the gangs” smuggling people across the Channel during this year’s election.
Channel crossings
Some 22,629 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel since Sir Keir became Prime Minister in July, up 25 per cent on the same period in 2023 but down 31 per cent on the record year of 2022.
So far this year, 36,204 migrants have arrived in the UK on small boats, provisional Home Office figures show.
This is up 23 per cent on this time last year, but down 21 per cent on 2022. Prior to the election, crossings in 2024 were up 19 per cent compared to the same period in 2023.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.
“We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”
Press Association – Christopher McKeon