Ministers tried to dodge the blame yesterday after the number of small-boat migrants reaching Britain under Labour passed 50,000.
Keir Starmer was slammed for ‘incompetence’ over the handling of the Channel crisis, with the soaring figure a clear indication of the lack of a plan since he axed the Tories’ Rwanda deportation scheme on his first day in power.
Remarkably, former Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith blamed the Tories, claiming: ‘What is happening is the result of the last government.’
Yesterday, large groups of migrants were seen sprinting into the surf off Gravelines beach, between Calais and Dunkirk, to board a boat to Britain.
At first light, as French police stood and watched and a navy boat patrolled nearby, scores waded into the water to clamber on to a taxi boat that appeared just off shore. Only a few of them wore life jackets for the perilous crossing.
The Government’s ‘returns deal’ with France appears to have done little to deter those determined to get to Britain, with the latest total including more than 1,500 arrivals in the seven days since the ‘one in, one out’ scheme launched.
Official figures revealed there were 474 arrivals on Monday alone, bringing the total since the general election on July 4 last year to 50,271, despite the Prime Minister’s promise to ‘smash the gangs’ behind the trafficking trade.
The milestone was passed seven months earlier than under his Conservative predecessor, Rishi Sunak.
It does not include hundreds brought into Dover by Border Force vessels yesterday after being picked up mid-Channel, with the number to be confirmed today.
Baroness Smith – who is now an education, women and equalities minister under Sir Keir – said: ‘It is a completely legitimate claim to say that what is happening is the result of the last government that chose to focus on gimmicks with the Rwanda scheme.’
Asked by Wilf Frost on Sky News if the crossings were not Labour’s fault, she insisted that the Government was taking responsibility now, but added: ‘I don’t believe it is our fault that it was enabled to take root in the way in which it has done by a government who failed to do what was necessary at that point.
‘The last government enabled this hideous criminal activity to really get its roots into Europe. There was a lengthy period at the time in which the criminal gangs… behind this had the opportunity to have this operation set up and really embedded.
‘And that’s the task that this Government now has – to deconstruct that.’
However, her attempt to evade responsibility was met with incredulity. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘The Government has confirmed 50,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the Channel in Labour’s short time in power – the worst crisis in our history.
‘Labour has surrendered our borders, and the consequences are being felt in our communities, from rising crime to shocking cases of rape and sexual assault by recent arrivals. Labour has scrapped Conservative deterrents and created the conditions for chaos, leaving the British people to foot the bill.’
Labour scrapped the Tories’ Rwanda asylum deal – designed to deter migrants from crossing – as one of its first acts, pledging instead to ‘smash the gangs’ by boosting law enforcement.
However, small boat numbers are soaring, with 27,029 arrivals this year, up by 47 per cent on the same point last year and 67 per cent on the same point in 2023.
Since the start of the crisis in 2018, 178,167 migrants have reached Britain, with only about four per cent of them removed.
Yesterday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch insisted she would reduce migrant crossings to zero if the Conservatives regained power. She added: ‘Labour’s plan to smash the gangs was just a slogan. Things are so much worse since Labour came into office.
‘Their one in, one out scheme isn’t going to work, and what we’re seeing is a lot of local communities having to pay the price and bear the brunt of the Government’s incompetence.’
Asked if the Tories would cut the number of crossings to zero, she replied: ‘I think we can. It wouldn’t happen straight away, but it would happen quickly.
‘My team are looking at what we can do in terms of detention centres. But stopping people from coming here in the first place – if they think they’re going to be sent to Rwanda and not get here, get a free hotel, get benefits, then they won’t come here.’
It emerged yesterday that a woman drowned off the French coast as she tried to board a traffickers’ dinghy on Monday.
Thought to be a Somali in her late twenties, she was reportedly unable to get aboard and went into the sea off Dunkirk at 4am. She was brought back to the beach but could not be revived, making her the 19th small-boat migrant to die this year.
The ‘one in, one out’ deal involves small-boat arrivals being sent back to France, with the UK accepting in return an equal number who have legally applied to come through official channels.
