Small boat crossings under Labour have surged past 50,000 – equivalent to one migrant arriving every 11 minutes, official figures are set to reveal.
The milestone underscores the failure of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘smash the gangs’ strategy, which critics have long insisted will not work without an effective deterrent for the migrants themselves.
Official figures from yesterday suggested 49,797 had crossed in small boats from northern France. However the figure is expected to pass 50,000 when official data is released later today.
The crossings continued this morning, with extraordinary pictures from Gravelines in northern France showing dozens of migrants rushing into the sea towards an overloaded dinghy. Migrants in lifejackets were later seen being brought ashore at Dover.
Asked about the passing of the 50,000 milestone, Labour education minister Baroness Jacqui Smith of Malvern called it ‘unacceptable’ – only to then blame the previous Conservative government.
She told BBC Breakfast: ‘It is an unacceptable number of people. It sort of demonstrates the way over the last six or seven years that the criminal gangs have got an absolute foothold in the tragic trafficking of people across the Channel.’
The 50,000 figure has been reached after just 401 days under Sir Keir compared to 603 for Mr Sunak. The Labour leader scrapped his predecessor’s Rwanda scheme as one of his first acts in office.
Earlier this morning, one attempted crossing ended in tragedy when a young woman tried to board a boat but fell off and drowned, according to French media. The woman, believed to be Somalian and aged between 25 and 30, is the 19th migrant to die in the Channel this year.
Before entering Government, Labour had promised to ‘smash the gangs’ to bring numbers down.
The problem had plagued Mr Sunak’s government, which had struck an agreement with Rwanda to send asylum seekers there to have their claims processed.
However it was cancelled under the incoming Labour Government, after only a handful of migrants had gone to the central African country voluntarily.
Ms Cooper claimed the Tories had spent £700 million on it.
Labour’s ‘one in, one out’ deal with France became operational last Wednesday but has done nothing to slow the record number of arrivals.
Earlier today, Lady Smith told Sky News that Ms Cooper has a tough job to tackle the gangs as she placed responsibility on Mr Sunak and his former ministers.
‘I think it’s tough because the last government enabled this hideous criminal activity to really get its roots into across Europe,’ Lady Smith said.
But speaking yesterday during a visit to Epping – which has been the centre of anti-asylum seeker hotel protests – Tory leader Kemi Badenoch insisted Labour were a soft touch.
‘Not everyone here is a genuine asylum seeker. People are arriving in our country illegally,’ she said.
‘That is why we have a plan to make sure that people who arrive here illegally are deported immediately.
‘We need to close down that pathway to citizenship that means that lots of people get here not making any contributions, claiming welfare, claiming benefits. We also need a deterrent.’
During her visit, Mrs Badenoch warned that some communities ‘don’t feel safe’. Speaking about the possibility of putting asylum seekers in camps, she said: ‘We need to make sure that communities like Epping are safe.
‘What a lot of the parents – the mothers and even some of the children – have said to me is that they don’t feel safe.
‘It is unfair to impose this burden on communities… lots of people here have been talking about being harassed by a lot of people in the hotels.’
The Labour Government has previously set out its intention to close asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament.
But Mrs Badenoch warned that things were likely to get worse as Labour tried to move people out of hotels and into private accommodation.
She also rounded on Sir Keir’s pledge to deport foreign criminals, pointing out that he tried to stop flights when the Tories were in power.
She questioned Labour’s plans to remove foreign offenders from the UK, saying the Prime Minister had previously condemned the practice.
Labour has announced plans to deport foreign criminals as soon as they are sentenced, and before they can appeal, to free up much-needed space in prisons.
She said: ‘When we were deporting criminals, Keir Starmer was writing letters trying to stop our deportations, so I’ll believe it when I see it. This is the sort of stuff they should have been doing on day one. The fact that they tried to stop deportations before means I don’t really believe it.
‘The Government has released 26,000 prisoners since they came to power, released them early, there are now more criminals on our streets, that’s what I’m really worried about.’
In 2020, Sir Keir, then a shadow minister, wrote to then prime minister Boris Johnson calling for charter flights from the UK to Jamaica to be suspended.
He co-signed the letter saying he had ‘grave concern’ over the Home Office plans to deport 50 people to Jamaica by charter flight on February 11, 2020.
