Small boat crossings up 20% in 2024 despite UK's pledge to smash the gangs

Almost 35,500 asylum seekers have made the journey this year, with a late surge as weather improved

Migrants picked up in the English Channel arrive at Dover, in Kent, south-east England, on December 26. PA

The number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats is set to end the year 20 per cent higher than in 2023 – despite a pledge by Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer to “smash" the people-smuggling gangs.

Official figures show 451 people took to the flimsy boats on Christmas Day, and 407 on Boxing Day after a 10-day period in which there were no crossings. This took the total arrivals for the year to 35,491, compared to 29,437 last year.

More than 150,000 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel since records began in 2018. This year’s figure is, however, lower than in 2022, when there were 45,755 crossings.

More migrants were seen arriving on Boxing Day – December 26 – and although the exact number has not yet been recorded by the UK’s Home Office, an end-of-year surge of “hundreds” making the crossing is being predicted by one organisation that supports asylum seekers in northern France.

Mr Starmer made tackling small boats a key pledge and has promised to “smash the gangs” by stepping up law enforcement measures, including sending officers to Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, which has increasingly become the centre of the international people-smuggling business.

He also ditched his predecessor Rishi Sunak’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda as a deterrent to attempting the crossing. The scheme ran into difficulties in the UK courts, after campaigners successfully argued the African country’s human rights record fell short of international standards.

Migrants attempt to cross the Channel – in pictures

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  Migrants clamber aboard a small boat off the beach at Gravelines, northern France. All photos: PA

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  Dozens of migrants waded into the water at Gravelines and pulled themselves onto the crowded boat on Monday morning

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  Men, women and young children, some wearing life jackets, could be seen walking across the beach

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  Items of clothing were left after people boarded the small boat

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  Migrants leave Gravelines aboard the small boat

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  Some families walked from the sea as others walked out into the water to be picked up by the inflatable boat

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  People are escorted by French police officers as they walk across the beach.

Angele Vettorello, a co-ordinator in the Calais area for the Utopia 56 refugee support organisation, told The National on Friday that hundreds of migrants were going to the bus station in Grande-Synthe, a suburb of the town of Dunkirk, where the main camp housing migrants is located.

“This has been happening since [December] 25 and the weather is now really good,” she said. “These last two days have been really busy because there’s no wind and waves.”

Ms Vettorello said that despite the UK government’s promise to tackle people smuggling gangs, there appears to be no reduction in the numbers willing to make the perilous crossing. “The UK government – and also the French – are spending millions on security, but the fact is that the number is not decreasing,” she said.

“As a state you cannot just put the pressure on smugglers and gangs and hope to get a response without a humanitarian response, for example such as safe passages for refugees. The people are still there in the camps and we’re talking about families as well, with babies and children.”

As The National reported this year, one effect of clamping down on people smugglers was to reduce the supply of boats, resulting in more migrants cramming on to each vessel. This has been linked to the increasing number of deaths in the English Channel.

Though the break in the weather has led to the recent increase in crossings, the Labour government – which was elected in July – is claiming that, overall, it has begun to break the link between calm days in the Channel and migrants taking to the boats. These so-called “red days” are when low wind and waves make it safer to cross to the UK, so more boats set off.

The average number of arrivals each red day was 262.8 for July to December 23, compared with 360.8 in the final six months of last year, 383.8 in 2022 and 286.2 in 2021, Home Office figures show.

This decrease comes despite their being more “red days” in the six months since the government came to office than the same period in 2022 and last year.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that "by scrapping the Rwanda deterrent before it started, Labour has let us down" and added there had been a 20 per cent increase in arrivals since the election.

People smuggler Barzan Majeed was tracked down in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Photo: National Crime Agency

He pointed out that Australia's scheme for sending asylum seekers to Nauru, an island republic in Oceania, to process their claims, on which the Rwanda plan was based, had succeeded in cutting numbers. “It is an insult that Labour has allowed 858 illegal immigrants into the country on Christmas Day and Boxing Day," Mr Philp said.

The UK and Iraq last month agreed on a “world-first” deal to tackle gangs based in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region that run people-smuggling operations across Europe that result in the small boat Channel crossings.

It came as members of a smuggling gang were sentenced to prison terms of up to 15 years by a court in Lille, France. Another key player, Barzan Majeed – known as Scorpion – was detained this year in Sulaymaniyah, north-eastern Iraq, where he had fled after being sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court in Belgium.

A Home Office source said the previous Conservative government had "left an appalling legacy of broken border security" and that the Labour administration was "fixing the foundations with a new Border Security Command, 100 new specialist investigators, and new agreements with Europe and beyond to break up the business models of the evil criminal gangs making millions from small boat crossings".

“We are increasing removals of those with no right to be here and are clamping down on illegal working," said the source.