Up to 50,000 migrants could cross Channel this year
Britain is on course for up to 50,000 migrant crossings this year according to new analysis after daily arrivals topped 1,000 for the first time this year and a new row broke out with the French.
Home Office figures revealed 1,195 migrants arrived in 19 boats on Saturday — the highest daily tally so far this year and the fourth highest figure recorded. The French prevented a further ten boats from entering the water, according to UK government sources.
However, the French rescued only 184 migrants from the sea on Saturday, despite agreeing in February to amend laws to allow police to intercept boats in shallow waters.
Intelligence gathered by Border Force has estimated that more than 2,000 migrants are waiting to make the journey amid forecasts of a 'catastrophic' summer of crossings.
Videos posted on TikTok showed migrants celebrating as they crossed the Channel packed into unseaworthy dinghies.
Saturday's arrivals took the total number to have crossed so far this year to 14,811 — the highest figure recorded for the first five months of the year and 42 per cent higher than this time last year.
Analysis by The Times, using similar modelling as previous Border Force methods to estimate future arrivals, has forecast that a further 35,000 are on course to arrive by the end of the year.
This would take the final tally for 2025 to 50,000 crossings, according to a formula that has accurately predicted monthly crossings in previous years. A Border Force source said it did not recognise this figure and suggested the number would be lower.
John Healey, the defence secretary, branded the scenes on Saturday 'shocking' and showed Britain had 'lost control of its borders'. But he rejected suggestions from Nigel Farage that the government should use the Royal Navy to stop the boats crossing the Channel by intercepting them and returning them to France.
Healey told Times Radio: 'The Royal Navy is a part of defending the country, not policing the borders. They have the equipment to do that job, not a border force job. They'll back up with intelligence, with surveillance, with communications, with operational control and we're willing to play a part where we've got a special contribution to play.
'But the first job of the defence forces is to keep the country safe and that's my job as defence secretary.'
Farage hit back, arguing that the strategy of deploying navy boats to pick up and return migrant boats was effective in Australia when Tony Abbott, the prime minister at the time, instructed the authorities to turn back boats.
The Reform UK leader said: 'I would have thought protecting our borders is the primary task of the Royal Navy. If that's not the job of the Royal Navy then I don't know why he's the defence secretary.
'The idea that the Royal Navy isn't there to defend the borders is ridiculous. If it absolutely comes to it then we'd get the Royal Navy to do what Tony Abbott did when he towed boats back to Indonesia. The whole world went mad but it soon stopped the boats.'
The French have intercepted just 38 per cent of boats this year, down from 45 per cent last year and 47 per cent in 2023. It is the lowest rate since small boats began ferrying migrants to the UK on a regular basis in 2018 and has come despite a three-year, £480 million deal Britain struck with France to help intercept migrants in 2023.
Healey said it was a 'really big problem' that the French authorities were unable to intervene to intercept the boats three months on from agreeing to amend its laws.
Local mayors on the French coast said that police officers often faced dangers when intercepting migrants
GARETH FULLER/PA
Calling on the French to follow through on their pledge, Healey told Sky News: 'They're not doing it, but for the first time we've got the level of co-operation needed, we've got the agreement that they will change the way they work. Our concentration now is to push them to get that into operation, so they can intercept these smugglers and stop these people in the boats, not just on the shore.
'That'll be part of, I hope, dealing with this absolutely intolerable problem.'
The defence secretary said Britain had 'lost control of its borders over the last five years'.
Asked to give his reaction to the numbers that crossed on Saturday, he said: 'Pretty shocking, those scenes. We saw the smugglers launching elsewhere and coming around like a taxi to pick them up.'
Photos have emerged of more than half a dozen French police officers standing by as they watched migrants enter the water to clamber on to boats. One officer was seen taking photos of the scenes on a beach at Gravelines, near Dunkirk.
Local mayors in the region have highlighted the dangers for police on the beaches. Marc Sarpaux, the mayor of Audinghen, west of Calais, said that two officers had been taken to hospital after being pelted with stones by migrants.
Bruno Retailleau, the French interior minister, was silent on the daily record high of migrant crossings. Instead, he posted on social media about Paris Saint-Germain's victory
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