More than 2,100 migrants have crossed the English Channel in 58 small boats this month alone, Home Office figures reveal – as a total of 263 were intercepted yesterday
- Ministry of Defence says 263 migrants intercepted yesterday in seven incidents
- Strong weather conditions Wednesday made it too rough for the 21-mile journey
- The total number of migrants to arrive this year is 6,693 in a total of 204 boats
More than 2,100 migrants have made it across the perilous English Channel in small boats so far this month, according to official figures.
The Ministry of Defence today revealed that a total of 263 were intercepted on Tuesday in seven different incidents, taking the total so far in April to 2,143 in 58 small boats.
Strong weather conditions meant it was too rough to make the 21-mile crossing of the Dover Straits on Wednesday, although some boats are thought to have been picked up by French authorities.
The latest figures mean the total number of migrants to arrive so far this year is 6,693 in 204 boats.
Some 1,425 of these have made it across since the Royal Navy took over control of migrant operations in the Channel on April 14.
A total of 28,526 migrants crossed the Channel in 2021 – significantly higher than the 8,410 who arrived in 2020.
Members of the Border Force escorted migrants back to Dover after they were picked up in the English Channel Tuesday morning
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, following a small boat incident in the Channel Tuesday
Minister for Justice and Tackling Illegal Migration, Tom Pursglove MP, has said: ‘The rise in dangerous Channel crossings is unacceptable.
‘Not only are they an overt abuse of our immigration laws but they also impact on the UK taxpayer, risk lives and our ability to help refugees come to the UK via safe and legal routes.
‘Rightly, the British public has had enough.
‘Through our Nationality and Borders Bill, we’re cracking down on people smugglers and fixing the broken system by making it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introducing a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for those who facilitate illegal entry into our country.’
It comes after hundreds of migrants were pictured arriving by boat to Kent on Tuesday.
The first migrants arrived in the early hours of the morning – with around 30 people reaching the Dover Harbour in a dinghy at around 4.30am.
A second dinghy carrying approximately 50 migrants – including several small children and babies – was intercepted by UK officials shortly before 9am.
Among them were at least three babies and a young child, who could be seen wrapped in warm coats and cradled by adults as they were brought to shore on board Border Force cutter Valiant.
Border Force vessel Typhoon escorted a third group to shore just after midday, while Navy ship HMS Tyne could be seen retrieving dinghies from the Channel around 2.30pm.
It comes after the Easter bank holiday weekend saw more than 500 migrants arrive in the UK – despite Navy vessels patrolling the waters.
According to official figures released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), 181 people were intercepted on Good Friday, while 255 reached British soil in seven boats on Saturday.
Easter Sunday saw 76 people arrive at Dover Harbour, and on Monday 88 people were escorted to shore by UK officials.
Theresa May and Tory backbenchers line up to savage Priti Patel’s £120m scheme to send Channel migrants to Rwanda – as Home Secretary defends ‘innovative’ plan to break ‘evil’ people smuggling gangs
- Former PM Theresa May questions whether the plan is legal or whether it will work
- She suggests the £120m scheme will increase trafficking of women and children
- But Home Secretary Priti Patel defends the ‘innovative’ plans in the Commons
- She says action is needed to end the exploitation of migrants by smuggling gangs
ByDavid Wilcock, Deputy Political Editorand Greg Heffer, Political Correspondent For Mailonline
Former Prime Minister Theresa May today lambasted the Government’s Rwanda migrant removal plans as she questioned whether the £120m scheme was legal.
The ex-premier, who before entering Downing Street was the longest-serving home secretary of modern times, led a House of Commons backlash against the policy.
Taking her successor Priti Patel to task, Mrs May told MPs: ‘From what I have heard and seen so far of this policy, I do not support the removal to Rwanda policy on the grounds of legality, practical and efficacy.’
The former Tory leader also quizzed Ms Patel on whether only young men would be subject to removal from Britain to Rwanda.
She asked: ‘I understand that those who will be removed will only be young men… but if it is the case that families will not be broken up… does she not believe, and where is her evidence, that this will not simply lead in an increase in the trafficking of women and children?’
In response, Ms Patel stressed the Rwanda plan ‘is legal’ but declined to comment on who or who wouldn’t be eligible for removal from the UK.
She said Mrs May ‘would know very well that it’s that type of criteria that is used by the smuggling gangs to then effectively exploit various loopholes’.
Ex-PM Theresa May told MPs she did not support the Rwanda plan ‘on the grounds of legality, practical and efficacy’
Home Secretary Priti Patel told MPs that ‘innnovative’ action was needed due to the profiteering of ‘evil’ people traffickers operating in the Channel
Mrs May’s fellow former Cabinet minister, Andrew Mitchell, also questioned whether Ms Patel’s plan would prove effective.
He said the Home Secretary deserved ‘great personal credit’ for seeking to tackle the migration crisis in the Channel.
But Mr Mitchell added: ‘Will she accept that many of us have grave concerns that the policy she has announced simply will not work?’
The Home Secretary had earlier told MPs that ‘innnovative’ action was needed due to the profiteering of ‘evil’ people traffickers operating in the Channel.
‘Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not on the ability to pay people smugglers,’ Ms Patel told the House of Commons in a statement.
‘Change is needed because people are dying attempting to come to the UK on illegal and dangerous routes.’
Ms Patel dismissed claims that Home Office officials had failed to back her plans or ruled the scheme did not represent value for money.
She declared that ministers were required to take ‘tough decisions in the interests of our country’ and that the ‘global migration crisis’ required ‘innovative and international solutions’.
The £120million, five-year programme to send thousands of illegal economic migrants who arrive in the UK to the east African nation was announced last week.
It has faced strong pushback from civil and religious leaders, and today Boris Johnson was castigated by a hardline Brexiteer today for using the EU split to justify it.
Unveiling the agreement with Kigali last week, Mr Johnson invoked the referendum pledge of ‘taking back control’ of the UK’s borders, saying it was an ‘innovative approach made possible by Brexit freedoms’.
But writing in the Times today, former Brexit minister David Davis said ‘we are better than this’, adding: ‘The plan is fraught with practical problems, beset by moral dilemmas and hamstrung by extortionate costs.
‘And outsourcing our international obligations are certainly not the freedoms that Brexit was about winning.’
He said that while it was ‘laudable’ to try to cut down on cross-Channel migrants, ‘there is little evidence that outsourcing our obligations under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees is going to break the people smugglers’ business model’.
It came as the Church of England opposition to the plan grew with Priti Patel’s local bishop joining the chorus of disapproval.
After church leaders including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York became embroiled in a row with ministers at the weekend, The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Rt Rev Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani said it was ‘cruel and inhumane’.
Dr Francis-Dehqani, who arrived in the UK as a refugee from Iran in the 1970s, said: ‘Those who find their way to this country, often through treacherous means, deserve to have their cases considered and processed here.’
Former Brexit minister David Davis attacked the £120m scheme to send those arriving illegally in Britain to the African nation, saying ‘we are better than this’.
Writing in the Times today, Mr David, who has become a backbench critic of Mr Johnson, said: ‘The plan is fraught with practical problems, beset by moral dilemmas and hamstrung by extortionate costs.
Unveiling the five-year agreement with Kigali last week, Mr Johnson invoked the referendum pledge of ‘taking back control’ of the UK’s borders, saying it was an ‘innovative approach made possible by Brexit freedoms’.
Migrants travelling to the UK on small boats will be put on jets and sent to Rwanda while their applications are processed. Pictured: A map detailing the plan proposed by the Prime Minister
Former immigration minister Brandon Lewis defended the Rwanda immigration plan as the ‘humanitarian thing to do’.
The Northern Ireland Secretary told BBC Breakfast this morning: ‘I’ve been immigration minister, this is a really difficult area.
‘There are horrible scenes and stories of what these people smugglers put these people through.
‘We’ve got to break this business model and doing something like this with Rwanda, which has such a strong track record, is right for the people of the UK, who can be rightly proud of our humanitarian support because this is a humanitarian thing to do.
‘It is ensuring that we are deterring people from taking a treacherous as well as illegal journey to the UK.’
Asked about civil servants reportedly having raised objections to the scheme over its possible cost, Mr Lewis said: ‘I do think it will work.’
Former archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams yesterday became the latest high-profile ecclesiastical leader to attack the £120million programme that would see economic migrants arriving in the Uk illegally sent to Africa.
He joined his successor and the incumbent Archbishop Justin Welby, and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell in questioning the morality of the plan, labelling it ‘sinful’.
However ministers have hit back at the church leaders, accusing them of throwing criticism without suggesting a viable alternative to halt the small boats carrying thousands of people across the Straits of Dover.
Dr Williams was today asked about the scheme in a Times Radio interview. ‘Is the policy sinful? I think, in a word, yes,’ he told the broadcaster.
‘I think that without commenting on the motivation, or moral standing, of any individual involved, the policy itself seems to me to be not in accord with, with what I understand about God.’
Archbishop Justin yesterday used his Easter Sunday sermon to launch a scathing criticism of Home Secretary Priti Patel’s deal, signed in Kigali last week.
On Sunday morning, the Archbishop told his Canterbury congregation that the UK has a duty as a ‘Christian country’ to not ‘sub-contract our responsibilities’ after anyone who arrived in Britain illegally since January 1 could be relocated to Rwanda under a new deal.
But it sparked a hardline response from Ms Patel and other ministers, who invited him to come up with with a better idea or stop carping from the sidelines. Ms Patel resurrected the row on Easter Monday, using an opinion piece in the Times to attack her critics.
Dr Williams was today asked about the scheme in a Times Radio interview. ‘Is the policy sinful? I think, in a word, yes,’ he told the broadcaster.
The Archbishop of Canterbury (pictured today) blasted the government’s Rwanda plan for asylum seekers as the ‘opposite of the nature of God’
Without naming the head of the Church of England in a joint article with Rwandan foreign minister Vincent Biruta, she wrote: ‘We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions.’
Minister Greg Hands was even more direct on a round of interviews today. Asked about Welby’s intervention he told Sky News: ”I think what others, the critics of this plan, need to do is to show what their solution would be.’
The Government has said the £120million, five-year plan would help to break people-smuggling networks and stem the flow of migrants across the Channel, which has faced immediate and heavy criticism from politicians and charities.
It would see economic migrants who arrive in the Uk illegally handed a one-way ticket to Rwanda to start a new life there .
Mr Welby said the ‘serious’ ethical questions’ over sending asylum seekers abroad cannot ‘stand the judgment of god’.
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