Ministers face renewed pressure over boat crossings

Ministers are facing renewed pressure to tackle boat crossings in the Channel after six migrants died when a vessel sank off the French coast on Saturday.

Labour said people smugglers were “running rings” around the government, while a Tory backbencher said the UK had a “moral duty to act”.

The government has made “stopping the boats” one of its five priorities.

Investigations continue into Saturday’s incident in which 59 people were rescued.

Earlier reports suggested two people were still missing but the search has now been stood down after authorities said all people had been accounted for.

The overloaded vessel, which got into difficulty and capsized 12 miles (20km) off Sangatte, was said to be one of a number of migrant vessels which set off on Saturday in the hope of reaching the UK.

On the same day, French coast guards rescued 54 others from a different migrant boat after it capsized 6 miles (10km) off the coast of Calais. They were brought to the port of Dunkirk.

Shadow cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson said criminal gangs were “running rings” around the government claiming it was because the asylum backlog is “completely out of control”.

She accused the government of presiding over a home office which was “increasingly shambolic and completely incompetent”

“There is a total failure to do the basics: process cases, get decisions made as quickly as possible and then you can take action. If people don’t have a right to be in this country and for those that do you can make sure that they’re allowed to get on and live the rest of their lives happily,” she told BBC Breakfast.

Calls for action have also come from within the Conservative Party. Backbench MP and ex-party chairman Sir Jake Berry said “only radical changes can truly turn the tide”.

Writing in the Sunday Express, he said: “We have a moral duty, both to our own citizens and those asylum seekers, to act.”

He called for the UK to leave the European Convention of Human Rights, which he claimed would continue to block “any and all attempts to stop the boats”.

Refugee charity Care4Calais said the incident was an “appalling and preventable tragedy”, while the Refugee Council warned “more people will die” unless more safe routes to the UK are created.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who chaired a meeting with UK Border Force officials on Saturday, said the deaths were a “tragic loss of life”.

The new Illegal Migration Bill, spearheaded by Ms Braverman, is central to the government’s plans to stop small boats crossing the Channel. It places a legal duty on the home secretary to detain and remove anyone entering the UK illegally.

Conservative minister David TC Davies says the government has already stopped “a lot” of boats and insisted the controversial Rwanda policy was a solution. He said it would “take away the incentive to jump into rickety boats”.

The policy, which is currently stuck in a court battle, would see people who arrive in the UK illegally sent to Rwanda to claim asylum.

The government is also planning a new agreement with France, under which the UK will pay £500m over three years to fund more patrol officers and a new detention centre.

French authorities have in the past pointed to the English Channel’s long coast line making it extremely difficult for the coastguard to prevent all small boat crossings.

On Saturday, 509 people made the journey across the Channel to the UK, government figures show, bringing this year’s total to 16,679. More than 100,000 migrants have crossed in small boats since 2018.

The English Channel is one of the most dangerous and busiest shipping lanes in the world, with 600 tankers and 200 ferries passing through it every day.

French authorities said the migrant boat was first detected by a commercial vessel, before a French patrol boat was dispatched to the boat in distress.

French sea minister Hervé Berville said: “While we mourn these victims… it is the responsibility of human traffickers – of criminals – who send young people, women, adults, to their death on these maritime routes that are dangerous and lethal.”

Investigators are looking for any information that might lead them to the smuggling gang which organised the crossing.

According to rescued migrants, 65 or 66 migrants had been on board the boat.

One of the volunteer rescuers told the Reuters news agency migrants were using shoes to bail water out of the sinking boat.

Many of the migrants on board are believed to have come from Afghanistan, and others from Sudan. It also understood children were among them.

Aid workers in Calais have say more migrants have been arriving in recent weeks and have been living rough on the coastline. They say many of them are determined to get to the UK, despite warnings over the dangers of the crossing.

The pressure on the ministers follows criticism after 39 asylum seekers had to be moved off the Bibby Stockholm barge due to the discovery of Legionella bacteria in the water supply.