Home Secretary hails work with French to stop small boat crossings
The Home Secretary has hailed the UK’s co-operation with France after reports that authorities are using nets in the sea to try and prevent small boats crossing the Channel.
The Sun On Sunday reported that French police have been laying nets in the water which could jam boat propellers, in an attempt to reduce the number of crossings.
It comes after reports on Friday that French police officers had used knives to puncture a boat off the coast.
Intervention
The Government has repeatedly pushed for French authorities to do more to prevent boats leaving the shore, including changing existing rules to allow police officers to intervene when dinghies are in the water.
The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said that “no-one should be making these small boat journeys across the Channel, which undermine our border security and put lives at risk”.
She said that working with the French is “vital to stop boats crossing in the first place”, and added: “Over the last few months we have been working together on new ways to crack down on the criminal gang operations, with the French now bringing in important new tactics to stop boats that are in the water.
“We need to stop at nothing to boost our border security and deliver our plan for change.”
There were no crossings on Saturday according to the Home Office, after more than 500 people made the journey on Friday.
Progress
Earlier this week, the tally pushed past 20,000 for 2025, the earliest point this has happened in a calendar year since data started being recorded in 2018.
The total for 2025 currently sits at 21,117, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office data.
Sir Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron are set to discuss immigration when they hold a summit later this week.
The Prime Minister will meet Mr Macron when he travels to the UK for a state visit.
The two leaders spoke on Saturday, and said they hoped to make “good progress” on the matter in their talks expected on Thursday.
Issuing a readout of their conversation, a Downing Street spokesperson said: “Turning to the UK-France summit on Thursday, they hoped to make good progress across a wide range of our joint priorities including migration, growth, defence and security.”
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Let’s wait a few months and then check. We have heard this before.
The only alternative to rejoining the Dublin regulation, the leaving of which started the small boat crossings, is to pay France to process asylum claims on behalf of the UK and accept all the refugees that France decides are genuinely fleeing war and persecution. That way anyone arriving in the UK by small boat can be legitimately returned to France for processing.
There were crossings before that by lorry and container, boat crossings increased as a natural progression from boats to Italy and Greece, if Dublin agreement working why is Poland under Tusk sending 5000 troops to German and Lithuania border? Next week.
The difference is the 26 miles of water they have to cross. That’s what made Dublin uniquely useful to the UK. Crossing a land border to try your luck in another EU country is one thing but who’d pay all that extra money and risk their lives on the busiest shipping lane in the world if they could be immediately returned to the first safe European country for processing and not even end up in the country they reached. And this is new crossings because between 2011 and when Johnson took us out in 2020, asylum claims were stable at… Read more »
Where ate the safe methods to claim asylum. These crossings happen due to brexit and lack of prep for the aftermath by those who created the mess.This nonsense is just pandering to the right, without decent long term proposals. Labour hates the left now.