Channel migrants; now target the people smuggling gangs – Bill Carmichael

So I imagine the air in the Home Office has regularly been turned blue as she has repeatedly tried, and so far failed, to solve the problem of rising numbers of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats organised by people smuggling gangs.

On Monday a daily record of at least 420 people arrived on our shores bringing the total this year to more than 8,000, which is more than arrived in the whole of 2020.

Patel’s solution is to try and persuade the French authorities to do more to stop the boats setting off in the first place, as once they are at sea the UK Border Force simply escorts them to British ports like a glorified taxi service.

And British taxpayers are paying handsomely to get the French authorities to do their job. Patel handed over £28.2m last November, which failed to stop the rising numbers, and this week she announced another £54.2m deal, which critics said was “throwing good money after bad”.

The money will be used to double the number of police patrolling French beaches and fund improved intelligence sharing and better technology to target the smuggling gangs.

To be fair the French are intercepting more boats – more than 6,000 this year alone, compared to 2,100 in the whole of 2021, according to Border Force director general Paul Lincoln.

The trouble is more boats are setting off, and they are dispersed along a huge stretch of the French coast, rather than being concentrated on Calais, which means they are harder to stop. It is a problem that is not going to go away in the near future.

Of course we have a responsibility to offer asylum to persecuted people and we should have compassion for those fleeing war and torture.

But that is the important point – these people are not fleeing war and torture, they are fleeing France, which is a perfectly safe country. The asylum system is designed to offer people a place of safety in the first available country, not a world tour of desirable destinations.

And the cost of a place in one of the smuggling boats is about £3,000, which means the people coming across are comparatively rich, and by crossing illegally they are also jumping the queue in front of other would be migrants who might have a stronger case to claim asylum.

What is happening in the Channel is not about compassion – it is about money. The smuggling gangs are making vast fortunes from what is an evil trade. They pack migrants onto rickety boats without caring if they capsize and people drown.

With an average of 22 passengers per boat, a single trip can net the smugglers a profit of more than £60,000.

What I cannot understand is why more is not done to combat these gangs. They openly advertise their trade on social media, so they should not be difficult to track down. If more of the people smugglers were arrested and prosecuted, and their assets confiscated, it might make more of a dent in the numbers coming over.

One thing is certain. Until the smugglers are shut down, this exploitative trade will continue and the numbers coming over on small boats will continue to rise.

Patel has admitted the current asylum system is “broken” and has pledged to replace it with a “firm but fair” system, and she has also said she would “break the business model” of the people smugglers.

To this end she has introduced a Bill into Parliament that will create a new criminal offence of knowingly arriving in the UK without permission and introduce maximum life sentences of those convicted of people smuggling. It will 
be debated by MPs and peers later this year.

But even if this becomes law there will be no quick fix, and we can expect the migrant numbers to continue to rise, especially during the summer months when the sea is calmer and warmer.

Priti Patel may be one tough woman, but she has got her work cut out to make any progress on this intractable problem.

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