This April, we agreed another deal with France to stop migrants coming across the Channel. The Home Office has explained it is ‘bearing down’ on small boat crossings, and that this latest £662 million deal would ensure ‘enforcement action on beaches and put people smugglers behind bars.’ Over the last Bank Holiday weekend, almost a thousand migrants were recorded as coming across the English Channel. This is regrettable, but there is no alternative. Small boat crossings began at scale in 2018. Since then, the total number of recorded arrivals comes to about 200,000. We have to accept that they are now a fact of life.
In the interests of fairness – the figures could easily be inflammatory – we also don’t record data about what proportion of crimes, or violent crimes, in this country are committed by small boat migrants
There is an immediate human cost to these arrivals. Since 2018, the Migration Observatory estimates that 162 people have died in the Channel. The Migration Observatory maintains it is neutral, but its suspicious interest in migration suggests an agenda. We should treat its figures with caution. Our government has no such bias, and its neutrality is demonstrated by the fact that it produces none at all.
