Small boat channel crossings top 5,000 in record start to 2024

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Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” is in tatters after figures confirmed a record quantity of migrants crossed the Channel in the primary three months of 2024.

A complete of 5,435 asylum seekers arrived by way of small boats in the UK this yr, Home Office figures confirmed, a 43 per cent improve from the identical time final yr.

The determine can also be round a fifth increased than the full by this level in 2022, the yr which noticed the very best variety of small boat crossings on record.

The complete variety of arrivals soared over the weekend amid calm climate in the Channel, making it the busiest Easter financial institution vacation weekend for channel crossings on record.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock stated the Conservatives had “overseen an unprecedented level of dangerous Channel crossings this Easter Bank Holiday”.

Mr Kinnock stated: “Over the Christmas break, they were quick to claim credit for the low number of crossings, so where are the home secretary and prime minister now, when we’ve seen almost 800 people arrive in small boats over the Bank Holiday weekend?”

After Christmas, James Cleverly boasted on social media that “there were no small boat arrivals over Christmas for the first time since they started in 2018”.

Mr Kinnock added: “This is complete chaos. It’s time the Tories got a grip.”

The Labour MP known as for the federal government to undertake his celebration’s plan to chase individuals smuggling gangs and arrange a brand new returns and enforcement unit.

Last January Mr Sunak set out his 5 pledges to voters, with one among them being to “stop the boats”.

A key plank of the technique is the scheme to deport asylum seekers  to Rwanda, however the laws to implement that plan was not handed earlier than Easter as a result of friends inflicted a collection of defeats on the federal government and ministers didn’t search to rush it via earlier than Parliament’s recess.

It will now be thought-about by MPs when Parliament resumes on April 15, with the Commons seemingly to undo the most recent adjustments made by the Lords and ship it again to the higher chamber.

The PM has claimed his plan to cease Channel crossings is working, as numbers fell by a 3rd final yr. But critics blamed poorer climate, and have seized on the record start to 2024 as proof the pledge won’t be met.