Home Office Stops Publishing Data on Blocked Channel Crossings After Talks With France

A Border Force vessel brings in a group of illegal migrants following a small boat incident in the English Channel in Dover, Kent, on Feb. 25, 2024. (Gareth Fuller/PA Media)

The government has paused publishing the number of migrants stopped from illegally crossing the English Channel in small boats “after consultation with the French.”

The move ended the recently applied practice of releasing data on illegal small boat crossings by the UK Border Force and the Home Office.

Over the weekend, the government reported the number of migrants who had been successfully blocked from crossing the Channel alongside the number of those arriving in the UK. However, an official statement on Wednesday, said that the practice will be paused “until further notice.”

“We will continue to publish daily statistics on small boat arrivals, by individuals and boats. We will provide further updates on the publication of prevention data as soon as possible,” the government added.

Figures

Between April 29 and May 4, 759 crossings have been prevented. According to the Home Office, these figures were “estimates” and prone to “measurement error.”

The statistics included people who were blocked from leaving the French shores or returned to France. However, it remained unclear whether this included migrants on repeat attempts to cross the Channel.

On the latest reported day, when crossings were detected—May 7—116 migrants embarked on the journey to reach the UK. Since the beginning of the month, a total of 1,223 migrants entered Britain on 24 boats.

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In the first four months of the year, 7,567 migrants were detected crossing to the UK. This compares to 5,946 people in the same period last year.

A Home Office spokesperson has previously said that French authorities stopped 26,000 people from reaching UK shores last year.

“We continue to work closely with French police who are facing increasing violence and disruption on their beaches as they work tirelessly to prevent these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary journeys,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Rwanda Scheme

The government said that the “unacceptable” number of people who continue to cross the Channel demonstrates the importance of the Rwanda bill, meant to deter small boats crossings.

The Rwanda legislation was passed last month by Parliament and greenlights government plans to deport illegal immigrants to the African nation. Since the bill aimed at getting deportation flights to Rwanda off the ground received Royal Assent on Apr. 25, 2,123 illegal immigrants arrived in the UK, according to provisional figures released by the Home Office.

Hours after the Rwanda asylum bill was greenlighted by Parliament, five people including a child died, while attempting to make the journey across the Channel.

French officials said that the boat, carrying 112 migrants, was overloaded and experienced engine difficulties. As a result a number of people fell into the water and died.

Downing Street said that the Rwanda deportation scheme will break the business model of people smuggling gangs and end risk to people’s lives.

Last week, Britain relocated a failed asylum seeker to Rwanda, under a voluntary removals programme, but it’s yet to start shipping out those whose cases are deemed inadmissible because they arrived illegally from a safe third country, such as France, on or after March 7, 2023.

The opposition, on the other hand, led by Sir Keir Starmer doesn’t believe that the Rwanda plan will work and had indicated plans to ditch the scheme if Labour comes to power.

In its ambition to reform the asylum system, Labour wants to recruit over 1,000 Home Office caseworkers to clear the asylum backlog, and a further 1,000 staff for a new returns unit. This would ensure that people who don’t have a right to stay in the UK can be quickly removed.

Labour has also vowed to save taxpayers’ money, by ending the use of hotels for illegal immigrants within 12 months, and setting up a new returns unit for safe countries.