Deaths in the English Channel are expected to rise to “devastating” new highs over the coming months, with charities and experts warning that Labour’s action against smugglers could trigger increasingly dangerous methods to launch boats.
A record of 43 people have died attempting to cross the Channel this year, 35 of them at sea, with six children and a pregnant woman among 12 people who drowned in a disaster on Tuesday.
Humanitarian groups are continuing to call for the government to establish safe and legal routes to provide an alternative to the deadly crossings, but the Observer understands the government’s sole focus is on efforts to “smash the gangs”.
A Home Office source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been “no talk” of developing new refugee schemes or humanitarian visas within the department, adding: “They are hoping they won’t need to legislate on safe and legal routes, or change the current asylum law.”
Polling by Focaldata for the British Future thinktank this year found that half the British public would support the creation of visas to allow asylum seekers to travel safely to the UK and reduce demand for small boats.
But ministers have not brought forward any proposals to reduce that demand since the election, instead working to set up a new Border Security Command linking different law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Keir Starmer said he was “absolutely convinced” that disrupting smuggling gangs was the best way to tackle the crisis after a summit on irregular migration held at the National Crime Agency’s headquarters on Friday.
More than 22,000 people have reached the UK in small boats so far this year, with the figure slightly up on 2023 but 20% below the same period in 2022, when crossings were at an all-time high.
Amélie Moyart, of French charity Utopia 56, said there were still thousands of people waiting to board boats on the northern French coast, despite increased police enforcement on beaches and action to reduce the supply of dinghies.
A UK Border Forcce vessel carrying migrants picked up at sea arrives at Dover on 7 September, days after 12 people perished trying to cross the Channel in a dinghy. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
“There’s still a lot of demand but there’s less boats, which means there are more people in each one, and it’s more difficult to put a boat in the sea,” she said.
“All the enforcement the French and English are putting in place, it’s not a solution, it’s just making people take more and more risk and making the crossing more dangerous.”
Moyart said that while the inflatable vessels used are no bigger this year, the average number of people loaded on by smugglers had risen from around 40 to “60 at least”, sometimes rising to 80.
In April, more than 100 people tried to board one dinghy from a beach in Wimereux while fleeing French police firing tear gas. Five people died, including a seven-year-old girl.
Moyart said that some of those victims were crushed, and that cases of people suffocating inside boats were first seen late last year because of overloading.
“We are concerned because the only thing we have heard from the UK and French governments is they want to keep doing work against the smugglers, and this will mean people taking more and more risks,” she added.
“It will not stop the crossings because they do not have another solution. If the government wants to save lives they need to create safe routes for people to seek asylum – that is the only way to stop what is happening currently.”
Moyart said that worsening weather conditions in the Channel and cooling sea temperatures would make crossings increasingly dangerous over the coming months, adding: “Almost every time there is a good window for the weather this year, we have seen a shipwreck. If it continues in the winter it could be devastating.”
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Several Conservative politicians, including former prime minister Boris Johnson, have sought to suggest the new government’s decision to scrap the Rwanda plan was driving up crossings because it removed a “deterrent”.
But experts told the Observer there was no evidence that the Rwanda policy had ever had a deterrent effect, and that fewer small-boat migrants had arrived since the general election than in the same two-month period in either 2022 or 2023.
Dr Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, said: “There’s no real evidence of a shift so far, either upwards or downwards, in response to the new government. It very much looks like business as usual.
“Enforcement on its own can have an impact, but it’s unlikely to be a magic bullet.”
Dr Walsh said the Observatory had also chronicled smugglers changing their behaviour in response to increasing security along the French coast, including by loading more people onto each boat and launching them from points further from the UK.
Forget ‘stop the boats’, Starmer wants to ‘smash the gangs’ – but will it work?
He said that although safe and legal routes or increasing refugee resettlement could reduce demand, they would have to be “sufficiently expansive” and smugglers would still be used by ineligible people.
Marley Morris, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, said that the “very fragmented and adaptable criminal network” in northern France was resilient to enforcement.
“If you do make progress on taking out some of the key players, the network can quickly respond,” he added. “If you close off routes, they can find new ones.
“The most effective way to tackle small boats is in combination with other things like safe and legal routes, and cooperation with the EU.”
