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August 22, 2024 - 1:15pm
Small boat arrivals to the UK fell by almost a third in the last year of Rishi Sunak’s tenure as prime minister, according to statistics published by the Home Office today. In the year ending June 2024, there were reportedly 31,493 small boat arrivals, down 29% on the previous year’s figure of 44,460. The numbers have been released in the same week that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to deport more than 14,500 illegal migrants in the next six months, with the public responding broadly positively to Labour’s immigration plans.
Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly, who was home secretary for most of the period covered by the newly-published statistics, responded to the release this morning by saying: “When I said I was going to cut migration, I meant it,” adding: “It’s not about words, it’s about delivery.”
The new data reveals that there were 38,784 “irregular arrivals” to the UK in the last year, down 26% from the previous year. Of these arrivals, 81% came via small boats, while the average number of people per boat has increased from 44 to 51. The number of people waiting for an initial decision on an asylum application to the UK fell by 32% to 118,882, and the number waiting more than six months for a decision almost halved from a record high of 139,961 in 2023.
There is a caveat to the good news for Sunak, however. Despite the drop over a 12-month period, the number of small boat crossings in the first half of 2024 was actually a fifth higher than in the corresponding period of 2023. So far this year, more than 19,000 migrants have entered the country on small boats.
Shortly after becoming prime minister last month, Keir Starmer confirmed that Labour would not continue the Conservatives’ Rwanda scheme. More recently, the new government has sought to revamp the Home Office’s approach to housing asylum seekers, turning to “homes of multiple occupancy, family properties, former care homes and student accommodation” rather than hotels. Cooper has nonetheless announced her intention to go through with the Tory plans to reopen two immigration detention centres, a decision which has seen her accused of authoritarianism by Labour supporters and compared to Theresa May, who as a Conservative home secretary pursued the “hostile environment” policy.
In the year ending June 2024, the most common nationality arriving by small boat was Afghan, making up 18% of the total. This was followed by Iranian, Vietnamese, Turkish and Syrian. Shortly before July’s general election, Starmer claimed that he would not return Afghan migrants to their home country in order to clear the asylum backlog. Speaking at the same event in June, he described Sunak’s handling of asylum claims as “this absurd situation where there’s just a growing and growing number to which the prime minister has got absolutely no answer”.
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SubscribeMaybe a stupid question, but how many manufacturers / distributors of inflatables with 40+ person capacity are there? I suspect it’s a niche market – perhaps think about tackling the problem from another angle…
Yes. Probably cheaper in the long run to buy every large RIB in the European market than to deal with the consequences of their use in the Channel. Or at least buy enough to force up the price to a prohibitive level.
Many of the dinghies are put together in Turkey by crime syndicates. It’s a bit DIY but high profit. Then taken across Europe. So it’s not quite so simple, although your point is about hitting the Smugglers where it hurts.
It’s worth reading the saga related to the people smuggler – Scorpion. It’s big business – $6k a time the poor souls pay, 40 on a dingy and there you go, a cool quarter mill. Instead of going after these syndicates and organisers we’ve fixated and spent millions on Rwanda. Crackers. What I like about the new approach is extension of anti-terrorism law to cover the smugglers and their syndicates giving law enforcement more power. We need to do more quickly to repair relationships on data sharing etc with EU law enforcement too. This will take a bit of time but we need more Eliot Ness approach to these manipulators, and essentially murderers given how many drown. Go after them much harder than we have been. Last year UK did convict 100 people smugglers but they were more the operatives, or freelancers, not the big money men running the rackets.
A miraculous drop just as the Rwanda deportation scheme looked like it might clear the courts.
Even if it had, and I personally wasn’t against the principle, I just didn’t think it’d make much difference other than an initial blip. You’d have to be moving many thousands there to have a real deterrent effect and assume your marketing on the risk beats the smugglers marketing. Rwanda would have taken a few hundred, milked us, then something would have gone wrong and it got suspended. Sure as ‘eggs is eggs’ and that inevitability meant it was always a mirage.
For once I agree with you. Dominic Cummings has been clear that the plan initially was to get the Navy to stop the small boats landing, but Boris got cold feet. Rwanda was always a decoy – meant to delay any real action & ultimately fail. It’s all horrendously cynical.
I do think a deterrent is needed, however, on top of going after the people-smuggling gangs. Giving out free housing, food, education, medical treatment & cash in hand on top, you’d be silly not to leave the developing world for the uk.
As ex Royal I know the RN would not have pushed the boats back. Helping someone at Sea would not be characterised by that, and RN would have rebelled against it. That’s part of why never happened. Politicians are often macho with how they refer to their Armed Forces way ahead of the operational reality.
Deterrent is aided by rapid processing, maximum returns to Countries where we have that, proper processing centres sized and built – how many could we have built for the £240m we’ve given Rwanda?, and the smuggling network collapsed. The smugglers need to be deterred by knowing we are coming after them like we would a terrorist or terrorist organisation. They are sitting in luxury properties and have much to lose.
Now in truth they’ll still be an issue. Some of the drivers for desperate people trying to migrate aren’t easily solved, but we would have reduced the number and managed it much better.
Any male in the world could become a citizen of Rome in antiquity. All that was required was that you should spend ten years in the legion. If you survived that – and a lot didn’t – you were in and could bring your dependents. Most of those coming are military age young men. We should adopt a similar system.
I’m not too sure those who are v anti-migrant would be too chuffed if we trained them all to use weapons and develop military skills! However I think something about earning citizenship is valid. The question is what that would entail. Currently of course the vast majority of migrants are legal and a work or student visa has been obtained for them. The illegals aren’t allowed to do anything and just languish until processed. We’ve been reluctant to let them work. Of course if processing was quick then issue may not arise but given the backlogs the last few years it’s a serious question.
Turkish, Vietnamese? Are their countries war zones, or pleasant holiday destinations?
Once processed they’ll v likely to be flown back. When you’ve built a backlog of 118k though you have all these stuck somewhere in that number in a hotel somewhere. The backlog went up because more time and energy was focused on Rwanda.
There should be zero small boat arrivals.
Care to suggest how this should be achieved?
Rock I did think URs comment one of the more insightful I read yesterday.
I agree in principle but question how its going to be achieved. Paying the French to stop the boats hasn’t worked, they’re quite happy to see them leave. There’s no effective deterrent for migrants to make the journey and the people-smugglers seem to evade all efforts to disrupt their activity.
Short of the Royal Navy patrolling the channel and turning the boats back I see no easy solutions.
The foot soldiers will still be entering Britain ready for the battle ahead. We can see that from the last general election when their presence was quite notable. It just amazes me that the current liberal Elites cannot see the end story
“81% came via small boats, while the average number of people per boat has increased from 44 to 51.” A boat that can hold 50 illegal immigrants does not seem small to me.