Suspected migrant dinghy evades French patrol vessels
Migrants sprinted through water to board a Britain-bound dinghy as the shocking scale of the small boats crisis was laid bare today. Dozens were videoed desperately running and wading through the shallows before setting off across the English Channel.
The extraordinary scenes came as Sir Keir Starmer announced his latest attempt to curb numbers and the United Nations said the UK will have Europe’s biggest “population boom” this century because of mass migration. Sir Keir said a new deal with Germany will help “smash” people smuggling gangs.
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Migrants run across the beach in Gravelines, France (Image: PA)
Read more: I was in the room when Starmer announced new migrant deal with Macron
The Prime Minister and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz sealed the “friendship treaty” which includes a pledge by Germany to make people smuggling to Britain a criminal offence by the end of the year.
It comes a week after Sir Keir struck a “one in, one out” migrant return deal with Emmanuel Macron of France.
The small boats, which have crossed in record numbers this year, embark from French beaches.
However, Germany is a transit country for migrants hoping to reach Britain and has emerged as a storage hub for boats, engines and life jackets used by migrants in taxi boats.
Under German law, people smuggling into non-EU countries is currently not a crime.
Sir Keir is under massive pressure to curb the number of migrant crossings which is on record pace this year with more than 22,000 arrivals so far.
There have been more than 44,000 arrivals in the 12 months since Labour came to power and 2,500 in July alone.
Pictures and video footage showed dozens of migrants at Gravelines beach in northern France on Thursday morning.
French authorities in an inflatable boat out at sea approached the overcrowded dinghy, passing those on board lifejackets.
No police were seen on the beach when the groups of people came out of the sand dunes and attempted to board the black inflatable boat.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp, said of the new deal with Germany: “This is just more of the same tired, headline-chasing from Keir Starmer.
“He’s scrambling to stay relevant with yet another gimmick, but this latest press release is not a plan but a distraction.
“Starmer is weak and capitulates on the world stage. He talks tough but delivers nothing. Meanwhile, the crisis in the Channel continues to spiral. This year is already the worst on record for small boat arrivals, with over 22,000 people crossing, and it’s getting worse under Labour’s watch.”
Migrant crossing numbers (Image: PA)
Migrants wading through the sea (Image: PA)
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay and we will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
“That is why this government has put together a serious plan to take down these networks at every stage.
According to the United Nations World Population Prospects report, Britain’s population will rise from 69.6 million to 74.3 million by 2100 - an increase of 6.8% - largely fuelled by legal and illegal immigration.
It said UK population growth is predicted to continue at a minimum of more than 100,000 a year until 2099.
Without immigration, the report said the UK’s population would be less than 50 million.
The UK is one of just a handful of European countries whose population will increase over the time period.
Luxembourg will see the highest increase, at 10%, while France's population will grow by 2.8 %.
The populations of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland will all fall.
The UN data does not explicitly map where migrants have come from, but immigration is expected to continue along existing trends.
The last census said that India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania and Ireland were the most common countries of birth among UK migrants.
Earlier this year the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the arrival of 10 million immigrants within a decade was projected to bring Britain’s population to 72.5 million.
The figures projected a population growth of 7.3% between 2022 and 2032, compared with an increase of 6.1% over the previous ten years.
At the time Sir Keir said that he wanted to bring down “staggeringly high migration numbers”.
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, said that the numbers were a “complete betrayal by our political class”.
Sir Keir is under massive pressure to bring down illegal migration.
Channel migrant crossings are at a record high with more than 44,000 people arriving on British shores since Labour came into government.
The Migration Observatory, a research centre at Oxford University dedicated to studying migration data, said last month that projections on future net migration were “inherently uncertain”.
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Estimates from the ONS said that total net migration was 431,000 in 2024.
This figure represents around half of the level recorded for the 12 months up to June 2023, when net migration peaked at 906,000, but is above pre-pandemic estimates of between 200,000 and 300,000.
In the latest figures, the number of non-EU citizens moving to the UK for work fell by 108,000 and the number of people moving to the UK to study fell by 53,000.
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