The number of people who have crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2025 has exceeded 10,000, an increase of about 40% compared with the same period last year.
A total of 247 people crossed on Sunday, taking the total to 9,885 migrants the Home Office has recorded arriving in the UK since the start of the year.
More than 200 people made the crossing on Monday, taking the figure over 10,000. In 2024, that figure was reached on 24 May.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government were “strengthening international partnerships and boosting our ability to identify, disrupt, and dismantle criminal gangs whilst strengthening the security of our borders.”
Labour campaigned at the July general election on a promise to “smash” the criminal people-smuggling gangs after a surge in small boat crossings since 2018.
Since coming to power, the government has announced a series of measures to tackle people smuggling, including a new criminal offence of endangering the lives of others at sea.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill currently going through Parliament sets out Labour’s plan to treat people smugglers like terrorists – with suspects facing travel bans, social-media blackouts and phone restrictions.
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.”
Official forecasts estimate 5,400 migrants have been prevented from arriving in the UK on small boats through returns, arrests or and individuals being prevented from departing France.
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp blamed Labour’s scrapping of the last government’s Rwanda scheme for the rise.
“We know deterrents work,” he told the BBC.
“It stands to reason that if somebody illegally crossing the Channel from France ends up somewhere else like Rwanda, they won’t bother attempting the crossing in the first place.
“Keir Starmer’s claims to be smashing the gangs are laughable, they lie in tatters,” Philp added.
Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart said the figures were concerning.
“After the Conservatives trashed our asylum system, allowing criminal gangs to act with impunity the Labour government has failed to get a grip and turn things around,” she said.
“We all want to stop these dangerous Channel crossings and that starts by improving our cooperation with international partners.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told the BBC: “If this carries on at this rate, by the end of this Labour government another quarter of a million people will have come into this country, many of whom don’t fit our culture and will cost us a fortune.”
He claimed Reform were “the only party that says unless you deport those that come illegally they will continue to come”.
Between July 2024 and March this year, the government said more than 24,000 individuals with no right to be in the UK had been deported. Official figures show 6,339 of these were “enforced returns”.
