As 40,000 cross Channel, Suella’s £60m French deal
‘Hotel Britain must end’
SUELLA Braverman will announce a deal with France today to tackle the Channel crisis after the number of migrants to land on England’s beaches this year passed 40,000.
The Home Secretary’s plan, rumoured to cost at least £60million, will fund more officers guarding the beaches in Calais and Dunkirk.
A French government spokesman last night insisted that Britain and France work together in a ‘resolute, determined manner’ to stop migrants crossing the Channel after 972 made the perilous journey in 22 boats on Saturday. The agreement will see British Border Force officials accompany French authorities on the beaches as part of a ‘joint control centre’.
‘The deal is finally done and it will be signed on Monday,’ said a French diplomatic source, who said the UK’s annual contribution to policing the border will rise from around £54million to the equivalent of just above £62million.
The source added: ‘The focus of the agreement will be on breaking up the people smuggling gangs, using better technological surveilentitled lance, including more drones.’ Britain has paid some £175million to France to police the Channel border since 2018.
French government spokesman Olivier Veran told the Financial Times: ‘There is a need for FrancoBritish co-operation on this problem. If we act separately, each one on their side [of the] Channel, it will not work. We must work together in a resolute, determined manner, and we will do so.’
His comments came as immigration minister Robert Jenrick vowed to put a stop to ‘Hotel Britain’ which has seen taxpayers fork out £ 6.8million a day to put migrants in ‘unsuitable’ accommodation. He said the use of hotels, sometimes four star, ‘must end’ as ‘illegal immigrants are not to luxury hotels’. Ministers are understood to be looking at less luxurious sites to put migrants, including old student accommodation, defunct holiday parks and budget cruise ships.
‘Hotel Britain must end, and be replaced with simple, functional accommodation that does not create an additional pull factor,’ Mr Jenrick wrote in The Sunday Telegraph. He added: ‘Accommodating these record numbers is extremely challenging, and a chronic shortage of acceptable accommodation has forced the Government to procure expensive, and frequently unsuitable, hotels at an unacceptable cost to the taxpayer.
‘ Human decency has to be accompanied by hard-headed common sense: illegal immigrants are not entitled to luxury hotels.’
The Government’s crackdown came after the provisional total number of migrants who arrived in Britain on small boats this year hit 40,885 – with more expected yesterday.
Thousands have now been waiting for over a year for their asylum applications to be processed. Shockingly, 725 people, including 155 children, have been waiting for more than five years, the Refugee Council charity said.
A Home Office spokesman said the system was under ‘incredible pressure’, adding: ‘We are doing everything we can to address this issue. We have increased the number of caseworkers by 80 per cent to more than 1,000, and a successful pilot scheme has seen the average number of asylum claims processed by caseworkers double. We are now rolling this out across the country.’
The spokesman also said applications from children were being prioritised ‘where possible’.