France denies accord to stop all Channel crossings
FRANCE and Britain were embroiled in a fresh row about Channel migrants last night over whether the French had agreed to prevent every single crossing.
The French embassy issued a statement rejecting a British claim on Monday that Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and her counterpart Gérald Darmanin had agreed to work to stop “100 per cent of crossings” of the Channel.
“For the record, the 100 per cent figure was not agreed ... and should not be presented as an agreed commitment: it is not. And it is not part of the joint statement,” the embassy tweeted.
However, Home Office sources countered by pointing to a press conference by Mr Darmanin on Oct 9 when he said the UK and France “should be able to reach 100 per cent [of interceptions] if we push resources and if our British friends continue to help us”.
The row follows an apparent thawing in relations on Monday when the two pledged to make the dangerous crossing “unviable” after a bitter war of words in which Mr Darmanin told Britain to stop lecturing France – and the UK accused France of ceding sovereignty to the people smugglers.
Ministers were last night said to be pinning their hopes of ending the migrant crisis on flying migrants out of the UK within seven days to offshore processing centres, with Albania the most likely first location, according to The Times. Officials calculate the cost of flying and accommodating them could be as much as £100,000 per migrant.
Ministers have yet to determine how it will work as, under international law, migrants cannot be detained and would be free to leave. Tom Pursglove, the immigration minister, told MPS it was an “important part” of their new Bill.
It comes as MPS were told that just five migrants who crossed the Channel in small boats have been returned to Europe this year, despite the number attempting the journey almost trebling.
The figures emerged yesterday as Border Force sources claimed that 1,135 migrants arrived on Tuesday – which if confirmed would represent the second highest number of crossings on record.
Appearing before the Commons home affairs committee, immigration minister Tom Pursglove confirmed that more than 23,000 people had now crossed since the start of the year.
It represents an almost threefold increase on the 8,500 who crossed the previous year and a fivefold increase compared with 2018.
While the number of asylum claims in the 12 months to June had fallen by 4 per cent, Mr Pursglove suggested this was also likely to have been reversed due to the record-breaking numbers crossing over the summer and autumn.
Asked how many had been returned to European countries after being refused asylum in the UK, Mr Pursglove told the committee: “On returns related to small boat arrivals ... the answer in this year is five.”
The disclosure was challenged by Labour’s Yvette Cooper, who pointed out that before Brexit the UK had been able to return several hundred migrants annually under a deal with the EU known as the Dublin Agreement.
Warning that people smugglers were becoming “more audacious” and taking ever-greater risks, Mr Pursglove added that the stretch of French coastline where small boats operated had quadrupled in length from 50km (30 miles) to 200km in recent years.
“What we are seeing is that small boat arrivals is becoming the route of choice for facilitations by evil criminal gangs,” he said.
His comments were echoed by Dan
O’mahoney, the Home Office’s clandestine Channel threat commander, who said that Covid travel restrictions had only intensified the problem by limiting other alternative routes into the UK.
He warned that the use of small boats to smuggle people into Britain was now well-established and highly lucrative, pointing out that just two weeks ago one boat intercepted by border force had been carrying 88 migrants.
Mr O’mahoney said that the boat could have fetched up to €350,000 (£293,000) for the smugglers – with each migrant paying €4,000 each.
Mr Pursglove defended the Government’s continued co-operation with the French authorities, amid calls from some Tory MPS to withhold payments to France which were agreed as part of a £54 million deal in July.
He argued that the 19,000 crossings prevented by France so far this year was a “welcome improvement” and confirmed that a “significant proportion” of the funding had now been paid.
It came as Decathlon, the sports retailer, announced it had stopped selling kayaks in northern France in an effort to prevent migrants from attempting to use them to cross to England.
Meanwhile, rescuers who went to the aid of an overcrowded wooden boat full of migrants trying to cross from North Africa to Italy found 10 dead bodies crammed in the hold.
The victims most likely died from inhaling petrol fumes in the cramped space as the boat headed north from the coast of Libya towards Europe.
The grim discovery was made by rescue personnel from the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) after their vessel, the Geo Barents, spotted the migrant boat taking on water. They saved 99 migrants but were told that there were others below deck.