Now show us your Rwanda plan works
As 300 more migrants cross Channel, MPs demand:
TORY MPs defended the Government’s Rwanda plan last night after more than 300 migrants were thought to have made it across the Channel in two days.
The Ministry of Defence said it had intercepted seven boats carrying 254 migrants on Sunday and witnesses said as many as 100 more arrived yesterday.
The crossings, which followed an 11-day break due to poor weather conditions, mean that three times as many migrants have arrived in small boats this year than at the same point in 2021.
More than 7,000 are thought to have crossed already this year.
yesterday, critics said the Rwanda plan, under which illegal cross-Channel migrants will be sent to the east African nation, would not act as a deterrent to those seeking to make the trip. They said the 11-day break had simply been due to the weather.
But Tory MP Tim Loughton told Radio 4’s The World At One: ‘It may seem a very robust, extreme scheme, but it is the first thing that has actually been put forward that would actually practically do something about this problem.
‘People in the South and up and down the country are just sick and tired of these people smugglers making a fortune out of human trafficking, this misery coming across the Channel.
‘The Rwanda scheme is an attempt to do something practical about it. But is very early days – it was only announced three weeks ago and it hasn’t started yet.’
Fellow Tory MP Andrew Bridgen added: ‘The sooner people realise that it’s not a hollow threat, the sooner the crossings will be reduced.
‘The sooner flights start removing illegal entrants to Rwanda the sooner these economic migrants will stop placing themselves in the hands of the ruthless people traffickers and the sooner their exploitation will stop.’ The French National Assembly member for Calais, Pierre-Henri Dumont, pounced on the resurgence as evidence that migrants were undeterred and predicted ‘more and more’ crossings this summer.
He claimed smugglers used the plan as a ‘commercial argument’ to urge people to ‘cross quickly’, despite the Government’s announcement that anyone who has arrived after January 1 would be eligible.
‘When you leave your country because of flood, because of starvation, you are not afraid of being hauled off and sent back to another country,’ Mr Dumont told the BBC.
The Ministry of Defence said Sunday’s crossings were made in seven small boats. Those ashore yesterday were put on coaches to be taken to the immigration processing centre at the former Manston airport near Ramsgate.
Pictures showed large groups of mostly working-age men in life jackets and blankets. Several women and young children were with them. Channel migrants are still processed in the same was as before the Rwanda deal was announced, with most placed in hotels while their claims are processed.
Boris Johnson has said tens of thousands could be sent to Africa under the £120million deal, which will let them apply for asylum there.
But critics plan legal challenges, claiming it is a breach of human rights.
The Care4Calais charity said a survey of 64 migrants found 87 per cent had heard of the plan and 75 per cent said ‘it won’t put them off crossing to the UK’. ‘They have no choice: they’ve fled danger made long, dangerous journeys,’ a spokesman said.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘Nobody wants to see anybody making that perilous journey across the Channel and everybody wants to crack down on the criminal gangs driving this.
‘The best way to do that is to have an international co-ordinated criminal response.’
‘Crack down on the gangs’