Migrant channel crossings hit high
MORE than 4,000 migrants are thought to have arrived in the UK so far this year after the busiest day for Channel crossings since the start of 2024.
Home Office figures indicate 514 people made the journey in 10 boats on Wednesday – the highest daily total of the year to date – suggesting an average of 51 people per boat.
It takes the running total for Channel crossings in 2024 to 4,043 – 10% higher than this time last year ( 3,683). It is also 25% higher than the total at this stage in 2022 when there were 3,229 arrivals recorded.
The government department has stressed that the latest data is provisional, suggesting the numbers could later be revised.
Channel crossings continued yesterday.
It comes as the UK Government was dealt another setback in its plan to send migrants to Rwanda with another series of defeats to draft laws in the Lords.
Meanwhile, a migrant was taken to hospital when he arrived in Dover, Kent, after crossing the Channel, having told police he was stabbed on a French beach before making the journey.
In the wake of the Government’s defeat in the Lords, the Archbishop of Canterbury said there was
“no evidence” to support claims the Church of England was “subverting the asylum system” by allowing spurious conversions to Christianity.
The Church has been accused in recent months of allowing “industrial- scale” baptisms of migrants to assist with their asylum claims, allowing them to suggest they would be persecuted in their home country because they were now Christians.
But speaking on Times Radio yesterday, the Most Reverend Justin Welby said he had seen “no evidence” of this occurring, only “assertions”.
He added: “We wrote to the Home Office and they said they had no evidence to show us.”
The accusations followed claims by former Anglican vicar Matthew Firth, who told The Daily Telegraph he had “put a stop to the conveyor belt and veritable industry of asylum baptisms that was going on”.
Noting that in the last 10 years there had been 15 baptisms in Mr Firth’s parish of people who may have been asylum seekers, the Archbishop said: “If that’s industrial- scale, we have got a small idea of industrial production.”
Mr Welby joined other Anglican bishops and fellow peers to vote again to amend the Safety of Rwanda ( Asylum and Immigration) Bill.
It means the legislation will now return to the Commons on April 15 and will not pass before Easter. As a result, plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda have been delayed yet again.
In 2023, some 29,437 migrants arrived in the UK after making the journey, down 36% on a record 45,774 arrivals in 2022.