Now Priti channels £54million to France
...as they escort boats of migrants into UK waters
PRITI Patel has agreed to give France another £54million to stop the growing number of migrants crossing the Channel.
The Home Secretary signed the pledge after chaotic scenes emerged of a French navy vessel apparently ushering an overcrowded dinghy into British waters early yesterday.
It came as the number of people to have made the perilous journey this year hit 8,452 – surpassing the figure for the whole of 2020.
A record daily total of 430 landed in the UK after setting off from France in small boats on Monday – and 287 more arrived yesterday.
Miss Patel’s controversial agreement with French interior minister Gerald Darmanin will see policing numbers along the French coast more than double to 200.
The two countries agreed to draw up a long-term plan for a ‘smart border’ using technology to identify where crossings are being attempted.
But the deal failed to impress critics, who accuse the French authorities of not doing enough to stop small boats leaving their territorial waters.
Miss Patel has repeatedly called for stronger action by the French to tackle the migrant crisis.
However, record levels of arrivals have consistently undermined her tough public pronouncements.
Extraordinary scenes in Kent yesterday showed the scale of the issue. With calm seas on one of the hottest days of the year, traffickers took their opportunity to send scores of migrants to the UK.
Dungeness was at the centre of the rush as wave upon wave arrived in boats on its pebbled beaches.
Groups started arriving at Dungeness from 9.30am. A further 12 migrants – mainly men – were filmed successfully landing their boat at 11.15am. The men said they had paid £3,000 each for the ten-hour crossing.
Shortly before 2pm, a further 42 migrants wearing lifejackets were brought to shore by the RNLI lifeboat. A family of four from Kuwait said they paid £8,000 in total for their journey.
Earlier in the day, a TV crew from ITV’s Good Morning Britain watched a French navy vessel appear to guide an overcrowded boat into UK waters.
Reporter Pip Tomson said French authorities turned around as the vessel, which was carrying around 13 people despite being designed for six, entered UK waters at around 6.30am.
Miss Patel has repeatedly called for stronger action by the French to tackle the problem.
In May last year, she asked French officials to intercept more small boats in their own waters, and even to accept vessels turned around in UK waters.
But no deal was reached and instead the UK handed Paris £28million in taxpayers’ money for extra patrols of France’s 155-mile north coast.
But the Home Office said the increased policing led criminal gangs to change their tactics – ‘moving further up the French
coast and forcing migrants to take even longer, riskier journeys’.
Announcing the plans, the Home Office accepted that more needed to be done to significantly disrupt people trafficking networks.
But MPs questioned why Britain was giving yet more money to France. Natalie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, said: ‘Some people might be wondering what on earth we have been paying the French for as it is – tens of millions of pounds, yet more and more migrants arriving. What is needed is for France to stop boats leaving – as they are paid to do.’
Labour dismissed the latest move as ‘empty promises’, saying the Tories are ‘letting down victims and allowing criminals to continue their evil trade’.