More than 200,000 migrants have now reached Britain by small boat since the Channel crisis began, after around 70 more were brought into Dover aboard a Border Force vessel on Friday — a figure equivalent to the entire population of Norwich.
The running total stood at 199,943 before Friday’s arrivals, meaning the grim milestone is expected to be officially confirmed when the Home Office publishes its figures on Saturday. The first small boat crossing was recorded on 31 January 2018, with the situation declared a “national emergency” by then Home Secretary Sajid Javid by the end of that year — at a point when only a few hundred people had made the journey.
The scale of what has followed dwarfs those early figures. Last year alone, 41,472 migrants reached Britain by small boat — the second highest annual total since the crisis began. More arrivals have occurred under Sir Keir Starmer’s tenure as Prime Minister than under any other, with 71,932 recorded since he took office. That figure surpassed the previous high of 65,800 under Boris Johnson in February this year.
The 200,000 milestone comes just days after two migrants — a 16-year-old girl and a woman in her 20s — died while attempting the crossing on Sunday. Their dinghy’s engine caught fire and the pair are feared to have been trampled during the ensuing panic. The International Organisation for Migration puts the total number of deaths associated with Channel crossings at 288 since 2018, including 148 drownings.
The financial cost of attempting to tackle the crisis continues to mount. Last month, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood confirmed that British taxpayers would hand France up to £660 million for small boat patrols, pushing the total paid to Paris since the start of the crisis past £1.3 billion. The new agreement includes a core package of £500 million spread over three years for French police operations, plus a further £160 million for new tactics including intercepting dinghies already in the water. A previous three-year, £500 million deal agreed in 2023 under Rishi Sunak coincided with more than 84,000 migrants reaching Britain.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the milestone demonstrated that the immigration system was “totally broken,” adding that small boat arrivals were up 45 per cent since the election. “They never seem to get removed — so no wonder they keep flooding in, knowing they will almost certainly get to stay,” he said. “This situation is a disgrace.” He called for asylum claims by illegal migrants to be banned, for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and for courts to be prevented from blocking deportations — measures he said would allow all small boat arrivals to be deported within a week.
One of Labour’s first acts in office was to scrap the previous government’s Rwanda asylum deal, which had been designed as a deterrent to crossings.
A Home Office spokesman said the government was “bearing down on small boat crossings,” citing the new French deal and claiming that joint work had stopped more than 42,000 illegal migrants attempting the crossing since the election. “We have removed or deported almost 60,000 people who were here illegally,” the spokesman added.
