James Cleverly vows to end small boat crossings after arrivals drop in 2023

James Cleverly has vowed to end illegal Channel ­crossings entirely after trumpeting a sharp fall in small boat arrivals.

Downing Street declared the UK was “bucking the trend of what we are seeing in Europe, where crossings are up significantly”.

Small boat crossings were down by 36% last year, with provisional annual statistics showing 29,437 arrived, compared with 45,755 in 2022.

The Home Secretary said the decrease was due to cooperation with Europe, disrupting the supply chain of engines and boats and “going after the money of these people smugglers”.

Asked what he believed constituted success in 2024, Mr Cleverly said: “My target is to bring it down to zero. I’m completely committed.

“My target is to reduce it to zero, to stop the boats, and I’m unambiguous about that.

“Last year, the final figure was a 36% reduction year on year. In the last half of last year it was down by 45%.

“And the last quarter of last year, compared to the last quarter of the year before that, it was down over 60%. So the trend is in the right direction.”

The Home Secretary also dismissed claims crossings were down in 2023 “because of the weather”.

He pointed to Border Force assessments that there were 102 “good sailing days”, compared with 106 in 2022.

He said: “This is a convenient way of overlooking the incredibly hard work our officials have done with their colleagues across Europe. This is not about the weather.

“In fact, the number of good sailing days this year was only four fewer than the previous year, so the weather is not a contributory factor.

“The 36% reduction is because of things ­including co-operation with our European ­partners, including France, Albania, Romania and Germany.

“It’s about disrupting the supply chain of engines and boats used to bring people and it’s about going after the money of these people smugglers, and it is about working hard on the UK border and across Europe.

“We are a positive outlier because of the actions we have taken. This is not about the weather, this is about the work that the Home Office officials have been doing both ­domestically and with counterparts across Europe.”

Ministers yesterday ­celebrated abolishing the legacy backlog – claims which were made before June 28 2022.

The Home Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the Prime Minister’s ­commitment had been to “make sure we ­process” the 92,000 ­legacy claims.

Mr Cleverly said: “Every single one of those applications has been processed. In the vast majority, a final adjudication has been made. In a small number – about 4,500 where there are discrepancies, where there are further checks, additional work needs to be done.”

Pressed on cases not being fully resolved, he added: “The commitment was to make sure they were all processed, to process that backlog and that’s exactly what we’ve done, we’ve completed that processing.”

The Home Office has said the 4,500 complex cases typically involve “asylum seekers presenting as children – where age ­verification is taking place – those with serious medical issues or those with ­suspected past convictions, where checks may reveal criminality that would bar asylum”.

Ministers will come under pressure to cut the overall ­asylum backlog, with tens of thousands of Channel migrants yet to have their claims assessed.

Many of these – some 50,000 – are believed to be staying in taxpayer-funded hotels, costing £8.2million per day.

The overall backlog of applications awaiting a decision, including both legacy and non-legacy cases, is 98,599 – down 10% from the end of November and down 29% from its recent peak of 139,552 at the end of February 2023.

Mr Cleverly said it was “impossible” to say how long it will take to get through outstanding asylum cases. When asked how long it takes to tackle 100,000 cases, he told Today: “It’s impossible to say and I’m not going to make predictions.”

The minister added: “You can see our track record. We have delivered over 112,000 ­processes, 112,000 applications this year. You know there are fewer than that left in the system.”

The Home Office is also facing demands to explain where 17,000 “missing” migrants are.

Many have vanished from hotels to work illegally. And critics are urging Mr Cleverly to explain how migrants refused asylum will be deported.

Chairman Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch UK said: “The government is playing fast and loose with the figures. The public will not be fooled by smoke and mirrors.”

He said the UK’s granting of asylum to 67% of applicants is a “lenient exception” compared to most of Europe and is almost three times the rate in France. And he added: “We also haven’t been told where the 25,550 who were refused asylum are now. Does the ­government even know?

“The Home Office may have moved a few papers from the pending to the out-tray by giving thousands the benefit of the doubt but they have not done anything to dissuade other migrants from getting to the UK by whatever means they can, including in a small boat.”

Mr Cleverly told the BBC that withdrawn ­applicants who sought to hide in the black market would be tracked down.

He said: “If they try to slip into the illicit ­economy we ­significantly increase the raids on ­illegal working, so ultimately we find these people.

“We go looking at places where we know people work illegally – so often in the clothing trade, sometimes in the restaurant trade, in building.

“And we know where these people typically work, often cash in hand, often undocumented. We go and find them and we remove them.”