Bragging about a tiny dip in the rate of migrant small boat crossings is pretty desperate stuff from Labour. According to Home Office data, some 55 boats crossed the English Channel last month, the lowest August figure since 2019.
The total number of illegal migrants arriving by small boat also fell to its lowest August figure since 2021 too. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will tell parliament later that the National Crime Agency’s 347 disruptions of people-smuggling gangs this year is starting to have an effect. While this welcome news, the reality is it is too little, too late.
Migrant crossings have surged under this Labour government and 2025, with around 29,000 arrivals so far, is on record pace.
Smuggling gangs also seem to be putting more people on each boat – last month there was an average of 65 individuals per vessel.
New changes, like tightening rules for migrants granted asylum bringing their families to the UK are just tweaks.
It comes with the government under increasing pressure to end its reliance on asylum hotels.
On Friday the Appeal Court overturned a temporary injunction which would have prevented the Home Office from housing asylum seekers at the Bell Hotel in Epping and it was seen as a possible precedent for legal challenges elsewhere.
Epping Forest District Council will meet later today to decide its next course of action, including whether to take its attempt to prevent the hotel being used for asylum seekers to the Supreme Court.
The government’s planned reforms to the asylum system announced in the last few weeks include a new independent body prioritising cases involving asylum accommodation and foreign national offenders within 24 weeks, and a new fast track appeals process.
Cooper will also give an update on the UK’s returns deal with France, where some migrants arriving in the UK on small boats crossing the English Channel will be detained and returned under a pilot scheme lasting 11 months.
She is expected to announce that the first deportations to France are due to take place in the coming weeks.
But public anger is at boiling point.
Protests against the housing of asylum seekers at hotels – as well as counter-protests – continued to take place across England and Scotland at the weekend including in Epping, London, Gloucester, Portsmouth, Warrington, Norwich and Falkirk.
Both the Tories and Reform UK are proposing tougher action.
Nigel Farage’s plans to deport 600,000 migrants are proving popular if the polls are anything to go by.
Perhaps it will take these sort robust measures to have an effect.
One thing is for sure, voters are already growing tired of Labour’s toothless action to deal with the migration crisis.
