People smugglers will always find a way to cross the Channel

A boat carrying 230 illegal immigrants crossed the English Channel on Monday. It was the largest ever single crossing since the small-boats crisis began in 2018. Worryingly the prior record was only set last month, when a boat with 165 illegal immigrants crossed. That is roughly as many people as fit on a passenger jet. Back in 2018, the average passenger size of a small boat was eight.

Jean-Marc Lamblin, the director of the Berck-sur-Mer branch of the SNSM, France’s version of the RNLI, warned that they were seeing “more and more” of these 15-metre boats and that there could be “no limit now” to the numbers on board. Such a large dinghy is not a practical vessel. On boat-selling websites, the only models this long are luxury vessels which cost six figures. It’s highly likely that these dinghies have been purpose-built in China, just in order to facilitate illegal immigration across the English Channel.

That shows both the scale of the trade, with more than 200,000 illegal immigrants arriving since 2018, and how the smugglers respond to pressures on their trade. When the former prime minister Keir Starmer came into office, he promised to “smash the gangs”. As part of that, several deals with European partners were struck in an effort to seize items like boat engines before they got to the coasts of northern France. The plan was that fewer engines meant fewer crossings and lower numbers. However, the smugglers responded by putting more and more migrants onto each vessel, as well as increasing the size of the dinghy.

This exposes the difficulty of trying to solve the problem by squeezing the trade. When the one-in-one-out deal was struck with France to try and remove illegal immigrants immediately, some smugglers began to offer affected clients a second attempt to illegally enter Britain free of charge, including by different routes like lorries. That forced the authorities to amend the original deal, to facilitate faster removal of those who reentered Britain after being sent back.

Similarly, increased co-operation with the French police led to some smugglers abandoning the French beaches, only to start launching from Belgian beaches instead. The Home Office has had to provide Belgian police with night-vision goggles and drones with thermal cameras to help them deal with it.

Defenders of this policy argue that it is making a difference. So far this year, around 15,000 people have crossed the English Channel. That is down 43 per cent on last year, with the number of boats crossing down 49 per cent. Last July had the lowest number of crossings since 2020, even with the weather being no worse than prior years. In addition, increased surveillance means that almost no boats cross without being intercepted.

It is very difficult to pinpoint exactly what has caused this dip. The numbers arriving do tend to spike and dip, with a spike in 2022 due to large numbers of Albanians arriving. Deals to return Albanians meant that the numbers dipped in 2023 before rebounding, until there were almost as many crossings in 2025 as in 2022.

Another possibility is that reforms have made asylum slightly less attractive, leading potential arrivals to go elsewhere. Since March, successful asylum seekers have only been granted temporary protection, which needs to be reviewed every two and a half years. The proposal to make them wait 30 years before settlement might also discourage them. Refugee family reunion was still also suspended in September last year.

Perhaps the most likely answer is that the number of illegal immigrants entering the EU has dropped. The EU border agency Frontex says that the number of illegal entries into the EU in the first half of this year is down 37 per cent. That will mean fewer making their way to France and on to Britain.

Nonetheless, numbers remain high, as does the financial impact. The asylum system still costs billions each year to run and the lifetime fiscal cost of these illegal immigrants will be “unambiguously negative”, in the words of the Migration Advisory Committee’s 2025 report. The MAC noted that data from Australia showed a cost of 400,000 Australian dollars (£200,000) over their lifetime, while a Dutch study found they cost 400,000 euros (£340,000).

There is no such calculation for Britain, but if they cost a similar sum of £350,000 over their lifetimes then the 230 illegal immigrants that arrived on Monday will cost taxpayers over £80m. The 15,000 arrivals this year will cost more than £5bn.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has suggested that introducing safe routes will “take away the selling point of the gangs”. That should be treated with scepticism, as efforts to squeeze the gangs have only led them to innovate, such as the new mega-dinghies. Instead he needs to end the pull factor, which means making it impossible to claim asylum if you arrive illegally.