It is no secret that migrant boat crossings have been on the rise. Already this year, around 3,700 people have arrived on small boats in Kent. According to the Office for the Fight against Illicit Trafficking of Migrants, seventy-eight people died while attempting to reach England aboard small boats last year—the highest number since the first recorded crossing in 2018. Six people have already died this year.
These shocking numbers stand in stark contrast to Starmer’s promise to “smash the gangs” at the heart of small boat crossings. This year, with almost 4,000 crossings, the figure is already 17% ahead of the same point last year. Recently, a spokesperson from the Home Office reiterated the government’s pledge to dismantle the business models that make these crossings possible.
But the tactics of these gangs are varied and are proving more difficult to tackle than anticipated. Gangs have turned to marketing their services on social media, which is proving a headache for the government. As long as these adverts reach people willing to pay to cross the Channel, the flow of migrants is set to continue.
The schema of the gangs is intelligent. Gangs will offer discounts to families and even offer rewards to those willing to make promotional content on their behalf after a successful crossing, creating a survivorship bias. With this considered, what has this government done to turn the tide on migrant boat crossings?
The government passed the Border Security Asylum and Immigration Bill, which Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has stated will make it easier to take early action against “those facilitating the boats”. Tangibly, the bill has empowered border authorities to seize the phones of migrants who have crossed the Channel. Additionally, in an attempt to tackle gangs at a far earlier stage in their preparations, individuals convicted of acts in preparation of smuggling, such as buying boat parts, can now face up to fourteen years in prison.
While the government will have to be careful not to breach the human rights of migrants by taking away their phones, these powers may provide a credible way of identifying organisers of human trafficking and collecting evidence of their criminal activities. It could, however, be naive of the government to expect that these gangs would leave unencrypted evidence of their conversations—or even any trace at all.
This renewed focus on migrant crossings takes place within the backdrop of the inquiry into the deadliest Channel crossing in history, where a boat carrying a suspected thirty-three people capsized in November 2021, killing a confirmed twenty-six individuals. The inquiry explores the failures in the rescue operation, which resulted in people being left in the water for twelve hours.
Tragedies like these raise the question of what can be done. Migrant crossings have been a political football for a considerable number of years, and prior to the Labour government, successive Conservative administrations have all attempted to “solve the problem”, with proposals ranging from third-party processing in Rwanda to an intensification of border security.
Migration is likely to remain a key issue for the electorate, with the Conservatives and Reform offering increasingly extreme approaches to the perceived problem. Recently, leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has suggested that the Human Rights Act should not apply to asylum seekers. This approach refuses to deal with the issue of gangs and is a cry back to the gimmick-stricken days of the Rwanda plan.
Therefore, perhaps the only viable method for turning the tide on migrant boat crossings is to offer safe and accessible routes. Since it is highly unlikely that migration will ever cease or that the UK will ever stop being an attractive destination for migrants, the government should consider providing accessible routes with appropriate processing to undercut the gangs at their own game.
If migrants were offered safer routes, the UK could pre-emptively protect migrants to avoid what all will agree are tragedies in the Channel.