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A woman has died while crossing the English Channel in a small boat – the 23rd such death this year as unprecedented numbers of people make the perilous journey from France to seek refuge in Britain.
One person has been found dead after a boat attempting to cross the busy shipping lane near Calais ran into difficulties overnight, French authorities said.
A total of 34 other people were rescued and taken away by emergency services, the Calais prefecture said.
Due to a lack of safe and legal routes for people seeking asylum in the UK, more than 12,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Britain this year in small boats, making perilous crossings in overcrowded dinghies that risk capsizing.
About 1,500 people arrived in the last week for which data are available, and by June more people had made the crossing than in the same period in any previous year.
Such attempts to reach Britain began to be detected in late 2018, after increasingly strict security measures were put in place at ports and the Eurotunnel successfully prevented stowaways from arriving on lorries and trains bound for the UK.
In total, 23 people have died making the journey this year, almost double the total number of deaths recorded in 2023, including seven people this month alone.
According to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, citizens of five countries – Iran, Albania, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – account for two-thirds of those who have crossed the sea in small boats since 2018.
With neither the previous nor the current government offering safe routes, people have continued to make the journey in ever-increasing numbers, despite Tory ministers criminalising unauthorised crossings and threatening to send people to Rwanda, under a £500m scheme now abandoned by Sir Keir Starmer.
The new Labour government has pledged to tackle people-smuggling networks and strengthen cooperation with European nations after years of strained relations. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper moved to establish a new Border Security Command in her first days in office.
The small rubber boats that cross the strait are often dangerously loaded with many more people than can be safely carried, with one father describing to the BBC in May how his seven-year-old daughter was crushed to death on board a boat carrying 110 people.
Those who manage to reach Britain often have to wait years for their asylum claims to be processed, with a backlog of more than 120,000 cases awaiting a Home Office verdict.
Ms Cooper told MPs this week that officials had “effectively stopped making the majority of asylum decisions” because of the impact of the Illegal Immigration Act, a law introduced under the Conservative government.
The new Home Secretary said it was the “most extraordinary policy I have ever seen”, adding: “Thousands of asylum officers cannot do their jobs properly and as a result the backlog is now increasing.”
According to Home Office projections, housing these people in taxpayer-funded hotels would cost between £30bn and £40bn over the next four years, she said.
Earlier this month, The Independent It has been reported that UN human rights experts have written to the UK warning it risks breaching international law over allegations that child asylum seekers are being placed in adult detention centres because of its age assessment policies.
