ILLEGAL Channel crossings by rubber dinghies overloaded predominantly with young men have been an increasingly worrying trend for many years yet successive governments have made no serious or workable attempts to do anything about it.
Migrant crossings are up by more than 40 per cent on last year and a record for daily arrivals has been set. A total of 705 migrants in 12 boats crossed the Channel on Tuesday April 15, days after the previous record of 656 was set the previous Saturday. The total number of arrivals in 2025, at 8,888, is 42 per cent higher than at the same point last year and 81 per cent higher than at this stage in 2023. More arrivals were recorded in January to April than in the equivalent four-month period in any year since data on Channel crossings began in 2018.
The French authorities are providing lifejackets to ensure migrants can cross the Channel safely. The jackets are returned to the French once the migrants have been escorted to the mid-point of the Channel and are rescued by the British authorities, so that they can be re-used for future crossings.
We have seen French police on the beach at Calais standing idly by while migrants board dinghies to Dover.
When Tony Abbott was Prime Minister of Australia between 2013 and 2015 he instituted Operation Sovereign Borders, which tasked the Royal Australian Navy with intercepting migrant smuggling boats and forcing them back to Indonesia. This operation was so successful that migrant smuggling to Australia virtually ceased. Mr Abbott has since advocated this policy to Britain.
Our current fleet of five Border Force cutters is ageing and has to patrol the entire British coastline. Assuming at least two are undergoing maintenance at any time that leaves three, so clearly more vessels of the right sort are needed. A rapid and inexpensive solution to this would be for the Ministry of Defence to purchase six medium-sized (60-80ft) second-hand motor yachts on the open market. There are always plenty for sale and most are in pristine, hardly used condition with low engine hours and capable of 24-30 knots. All are fitted with highly reliable diesel engines designed for the marine environment and capable of ocean crossings. They also have accommodation for two or three crew as well as six or more guests, spacious saloons and well-equipped galleys, and, of course, they all have state-of-the-art navigation and communications equipment.
The boats should be painted grey, a small gun mounted on the foredeck, and manned with recently retired RN personnel. (There would be no shortage of volunteers.) A small support base should be built in Folkestone harbour, initially using Portakabins for rapid start-up, with fuelling facilities, a small workshop, an accommodation block and a canteen. This could be achieved relatively quickly and at a modest cost to the defence budget. These boats would be tasked with patrolling the Dover Strait every day from dawn to dusk, three or four at a time. Drones could also be used to detect dinghies and direct the patrolling boats to them. They would not need to be at sea in weather too rough for small smuggler-boat crossings.
They should be tasked to intercept the smugglers wherever they are in the Channel, approaching our shores, over the mid-way line or just leaving French beaches, and turned back and escorted. On approach to the smugglers’ beach the Border Force vessel should stand off and launch a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) manned by four staff who would escort them until they grounded on the beach. With two of them standing guard with weapons the others, using box cutters, would slash long holes in the rubber dinghies and remove the outboard motors and drop them into the water to render them unserviceable. On completion the RIB should return to its vessel and the vessel withdraw to resume patrol. Input from serving senior naval officers would be needed to provide detailed operating procedures. Once deployed this division would be under the command of a senior serving officer.
Of course, French President Emmanuel Macron would immediately be protesting. But he hasn’t got a leg to stand on. France is a signatory to the Schengen Agreement which requires migrants/asylum seekers to be processed in the first safe country they enter. Not only that but Britain has paid France almost half a billion pounds to stop the migrants arriving at the beaches and boarding dinghies to Dover.
France has not only done nothing but trouser this cash while its navy continues to escort the dinghies into UK waters and hand them off to our Border Force or the RNLI.
Inevitably there would be howls of anguish from the hand-wringing, pearl-clutching left-wing liberal media, social media commentators and many MPs. Establishment figures would be quick to state that various agreements and arrangements with our European ‘partners’ would make this action impossible. They should be ignored. Australia has proved that it can be done so let’s do it. Sir Keir Starmer wouldn’t dream of it. It is another compelling reason to vote Reform in the May local elections and the eventual general election in 2029.
