UK to face 'challenging summer' of Channel migrant crossings, Downing Street warns

Sir Keir Starmer is facing a “challenging” summer of small boat crossings, Downing Street has admitted.

The first Channel migrants of the new Prime Minister’s tenure arrived in the UK on Monday – just hours after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to smash the smuggling gangs.

And Ms Cooper’s Conservative predecessor, Suella Braverman, slammed the Government for making the “UK become an even bigger magnet for illegal arrivals.”

Mrs Braverman insisted the UK must leave the European Court of Human Rights and deport migrants “quickly”, adding nothing else matters.

Crossings resumed on an overcast Monday which saw relatively calm conditions at sea after a six-day hiatus amid poor weather.

Pictures showed groups of people wearing life jackets, and some wrapped in blankets, being escorted off a Border Force boat in Dover, Kent, with children among those seen being carried ashore.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told reporters: "We're getting to work straight away because we know that this summer will be challenging."

The Government is "now focused on the work needed to secure our borders and smash the gangs", he added.

So far this year 13,574 migrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel, according to the latest available Home Office figures.

This is already a record for the first six months of a calendar year.

It is also 12% higher than the number recorded by this time last year (12,119) and up 3% on the same period in 2022 (13,149).

Recruitment of a Border Security Commander, who will report directly to the Home Secretary, has begun, with the new recruit expected to take up their post in the coming weeks, the Home Office said.

The commander will be a "leader used to working in complex and challenging environments, for example at senior levels of policing, intelligence or the military" and will bring together the work of the National Crime Agency (NCA), intelligence agencies, police, immigration enforcement and Border Force, the department said.

Mrs Braverman said of Labour’s policies on Monday: “More blah, blah, blah. I warned, but prepare to see the UK become an even bigger magnet for illegal arrivals & numbers soar as our borders disintegrate.

“We need to leave the ECHR, scrap the Human Rights Act and quickly remove people when they arrive illegally. Nothing else matters.”

Keir Starmer is under intense pressure to end the Channel crisis – and in one of his first moves since taking office, scrapped the Rwanda deportation scheme,

Officials have also hinted migrants could have their rights to claim asylum restored.

Asked if people crossing the Channel to the UK will now have the right to claim asylum, the Prime Minister's spokesman said: "We need to ensure that people who arrive here are processed so that people are not sitting in the system, housed in expensive taxpayer-funded hotels as they have been under previous administrations."

As well as focusing on the Border Security Command, resources need to be found to staff a new returns and enforcement unit to make sure "failed asylum seekers and others with no right to be here are removed", he added.