Labour has blamed the Tories for leaving an “appalling legacy of border security” after figures showed more than 150,000 people have arrived in the UK in small boats since 2018.
The milestone was reached after Home Office figures confirmed that at least 850 people landed in small boats on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said it was “an insult that Labour has allowed 858 illegal immigrants in to the country on Christmas Day and Boxing Day”.
Philp said the government should not have abandoned Rishi Sunak’s plan to send people who arrived by illegal routes to Rwanda, saying: “By scrapping the Rwanda deterrent before it started, Labour has let us down. We saw removals deterrents work in Australia.”
On Boxing Day, 407 people made the journey in 10 boats, according to Home Office figures, while photographs suggested more people had made the crossing on Friday.
Combined with the 451 people who crossed the Channel on Christmas Day, that brought the total since 1 January 2018 to 150,243.
Keir Starmer has said he plans to tackle the issue of small boats by “smashing the gangs” that operate the people-smuggling routes, and prioritise international cooperation with law enforcement agencies in Europe.
Provisional Home Office figures show that so far this year 35,898 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel. This is up 22% on this time last year, but down 22% on 2022.
The National Crime Agency said it was leading about 70 live investigations into organised immigration crime or human trafficking.
About 50 people have died while trying to cross the Channel this year, according to incidents recorded by the French coastguard, which is likely to make it the deadliest year for crossings since the smuggling routes started in 2018.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has also reported several more migrant deaths believed to be linked to crossing attempts so far in 2024.
The number of people crossing the Channel has steadily increased since 299 people were detected in 2018.
That year, Sajid Javid, then home secretary, cut short a Christmas break to return to the UK and take charge of the unfolding crisis, and declared a “major incident” after 40 migrants made the journey on Christmas Day and 12 more arrived days later.
There were 1,843 crossings recorded in 2019 and 8,466 in 2020, according to the Home Office. A record 45,774 people made the journey in 2022 compared with the 28,526 recorded for the whole of 2021. In 2023, 29,437 people arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay. We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.”
The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has previously said the government had a moral responsibility to tackle Channel crossings, but refused to set a deadline for when a target to see the numbers fall “sharply” would be met.
Cooper said the UK must “go after” the gangs behind the dangerous crossings, during a visit to Italy where she met the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to discuss migration.
As she faced questions from the Commons home affairs committee, which she previously led as chair, for the first time since being appointed home secretary, she appeared to rule out creating more safe and legal routes for asylum seekers as a way of preventing crossings.
While the UK would always “need to do its bit”, this was not “an alternative to going after the criminal gangs”, she said.
She also told MPs she was “determined to keep making progress” on reducing the number of hotels being used to house asylum seekers, saying they were “completely inappropriate and extremely costly”.
