Small boat arrivals fell by a third in Rishi Sunak’s last year of power piling pressure on Labour

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster email

Get our free View from Westminster email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Migrants crossing the Channel in small boats fell by almost a third in Rishi Sunak’s last year as prime minister, figures show, piling pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to continue the downward trend.

In the year to 30 June, days before the general election, there were 31,493 arrivals in the UK via small boats. It marked a 29 per cent fall on the year before and a slight decrease from the same period two years ago.

Coming just days after Yvette Cooper fleshed out Labour’s alternative to the Rwanda deportation policy, which would have sent some asylum seekers to the east African nation, the figures will add to the pressure on the government to bring the numbers down further.

Tory leadership contender and shadow home secretary James Cleverly said: “The actions I took as home secretary are working... that’s the inheritance I left Labour.

“But they’re undoing all of this progress. They have ditched our deterrent, have no clear plan to smash the gangs, have nowhere to send failed asylum seekers who they can’t return, have failed to hire anyone to run their phantom border command, and are already planning to roll over for the EU and open our borders.”

But Home Office minister Seema Malhotra said the figures showed Tories had left the immigration and asylum system in “chaos”.

“Since 2019, net migration trebled to a record high. Despite the hundreds of millions pumped into the Rwanda partnership, small boat crossings for the first half of this year went up by almost 20 per cent. The asylum backlog has soared, costing the taxpayer billions. And the removal of foreign national offenders has dropped 20 per cent since 2010,” she said.

The Home Office also said the average number of people per boat increased over the year, highlighting the growing risk being taken by the smuggling gangs responsible for the trade. There were 51 people per boat, compared with 44 per boat a year earlier and 10 per boat in 2019.

Despite the fall over the past 12 months, Home Office data for the first six months of 2024 shows that the number of small boat crossings was a fifth higher than the same period in 2023.

On Wednesday, Ms Cooper announced a series of measures including a pledge to raise the number of returns to 2018 levels over the next six months – meaning more than 14,000 deportations by the end of the year. But that figure is far lower than the 45,000 returned in 2010 under the previous Labour government and fewer than the 19,000 migrants who have arrived in Britain by crossing the Channel in small boats so far this year.

The government also revealed plans to increase detention capacity with 290 beds at two removal centres, Campsfield in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and Haslar in Gosport, Hampshire. But these plans are being criticised as a backwards step as both sites were plagued with problems before they shut in 2019 and 2015 respectively, including hunger strikes and suicides.

Between 2018 and June 2024, there were 3,788 returns of small boat arrivals – just 3 per cent. The vast majority of these were Albanians after Britain and Albania signed a joint returns agreement.

Labour has also promised to speed up the processing of migrants, which the Conservatives have warned will lead to tens of thousands being granted asylum.

Almost all (99 per cent) of those who arrived by small boats in the year to June claimed asylum, and the grant rate for those who claimed asylum was 71 per cent between 2018 and June 2024. Of all small boat asylum claims made in the past year, 96 per cent remain undecided, the figures showed.

The Home Office said there are 76,268 people who have waited more than six months for a decision on their asylum claim, with charities including Refugee Action calling for those people to be allowed to work.

As well as the lengthy waits for asylum decisions to be processed, the Home Office figures laid bare the spiralling costs of the system, which have jumped from £568m in 2011 to £4bn in 2023, while staff productivity has fallen drastically.

A Home Office spokesman said there was “a long way to go to reduce historically high levels of legal migration ... immigration brings many benefits to the UK, but it must be controlled and managed so the system is fair.

“Work is already underway across government to tackle the root causes behind high international recruitment, which is still driving up numbers of overseas workers on the skilled worker visa. By linking immigration, labour market and skills systems we will ensure we train up our domestic workforce and address this shortage of skills.”