UK’s Starmer blames lack of joint action for surge in migrants crossing Channel

UK prime minister hosts London summit and urges nations to smash people smuggling gangs

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Migrants board a smuggler’s boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, off the beach of Gravelines, north of France. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:47am, 1 Apr 2025Updated: 11:15am, 1 Apr 2025

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that a lack of coordination between UK police and intelligence agencies is partly responsible for a surge in the number of migrants reaching the UK in small boats across the English Channel.

At an international meeting on boosting border security and tackling people-smuggling, Starmer expressed frustration at the difficulty of stopping thousands of people a year risking the dangerous sea crossing from France.

“We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies,” Starmer said as officials from more than 40 countries met in London. “A fragmentation that made it crystal clear, when I looked at it, that there were gaps in our defence, an open invitation at our borders for the people smugglers to crack on.”

Starmer’s centre-left government, elected nine months ago, is grappling with an issue that vexed its Conservative predecessors.

Inflatable dinghies that are believed to have been used by migrants crossing the English Channel from France. Photo: AFP

Despite police cooperation with France and work with authorities in countries further up the route taken by migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, more than 6,600 migrants crossed the channel in the first three months of this year, the highest number on record.

The opposition Conservatives say the figure shows Labour should not have scrapped the previous government’s contentious – and never-implemented – plan to send asylum seekers who arrive by boat on one-way trips to Rwanda.