BRITAIN AND FRANCE have signed a new agreement aimed at curbing the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.
British Home Secretary Priti Patel and her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin said they wanted to make the route used by more than 8,000 people this year unviable.
They agreed to double the number of French police patrolling a 150km stretch of coastline used by crossers.
However, the Home Office did not say how many more officers would be deployed.
The announcement was criticised by a charity as an “extraordinary mark of failure” akin to “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”.
Patel and Darmanin also agreed an enhanced package of surveillance technology, with drones, radar equipment, cameras and optronic binoculars.
It is hoped the equipment will help the French deploy officers to the right places to detect migrants and stop them before they start their journey.
The agreement also includes steps to support migrants into accommodation in France, and measures to increase border security at ports in the north and west of the country.
It builds on measures previously agreed which the Home Office said had seen the proportion of crossings intercepted and stopped rise from 41% last year to 60% in recent weeks.
Despite deteriorating weather conditions, the UK’s Border Force has continued to deal with migrants making the dangerous trip from northern France.
The number crossing aboard small boats has rocketed this year, with more than 8,000 reaching the UK – compared with 1,835 in 2019, according to data analysed by the PA news agency.
This is despite the Home Secretary’s vow last year to make such journeys an “infrequent phenomenon”.
A recent report chronicled nearly 300 border-related deaths in and around the English Channel since 1999.
Written by Mael Galisson, from Gisti, a legal service for asylum seekers in France, it described the evolution of border security in and around the Dover Strait as a “history of death”.
It claimed responses to the migrant crisis have become increasingly militarised, forcing people to resort to more dangerous routes.
Bella Sankey, director of humanitarian charity Detention Action, said: “It is an extraordinary mark of failure that the Home Secretary is announcing with such fanfare that she is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
“No amount of massaging the numbers masks her refusal to take the sensible step of creating a safe and legal route to the UK from northern France, thereby preventing crossings and child deaths,” Sankey said.
“Instead she throws taxpayers’ money away on more of the same measures that stand no chance of having a significant impact on this dangerous state of affairs.”
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