Prime Minister Andy Burnham has admitted he cannot promise to end small boat crossings in the next three years. Asked if he would stop the arrival of dinghies across the Channel by the next general election, which will be in 2029 at the latest, he said: "I just can only promise to people what I know I can do and what I know I can deliver."
Mega Dinghies Signal Escalation
The Prime Minister admitted the UK and French Governments will have to "change our tactics" after smugglers launched mega dinghies carrying as many as 230 people. The development has prompted fears of a new phase in the crisis, with calls for a "war-time" suspension of some human rights to ramp up deportations as organised crime gangs "scale up".
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: "The Burnham boats crisis gets worse and worse. First, he tried to claim there was a plan that was working. But just a fortnight later he’s been forced to admit it’s actually chaos."
Mr Philp added: "Each day of calm seas brings hundreds of illegal immigrants, including on massive mega dinghies. The illegal immigrants are mainly young men, many of whom have gone on to commit crimes including murder and rape. If Andy Burnham was serious, he would adopt the Conservative plan to leave the ECHR so illegal immigrants can all be deported within a week of arrival."
Rescues and Government Response
Some 230 people were detected on a single boat in the early hours of Monday morning. This followed an emergency last week, when 173 people were rescued from a vessel.
Mr Burnham said: "I know people will have been worried to see that image yesterday. It shows that the gangs are changing their tactics, but so will we. We will now change our tactics and we will be relentless in chasing them down. I said that when I visited Dover just over a week ago, and I meant it, and I was there to change the conversation."
Asked if he could guarantee the boats wouldn’t be crossing by the time of the next General Election, Mr Burnham told GB News: "It would be wrong, I think, for me to make a prediction now based on a timeline. I mean, I just can only promise to people what I know I can do and what I know I can deliver. And that is a relentless focus on this issue to deal with the public concern. I heard it on doorstep after doorstep in Makerfield, and I said to the people there and I say it to the country 'I hear what you say'."
Defence of Handling and Calls for Action
The Prime Minister defended Labour’s handling of the crisis, saying: "The deal that we put in place, the payment-by-results deal, has created a change. There is more law enforcement on the other side of the Channel in summer 2026 than there was last summer, and that has led to quite a reduction in the number of crossings. But that's not good enough. People will say to me, we don't want any crossings. I understand that concern. There are further things that we are doing, and we will keep going at this issue until we deliver that eradication that people are looking for."
The inflatable boat carrying 230 people was "buckling" in the water and could have led to a tragedy, French rescuers warned. Smuggling gangs have spread out into Normandy so they can launch vessels destined for Britain. Mega dinghies are launched in canals and travel along the coast picking up groups of migrants.
Lord Alton, the chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, said smuggling gangs are "scaling up". The situation has become "serious enough" for the UK and France to trigger Article 15 of the ECHR, the senior Peer said. Invoking Article 15 could allow ministers to temporarily suspend migrants’ rights to a family life – a key hurdle in the Home Office’s battle to deport tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers.
Lord Alton said: "The CCP loses no sleep as thousands of migrants are exploited for malign purposes, including the aiding and abetting of criminal gangs. These new mega dinghies are a scaling up and, to my mind, constitutes a serious enough crisis in which Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) could be invoked. It is a personal view but one which was previously mooted by Lord Blunkett and which Shabana Mahmood should revisit. Invoking Article 15 would allow the government to take temporary specific steps that suspend certain human rights obligations during a time of war, or a public emergency that threatens the life of the nation. It should never be used casually and would be a temporary but reasonable response. The UK and France should give notice of their intention to do this."
Jean-Marc Lamblin, the director of the SNSM’s Berck-sur-Mer branch, said: "Over the past three months, we’ve been seeing more and more 15-metre boats passing through." He added that when the 150-migrants per boat figure was recently surpassed, "we didn’t think there could be any more, but there really is no limit now".
Government sources say the smugglers are being forced to resort to the 'mega-dinghies' to make the crossings financially viable due to smaller crossings being increasingly disrupted by police operations. "Sustained pressure from law enforcement means the gangs are finding it harder to launch boats and are therefore being forced to place more people onto them," said a government source.
