A French gendarme has claimed 'our orders are to let them go' amid chaotic scenes in the Channel. The armed officer told Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp: 'We just have to say to them don’t do that, it is dangerous' as dozens climbed onto a dinghy near Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Officers accused of 'shameful dereliction of duty'
Mr Philp accused French gendarmes of a 'shameful dereliction of duty' after they allowed a suspected smuggler who fired up the dinghy's engine to walk away free as the vessel departed. He said officers could easily have prevented the departure because the water was only 'knee deep'.
He revealed how male asylum seekers were so desperate to reach the UK that they pushed women and children off in another day of carnage in the Channel. The officer, who at first shrugged at the question of why they are letting migrants into the water, told Mr Philp: 'Our orders are to let them go. We just have to say to them don’t do that, it is dangerous. We have to protect them.'
Coordinated launches and crossings
Smugglers launched a series of co-ordinated launches across northern France. As many as 700 migrants are feared to be crossing the Channel on Wednesday. Mr Philp said: 'The illegal immigrants had pushed off a number of women and children who were then left behind. The French police are standing aside, doing absolutely nothing at all to stop this re-embarkation. We are only knee-deep in water, and it would be very easy for the French police to stop this dinghy.'
The migrants ignored Mr Philp’s questions on where they were from. He added: 'It’s absolutely rammed full.'
Confrontation with smuggler
Mr Philp then confronted the man trying to fire up the engine on the dinghy carrying about 100 people. He shouted: 'You are breaking the law. You are attempting to enter the UK illegally. That is a criminal offence.'
He added: 'I identified and confronted the people smuggler who started the engine and co-ordinated the migrants to push off. He left the boat before it departed. I asked the Gendarmes to arrest him as he walked up the beach, but they refused. It’s a shameful dereliction of duty.'
UK funding for French patrols
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed to give Paris £500million for an increase in police patrols, a new vessel to intercept migrant taxi boats, two helicopters, drones and a camera surveillance system. The Home Office will give the French another £160million to test new tactics to stop Channel migrant crossings, including paying France to deport migrants on its coastline.
Ms Mahmood wants Paris to intercept migrants in the water.
Tory MP tracks migrants on French beach
Mr Philp tracked the group of roughly 100 migrants to a beach in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Walking alongside them, he said: 'There are no French police on this beach whatsoever. In this group, there are probably 20 or 30 illegal migrants, mostly young men, it looks like mainly from sub-Saharan Africa. And yesterday, the French were assisting the migrant dinghy by handing out life jackets. This group seem to have got themselves life jackets already, and the French made no attempt to stop the embarkation.'
In a clip posted on X, as the suspected migrants were waiting for a boat to arrive, he accused the French of 'doing nothing whatsoever'. He stressed he managed to find the large group 'within a matter of hours' of reporting on the crisis from the French coast.
He said: 'Shabana Mahmood should not be paying half a billion pounds of our money to the French when they're failing to stop these embarkations. I only arrived here yesterday, and I managed to find this group of illegal immigrants in just a matter of a few hours. So why haven't the French police been able to do that? Andy Burnham's claim that this problem has been solved is clearly ridiculous.'
