Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp has accused French gendarmes of a “shameful dereliction of duty” after they allowed a suspected smuggler to walk away free as a dinghy carrying about 100 migrants departed from a beach in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Philp, who filmed the group, said the water was only “knee deep” and that officers could easily have prevented the departure.
Philp Confronts Smugglers on Beach
Philp tracked the group of roughly 100 migrants to the beach and confronted the man trying to fire up the engine. He shouted: “You are breaking the law. You are attempting to enter the UK illegally. That is a criminal offence.” Philp later said: “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.”
He added: “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.”
Women and Children Pushed Off
Philp described how male asylum seekers were so desperate to reach the UK that they pushed women and children off the dinghy. “The illegal immigrants had pushed off a number of women and children who were then left behind,” he said. “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.”
He noted that the dinghy was “absolutely rammed full” and that the migrants ignored his questions about where they were from. As many as 700 migrants were feared to be crossing the Channel on Wednesday.
Criticism of UK Government
Philp criticised the Government, arguing that it is “nonsense” to claim its actions have secured Britain’s borders. “The reduced numbers are simply down to the weather. The sea and the Channel has been quite choppy so far this year, the only thing protecting our borders is essentially the wave height in the English Channel, it is not a deal,” he said. He also targeted Labour’s Shabana Mahmood and Andy Burnham, saying: “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.”
French Warships Patrol South
French warships are patrolling as far south as Rue amid fears that smugglers are expanding their routes into the UK. Three navy vessels are operating between Fort-Mahon-Plage and Le Touquet. A maritime security source told GB News: “What we're seeing here is a full-frontal assault by the criminal gangs. For weeks, they've been frustrated by increased police patrols, hampering their ability to launch boats from their regular push-off points around Calais and Dunkirk. That's forced a switch in tactics, with most launches happening up to a hundred miles south of Dunkirk, around the Dieppe area.”
The source added: “What we're seeing is the kind of surge tactics we haven't seen in the Channel for quite some time. It's an attempt to overwhelm and stretch the French police. Even with the millions of pounds of extra funding the French are getting from the UK, they still can't be everywhere at once. And there's no doubt this has worked today. Hundreds have already managed to cross, and the day is far from over.”
