More people cross Channel after deadliest day of migrant crisis

More people making the perilous journey across the Channel have been brought ashore following the deadliest day of the current migrant crisis.

A group of people wearing life jackets and wrapped in blankets were seen huddled together on board an RNLI lifeboat before disembarking in Dover on Thursday morning, just a day after a dinghy capsized off the coast of Calais, causing the loss of dozens of lives.

French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the loss of 27 lives was an “absolute tragedy” as he blamed human trafficking gangs who promised people the “El Dorado of England” for a large fee.

Boris Johnson called on France to agree to joint police patrols along the French Channel coast, while French politicians pointed the finger at UK authorities for failing to tackle the issue.

The Prime Minister spoke to President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday evening in the wake of the worst incident of its kind in the Channel since the current migrant crisis began.

Downing Street said they had agreed to “keep all options on the table” in their efforts to break up the human trafficking gangs responsible for putting desperate people at risk in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes.

Home Secretary Priti Patel will also speak to her French counterpart on Thursday morning, immigration minister Kevin Foster said.

Mr Darmanin told French radio network RTL that the smugglers are “criminals, people who exploit the misery of others, of women and children – there were pregnant women, children who died yesterday on that boat… and for a few thousand euros they promise them ‘El Dorado in England’.

“And, sadly, this has been repeated every day for the last 20 years.”

A joint search and rescue operation by the French and British authorities launched after a fishing boat spotted people in the sea off France was finally called off late on Wednesday.

The dead were said to include five women and a girl, while two survivors were picked up and were being treated in a French hospital. One of the dead women was later reported to have been pregnant.

Mr Darmanin said the boat which sank had been very flimsy, likening it to “a pool you blow up in your garden”.

The French authorities have arrested five suspected people traffickers in connection with the incident while the regional prosecutor has opened an investigation into aggravated manslaughter.

Following a meeting of the Cobra emergencies committee, Mr Johnson said it was clear that French operations to stop the migrant boats leaving “haven’t been enough” despite £54 million of UK support, adding that the people traffickers were “literally getting away with murder”.

However, the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, said that it was the British who were to blame and called on on Mr Johnson to “face up to his responsibilities”.

“The British Government is to blame. I believe that Boris Johnson has, for the past year and a half, cynically chosen to blame France,” she said, according to French media reports.

Franck Dhersin, the vice president of transport for the northern Hauts-de-France region, told French TV station BFMTV: “In France what do we do? We arrest the smugglers…

“To fight them, there’s only one way – we need to stop the organisations, you need to arrest the mafia chiefs.

“And the mafia chiefs live in London… They live in London peacefully, in beautiful villas, they earn hundreds of millions of euros every year, and they reinvest that money in the City.

“And so it’s very easy for the tax authorities to find them.”

Mr Johnson, meanwhile, said the Government would seek to “accelerate” measures in the Nationality and Borders Bill to enable the authorities to “distinguish between people who come here legally and people who come here illegally”.

But Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said the incident should lead the Government to rethink its approach.

“Surely a tragedy of this magnitude is the wake-up call our Government needs to change its approach and finally commit to an expansion of safe routes for those men, women and children in desperate need of protection,” he said.

A number of people are also believed to have reached Britain in small boats on Wednesday, with an Afghan soldier who had worked with British forces reported to be among those landing at Dungeness in Kent.

The Dover Strait is the busiest shipping lane in the world and has claimed many lives of people trying to cross to Britain in inflatable dinghies.

More than 25,700 people have made the dangerous journey to the UK in small boats this year – three times the total for the whole of 2020, according to data compiled by the PA news agency.