There is no “switch” to stop small boat crossings, and not every migrant boat can be intercepted, Labour’s deputy leader has told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Lucy Powell’s comments came after two uncontrolled landings from the Channel in two days, at Folkestone and Samphire Hoe in Kent.<\/p>\n
The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has ordered an urgent review by Border Security Command, calling the failure to intercept the two boats “not acceptable”.<\/p>\n
But the Conservatives say Labour has lost control of Britain’s borders, and a “radically different” approach is needed.<\/p>\n
A total of 781 people were recorded as arriving in 10 boats on Wednesday, the highest in a single day for far this year.<\/p>\n
In a round of interviews with BBC local radio ahead of Labour’s annual conference, Powell told BBC Solent: “We are taking all steps we can to really bear down on and eradicate the small boat crossings altogether.<\/p>\n
“This has been a mammoth task across a whole range of different policy areas over the last couple of years, which is now starting to bear fruit, in that small boat crossings are significantly down this year – in fact significantly lower than at any time in the last six years.<\/p>\n
“Obviously as we close down some avenues and we close down routes criminal gangs look to find new ways to deliver their terrible business model.”<\/p>\n
The thousands of migrants crossing the Channel are usually brought to shore by Border Security Command or RNLI boats.<\/p>\n
Before Monday, no small boat arrivals to the UK coast without an escort had been officially recorded since September 6, 2025.<\/p>\n
Uncontrolled landings are so rare that last year’s incident was the only other one recorded since the Home Office began keeping data in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no “switch” to stop small boat crossings, and not every migrant boat can be intercepted, Labour’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-781178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}