Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is their policy to stop all dangerous channel crossings.

The Illegal Migration Act, which this Government has enacted, is an important part of our response to illegal migration. The Act marks a vital step forward to stopping dangerous, unnecessary, and illegal journeys to the UK by removing the incentives for people to take these routes in the first place.

The UK and French governments are committed to working together to stop small boat crossings of the English Channel, and in March 2023 the Prime Minister and President Macron agreed an ambitious new, multi-year, deal that will see us intensify our cooperation with the French government to prevent small boat crossings, with the aim of improving the interception rate and drastically reducing the number of crossings year-on-year. This new agreement is seeing more French personnel being deployed, supported by cutting-edge surveillance technologies and equipment; a new Zonal Coordination Centre has been established, responsible for the coordination and deployment of all relevant French law enforcement, supported by the UK and including permanently embedded British officers, and more work being done to disrupt organised crime gangs through improved intelligence sharing.

In 2023, our cooperation with France prevented over 26,000 individual crossings by small boat to the UK. Since the Joint Intelligence Cell was set up in July 2020, we have dismantled 82 organised criminal gangs responsible for people smuggling of small boats migrants.

We have developed a comprehensive illegal migration strategy to stop the boats and we are focused on delivering it; this has already seen a reduction in small boat crossings by a third in 2023.