France under pressure to set up joint maritime brigade to turn back Channel migrants

Development comes as charities report that 1,500 more migrants are waiting on French coast to cross Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, on a Border Force vessel during a week of record crossings
A group of migrants, including children, are brought in to Dover, Kent, on a Border Force vessel during a week of record crossings Credit:  Gareth Fuller/ PA

France is coming under pressure to set up a joint maritime brigade to turn back migrants as 1,500 more mass on the northern French coast to cross to the UK.

In a record week for migrant crossings, Border Force, Tory MPs and a leading French Republican politician who is standing for president are calling for new tactics to halt the surge in migrants using small boats to reach British shores.

The demands pile pressure on Emmanuel Macron's government, which has so far refused British offers of joint sea forces to stop and return migrant boats to France.

French officials have claimed maritime law dictates that their vessels can only stop the migrants' boats if they ask for help or are in dire need of rescue – a position challenged by Britain, which believes the rules of sea allow interception of "illegal" attempts to enter UK waters.

It comes after two days of record crossings saw nearly 1,000 migrants reach Britain in small boats, taking the total past 10,500. In the whole of last year, 8,417 migrants arrived.

Charities reported that some 1,500 migrants are grouped around Calais and Dunkirk, although stormier weather over the next couple of days is expected to delay their attempts to cross the Channel.

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Britain has given France an extra £54 million to double police on French beaches to 200 officers and boost surveillance in a bid to prevent migrants launching their boats, but Border Force chiefs and MPs said the only truly effective deterrent would be start turning boats back at sea.

Xavier Bertrand, a Republican party candidate in the French presidential elections, broke ranks to support a joint maritime brigade to block migrants on the water.

Mr Bertrand, the centre-Right president of the regional council of Hauts-de-France, who has been taking votes from Marine Le Pen's National Rally, called for a "Franco-British maritime brigade to break the traffic in the Channel to show that the passages to the United Kingdom are impossible".

He coupled that with an attack on "British hypocrisy" over the UK's failure to protect its territorial waters by deploying the Navy to block the migrants' boats.

"The British have been very good at threatening to send the Navy for our fishermen. Why don't they make the same effort to stop the smugglers? There is enough British hypocrisy," he said.

Tony Smith, a former director general of Border Force who held talks with Mr Bertrand on post-Brexit trade, said the presidential candidate was the best chance of shifting the French approach to accept returns at sea.

"We need a joint agreement with the French that migrants will be instantly taken back to the point from where they came and their asylum application would be considered there," said Mr Smith.

Tim Loughton, a Tory member of the Home Affairs committee, said: "I am in favour of anything that is going to achieve some results. If they are talking about intercepting the boats and returning migrants to France, that is the key to all of this.

"If their actions can match their words when they are in a position to do it – and if a joint force is deemed necessary to execute it – then that's fine. We need to do something that effectively deters them."

Boris Johnson's spokesman said on Friday that the rise in "dangerous and unnecessary" small boat crossings was "totally unacceptable", adding: "We know more needs to be done."

He said a visit by Chris Philps, the immigration minister, to meet French police, officials and his political counterpart this week was designed to ensure the extra funding provided by the UK to the French "continued to get results for the British public".

Britain has considered or trialled "turn back" options including nets that stop the propellers of dinghies, floating walls or fences in the Dover Straits and wave machines to push boats back.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, this week went on a fact-finding mission to Greece to see how their tactics are preventing illegal migrants' boats crossing the Aegean from Turkey by blocking and turning them back at sea.

The Government's new Nationality and Borders Bill gives Border Force new Australian-style "turn-back" powers to stop and redirect boats carrying illegal migrants across the Channel.

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