Undocumented Migrants: English Channel
(asked on 8th January 2020) - View Source
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many suspected migrants have been detected entering the UK by small boat across the Dover straits in each year since 2015.
Small boats crossing the English Channel were an infrequent phenomenon prior to 2018. Incidences involving small boats, as a result, were not recorded with this level of granularity.
However, information was provided to the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) on 5th March 2019 which gave the number of migrants detected entering the UK by small boats from January 2018 to February 2019 as 428.
On 22 July 2019 the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid provided an additional figure to Home Affairs Select Committee that up to 21 July 2019, 725 migrants had crossed the English Channel.
We anticipate publication of 2019/2020 data in the coming months.