EXCLUSIVE: Investigations editor Zak Garner-Purkis visited the Channel on the day Labour’s new deal came into force with Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.
Investigations editor Zak Garner-Purkis visited the Channel to see the small boats up close (Image: Phil Harris)
From the early hours of the morning, plenty of French naval vessels were in the waters where migrant boats make their first tentative moves towards Britain.
High-powered ribs zoomed across the horizon at speeds of 40 knots while large grey warships glided up and down the shoreline.
From the sky, drones provided the French authorities with an aerial picture and, peering through binoculars, I could see dune buggies were visible on the beaches.
As I sat with Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp on a fishing vessel bobbing along the English Channel, I wondered whether the small boat crisis we were there to observe would not materialise.
The French authorities had all this technology and expertise – how could they be outflanked by a gang of traffickers with only mobile phones and a blow-up dinghy?
But sure enough, once weather conditions had settled, we learned that two migrant boats had somehow evaded the French vessels.
Instead of blocking the flimsy little boats entering one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, they were helping them into deeper, more dangerous waters.
All the French might and technology were being used for a different purpose.
Two drones and an aeroplane watched from the sky as a large naval vessel diverted marine traffic from the route of the bobbing dinghy, which was piloting its way to British waters.
As they neared the dividing line, UK Border Force raced to pick up the migrants.
Although he’s spoken about it many times, the Shadow Home Secretary was shocked to see the way the boat was being escorted by the French authorities with his own eyes.
“They need to be stopping illegal migration,” he told me in an exasperated tone, “not assisting and facilitating it.”
It’s a fair observation, but sadly not a new one. I remember first going to the Channel two years ago and being astounded by how normalised it had become for a national government to support the efforts of ruthless human traffickers.
The role the French ships play in ferrying migrant boats to rescue in UK waters was and remains an absolute godsend for criminals who profit from risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants on dangerously overloaded dinghies.
It’s actually a really useful marketing tool for any trafficker dealing with a nervous small boat passenger.
‘Don’t worry’ they can say ‘you’ll be escorted to Britain by the French Government as soon as you’re on the water.’
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp near the White Cliffs of Dover speaking to the media as a group of (Image: PA)
The result is a boon for the trafficker’s business. Migrants pay between £1,000 to £5,000 for passage across the Channel, so the 120 or so migrants we watched being taken to English shores easily earned these criminal networks hundreds of thousands.
That money lines the pockets of gangsters who are free to invest in weapons, drugs, prostitution, terrorism and any number of other exploitative crimes that cause suffering to the most vulnerable people.
I still find it astonishing that this has become the way things work and an accepted part of the way Britain and France tackle the issue.
This was only emphasised by the fact that yesterday’s sorry scene took place on the first day of Keir Starmer’s so-called ‘groundbreaking’ deal with France coming into force.
The Prime Minister hyped up the unprecedented nature of getting France to take back some of the migrants who’ve travelled illegally to Britain from its shores in a one-in-one-out arrangement.
But the bitter reality for Starmer is that the brazen facilitation of human trafficking by the French Government on the English Channel was never even on the table.
His boasts about the deal sound like a husband who watches a neighbour have an affair with his wife and then calls himself a winner when the neighbour agrees to trim a hedgerow that’s been overhanging his garden for years.
Philp’s suggestion is that Labour’s senior team needs to jump on a boat and watch for themselves.
“I think, frankly, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper should come out onto the Channel and see what is going on,” he told me.
It’s true, you really do have to see it with your own eyes to understand.
