Migrant Crisis: Patel Pays French £54m To Do Their Job

Home Secretary says ‘public rightly angry‘ as record numbers arrive on our shores

- Michael Knowles

Priti Patel is to pay France another £54million to stop migrants reaching Britain.

Beach patrols by French police will be doubled after a record 430 people crossed the Channel in just one day.

The Home Secretary said: “The public are rightly angry” as yesterday’s arrivals brought the tally of migrants to have landed in Britain this year to 8,452 – more than all of 2020.

The UK has given France £141million to tackle the crisis in the last six years. Ms. Patel yesterday signed a fresh agreement with Gerald Darmanin, its Interior Minister, to strengthen a crackdown on people-smuggling gangs

Fears are growing that current good weather and calm seas might see hundreds of more migrants cram into dinghies and attempt to cross the busy shipping lanes.

As well as increased patrols on French shores, the handout pays for more drone surveillance to combat traffickers and fences in smuggling hotspots such as Calais.

French officers will comb wider areas of their northern coast between Boulogne and Dunkirk and will expand patrols further north-west around Dieppe.

Crime gangs have spread out across France’s shoreline, forcing migrants to take longer, riskier journeys across the Channel while making them pay thousands of euros each. The French authorities have been accused in Britain of making “their problem our problem” by failing to prevent more migrants from setting sail.