The British government has reportedly hired a fleet of private boats to help the Border Force bring illegal Channel migrants ashore at a cost to the taxpayer at least £36 million.
According to a report from The Times of London, the UK Home Office — the government body responsible for controlling immigration and protecting the country’s borders — has signed a contract worth £36 million for the hiring of a “charter of vessel(s) to support small boats operations in the Dover Straits”.
The contract, which is set to come into force in April and will last until at least the end of March next year, will mean that private vessels will assist the Border Force in picking up migrants in the English Channel and bringing them ashore in Britain.
The government was forced into seeking private assistance to deal with illegal migration because of further delays to plans to replace the ageing fleet of cutters currently used by the Border Force, some of which are over 20 years old and need frequent repairs to remain operable.
While the government set aside £224 million to begin procuring five new cutters and six coastal patrol vessels in April of 2022, the process of replacing the current Border Force fleet was first pushed back to April of 2024 and now is not expected to begin until March of 2026.
In addition to the £36 million earmarked for private boats, the government also shelled out £9 million on refurbishing the outdated Border Force vessels to hopefully keep them running for a further five years.
The revelations come as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seeking to finally implement the long-awaited plan to send illegal boat migrants to Rwanda, which still needs approval from the House of Lords. The scheme, which was first floated by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, still faces the potential of legal challenges from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and at home with British judges having a long history of siding with illegal migrants, foreign criminals, and even terrorists in deportation battles.
Sunak, like Johnson before him, has argued that sending illegals to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed rather than putting them up in accommodations in Britain will not only save money but will also serve as a deterrent to more illegals crossing the English Channel in small boats operated by people smuggling networks on the French coast.
Others, including Brexit leader Nigel Farage and Reform UK leader Richard Tice, have argued that if the government actually wanted to deter illegal boat migration, it should adopt a send-back-the-boats approach like that adopted in Australia.
In 2013, the government of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott implemented Operation Sovereign Borders, in which migrant boats, mostly arriving from Indonesia, were immediately turned back to their country of origin or brought to off-shore asylum processing centres in third-party countries. The system effectively shut down the boat migrant routes that overwhelmed Australia prior to the policy’s implementation.
Conversely, rather than protecting Britain’s borders and sending illegals back to France, the UK Border Force has been accused of operating a “taxi service” for illegal migrants, picking them up in the middle of the Channel and ferrying them to the Port of Dover. The Border Force has even been reported to have travelled into French territorial waters to pick up migrants and bring them to British soil.
So far this year, over 600 illegal boat migrants have been brought ashore, following around 30,000 successful crossings last year.
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