France has been accused of aiding the people smuggling gangs operating along its coast after failing to stop an overcrowded dinghy setting sail for Britain and the French Navy escorting the small boat to UK waters even after five people fell off the vessel and drowned on Tuesday.
On the first day after the UK finally passed legislation to send illegal boat migrants to processing centres in Rwanda, 402 foreigners successfully crossed the Channel from France. However, five migrants, including a seven-year-old girl, a woman, and three men died as the engine of the overcrowded dinghy cut out, sparking panic.
While 48 migrants from the boat were returned to France, the French Navy decided to continue escorting the 58 remaining migrants in the dinghy to UK waters, despite the drownings.
“They managed to restart the engine and decided to continue their sea route towards Great Britain under the surveillance of the French Navy,” the local Pas-de-Calais prefect Jacques Billant said per The Telegraph.
Brexit boss Nigel Farage, who first exposed the French Navy escorting migrants to the UK territorial waters in 2020, said on Tuesday evening: “What really strikes me is; five people overboard drown, the French Navy come, take other people off, and still escort that boat, effectively, the French Navy are working for the traffickers.”
“At what point politically, do we say to the French, you have got to stop acting as agents of the traffickers?” he questioned.
Home Affairs Committee member Tim Loughton also took aim at Paris, saying: “This is incredibly irresponsible behaviour by the French authorities on so many levels after another avoidable tragedy.”
The Conservative MP argued that police should not have allowed the overcrowded boat to set off in the Channel and questioned why they did not impound the dinghy after the drownings occurred given that it was a “potential crime scene”.
The French have consistently claimed that international maritime law prevents them from bringing migrants back to shore, as they may try to throw themselves overboard if impeded on their way to the UK and therefore must only serve as escorts for the migrants before handing them off to the British Border Force, who collect the migrants and bring them ashore at Dover.
The farcical situation in which the French are essentially unloading unwanted illegals onto the British is amplified by the fact that London is paying Paris for the pleasure, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government pledging to hand over worth £478 million (€541 million) in British taxpayer money to the French to step up patrols in Calais and other people smuggler hotspots.
While the money will go to help the French police their own beaches and build a detention centre, President Macron’s government steadfastly rejected any attempts by Sunak to include provisions for the return of migrants to France.
Instead, the British government will pay Rwanda at least £370 million over five years to take in the migrants as their asylum claims are processed, assuming legislation passed this week is not stymied by courts once again.
In the wake of the half-billion payout to Paris, illegal migration has only continued to rise, with crossings of the Channel rising by around 25 per cent over last year, as around 6,500 illegals have reached British shores since the start of the year.
The Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK party has argued that rather than picking up migrants from the French and then eventually expelling them to Rwanda, the government should merely turn back the boats in the Channel and bring them back to France, a safe and prosperous EU member state where by rights they should apply for asylum.