Royal Navy told to ‘patrol Channel and return migrants to France’

The Royal Navy should patrol the Channel for migrant boats, return the passengers to France and destroy the vessels, a military expert has said.

Nicholas Drummond, a former British Army infantry officer and defence industry analyst, believes skippers of such boats should be arrested.

He wrote on X: “I would like to see Royal Navy patrol craft tasked with patrolling the Channel for migrant boats.

“When they find them, they should return them back to France. Destroy the boats in question. Arrest and jail the skipper. When the message gets through that this route is closed, they’ll stop.”

Mr Drummond’s call came as official Home Office figures due to be published today (December 2) are expected to show more than 20,000 migrants have arrived in Britain after crossing the Channel since Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister.

Before the weekend, the total number of arrivals stood at 19,988 since Sir Keir entered No.10, but it is thought the number due to be added will take the total over the milestone figure.

Some 50,637 arrivals were recorded during Rishi Sunak‘s premiership, which began on October 25 2022. It took about eight-and-a-half months for migrant crossings to top 20,000 after Mr Sunak entered Downing Street.

Calls for the Royal Navy to return Channel migrants to France have been made previously, but critics of the idea say doing so would require agreement between London and Paris as UK vessels would need permission to enter French waters under such circumstances.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had put the Royal Navy in charge of dealing with Channel migrants in April 2022 as part of plans to tackle illegal migration.

When the same idea was floated in 2020, critics described turning back boats as a blunt instrument which would result in more deaths at sea.

Royal Navy support for the Home Office was schedulued to last until January last year, with responsibility passing back to Border Force.

Despite the Navy’s temporary assumption of responsibility, the number of migrants arriving via the perilous route in 2022 (45,774) was higher than 2021 (28,526) and 2020 (8,466), according to figures from the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory.

Last week, Sir Keir announced a major overhaul of the immigration system and accused the Conservatives of running “a one-nation experiment in open borders” amid concerns over the number of people legally arriving in the UK.

He said the Government had inherited an “utter mess” in the Home Office and new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch admitted her party had failed on migration.

The PM told a Downing Street press conference: “Let me say directly to the people watching: where the last government failed you, this one will not. They drove immigration numbers up. We will get them down.”

Recent figures showed the cost of the UK’s asylum system has risen to £5billion, the highest level of Home Office spending on record and up by more than a third in a year.

Other data showed 35,651 asylum seekers were being housed in hotels in Britain at the end of September, up more than 6,000 since the end of June, signalling the first quarterly rise for a year.

Some 50 people have died while trying to cross the Channel this year, according to incidents recorded by the French coastguard, in what is considered the deadliest year since the crisis unfolded.

The International Organisation for Migration has also reported several more migrant deaths believed to be linked to crossing attempts so far in 2024.

The Royal Navy has been approached for comment.