Channel crossings: People smugglers 'using smaller boats as a diversion'

People smugglers are using a first wave of small dinghies to distract police while larger boats are sent across the English Channel, a French MP has said.

Pierre-Henri Dumont said authorities could not stop every departure, with dozens of vessels attempting the crossing in a single night.

"Sometimes they use small, small boats as [a] diversion for bigger boats to cross after," he told BBC Radio Kent.

The Home Office last week agreed a deal to increase patrols on French beaches.

Mr Dumont, the MP for Calais, said hundreds of migrants had been intercepted last week, and greater funding for police would allow more boats to be stopped.

"The more men we have, the more migrants we will stop, but you need to understand that we cannot stop every one because there are too many kilometres of shore," he said.

He said interceptions were complicated by smugglers' co-ordinated tactics, launching boats from 200km of shoreline from Dieppe to Dunkirk.

The size of boats reaching the UK has increased this year, with the average number of people arriving in each vessel rising from 13 in 2020 to 23 in 2021.

On Sunday, 378 people crossed the Channel in 12 boats, an average of more than 30 per vessel.

Meanwhile, French authorities have restricted the sale of diesel and petrol in small containers in the Calais region, with sales capped at 10 litres, in an attempt to reduce crossings.

Mr Dumont said the move was "clearly designed to stop the smugglers", but warned they could easily obtain fuel elsewhere.

Clare Moseley, of Care4Calais, said that refugees were crossing the Channel "quite openly" in the hope they would be intercepted by Border Force, before applying for asylum.

However, she said the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would make crossings a criminal offence, would encourage people to try to "sneak in" using routes that are "even more dangerous and push up the prices that people smugglers can charge".

Ms Moseley said the government could "put people smugglers out of business once and for all" by allowing people to apply for asylum from outside the UK.

Home secretary Priti Patel said the French had stopped 7,500 migrants reaching the UK this year, which was "nearly treble the number for the same period in 2020".

The new agreement would "increase police patrols on French beaches, improve surveillance technology and enhance intelligence sharing", she said.

Ms Patel said criminalising crossings would "break the business model of people smugglers".

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