Nearly 500 migrants have made the crossing of the Channel to the UK in one day.
According to Home Office figures, a total of 471 people arrived in nine boats on Saturday October 12, following 142 in two boats on Friday.
The latest arrivals bring the total so far for 2024 to 27,225 which is a 5% increase on the same time last year but 25% less than 2022.
By October 12 2023, 25,931 people had made the crossing and in 2022, 36,491 had arrived.
The crossings on Saturday came a week after four people, including a two-year-old boy, died after two boats got into trouble off the coast of France on Saturday October 5.
The fatal incidents came on the same day as 973 migrants crossed in 17 small boats, the biggest daily number this year.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“As we have seen with so many recent devastating tragedies in the Channel, the people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay.
“We will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
“We are making progress, bolstering our personnel numbers in the UK and abroad.
“Our new Border Security Command will strengthen our global partnerships and enhance our efforts to investigate, arrest, and prosecute these evil criminals.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel