Channel migrants: Smugglers claim boat shortages affecting crossings

People smuggling gangs in France claim there is a growing shortage of small boats to make the crossings, a BBC investigation has discovered.

An undercover reporter was told it would cost up to £2,800 per person to reach the UK.

Migrants were also filmed using a free bus service to get to French beaches.

Commons leader Penny Mordaunt said it was an "appalling" issue, and said the home secretary would want to look at the BBC's findings.

So far this year more than 35,000 people have made the crossing, compared to just over 28,000 for the whole of 2021.

Posing as a migrant with a pregnant wife and two year-old daughter, our reporter was told by a smuggler the price to reach the UK was £2,800 per person, "otherwise I won't make any profit. I can't do less."

Migrants have been found gathering on sand dunes on a French beach

Another smuggler warned prices would increase.

"There are not enough boats," he told our reporter, "some problem in Germany.

"We get them from Turkey and bring them via Germany."

Migrants often catch a local free bus service to reach the beach

After catching the bus to beaches near Dunkirk the migrants are walked to sand dunes by members of smuggling gangs and told to hide until the boats are ready.

Garnyan travelled to France from Iraq with his pregnant wife and two-year-old son, and said he wanted to come to the UK because he feared they would be treated harshly in other European countries.

"We know that French police and English police will help us," he said.

Dover MP Natalie Elphicke told the Commons that the BBC's "shocking report" contained the "breath-taking" disclosure of free French public bus services being used to ferry migrants from camps to Dunkirk beaches.

Ms Elphicke said: "This is something I will be taking up with the Home Secretary...and asking that she takes up urgently with her French counterparts.

"It beggars belief there's a bus service from the migrant camps to the departure places. It clearly needs addressing urgently."

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A Home Office spokesman said: "We will go further and faster to tackle those gaming the system, using every tool at our disposal to deter illegal migration, disrupt the business model of people smugglers and relocate to Rwanda, those with no right to be in the UK.

"Despite the lies they have been sold by the people smugglers, migrants who travel through safe countries to illegally enter the UK will not be allowed to start a new life here."

The BBC has approached the two people smugglers for comment.

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