Large numbers of people have arrived on a Kent beach after Channel crossings continued for a fourth consecutive day. More than 600 migrants have arrived in the UK since Saturday, with more brought to Dungeness beach by lifeboat on Tuesday.
Officers processing the arrivals were seen carrying out security checks on a long queue of men with handheld scanners, while a small number of women and children were also pictured on board the lifeboat. More crossings are believed to be under way, with other arrivals anticipated later.
Since the start of this year, 8,412 people have reached the UK after navigating busy shipping lanes from France in small boats, according to analysis of Government data by the PA news agency.
There were 19 people who made the crossing in one boat on Monday, after 436 in nine boats on Sunday and 167 in 13 boats on Sunday, according to Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures.
The latest crossings come after Ministry of Defence said it had started to tell the first asylum seekers they could be flown to Rwanda under its new deportation plan, with flights expected to begin in “the coming months”.
In an interview with the Daily Mail at the weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said 50 migrants have already been told they are due to be flown to the east African nation within a fortnight but he anticipated legal opposition to the move.
Last week Tom Pursglove, one of the Government’s immigration ministers, told MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Committee that the scheme was a “new and untested policy” and could not point to what modelling was used to give the “evidence base” to implement it.
Downing Street acknowledged crossings would continue while work takes place to set up the Rwanda policy.
“Short-term, we will continue to see these crossings take place until this policy is fully established,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.
Asked if it was hoped to be a deterrent, the spokesman said: “We want to establish the policy in full and we believe that once fully established it will be successful in reversing some of this growing trend we have seen.”
