Dinghy reached the UK coast unimpeded and undetected earlier this week in ‘suspicious’ crossing
However, others are less convinced. A political source said: “I think it is more likely a cock-up. You can overestimate the sophistication of a crossing when in most cases it is chaotic and fraught with danger.”
The two small boats that arrived earlier this week were the first undetected landings for a year and represent an embarrassment for the Home Office, which has invested millions of pounds to prevent migrants making any “uncontrolled” breach of UK borders by crossing the Channel in a small boat.
Once migrants’ dinghies are at sea, French vessels generally escort them to the Channel median line, before they are picked up by Border Force, the RNLI or coastguard boats to be taken to Dover.
Home Office officials believe it may be a new “scatter-gun” tactic by the people smugglers who have seen their supply lines for boats, motors and lifebelts disrupted by police and Border Force operations, as well as the increased number of French police officers patrolling the beaches.
They have also expanded the “taxi boat” model, where they travel along the coast in mega-dinghies picking up as many as 230 migrants. And they have moved westwards as far as Cherbourg, some 200 miles from Calais, around which most of the French gendarmes and police are based.
Rob Lawrie, an aid worker and BBC documentary maker who has investigated the people smugglers, said he had been told by naval surveillance experts that these smaller taxi boats appeared to be much lower in the water with rounded sides, making them harder to be picked up on radar.
He suggested the “customers” for such clandestine arrivals were likely to be Iranians or Iraqi Kurds with business interests in the UK, who had not claimed asylum but wanted to move freely and secretly between the UK and France.
“What we discovered during the podcast is there are actually quite a few people in this country, usually of Iranian or Iraqi Kurdish nationality culture, that are going to and fro from France,” he said.
The Home Office declined to comment while its review of the incident was under way.
Disclaimer
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