The Small Boats Crisis in Numbers

Some striking statistics about what's unfolding on the southern border

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One issue that will have a profound impact on the outcome of Britain’s election next year is immigration. It is the third most important issue for all voters and the second most important for people who voted Tory in 2019, who believed they were ‘taking back control’. But, as we now know, this hasn’t happened. Quite the opposite.

Aside from spiralling levels of legal immigration —which, as I pointed out to a Cabinet Minister recently, concern the British people just as much as the spiralling levels of illegal immigration— there’s also the specific crisis of the rising number of small boats crossing the Channel to reach Britain’s southern border. It has become a powerful symbol of the country’s inability to control its own national borders.

Small Boats Emergency Report, Policy Exchange, 2023

But what do the British people really know about this crisis? Who, exactly, is entering the country? What is the cost of this crisis to the British taxpayer? And how can we fix this problem?

This week, my friends at the Westminster-based think-tank Policy Exchange —led by Rakib Ehsan— published a meticulous and damning report which not only answers all these questions but throws full light on the extent to which our national leaders have completely lost control of this issue.

Some of the numbers you are about to read are truly shocking —like the fact our broken immigration system has left us spending more on housing asylum-seekers and illegal migrants than we’re currently spending on tackling homelessness on Britain’s streets or levelling-up the left behind towns and regions outside of London (look at the numbers below — they are truly mind-boggling).

In fact, I’ve been writing about this issue for two years and even I was shocked by some of the numbers you’re about to read. And when you do read them, you’ll immediately grasp why so many people out there —especially outside London— are so utterly frustrated and angry with the failure of their leaders to resolve this incredibly costly and spiralling crisis. So, here’s the small boats crisis in numbers and also a few suggestions for how we might fix this crisis.

• Between 2018 and 2022, the number of people arriving illegally on the small boats surged from 299 to 45,755. The number of people who arrived last year was greater than the total number who arrived between 2018 and 2021.

• The largest number of people crossing on a single day was recorded last year, on August 22nd 2022, when 1,295 people crossed on 27 boats. This is nearly 1,000 more people than the number who crossed in all of 2018.

• According to the Home Office, unless this issue is resolved quickly then up to 80,000 people will arrive this year, in 2023, which, if true, would blow apart Rishi Sunak’s claim to be regaining control of Britain’s borders and make a total mockery of the claim that Britain is once again a self-governing nation which can exercise complete control over who is coming in and who is moving out.

• Two-thirds of the people who crossed last year were men aged between 18 and 39 years —almost ten times the number of females of the same age. Since 2018, men have vastly outnumbered females, representing 91%, 84%, 87% and 87% of all people arriving on the small boats, respectively

• Last year, the largest groups of foreign nationals on the boats came from Albania, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, India, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Kuwait, Georgia, Pakistan. A significant number of people arriving on small boats do not originate from countries at war.

• The number of Albanians arriving on the small-boats rose sharply between 2020 and 2022, from 54 to 12,301, though is now beginning to fall. Yet at the same time the number of Indian nationals crossing has risen sharply, from not a single Indian in 2018 or 2019 to almost 700 last year. Some suggest Indians are now the third-largest cohort of migrants crossing the Channel.

• There are currently more than 51,000 asylum-seekers living in hotels in Britain. At the end of 2022, the total estimated one-year cost of asylum-related spending on hotel accommodation, asylum-related allowances, healthcare, and school places – along with supporting new bodies like the Small Boats Operational Command (SBOC) and a technical unit specialising in asylum applications by Albanians – is now estimated to be in the region of £3.5 billion.

• Put another way, last year the UK government spent three and a half times more accommodating newcomers in hotels (£2.2 billion) than the £630 million spent tackling homelessness in the UK, or spent more money accommodating newcomers than it spent on the latest fund for Levelling-up the left behind regions outside of London (£2.1 billion).

And here are a lot more remarkable statistics …