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 …

• Applying the healthcare-related spend per head for the general population, the estimated one-week expenditure based on the end-of-2022 asylum backlog figures would be over £13 million. Over a year, this spend would add an estimated healthcare-related cost of £700 million. If the same calculation is applied for the 45,755 people who crossed in small boats last year, the estimated one week healthcare-related spend over one year would be £191.6 million.

• The projected estimated healthcare-related cost for 2023 - based on the Home Office which says up to 80,000 people may arrive on small boats by the end of this year – is estimated to be more than £335 million.

• Based on the Department for Education’s expenditure per child, the estimated cost of providing asylum-connected places for one year of state-school enrolment – based on the end of 2022 figure – is over £186 million.

• The estimated cost of the new Small Boats Operational Command (SBOC) is £23.7 million per year. The corresponding cost for the new unit dedicated to processing Albanian-national asylum applications is over £13 million.

• Asylum-seeker support is not currently being distributed evenly around the country. While, for example, Labour-run Knowsley in Merseyside (the site of recent protests) has been providing asylum support to 238 individuals, the equivalent figure in, say, leafy, Liberal Democrat-controlled St Albans is just 29.

• While 99% of asylum-seekers in Scotland are supported by Glasgow Council, only 0.16% are receiving support in neighbouring Edinburgh. And the number of people receiving support from Cardiff and Swansea comfortably exceeds the number receiving support across all of south-eastern England.

• What should be done to curb some of these numbers, resolve the crisis, and ensure that people do not continue to risk their lives in the Channel? Policy Exchange suggests we do four things quickly:

  • First, use the new Illegal Migration Act to ensure judicial interventions – both domestic and international – have far less of an impact on efforts to introduce a robust border-security regime and well-ordered asylum system. The Home Secretary should be empowered to ignore “Rule 39” orders issued by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights to block deportations from the UK, while the scope for UK courts to do the same on the grounds of the Human Rights Act must also be restricted.

  • Second, establish a new safe and legal route for refugees from any country but make it subject to an annual cap democratically determined by Government and Parliament each year (a move consistent with the Brexit claim to be regaining control of our institutions), and which prioritises women and girls at major risk of sex-based violence in conflict zones. The level of the cap should be required to be proposed each year by Government in a statutory instrument and approved by Parliament under the affirmative procedure. This would sit alongside existing schemes, such as those for Hong Kong and Ukraine.

  • Third, ask liberal progressive Britain to volunteer to expand the ‘Home for Ukraine’ scheme to other nationalities. Encourage pro-refugee British households to rehome asylum seekers and aid refugee integration. Volunteers could be mobilised to help refugees improve their command of the English language, thereby reducing pressure on the ESOL budget and organically facilitating integration in local communities

  • Fourth, we need to prioritise the security concerns of British nationals by extending the counter-terrorism Prevent scheme to cover immigration and asylum. The blunt reality is Britain has now suffered a series of Islamist terror attacks at the hands of those with an asylum-related background. We need to work harder to detect radicalisation among arrivals and expand prevent duty training to UK Border Force and immigration personnel. We also need much stronger regulation and supervision of asylum-related accommodation. This is also crucial to avoid a completely collapse of public trust in the system.

  • And, lastly, we need to disperse asylum-seekers more evenly around Britain so it is not the most deprived, left behind communities which are left to shoulder the responsibility while wealthier communities evade this responsibility. Those who are most vocal in support for refugees and asylum-seekers should be asked to do more in offering support and accommodation for them in their own areas, much like we have seen in recent months in the United States.

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