Last week, police used tear gas against dozens of people on a French beach, trying to prevent them boarding an inflatable boat bound for England. Once the would-be migrants had reached the water, though, the Gendarmes watched helplessly as they waded towards the waiting “taxi boat” and climbed aboard. As the people smugglers know, the police can only intervene on dry land. Once the desperate passengers are waist-deep in the Channel, officers can only watch from the shore.
This may be about to change. The French Ministry of the Interior told AFP that they want a change in the rules to allow officers to venture up to 300 metres into the water. Both UK and French governments hope this new policy will be in place before the Anglo-French summit in July. It would mark a new stage in the cat-and-mouse game between authorities and smuggling gangs, but will it solve the small boats crisis?
Last year, 38,023 people arrived in the UK on small boats, a 22% increase on the previous year (though still less than the peak in 2022). Small boat arrivals make up 86% of detected irregular arrivals. But this does not necessarily mean that 86% of irregular entrants come on small boats. Far from slipping unseen onto empty beaches, the overladen and unseaworthy vessels are the most visible and best detected route of arrival.
The busy waters between England and France are so well monitored that “not a single migrant has reached the UK on a small boat undetected” since new surveillance aircraft began patrolling in 2024. The De Havilland Dash 8 planes are equipped with radar, cameras, and other detection equipment, feeding data to a control centre at Lydd airfield in Kent. Patrolling continuously during peak crossing season, they are also used against drug smugglers and other criminal and security targets.
These are just the latest additions to the high-tech surveillance arsenal. In 2019, the Home Office entered a £1 billion contract with drone company Tekever, whose low-flying AR5 UAVs use video and infra-red sensors, as well as more conventional ship-tracking technologies, to monitor small boat movements in real time. Footage from one of the drones was used to convict Iraqi people smuggler Rebwar Ahmed in 2020, after the inflatable boat on which he was ferrying 20 passengers was intercepted by a Border Force cutter.
Rishi Sunak’s 2023 deal with France included nearly £500 million towards joint operations, including more drones and a joint Zonal Coordination Centre to bring together all the intelligence gathered by the many eyes in the sky. Drones equipped with infra-red night vision are now operating over the French coast.
Since November 2024, the UK Home Office has also been using a satellite monitoring system provided by Luton-based Telespazio UK. Their SEonSE (Smart Eyes on SEas) platform claims not only to detect vessels, but also to show their “estimated size, speed and direction… historical track analysis… list of anomalous events in which the vessel was involved, and aggregated risk assessment”.
From drones to orbiting satellites, there is no shortage of data about who and what is moving on the waters around the British Isles. Smuggling in people, drugs, or anything else has never been harder.
Nevertheless, record numbers of people are arriving on UK shores via dangerous sea routes, and record numbers are perishing in the attempt. In 2024, 73 people are known to have died, more than the total of the previous six years. All this data may help border authorities to understand patterns of movement, and to identify the gangs and individuals organising the crossings, but meanwhile the little boats keep setting off, overloaded with their human cargo.
One problem is that moving from observation to intervention is risky, a fact which the people smugglers (and their passengers) can use to their own advantage. Many of those who have perished, either by drowning or being crushed in overloaded boats, do so within sight of the French coast. One reason for the policy of non-intervention once people are in the water, however shallow, was that French police have been unwilling to risk being blamed for causing deaths while trying to prevent departures.
Trying to turn back overloaded boats once at sea is also potentially dangerous. Greek coastguards who intercepted a fishing vessel laden with hundreds of would-be migrants to Europe in 2023 now face criminal charges for “causing a shipwreck” and “exposing others to danger” by attempting to tow it, after monitoring its movements for 15 hours. Most of the people on the fishing boat drowned when it capsized.
This leaves border forces in a difficult position, as the obligation — legal and moral — to protect lives at sea outweighs the imperative to prevent irregular entry to the UK. Knowing this, people smugglers can presume on the duty of coastguards and other vessels to take their customers ashore for processing. However, they can also refuse to co-operate with French authorities, who may not risk endangering lives at sea by attempting to turn back boats or take individuals into custody.
People smugglers also adapt their methods to changes in policing. Instead of piloting the boats themselves, they will offer a free passage in exchange for steering the boat. In 2024 would-be asylum seeker Ibrahima Bah was convicted of manslaughter, after accepting a free passage in return for piloting an overloaded and unseaworthy boat in 2022. At least four men drowned when it sank.
Some have blamed the increasing overloading of the small boats — now carrying an average of 53 passengers, compared with 13 in 2020 — on the success of French and other authorities in confiscating or destroying them before launch. Boats are harder to come by and more expensive, and every launch brings greater risk of detection, incentivising fewer launches with more passengers per boat.
In response to increased surveillance of French beaches, people smugglers have resorted to launching boats elsewhere before collecting passengers who wade out to meet them, sometimes watched by police officers who are not authorised to stop them. It is hoped that the new French policy will impede this development, though fears of endangering lives by doing so will remain.
Improved intelligence and observation is only part of a long, strategic game between the authorities, the people trying to cross the Channel, and those making a lucrative business out of getting them on the water.
But is the focus on small boat crossings misplaced? Most small boat arrivals apply for asylum on arrival, and over two-thirds of those applications are granted, a higher proportion than those applying from other routes. This suggests that most small boat arrivals intend to seek legitimate status to remain in the UK, unlike arrivals by less visible routes, who may seek to stay unofficially and work in the grey economy.
“Most small boat arrivals intend to seek legitimate status to remain in the UK”
Small boat arrivals also make up only a third of all asylum claims, and around 10% of total net immigration. Other irregular arrivals include people arriving at ports or airports without correct documentation, or entering illicitly — concealed in freight lorries, for example — and only detected later, if ever.
Over a third of asylum claims are made by people who travelled to the UK legally on a visa, to work, study or visit, and subsequently claimed asylum in order to stay. Others who arrive with a visa may simply outstay it, without claiming asylum. Over three million visas were granted in 2024, over a million visitors got an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation) for a short stay, and others did not need either to enter the country.
All of this suggests that high-tech surveillance of the UK’s sea borders is no solution to concerns about uncontrolled inward migration. Even so, the British Government has another technological solution to hand: the Britcard. A digital ID card “issued free of charge to all those with the right to live and work in the UK” the Britcard “could be instantly checked by employers or landlords using a free verifier app”.
This would certainly make life harder for people overstaying their visas or failed asylum claims, as well as those who have slipped into the country undetected (probably not on a small boat). Unable to get legitimate jobs or rented accommodation, they would be forced into the “informal economy” and find it difficult to make the better life that drew them to the UK.
But what about the rest of us? The Britcard would be mandatory, universal, and “become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country,” or so its designers hope. They seem undeterred by the 40% of people they polled who worry that “the technology could be misused by the government down the line”. A reasonable fear, given that the card would be integrated into the Government’s digital systems, enabling cross-checking with HMRC, the National Landlord Database, and in future benefit claims and the NHS.
Financially, the cost is estimated at £140-400 million, which is a bargain compared to the billions spent on surveillance systems for the UK’s sea borders. Socially, however, the price of tracking individuals when they attempt to work, rent a home, or interact with state services, would be a universal identity card (albeit one carried on a smartphone) that everyone would be expected to produce in more and more situations.
Governments today are increasingly keen to turn to technology to solve big social and political problems, and a lot less keen to consider what new social and political problems the high-tech solutions may cause.
All the surveillance technology and intelligence-gathering on small boat crossings have reduced neither the arrivals nor the tragic deaths. Turning instead to technological surveillance of everyone already in the country, regardless of immigration status, is no more likely to resolve a complex problem that the UK shares with most advanced economies. It would, however, move us a step closer to being, if not a “papers please”, a “QR Code please” society.
