French action ‘has prevented nearly 500 small boat crossings this year'
Her statement came days after the Government secured a new agreement with France over returning migrants who had arrived on small boats.
She said: 'French actions have prevented 496 boat crossings this year, but 385 boats have crossed.
'And criminal gangs are operating new tactics, increasing the overcrowding of boats so that more people arrive, and loading them in shallow waters, exploiting the French rules that means their authorities have not been able to intervene in the water.'
It is unclear whether the figure refers to small boat crossings being stopped before or during attempts to leave the coastline, or by other means such as seizing boats from warehouses.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron during Mr Macron's state visit to the UK (Leon Neal/PA)
The Home Secretary referred to 'appalling scenes' of people clambering onto crowded boats in shallow waters, and said French police had faced 'disgraceful violence' from gang members behind the crossings.
She continued: 'We cannot stand for this. That is why the new action agreed with France includes establishing a new French Compagnie de Marche of specialist enforcement officers, with stronger public order powers to address increases in violence on French beaches and prevent boat launches before they reach the water.'
Some 22,492 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel, according to latest Home Office figures.
This is up 57% on this point last year (14,291) and 71% higher than at this stage in 2023 (13,144), according to PA news agency analysis.
Last week's agreement saw a deal struck for a one in, one out system that would see a small boat migrant exchange for a legal asylum seeker.
No details have been given about how many people will be covered by the scheme, but reports from France have indicated it could initially be limited to around 50 a week – a small fraction of the weekly average this year of 782.
Priority will be given to people from countries where they are most likely to be granted asylum as genuine refugees, who are most likely to be exploited by smuggling gangs and also asylum seekers who have connections to the UK.
The accord came at the end of a state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to the UK.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper during the UK-France Summit on day three of Emmanuel Macron's state visit to the UK (Yui Mok/PA)
Ms Cooper said: 'The new agreement reached at the summit last week means stronger partnership working with source and transit countries to prevent illegal migration.'
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp rubbished the idea that progress had been made on the issue, and said statistics showed small boat crossings had risen under Labour.
Mr Philp said the 12 months since Labour's election last July had seen a 40% rise year-on-year in terms of crossings.
He said: 'The Home Secretary comes here today sounding rather pleased with herself. I'm afraid she has no reason to.
'A year ago, she promised to smash the gangs, she said again and again that was her plan, indeed it was her only plan. Yet today, there is no mention of what was once her favourite catchphrase.
'That's because her claim to smash the gangs has become a joke, an embarrassment to her and to the Government.'
He added that rather than closing asylum hotels, there were 3,000 more people in them than last year.
'She is setting records, just all the wrong ones,' he said.
People thought to be migrants are brought in to the Border Force compound in Dover, Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA)
Ms Cooper replied: 'This crisis, the small boats chaos, went on for 340 weeks under the Tories, a period in which when he was immigration minister, overall migration near trebled and small boat crossings increased tenfold when he was the immigration minister in charge.'
She later said the Government's plan would involve greater co-operation with other governments, rather than 'standing at the shoreline shouting at the sea'.
Ms Cooper said: 'We will best strengthen our border security by working with countries on the other side of those borders who face exactly the same challenges far better than just standing at the shoreline shouting at the sea.'
Conservative former minister Andrew Murrison asked the Home Secretary to respond to the idea that the UK was 'perceived as being attractive to illegal migrants'.
She replied: 'I do think frankly it has been too easy to work illegally in this country for too long, and we know that one of the things that the criminal gangs say to people is, 'it will be easy to get a job'.
'They will even give people discounts if they can come and work for those same criminal gangs operating in the UK.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
2 minutes ago
- Spectator
Why France is cracking down on topless tourists
Police have been sent out to patrol France's seaside promenades. Not to chase hardened criminals – but to look for bare-chested tourists. From Les Sables-d'Olonne to Cassis, and in a growing number of coastal towns, local authorities are introducing by-laws banning shirtless men from wandering around in public. The fines are €150 if you're caught walking from the beach to the bakery in swim shorts and flip-flops, but no shirt. Uniformed gendarmes have been instructed to enforce the rules. Posters have gone up at beaches. Police are stopping tourists, handing out tickets and giving lectures. The summer's great threat to republican order, it seems, is the male torso. 'We are not nudists' declared Yannick Moreau, the mayor of Les Sables-d'Olonne, defending the new rules he's implemented as a matter of 'respect' and 'civic-mindedness'. In Cassis, on the Mediterranean coast, the town hall says the aim of the new measures is to 'preserve the elegance of the town'. Even the slogans are sanctimonious – 'Du sable à la ville, on se rhabille', that's 'when going from the beach to the town, we get dressed again.' One mayor, asked if the policy might be seen as heavy-handed, replied simply 'we're not asking people to wear a suit and tie, just a T-shirt'. There's something oddly comforting about it all if it were not for the bigger picture. The French state, for all its troubles, can still mobilise gendarmes to patrol the promenade, hand out fines and preserve a certain idea of public decency. Shirtless tourists, at least, the authorities know how to handle. But when it comes to the country's real problems with violent crime and insecurity, gang warfare, and lawless enclaves, the state increasingly looks powerless. The front page of yesterday's Journal du Dimanche showed a blood-red map of France, marking dozens of towns now gripped by a violence which was once thought to be limited to the banlieues of large towns and cities. Knife attacks, shootings, cars set alight, gang reprisals, even mortar fire. In Béziers, Blagnac, Albi, Lunel, Cavaillon, Metz, the gendarmes are not chasing bare-chested tourists, they're dodging bullets. Police in the small town of Carpentras in the Vaucluse won't go at all into certain housing estates without significant reinforcements. In Béziers, mayor Robert Ménard says his town is experiencing a wave of gangland violence. 'Eighty per cent of the troublemakers,' he told the Journal du Dimanche, 'come from immigration'. In Tarn, the body of a 22-year-old was found after what police believe was a drug-related execution. In Limoges, teenagers are barricading streets and launching attacks on emergency services. In Clermont-Ferrand, officers responding to a noise complaint were ambushed with iron bars. In Pontarlier, grenade blasts and gunfire now rattle quiet residential streets. These are far from isolated incidents. According to Ofast, France's anti-drug agency, the spread of organised crime into provincial towns is now 'deeply entrenched.' Cocaine is no longer a big city vice. It's a national industry. In response, some towns have tried imposing curfews. Others have begged for more police or tighter sentencing. What they often get is silence or lectures about the 'complex roots' of delinquency. Meanwhile, in places like Les Sables-d'Olonne, the authorities continue to defend the €150 fine for not wearing a shirt. The contrast is telling. The state can still act when it wants to. It can deploy uniformed officers to enforce swimwear etiquette. It can issue municipal by-laws about torsos and flip-flops. But faced with criminal networks, urban warfare and a judiciary that barely functions, it hesitates, defers or looks away. It's easier to fine a tourist without a shirt than to deal with drug traffickers on a housing estate. It's human nature to follow the path of least resistance. Policing beachwear is entirely risk-free. The new measures in seaside towns play well with local voters nostalgic for order. There is no national scandal, no debate in the Assemblée Nationale, no risk of accusations of stigmatising anyone, and no complaints from the hard left. It's public order in symbolic form alone: controlled and deeply unserious. But the deeper problem isn't symbolic. It's structural. Robert Ménard has asked to further arm Béziers' municipal police dealing with increasingly violent heavily armed gangs. The state said no. Local prosecutors complain they lack the tools to put violent offenders behind bars. The interior minister announces new plans every few months, but sentences are rarely served in full. There isn't enough space in prisons, not enough police, and not enough will to confront what everyone now sees. The France that worked, quietly, efficiently, locally, is faltering. It has become a theatre of control. You can see it clearly in the small and medium-sized towns that were once the last bastion of republican order. These were places where the state still worked. Where people trusted the police, the mayor, the courts. That's now all slipping away. In town after town, people no longer feel safe. France still knows how to police the small stuff. It can stop a man buying a baguette without a shirt. It can fine him on the spot, with a polite smile and a printed receipt. But when it comes to the real collapse, of order, of confidence, of the state's ability to impose the law where it truly matters, the state shrugs, retreats, or launches yet another working group.
South Wales Argus
2 minutes ago
- South Wales Argus
Age verification UK explained: How is it impacting the UK?
In short, social media and other platforms are required to implement safety measures protecting children or face large fines. This means that age verification tools are now being used on sites where they could access harmful content. Here's all you need to know about the new rules and how they are being implemented. Well done to everyone who campaigned to ensure age verification for pornography was in the Online Safety Act! Today it comes into force and while no doubt there will be some who get around it, it means young kids in particular won't be stumbling on violent and harmful porn. — Jess Asato MP (@Jess4Lowestoft) July 25, 2025 What is the Online Safety Act? The Online Safety Act is a piece of legislation that received Royal Assent on October 26, 2023, with the aim of protecting children and adults online. The Government website adds: "It puts a range of new duties on social media companies and search services, giving them legal duties to protect their users from illegal content and content harmful to children. "The Act gives providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce risks their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear. Why is age verification being used on the internet? As of July 25, internet platforms have a legal duty to protect children from harmful content. Companies within the scope of the act must introduce safety measures as part of this, which include age verification. The Guardian reports: "This means all pornography sites must have in place rigorous age-checking procedures." They continued: "Social media platforms and large search engines must also prevent children from accessing pornography and material that promotes or encourages suicide, self-harm and eating disorders." Platforms will also have to suppress other material that could be potentially harmful to children. This could include "the promotion of dangerous stunts, encouraging the use of harmful substances and enabling bullying". How is age verification utilised by platforms? Ofcom, the media regulator, has set out a number of ways websites can verify the age of users. This can be done through credit card checks, photo ID matching and estimating age using a selfie. Whatever format platforms choose, they must be "technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair," BBC News reports. Which sites will require age verification? Pornhub and a number of other major adult websites have confirmed they will introduce enhanced age checks, BBC News reports. Recommended reading: Reddit has already introduced checks to stop people aged under 18 from looking at "certain mature content", while X and Grindr have committed to this as well. Discord gives UK users a choice of face or ID scanning as a way to verify their age, after testing methods, and Bluesky says it will give UK users a range of different verification options, external. BBC News adds: "Many more services which allow sexually explicit material may need to bring in measures to comply with the new rules."
Scotsman
2 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Investors need certainty to build the homes Scotland needs
We must unlock the investment that would deliver new housing, says Colin Brown Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... In May 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national 'housing emergency' with some councils also declaring a housing emergency in their areas. The announcement of the emergency came two months after the Scottish Government laid the Housing (Scotland) Bill before the Scottish Parliament. The Bill continues to work its way through Holyrood and is expected to come into force later this year. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Observers in the world of institutional investment and those working in the sector have been watching the progress of the Bill with interest. Of particular concern to investors are proposals around rent controls. Colin Brown is a Partner at TLT To give one example that has occurred recently – a London-based investment firm, was about to commit many millions of pounds to its first Scottish investment before discovering that a committee considering the Bill had voted to include purpose-built student accommodation as subject to statutory rent controls. All of the financial appraisals the firm had undertaken in making the decision to invest in Scotland were potentially being ripped up by MSPs and they had no power to do anything about this. In this situation, the Scottish Government moved quickly to make clear it would not support rent control for purpose-built student accommodation. Whilst the project is now starting to come out of the ground it remains to be seen whether they consider Scotland a safe haven for future investment. The rental income which institutional investors derive from their investments in bricks and mortar helps to fund many individuals' pensions. The investors need to understand that in exchange for making their money available they will get a return on their investment and this return has generally been left to market forces – the law of supply and demand. The housing emergency should make investment in new build housing in Scotland a win-win. The country gets much-needed new housing to alleviate the emergency, and the investment funds get to deploy their capital to deliver housing and make a return on their investment. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the UK in the first quarter of this year £1.2 billion was invested in private rental accommodation with the potential for £6bn to be invested by the end of the year. 76 per cent of this investment is being directed outside London, with Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds leading the way. Every penny of this investment creates new housing and sustains and creates job opportunities. The fact that Scotland has not been able to open the investment tap when cities in England are seeing private rental accommodation expand, could be seen as a missed opportunity. In launching the latest consultation, the Social Justice Secretary acknowledges that rental properties are a crucial element of the efforts to tackle the housing emergency. Government policy has slowed investment into the sector in recent years and resulted in lower investor confidence in providing much-needed housing. Rent caps and controls are of course not universally despised and a balance must be struck between protecting tenants and unlocking the investment that delivers the new housing. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The latest consultation on exemptions for certain types of properties from rent control closed earlier this month. There will be investors with capital looking for a home waiting to see if the legislative and political environment in Scotland means they should be deploying more of this in Scotland or continuing to explore opportunities which guarantee a better return elsewhere.
