By JACK ELSOM, Chief Political Correspondent
CHANNEL arrivals are up 31 per cent since Labour came to power despite their election pledge to smash the criminal smuggling gangs.
The continuing influx will only add to the eye-watering burden on taxpayers to house and process illegal migrants.
Last year the government spent £5.38billion on asylum seeker accommodation and support – and 8,000 more migrants are in hotels since Sir Keir Starmer became PM.
Since January a whopping 6,642 people have made the perilous journey from France across the busy shipping lane.
That far exceeds the 4,644 who had arrived by the same point last year, and the 3,683 who crossed in 2023.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is now in a race against time to prove her decision to axe the Rwanda deterrent – and divert the money into a Border Security Command – is working.
On Labour’s watch 29,884 have now come to Britain, which is more than the 22,648 in the same period under the Tories.
The number is likely to pass the 30,000 milestone tomorrow after more boats were seen crossing the Channel.
The Government boasts of ramping up deportations to the tune of 19,000 people since coming to office, with enforced returns up 24 per cent.
Yet critics say the majority of those are voluntary returns, where foreign offenders are given assistance to return home.
Since the Channel crisis erupted in 2018, just 3 per cent of the 153,000 small boat migrants have been deported.
As of December, 112,187 asylum seekers were taking some form of government accommodation and subsistence.
Some 38,079 of these are in taxpayer-funded hotels, up from 29,585 in June and costing around £4.5million every day.
The number of asylum claims last year rose 18 per cent to 108,000 in the highest annual haul since records began.
However the proportion that were granted fell from 67 per cent in 2023 to 47 per cent.
The strain of small boats on the nation’s finances comes as Chancellor Rachel Reeves makes swingeing spending cuts and tax hikes.
Rob Bates from the Centre of Migration Control said: “Our quality of life is in freefall, and every corner of society is being walloped by the Labour government. Imagine the good that could be done to our society were these billions to be redirected to helping our own homeless and needy.
“It is a national shame that our asylum system has taken priority over everything else and is a situation that must be brought to an end immediately.
“There must be no more asylum applications processed, the system must be frozen and the backlog cleared by removing every single individual who entered our country illegally, without exception.”
France has long been accused of not doing enough to stop small boat crossings despite being given £500million since 2023 under a deal signed by Rishi Sunak.
Until recently the Home Office published the number of migrants Calais cops had prevented from leaving their beaches, which were often well below the amount that made it off.
The prevention stats have not been disclosed for months, with the government blaming errors in the way the data is compiled.
On a visit to Calais last month Ms Cooper hailed an agreement directing £7million of existing funds to stronger law enforcement in France.
Her French counterpart Bruno Retailleau also pledged to begin intercepting small boats in shallow waters, which has proved successful in neighbouring Belgium.
Mr Retailleau said: “We need to rethink our approach so that we can intercept the boats.”
Currently French police use knives to deflate the dinghies when they are on the beaches, but lack capacity to detain migrants, meaning many have another attempt later.
Ms Cooper’s Borders Bill will also give authorities powers to arrest migrants who refused to be rescued by the French because they want to get to Britain.
She will also give police “counter-terror style” powers to seize laptops, mobile phones and financial assets from suspected people smugglers.
The Tories say Labour lacks a deterrent like the Rwanda plan to dissuade would-be migrants from flocking to Britain.
It has emerged ministers are considering the possibility of processing asylum claims in one of the Balkan states.
Sir Keir’s spokesman said: “There isn’t a silver bullet to solve this problem. We’ve always said that we’ll take a pragmatic approach by looking at what works, and we’ll consider the widest range of options to secure our borders.
“And the best deterrent to these crossings is preventing people from making these life threatening journeys in the first place, while sending a clear message to anyone arriving here illegally that you’ll be processed and returned quickly. And we are seeing evidence of that.”
