Defence chiefs are said to be fed up with trying to enact the prime minister and home secretary’s rapidly imploding plan of using the military to control small boats in the Channel. The Royal Navy is threatening to “walk away” from Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s plan to stem the number of boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel as official data shows how spectacularly the policy has backfired.
As reported by The Guardian, Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chair of the influential defence committee, which has completed a damning inquiry into the use of the military in the Channel, said: “I know the MoD really wants to walk away from this, wants this to conclude. There’ll be less political pressure now. The prime minister is going. From my personal perspective, I can say this is a complete waste of naval time. The navy is already overstretched.”
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Despite promises of more cooperation, the number of migrants seeking to cross the Channel from France to England surged in the first half of this year, according to the French interior ministry. From January 1 to June 13, there were 777 attempted crossings involving 20,132 people, up 68 per cent from the same period last year, it said.
In a controversial policy, Britain is planning to deport illegal migrants, including those who arrive across the Channel, to Rwanda under an agreement with the African nation. However, the first flight last month was cancelled after a last-minute intervention by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), a decision which enraged London.
(with inputs from agencies)
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