New Home Office figures have revealed that 472 migrants arrived
by small boat on Tuesday (2 October), taking the total for the
year past 25,000, and increasing the number that have arrived
under Rishi Sunak’s premiership to 32,956.
It means that has now reached half the
entire total of migrants that arrived by small boat under , despite being Prime Minister
less than a third of the time that his predecessor was in charge.
Yesterday’s figures also mean that a total of 1,037 people have
arrived by small boat since the start of the Conservative Party
Conference in Manchester.
, Labour’s Shadow
Immigration Minister, said:
“Rishi Sunak promised the British people that he would stop the
small boats. Yet, within his first year as Prime Minister
Sunak has already overseen more than half the Channel
crossings that oversaw during his entire
three-year premiership. That is a dismal record of failure.
“The 1,000 arrivals since the start of Tory conference also
demonstrate once again that nothing or have done has made the
slightest difference and it remains the case that the number of
arrivals on any given day is entirely dictated by weather
conditions in the Channel.
“Only Labour has a serious plan to clear the Tory asylum backlog,
end the use of emergency asylum hotels, smash the criminal
smuggler gangs, and restore security to our borders. Everything
that and do just makes every
problem worse. It's time for them to call a General Election so
that our country can finally have the government that it needs
and deserves."
Ends
Notes:
was Prime Minister from 24th
July 2019 to 6th September 2022, giving him a total of 1,141 days
in charge, both of those dates inclusive. Within that time, a
total of 65,786 migrants arrived by small boat. By comparison,
yesterday’s arrivals figures take the total under to 32,956, more than half the
Johnson total, in just 343 days as Prime Minister. All the above
figures – collated from official Home Office and Ministry of
Defence data – are available in one place here: https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/channel-crossings-tracker
The start of Conservative Party Conference on Saturday 30th
September saw a total of 537 migrants arriving on small boats,
followed by 28 on Sunday, and 472 on Monday 2nd October, making a
total of 1,037 since the Tory gathering began, and taking the
total for 2023 as a whole to 25,330.