The number of boats carrying more than 60 people has rocketed (Image: Getty)
Labour is facing a “big boats crisis” as the number of migrants being packed into dinghies has increased sharply over the last six months.
Charting the horrific rise for the first time, the Daily Express can reveal 27 of the 45 crossing days where the average occupancy per vessel was over 60 have come since Sir took office.
Over 80% came in 2024, illustrating how people smugglers are more reliant than ever before on bigger, flimsier dinghies.
The National Crime Agency expects the criminals to mount a “big springtime push” to traffic tens of thousands of migrants across the Channel.
Migrant dinghies recovered after attempted crossings (Image: Getty)
Flimsy engines seized by Border Force (Image: Getty)
Home Office insiders believe the overcrowding of dinghies was “one of the starkest and most dangerous features” of crossings in 2024.
They added this has led to a record number of tragedies. As many as 79 migrants are feared to have died last year.
Sources believe many of the deaths are because of migrants suffocating as the boat folds in on itself when it begins to deflate.
Others drown when the boat breaks down because it is so overcrowded.
But Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick warned: “Labour have managed to turn the small boats crisis into a big boats crisis.
“They talked a good game about ‘smashing the gangs’ but it’s clear the gangs are now smashing them, and the British public are paying the price.”
Robert Bates, of the Centre for Migration Control, added: “The figures show Labour have poured petrol on the crisis.
“The demand to cross the Channel is like nothing we have ever seen before and we can thank for this.
“The people smugglers have leapt on his weakness, made small fortunes, and turned our country into a joke. It’s terrifying to think how much worse he can make things over the next five years.”
Since 2018, the Home Office has recorded 45 days with crossings where the average occupancy was over 60.
Officials have found 80% came last year, while 60% were between July and December.
Some 36,816 people made the journey in 2024, a jump of 25% from the 29,437 who arrived in 2023, according to provisional figures from the Home Office.
The total is down 20% on the record 45,774 arrivals in 2022.
Home Office sources insist they are making progress on preventing Channel migrant crossings, pointing to the number of so-called “red days”, when it is particularly calm and easier weather conditions for the smugglers to exploit.
Insiders said there were a record 88 red days in the second half of this year – but there were 10,000 fewer arrivals than over the same period in 2022.
This, they claim, shows they are beginning to disrupt the gangs and their smuggling routes as they were less able to exploit better conditions.
A Labour source said: “The left an appalling legacy of broken border security with control of our borders outsourced to criminal gangs.
“We are fixing the foundations with a new Border Security Command, 100 new specialist investigators and new agreements with Europe and beyond to break up the business models of the evil criminal gangs making millions from small boat crossings.
“We are increasing removals of those with no right to be here and are clamping down on illegal working.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is prioritising hunting the smuggling gangs – particularly the Kurdish organised crime networks that control many of the crossing routes – to end the crisis.
Ms Cooper also believes greater cooperation with European nations will allow police to disrupt the smugglers’ supply chains and seize more boats and engines.
Sources have told the Daily Express that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s team is hoping MI5 spies will treat people smugglers like foreign spies and terrorists.
This newspaper understands that this could see them bug smugglers’ phones and trace their movements.
But NCA Director General for Operations Rob Jones warned they are “rubber dinghies that are little more than a paddling pool”.
He blamed these lower quality boats for a record number of deaths, with more than 70 people killed this past year.
Mr Jones admitted that while there had been a big push to arrest and disrupt British facilitators of the crossings “the vast majority of organised crime involved in small boats is not in the UK. It is upstream, it is overseas in Turkey, Belgium, Germany and then northern France”.
“One of our objectives is targeting the aspects of the gang’s business model that is vulnerable which is the specialised improvised vessels.”
He said it was impossible to make the boats illegal on the grounds of their design. However, new legislation is being discussed to issue powers of seizure because they are being used almost exclusively for Channel crossings.
This would make smuggling much less financially viable because the gangs would be forced to use safer, smaller boats that could carry only a dozen migrants at a time.
Mr Jones said: “We are looking at regulations to make a boat seizable by customs as it comes across borders and ensure it doesn’t get into a legitimate supply chain.
“That goes all the way back to China, where these things are made and exported from.”