Small boat crossings to UK fell by a third in 2023

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The number of people arriving in the UK by small boat via the Channel fell by more than a third in 2023, according to government figures, marking the first year-on-year decline since records began in 2018.

The provisional data showed that 29,437 migrants arrived by this route, a decrease of 36 per cent on the previous year, when the figure stood at 45,774. However, levels were still higher than the total recorded in 2021, when 28,526 people made the crossing.

The tally confirmed that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak fell far short of his pledge to “stop the boats” altogether, one of his five priorities for 2023. He admitted in December that there was “no firm date” for fulfilling his vow.

James Cleverly, home secretary, acknowledged that the task of ending the crossings was “far from over”, but insisted it was a “significant achievement” that the rate of irregular arrivals to the UK had fallen “while illegal entries across Europe are going up”. Sea crossings into Europe soared by 80 per cent in 2023.

The drop in numbers was attributed in part to a successful returns deal agreed with Albania, while bad weather was also identified as a factor.

Lucy Moreton, professional officer of the ISU trade union that represents border staff, told the BBC the number of small boat arrivals in 2023 was “unusually low” and the total was expected to rise in the year ahead.

She said “particularly high winds” had been among “confounding factors” that had meant there was a large number of days when it was not easy to launch small boats.

“But we have also had much larger boats, much more seaworthy boats, so the planning assumption is that this is a glitch,” Moreton said.

She added: “Will we see the peak that we saw in 2022? Maybe not, but certainly more than we have seen in the last year.”

Whitehall insiders dispute the analysis that worse weather conditions occurred in 2023. A government official said that a comparison of “red” days — days with weather favourable for crossings — showed that 106 were recorded by the Home Office in 2022, compared with a similar level of 102 in 2023.

Sunak announced on Monday that he had fulfilled his commitment to clear the so-called legacy asylum backlog — defined as the 92,000 cases that were outstanding before the end of June 2022 — by the end of last year. The government introduced 1,700 additional asylum caseworkers, which helped to clear the legacy backlog and an extra 20,000 cases.

However, official figures to be published on Tuesday are expected to show that about 98,000 cases still await processing. Labour shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the claim to have cleared the backlog up to that point was “false”, as 17,000 asylum seekers had been simply “withdrawn” from the list. 

The grant rate for asylum decisions was 67 per cent in 2023, down from 76 per cent the year before.

The prime minister is under pressure from the right of the Tory party to tighten emergency legislation that aims to facilitate the government’s flagship Rwanda removals policy, after the Supreme Court found it was unlawful.

Political wrangling over the bill is expected to dominate debate within the party when MPs return to parliament on January 8.

Sunak’s administration is hopeful that flights to the African nation will take off this year, allowing the Conservatives to argue in an election campaign that their plan to deter small boat crossings is on track.

A jump in the number of Albanians who arrived in the UK in small boats in 2022 was reversed last year, following a returns pact struck between London and Tirana. Albania is considered a safe country to which migrants can be returned.

While 12,658 Albanians came to the UK by this route in 2022, accounting for 28 per cent of migrants, just 922 Albanians arrived by small boat between January 1 to November 29, representing 3 per cent of total arrivals by that date.