The UK government has announced a £100 million investment in border security after official figures revealed more than 25,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats so far in 2025, marking the highest number recorded at this point in any year since records began.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper unveiled the funding package as a “major new crackdown” on people smuggling gangs, pledging to strengthen what she called the government’s “serious and comprehensive plan” to dismantle criminal networks facilitating dangerous Channel crossings. The announcement comes as Labour faces intense political pressure over its handling of illegal migration.
The record-breaking figures represent a 51 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2024, when 16,842 people had arrived by this point, and a 73 per cent surge from 2023’s figure of 14,732. Wednesday alone saw nearly 900 refugees and migrants make the perilous journey in 13 small boats, bringing the total for 2025 to 25,436.
The £100 million investment will fund up to 300 new National Crime Agency (NCA) officials and support the pilot of a new “one in, one out” returns agreement between the UK and France. Ministers say the funding will also provide “state-of-the-art” detection technology and new equipment to “smash the networks putting lives at risk in the Channel”.
In the last 12 months, we have set the foundations for this new and much stronger law enforcement approach,” Cooper stated. “Now this additional funding will strengthen every aspect of our plan, and will turbo-charge the ability of our law enforcement agencies to track the gangs and bring them down.”
The Home Secretary highlighted existing measures including the establishment of the Border Security Command, strengthened NCA and police operations, increased Immigration Enforcement, and new counter-terror style powers in the Border Security Bill. She also noted cooperation agreements with Europol and other countries as key achievements.
However, the Conservative opposition dismissed the funding announcement as ineffective. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp branded the investment a Labour “gimmick” and a “desperate grab for headlines”, arguing it would make “no real difference” to the crisis.
2025 is the worst year ever for small boat crossings so far,” Philp told GB News. “While traffickers and criminal gangs rake in millions, Labour Ministers stand in Westminster rehearsing soundbites. This is a total collapse of border control.”
The funding will enable the Border Security Command, NCA, police and other law enforcement partners to “strengthen investigations targeting smuggling kingpins and disrupt their operations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and beyond”, according to government officials. The investment represents a significant escalation in resources dedicated to tackling cross-Channel migration.
The crisis has also proven increasingly deadly, with 73 people confirmed dead attempting the crossing in 2024 alone, more than in all previous years combined. A total of 152 people have died in the Channel between 2018 and June 2025, though experts suggest these figures may understate the true toll as not all incidents are reported.
The average number of people per boat has increased dramatically from 13 in 2020 to 53 in 2024, with reports suggesting many vessels are dangerously overloaded beyond their capacity. This overcrowding has been identified as a key factor in the rising death toll.
Cooper emphasised that the new funding would support the pilot of the UK-France “one in, one out” returns agreement announced in July 2025. Under this arrangement, the UK will return some people who arrive by small boat to France in exchange for accepting an equal number of asylum seekers from France.
“Alongside our new agreements with France, this will help us drive forward our Plan for Change commitments to protect the UK’s border security and restore order to our immigration system,” the Home Secretary stated.
The financial burden of the small boat crisis continues to mount, with housing asylum seekers in hotels costing taxpayers over £8 million per day according to recent House of Lords statements. This amounts to nearly £3 billion annually, equivalent to the cost of 73,000 basic Accident and Emergency visits daily.
Labour cancelled the previous Conservative government’s Rwanda deportation scheme immediately after taking office in July 2024, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer committing instead to “smashing the gangs. However, critics argue this policy has yet to bear fruit as crossings continue unabated.
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2025 is currently making its way through Parliament, whilst Border Force staff announced in May 2025 they would go on strike, adding further complications to the government’s response.
Since 2018, over 160,000 people have crossed the English Channel in small boats, with many subsequently claiming asylum. The demographic composition shows that between 2018 and 2024, citizens of six countries – Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Albania, Syria, and Eritrea – made up 70 per cent of crossings.
Notably, the asylum grant rate for people who arrived by small boat between 2018 and 2024 was 68 per cent, higher than the grant rate for asylum applicants overall. However, only around 5,000 people who arrived by small boat had been returned from the UK by the end of 2024, representing just 3 per cent of all arrivals, with most returns to Albania.
The government’s response comes as US President Donald Trump recently praised UK efforts on immigration, saying the country was “doing a fantastic thing” by addressing the issue, though he admitted knowing “nothing about the boats” specifically.
As weather conditions improve and the traditional peak crossing season approaches, pressure continues to mount on the government to demonstrate that its strategy can succeed where previous approaches have failed. With crossings already at record levels and the year barely seven months old, the effectiveness of this latest funding injection will be closely scrutinised in the months ahead.
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Image Credit:
This is a licensed photograph of the RNLI lifeboat at Portpatrick:
- RNLI Boat, Portpatrick – English description: RNLI Boat, Portpatrick – geograph.org.uk – 6032907.jpg, photo by Billy McCrorie, taken at 15:12 GMT on 25 January 2019, taken at Portpatrick harbour in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution‑ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY‑SA 2.0)
