Channel Crossings Fall 41 Per Cent as the Asylum Bill Divides Labour
Some 11,884 people crossed the Channel in small boats between January and June, a 41 per cent fall on the 19,982 recorded over the same period in 2025, figures cited in the Commons show. Ministers also told MPs that arrests of people smugglers were up 55 per cent and that 46,000 attempted crossings had been stopped in partnership with French law enforcement.
The improvement has not settled the politics. Almost eighty Labour backbenchers signed a private letter urging Mr Burnham to unwind Shabana Mahmood’s asylum reforms before the Immigration and Asylum Bill returned to the Commons; he voted for it at second reading regardless. Nor is the trend uniform — a single boat crossed on Friday carrying 128 people, the largest number yet recorded on one vessel, beating the 125 set in September 2025, evidence that smugglers are consolidating into fewer, more dangerous crossings. Promoting Ms Mahmood to the Treasury would hand her successor the task of defending her policy. Watch the bill’s remaining stages.