The Government’s Border Security Commander has blamed ongoing small boat crossings on the French, as Labour struggle to regain control of Britain’s borders. Martin Hewitt CBE said today that reducing crossings “isn’t going to happen very quickly”, bemoaning that he is “frustrated” at how long Paris is taking to implement new anti-dingy tactics.

The £200,000-a-year tsar said he had met the French minister responsible for policing the seas three weeks ago “to really press the point” about delivering the changes Sir Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for. Mr Hewitt said: “It is frustrating that it’s taken the time that it has.” He also blamed France’s recent political turmoil as a reason behind the delays to implementing new anti-boat policing methods, with President Macron facing calls to resign as he struggles to find a new prime minister.

MPs were told that people smugglers’ use of so-called ‘taxi boat’ services is driving up the number of crossings, in which migrant boats are launched in rivers and piloted out to shallow waters, where migrants then wade over to board.

Mr Hewitt said this allows smugglers to load more people on each boat compared to launching them directly from the beach.

In June the French Cabinet pledged to change its maritime laws to allow police officers to intercept small boats in the waters, within 300 meters of the coast, however this is yet to come into force.

Since coming to power, promising to end small boat crossings by ‘smashing’ the people smuggling gangs putting migrants in dinghies, Labour has presided over a record number of crossings this year.

Some 36,000 illegal migrants have crossed the Channel in 2025 in over 1,000 small boats, more than the previous record set in 2022.

Nearly 60,000 have entered Britain since Sir Keir entered No 10.

Speaking at the Home Affairs Select Committee in Parliament, Mr Hewitt argued that a recent rise in deaths and violence on the beaches of Northern France can be attributed to a surge in east Africans attempting to make the crossing.

He claimed: “Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese Somali migrants are being are being trafficked over.

“And I think that’s had a number of that’s had a number of impacts, one of the first impacts, and this was particularly prevalent towards the tail and in autumn into winter last year, where we had the horrific period where the number of fatalities rose quite significantly. And some of that was about that in a sense, I think, for a period, the smugglers lost a bit of control of the process they were running.

“And what was happening was, particularly with the Eritrean Ethiopian migrants, they were, they were storming boats and and getting onto boats even when they hadn’t paid.”

Rob Jones, director general at the National Crime Agency, added that the “Horn of Africa cohort” is driving violence and numbers.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for deaths in the Channel, though numbers have fallen this year.

Chairman of the Commons committee Karen Bradley also revealed that just 12 officials are working on the government’s ‘one-in-one-out’ deal with France, compared to over 1,000 officials who were assigned to work on the previous government’s planned Rwanda scheme.

Just 26 migrants have been sent to France under Sir Keir’s new scheme, despite the Government claiming the pact would be “game-changing”, with 18 processed asylum seekers being received by Britain in return.

Around £800 million of taxpayers’ cash has been given to France since the small boat crisis began in the hope they would prevent migrants from crossing.