More than 900 people arrived in small boats on Friday

Data from the Home Office indicated 919 people made the journey in 14 boats on June 13, taking the provisional annual total to 16,183.
This is 42% higher than the same point last year and 79% up on the same date in 2023, according to PA news agency analysis.
It is not the highest daily number so far this year, which came on May 31, when 1,195 people arrived.
People thought to be migrants were pictured being brought into Dover on an RNLI lifeboat on Friday, while others were brought ashore by the Border Force.
Rachel Reeves announced earlier this week that the Government will end the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament.
Unveiling her spending review on Wednesday, the Chancellor set out how funding will be provided to cut the asylum backlog.
She told MPs: 'I can confirm today that led by the work of the Home Secretary, we will be ending the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this parliament.
'Funding that I have provided today, including from the transformation fund, will cut the asylum backlog, hear more appeal cases and return people who have no right to be here, saving the taxpayer £1 billion a year.'
A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
'The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die as long as they pay, and we will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
'That is why this Government has put together a serious plan to take down these networks at every stage, and why we are investing up to an additional £280 million per year by 2028-29 in the Border Security Command.
'Through international intelligence-sharing under our Border Security Command, enhanced enforcement operations in northern France and tougher legislation in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, we are strengthening international partnerships and boosting our ability to identify, disrupt and dismantle criminal gangs whilst strengthening the security of our borders.'

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Telegraph

3 hours ago

• Telegraph

Rachel Reeves's plan is unravelling. She could be gone before the next Budget

It can't be easy living in the maelstrom of 11 Downing Street these days. First, Rachel Reeves had to endure almost four months of being warned what not to do with taxes, such was the brittleness of the UK economy. Then – after she chose to both increase taxes by a record amount and increase borrowing so she could afford her spending commitments – came months of warnings about the dire consequences. People are losing their jobs because of her choices, which will push up benefit claims and spending. Tax revenues will fall rather than increase by the numbers she expected. The economy has been flatlining with miniscule and highly erratic growth as it stops, starts, then stalls – seemingly on an endless repeat. Then there were the cuts to pensioners' heating allowances, the cuts to disability benefits, the death tax changes for farmers, businesses and pensions. On top of that, there were the tax rises we always knew were likely because Labour had refused to rule them out – the increases in capital gains tax and stamp duty, and the removal of incentives to entrepreneurs. It has maybe taken longer than some of us expected, but the bad news for the Chancellor – and us – now seems to be arriving like buses. I've imagined what it's like to be at the end of that constant deluge of bad numbers. 'Incoming!' The annual estimate for public sector borrowing for year ending March 2025 is £148.3bn – £17.2bn more than last year and £11bn more than the OBR forecast. Reeves carries on with her Sudoku. 'Incoming!' Oh no! The latest inflation figures for April have surged to 3.4pc, trending towards double the Bank of England's target of 2pc. Reeves stares out the window. 'Incoming!' The unemployment rate is up 0.2pc to 4.6pc – the highest since 2021. The unemployed claimant count is up 107,000 year-on-year to 1.73 million. 'Incoming!' Monthly GDP is down -0.3pc, three times worse than the -0.1pc consensus prediction. Reeves purses her lips. Looking forward, we can imagine over the months of July, August and September an unrelenting series of indicators breaking bad. 'Incoming!' The latest tax receipts are below estimates. The latest borrowing numbers are up again. Finally, the markets are beginning to react. 'Incoming!' The pound has fallen to $1.20, the lowest since 2023. Gilts are moving too. 'Incoming!' Ten-year gilt yields are over 5pc. The Bank of England reverses course and puts rates up to 4.5pc. 'Incoming!' The team from the IMF has arrived. 'Incoming!' Prime Minister! I have the Chancellor's letter of resignation. That type of scenario might seem far-fetched, but it is the trajectory the country is travelling. Unemployment is already up 10pc since Labour came to power, and sadly there's no reason to believe this trend will be reversed. Since 'modern' records began, in 1971, every Labour government has left office with unemployment higher in percentage and absolute numbers than when it took power. Reeves is continuing that tragic tradition. The spending statement from Rachel Reeves was not so much a review as a litany of unfunded spending commitments aimed not at reassuring the markets, but at reassuring Labour backbenchers. The brighter among them will not buy it. They will soon notice the important numbers getting worse every month as the full effect of the employers' National Insurance increase, the lowering of the threshold to start paying it and the increase in the minimum pay rates costs jobs and halts hiring. What does this all mean for people trying to get by: the savers, pensioners and those running their own businesses? It means that tax rises are not just inevitable in October's Budget, they will become a must-do if an embarrassing bail out is to be avoided. Labour likes to talk of having ended austerity – something that Philip Hammond, former Conservative chancellor, first claimed back in 2017. The truth of it is the UK has never had real austerity this century. The direction of travel of our public spending has always been up. When you hear of spending cuts, what you are being told about is cuts to the rate of increase in government spending, not a cut in the total amount of spending, which continues to rise year-on-year. Increasing taxes means an attack on our pensions, our savings and our properties. The tax hikes will be passed off as necessary to save the NHS when the NHS really requires an overhaul that boosts its productivity. The much hyped increases for the NHS of £29bn each year over the next three years is most likely to be eaten up by rising pay awards. The NHS is one of the world's largest employers, with around 1.3 million full-time equivalent staff in England (as of February 2024). Consequently, the wage bill for the NHS makes up a substantial proportion of its budget. Nurses are already being balloted about strike action over an 3.6pc inflation-busting pay offer – junior doctors are also wanting more again. In 2022-23, the total cost of employing the staff in the NHS was £71bn – 45.6pc of the NHS budget. These statistics don't include salaries for GPs (who are not directly employed by the NHS), nor employees in the Department of Health and Social Care and other national bodies, such as NHS England. GPs and GP practice staff are indirectly funded by the NHS through a complex system of contracts. The Resolution Foundation think tank estimates that, by the end of the decade, half of all public spending will be going to the NHS – and continuing to rise. So optimistic has Reeves been about 'fixing the foundations' and 'delivering growth' while 'making the right choices', that there will be no way back for the Chancellor when the next crisis begins. The next time someone shouts 'incoming!' in the Treasury, everyone had better duck under their desks. It will be to announce a new Chancellor.

BreakingNews.ie

4 hours ago

• BreakingNews.ie

Body recovered at Laytown beach in Meath after reports of swimmer in difficulty

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Daily Mail​

10 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Inside the migrant gateway to Britain that staff say is a TINDERBOX: Manston is where most illegal boat migrants are taken for processing, but the truth about what happens there is as alarming as it's scandalous

They are the first words uttered by boat migrants to British authorities after they set foot on our soil: 'Where is the hotel?' It is what they invariably say when they get off buses at the giant migrant reception camp on a former RAF base in Manston, Kent – the centre that processes all who arrive on traffickers' boats. We know this because, for the first time, whistleblowers at Manston have talked to the Mail in an investigation that lays bare in terrifying detail how overwhelmed staff struggle to adequately process the sheer numbers of migrants arriving on peak crossing days at Manston's doors. The whistleblowers told us that inadequate checks mean they are powerless to prevent migrants who have criminal pasts from being released on to Britain's streets, and staying in hotels across the country. 'They ask us that hotel question immediately,' a young male worker at the camp said this week. 'They expect to get a hotel bed straight away and that is one key reason they come to the UK. We are told not to answer – to distract them by offering a bag of crisps or a bottle of water.' So pressing is the concern about where they will stay, added the workers, that 'only the fear of not being given a hotel stops them misbehaving or running out of control at the camp. They could overwhelm us by sheer numbers in what feels like a tinderbox about to explode'. The Manston workers said they are told by the Home Office to refer to the thousands of migrants passing through the camp as 'residents' as if they are paying guests. Alarmingly, they are instructed not to talk about their private life to migrants, who are mainly young men, in case the information puts them at risk after the strangers leave the camp and are free to roam Britain. 'We must not say if we have children, for instance, or where we live because our families could be targeted by one of these foreign men at a later date,' the Mail was told. The whistleblowers talked to the Mail on the phone, via social media, face to face, and through intermediaries. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals from the Home Office which runs the camp amid great secrecy. Some have left Manston recently; others still do occasional shifts there on security, medical, cleaning, catering or administration duties. What emerged from our conversations is a deeply concerning picture of a migrant reception centre they described as 'chaos' and 'a joke'. And crucially, a centre where migrants 'routinely lie' about their backgrounds, their ages, and their nationalities – so no one can discover whether they have a criminal past. 'Most coming in are men. No one knows who they are, or their history,' a worker said. 'The men could be murderers or paedophiles. They throw away their identity documents either in France before getting on a boat or at sea when they are travelling over.' Another worker added: 'We know what the migrants tell us is often a falsehood but there is nothing we can do. We have to write it on their records as though it is the truth. 'Time and again, the migrants give us the same fantasy story as if they have learned a script. The Afghans say they are running from the Taliban. Some Africans from strict religious countries say they are gay and they will be killed at home for their homosexuality. A lot even give the same birth date of January 1.' A third worker explained: 'Britain is being hoodwinked. We have to accept at face value that their name and country is correct. There is no way of telling because, since Brexit, the EU police don't allow Britain to cross check the fingerprints or information collected when the migrant first entered Europe before arriving at Calais for the boats. 'Some will have been deported from EU countries for crimes. Some will have spent time in prison abroad. 'But we don't know – we can only start with a blank sheet. Yet within days these strangers are sprinkled around the country. If they are considered a potential danger to us staff, why are they not considered a risk to the British public?' At least 150,000 migrants have arrived on traffickers' boats to Britain in the last seven years. Nearly 2,000 have sailed over in the last 8 days, bringing the tally since Labour took office last July close to 40,000. Today, hundreds more throng on the French coast waiting to cross the 21 miles to Dover. All the boat arrivals are put on buses from Dover port to Manston reception camp for fingerprinting and background checks. They spend 24 hours in a 'custody' marquee, before being moved to on-site chalets for up to three days as medicals are performed and more forms filled in. At least 90 per cent of them claim asylum, telling Manston staff they face persecution, oppression, or war in their home country. They are not allowed mobiles at the camp, but are permitted to use on-site phones to call immigration lawyers for advice. Within 'normally just 72 hours', they are bussed out, in vehicles with darkened windows and often at night, to requisitioned hotels or leased Home Office houses up and down Britain. 'The Manston staff are getting depressed, even suicidal,' claimed one of our informants. 'As for the migrants themselves, the men often have sexually transmitted diseases, and scabies affects a lot of them. 'I have seen foreign mothers so tired and dehydrated as they waited in the custody marquee on a hard seat, that they nearly let their babies slip from their laps to the ground. 'The sights you see are unimaginable. Some 'residents' are whole families of three generations from the grandfather to his grandchildren. They are clearly here seeking a better life but still claim to be asylum seekers.' Our probe into the camp coincided with a damning report this week that exposed the extent of child rape grooming gangs in Britain's towns and cities. The author, Baroness Casey, revealed for the first time that asylum seekers and foreign nationals are involved in a 'significant proportion' of the around 12 live police investigations into this hideous crime. The disclosure has led Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to accept Baroness Casey's recommendation for the mandatory collection of the ethnicity and nationality of all child sex abuse suspects. Foreign-born paedophiles will, in future, be banned from claiming asylum. Ministry of Justice data also shows that one in five child-sex offence convictions involves foreign nationals. The worrying statistic was handed to the Independent MP Rupert Lowe who is running his own national 'Rape Gang Inquiry' after the Government initially refused to do so. He says not a 'single foreign national should be in our country raping children'. Shadow Home Secretary, Tory Chris Philp has also stated that a 'significant' number of the paedophiles involved in grooming gangs are asylum seekers or foreigners. 'More illegal immigrants have entered the UK across the Channel so far this year than any other in history,' he added. All this is highly relevant to what is going on at Manston and begs the question of whether the checks made there are worth the paper they are printed on. Last year the Mail published a map of England showing where asylum seekers had been convicted of crimes, including paedophilia, rape, knife attacks and murders, around the country. Many had slipped in by boat across the Channel. Our report highlighted an Afghan asylum seeker, Rasuili Zubaidullah, 22, who had drugged, raped and killed a 13-year-old girl in Vienna, Austria, in 2020. Just weeks after committing the crime, as a manhunt for him was launched by Vienna police, he sailed to Britain on a trafficker's boat using a fake name. Saying he was a refugee, he was sent to a migrants' hotel in Whitechapel, east London. Only when Austrian immigration police tracked him to the hotel, alerting the British, was he deported to face a trial which led to his murder conviction. What is plainly an asylum charade has been going on for years. It began well before Manston was opened in 2022 in response to traffickers sending more and more small boats with migrants across the Channel. Almost 20 years ago, under Tony Blair's Labour government, the Mail first blew open the scandal of asylum seekers and their links to crime. In 2006 we exposed the case of Oule Doucoure, an African who was then 23, who smuggled himself into Britain – on what was believed to be a Channel ferry lorry – before raping and half strangling a young nanny in a terrifying assault. Doucoure, who had found work as a kitchen porter working in the restaurant of Harvey Nichols' store in Knightsbridge, spied the 21-year-old woman on a London bus and followed her home. He nearly killed the woman who fainted in the attack. He was jailed and immediately claimed political asylum, joining the 3,500-strong ranks of asylum seekers among 11,000 foreign criminals in our prisons. Doucoure had destroyed his passport and refused to tell the authorities who he was or which country he came from – just as so many arriving at Manston do. Back then, one in every ten foreign criminals was deliberately obscuring their identity and country of birth to hamper deportation. The result? Like Doucoure, whose whereabouts is now unknown, they were deemed to be stateless convicts who, therefore, could not be sent back anywhere whatever their bad deeds. What is certain, is that some asylum seekers – including a number of those coming in on the boats through Manston and currently living in hotels – are involved in sex crimes against under-age British women and girls. Only this week an Afghan asylum seeker who raped a 15-year-old after following her in a Scottish town centre was jailed for nine years. Sadeq Nikzad, 29, attacked the teenager in Falkirk in 2023 soon after arriving illegally on a small boat. His lawyers told the judge he had not been educated in 'cultural differences' between Britain and Afghanistan. We have monitored the websites of self-appointed 'online child protection' teams, Britons who snare internet predators of under-age girls and hand them to the police. The videos are shocking viewing. In one sting, a man said to be an asylum seeker from Afghanistan is caught by a team in Newcastle upon Tyne after attempting to meet a 14-year-old British girl. He says on video: 'I want to meet my little girl. I will marry and convert her (to Islam). Get the police. I don't care.' Another video from a team shows the capture of 'lonely' asylum seeker Kalid Oryakhel. He had been in the country nine months and living in a Home Office migrants' hotel in Otley, near Leeds, when he tried to groom two young girls on-line. A court in 2023 heard the 26-year-old 'predator', believed to be an Afghan, had invited the children to 'make love' in the hotel garden, then sent them lewd messages and a three-minute film of him masturbating. He was found guilty and jailed for 45 months. Our contacts among the online protection teams told us this week: 'The migrant hotels do harbour sex pests and predators. It is naïve to say otherwise. 'They are getting to live among us in Britain and are endangering our children.' None of this would surprise the Manston whistleblowers who are ordered by the Home Office never to talk about their work. 'We have got to the point where we cannot remain silent,' said one of them. And who, in all honesty, can blame them?