The Home Office publishes quarterly statistics on detected irregular arrivals to the UK in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Quarterly data on detected irregular arrivals by sex and method of entry, including small boat arrivals, is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’. The latest data is up to the end of September 2024, with data up to December 2024 to be published on 27 February 2025.

The Ministry of Defence have provided 24 offshore and inflatable raiding craft to Ukraine. In addition, we recently announced our largest-ever military aid package for Ukraine, which will include 60 more military-grade boats, including offshore raiding craft, rigid raiding craft and dive boats.

On 30 September 2022, the Royal Navy transferred two Mine Countermeasures Vessels to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The Home Office is not aware of any formal request from the Ukrainian government for these lethally dangerous and unseaworthy craft, though it has repeatedly made clear the unsuitability of these boats to those who have advocated that they be sent to Ukraine.

The UK and France maintain a longstanding relationship on tackling illegal migration at the shared border and the UK has committed several funding packages to supporting this work in recent years.

Previous funding packages include:

• In 2015, the UK and France signed a Joint Declaration which committed £45.96 million towards security enhancements of the juxtaposed controls and to moving migrants into reception centres across France.
• This was followed by payments in 2016 of £17 million and a further £36 million to strengthen the border and maintain the operation of the juxtaposed controls.
• In 2018 the UK made a commitment of €50 million (£45.5m) to implement the terms of the Treaty.

• This was followed in 2019 by the signature of the Joint Action Plan on Combatting Illegal Migration Involving Small Boats. The UK committed €3.6 million (approximately £3.25m) to tackling the issue. This was supplemented with a further €2.5 million (£2.25m) dedicated to the deployment of gendarme reservists and further strengthening preventive security measures at the French coast.

• In 2020 the UK pledged €31.4 million (roughly £28.1 million) to support joint efforts to tackle the rise in small boat crossings.

• A further bilateral funding arrangement was reached between the UK and France on 20 July 2021 supported by UK investment of €62.7 million (approximately £54m).

• Most recently, on 14 November the Home Secretary agreed to a new multi-year strategic and operational plan with Minister Darmanin, supported by investment of up to €72.2 million euros (approximately £62.2 million) this financial year.

During 2018, over 500 migrants - mostly Iranian - attempted to travel to the UK on small vessels. 80% of them attempted this in the last three months of the year.

As a result, the Home Secretary redeployed two Border Force cutters from overseas to the UK providing four cutters available to operate in channel UK waters. In addition to the four cutters, Border Force has two Coastal Patrol Vessels on operation in the English Channel.

However, this is not an issue that can be resolved by maritime resources alone. Border Force Cutters form part of a layered approach to coastal defence, including on-shore resources and intelligence and surveillance to detect efforts to smuggle guns and drugs or facilitate illegal entry into the country.

But we haven’t been doing this work alone. We have been working closely with French authorities to tackle this issue. Around 40% of the attempts last year were either disrupted by French law enforcement or returned to France via French agencies.

Through these efforts, we reduced the number of individuals attempting the crossing from around 250 in December to around 90 in both January and February.

Border Force does not routinely publish this level of data. All our transparency data can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/border-force-transparency-data-november-2018