Yvette Cooper refuses to set a deadline to reduce small boats crossings
Share:
Almost 35,000 people have arrived in Britain on small boats so far in 2024, up a fifth on this time last year. Yvette Cooper has refused to set a deadline to reduce dangerous small boat crossings in the Channel. The home secretary described the numbers making the journey as “too high” but claimed it would have been “thousands” higher if the Conservative Party were still in power.
![[Cooper says there is a ‘moral’ reason to try to tackle boat crossings]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/15/10/3d8ff163718e028b4ef808a7615d242eY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM0MzQ0OTE0-2.78252429.jpg)
Some 34,880 people have arrived in Britain on small boats so far this year, up 20 per cent on this time last year but down 22 per cent on 2022. Ms Cooper repeatedly declined to say when the public could expect to see the number of small boat crossings fall.
She told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “These levels are far too high, this is dangerous what’s happening. Of course we want to continue to progress, of course we want to see the boat crossings come down as rapidly as possible.” Ms Cooper conceded that remaining under 2022’s record high would be “no comfort” to people while numbers continue to rise.
But she suggested the figures could have been as much as 50,000 under the Tories. She said: “What we inherited from the first half of this year... record high levels of boat crossings – had that continued we were on track really for the worst year ever for small boat crossings.
