Sir Keir Starmer was under fire last night for not including cutting migration among his targets as the number of people crossing the Channel on his watch reached 20,000.
Official figures are expected to confirm on Monday morning that the milestone was reached yesterday.
Two dinghies with dozens of migrants on board were picked up in the early hours and brought to shore after setting off from France, Sky News revealed.
It came after a fortnight without any crossings, during which the number of crossings recorded stood at 19,988 since Labour won the election on July 4. The Home Office tally for the year so far is 33,562.
And it comes after shock figures last week revealed the true scale of people arriving in the UK legally, with revised Office for National Statistics data showing that net migration hit a record 906,000 in the year to June 2023.
Yet a Cabinet minister admitted yesterday that cutting migration numbers – either legal or illegal – will not be in the ‘measurable milestones’ to be unveiled by the Prime Minister in his new Plan for Change this week.
Pat McFadden told Sky News: ‘I don’t say that targets don’t work in any circumstances. But numerical targets on migration have not had a happy history in recent years.’
He said that the Government will set out this week what it wants to achieve ‘in critical areas like education, health, crime, housing, energy and living standards’.
Over 20,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since Sir Keir Starmer came to power
Migrants being escorted by Border Force officials into the Port of Dover on November 16
Told that this did not include migration, which many people put among their biggest concerns, Mr McFadden insisted: ‘I don’t say that we’ll give you a target number, but we will certainly talk about migration, both legal and illegal when we publish the document later this week.’
Asked why, he replied that there was no ‘magic number’, adding: ‘The amount of migration that you need will ebb and flow depending on how your economy is doing.
‘But we do want legal migration to come down. We do want to train more of our own workers. We do want to get more people off welfare and into work.’
Last night Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Mail: ‘It is shocking that dramatically reducing legal immigration and ending illegal immigration is not even one of Starmer’s priorities. It is certainly the priority of the British people and it is my priority as Shadow Home Secretary.
‘But Starmer’s lack of concern is no surprise. It was Starmer who described immigration laws as “racist” in the past and it was Starmer’s Labour Party who voted 134 times in the last parliament against measures to combat illegal immigration.
‘They also scrapped the Conservative plan to further tighten up rules on dependents coming into the country in April next year. I call on Starmer to urgently reinstate this measure.’
A RNLI lifeboat assisting migrants in a dinghy in the Channel, before taking them to a beach in Dungeness
The Tories are also calling on Labour to reinstate the policy of trying to send illegal migrants to Rwanda as a deterrent, which Sir Keir scrapped on his first day in office.
Last week he announced a new deal that will provide funding for Iraq’s law enforcement agencies to tackle the problem of people-smuggling ‘upstream’ before it reaches Britain’s shores.
Cutting immigration is not among Labour’s five ‘missions’: growing the economy, an NHS fit for the future, safer streets, secure power through clean energy and opportunity for all.
However setting a new Border Security Command was one of the six First Steps announced soon after the election.