Failure to prosecute migrants arriving illegally leaves UK looking like ‘soft touch’

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is failing to prosecute migrants who arrive in the UK illegally, figures show, as MPs warned that "soft touch" justice was encouraging people to get on small boats to cross the Channel.

Only 61 migrants have been charged and 51 convicted for illegally entering the UK “without leave” in breach of the 1971 Immigration Act since December 2019, according to official figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws.

That compares with more than 46,000 who entered the UK illegally over the same period, including 16,500 “irregular” entrants confirmed by the Home Office in 2020 and nearly 30,000 via small boats across the Channel or smuggled into the UK on lorries.

The figures - representing a conviction rate of only one in 1,000 - expose the “hands off” approach to Channel migrants adopted by the CPS.

This summer the CPS revealed that it would no longer prosecute asylum seekers entering the UK illegally unless they were involved in other criminal activity.

The CPS advised its prosecutors that the migrants often had no choice in how they travelled and told them instead to focus on smugglers and repeat offenders.

However, Tory MPs and migration campaigners said the decision was removing a key deterrent to the deadly cross-Channel trade which this week claimed the lives of 27 migrants and left the door open to people smugglers who could make as much as £300,000 from a single boat.

The offence of illegally entering the UK carries a penalty of up to six months in jail, which the Government is increasing to four years under its nationalities and border bill. Penalties for people smugglers are being raised from a maximum 14 years’ jail to life imprisonment.

'You are breaking the law'

Alp Mehmet, chair of Migration Watch UK, said: “Despite the public safety risks, the Government seems to have turned a blind eye to thousands of illegal arrivals even as numbers soared. This is both shocking and unacceptable to the voters who are paying for this shambles."

Dover MP Natalie Elphicke said: “Make no mistake, if you are paying criminal gangs to smuggle you into Britain in a small boat you know you are breaking the law. It’s clear we need tougher laws and firmer action to prosecute illegal entrants and stop these Channel crossings.”

Former minister Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee, said: “What should be happening is that they are arrested, put in a detention centre where they can claim asylum, then get deported. That’s the logical thing to do but it’s not happening. We’re substituting hotels for prisons.”

Some 8,000 migrants are currently being housed in hotels after a record 26,000 migrants crossed the Channel this year in small boats, treble the total of 8,714 for the whole of 2020.

As well as increasing penalties, ministers are amending the law to make it easier to prosecute illegal migrants by changing the terms of the offence from “entry” to “arrival” on the basis that those who are intercepted by Border Force and brought ashore may not technically be illegally entering the UK.