The CPS advised its prosecutors that 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 prison, which the Government is increasing to four years under its Nationality and Borders Bill. Penalties for people smugglers are being raised from a maximum 14 years in prison to life imprisonment.
‘You are breaking the law’
Alp Mehmet, the chairman 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.”
Natalie Elphicke, the Dover MP, 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.”
Tim Loughton, a member of the home affairs committee and a former minister, 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.
