EVIL people smugglers are hurrying more migrants to cross the Channel before Britain’s Rwanda policy kicks in, the French say.
More than 7,000 have arrived this year, with 330 surviving the dangerous trip in packed small boats yesterday and 254 on Sunday.
A French MP says smugglers are using the East Africa threat as a “commercial argument” to ferry as many people across the water over the summer months.
But Tory MP Tim Loughton said that while more arrivals could be expected, it did not mean the Rwanda scheme — in which Channel migrants will be flown there to claim asylum — had already failed.
He said: “It may seem a very robust, extreme scheme, but it is the first thing that has actually been put forward that would actually practically do something about this problem.
“It is very early days — it was only announced three weeks ago and it hasn’t started yet.”
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His fellow Tory Tom Hunt said: “Ultimately the proper deterrent is going to be when we start having the pictures and the videos of the planes being flown out there.”
This year’s figure of 7,000 migrants making the Channel crossings so far was not reached until mid-July last year.
The number fell to zero in the week after Home Secretary Priti Patel announced the Rwanda scheme on April 14.
But Government insiders later put that down to high winds in the Channel.
The scheme is meant to start within weeks, but Pierre-Henri Dumont, MP for Calais in northern France, said there was now evidence that the policy was encouraging migrants to attempt the perilous voyage before the measures take effect.
He told the BBC: “From what I’ve heard from the migrants, it seems the smugglers have new commercial arguments for urging them to cross quickly.”
