The gross figure for the number of migrants crossing via small boats into Britain now stands at more than 200,000 for the last Tory and current Labour administrations; that is the equivalent of a city the size of Southampton.
More than 2,000 migrants have illegally entered just in the short period since Andy Burnham has taken office.
In 2025 alone, 100,625 people claimed asylum in the UK – around half arrived through illegal routes, principally by small boat, while about four in ten had previously entered legally on visas, such as work or student visas, but then exploited them to over-stay and make asylum claims.
The majority of these asylum claims were by young men, principally from Pakistan, Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
The cost to the British taxpayer of this wave of illegal migration over the last several years has likely run into £20 billion just for the immediate care of these individuals; the ongoing and secondary associated costs, if they are granted asylum, are substantially higher.
We have, in addition, given
£1 billion to France to supposedly ‘stop the boats’, and the Tories spent over £700 million on their failed Rwanda scheme without deporting a single illegal migrant.
It is galling
We need to start being honest. The vast bulk of the men crossing the English Channel are not refugees, and no reasonable assessment would consider them as such. They are, at best, economic migrants and, in some cases, as has been tragically proven far too many times now, at worst, tomorrow’s serious crime statistics. There are real-world consequences, particularly for women, of having a completely porous border where we allow large numbers of undocumented men from completely alien cultures to flood into our country every single day.
In South Dorset, the constituency branch that I represent on behalf of Reform, many families worry constantly about how they will pay the next heating bill during winter or put a decent meal on the table for their children. It is absolutely galling that young men who break into our country illegally are being put up in taxpayer-funded housing – be that HMOs, council houses or hotels – given as much food as they can eat, often with multiple options so their tastes are accommodated, free heating, free dental care, free driving lessons … the list goes on. It is absolutely unconscionable, and it must end.
Reform would rightly make an extremely robust response to this issue.
No dumping ground
We will deport every single migrant male that enters our country illegally immediately back to their country of origin and, as we have outlined this week with our policy platform, Operation Fortress, we will put the Royal Navy in the Channel to stop and take back the boats to France if needed. We will deport every single one of the estimated 700,000 to 1 million illegal migrant men currently unlawfully living in the UK, and we will retrospectively review all asylum grants from the last five years, revoking any which have been made by individuals (males) who entered our country illegally.
The days of our country being used as a dumping ground for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants, at the expense of hard-working British families, would swiftly end under a Reform Government.
Thomas Gargrave
for Reform Dorset
