Ministers know they have to tackle small boat crossings

Those pictures of dinghies bobbing around in the Channel are hugely powerful: they represent a geopolitical, diplomatic, humanitarian, economic and political issue all rolled into one.

For some it can be described more bluntly: people breaking into the country, with those with the job of stopping it failing.

As Nick Robinson sets out here after a week of reporting on this for the Today Programme on Radio 4, the huge amount of people desperate to reach the UK and other countries like it is not likely to shrink significantly.

And so the political argument revolves around what can be done to put people off trying.

One thing that does put people off, but politicians have no control over, is the weather.

The boats that are used are incredibly flimsy for a sea journey. I have seen and touched them, when visiting Border Force in Dover. They are made of the same stuff as a bouncy castle.

So it is not surprising that when the weather isn’t great, and in particular when there are plenty of waves, fewer crossings are attempted.

The Home Office classifies each day according to the weather, with those judged to have the most benign conditions on the water called ‘red days’.

Between mid October and mid November this year, there was the highest concentration of so-called red days in any month since the big uptick in small boat crossings in 2021.

Of the 31 days between those dates, 26 fell into that category and 6,288 people crossed the Channel.

In the same period last year there were three red days and 768 arrivals.