At least 20,000 people have illegally crossed the English Channel in small boats this year, almost double the amount that had made the crossing last year at this point, government figures showed Sunday.
Another 607 people were detected crossing the busy shipping lane between the UK and continental Europe on Saturday, taking the provisional total for 2022 to 20,017.
There were 28,526 crossings detected in the whole of 2021, and around 11,300 detected by this point last year.
The number of crossings has increased steadily each year, from 299 in 2018.
The illegal crossing is a hot political topic in the UK, with both candidates to become the new prime minister promising to clamp down.
But the government's plans to send some of those arriving in the UK on small boats to Rwanda to claim asylum have so far been stymied by the courts.
(AFP)
Damian Talbot
Nirmala Sitharaman speaks at the India-UK Investor Roundtable in London last Wednesday (9). On the panel were India’s department of economic affairs secretary Ajay Seth and Kotak Mahindra Bank founder Uday Kotak
Sitharaman with Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
Sitharaman with Jonathan Reynolds 
Sitharaman with Reynolds, Alastair King, India’s high commissioner Vikram Doraiswami and other delegates