Nigel Farage has accused Labour of “losing control” of Britain’s borders after a senior minister admitted that not every small boat crossing could be stopped.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell said “you can’t stop everything all of the time” after two boats reached the Kent coast without being intercepted by Border Force on consecutive days.
The latest incident saw 21 people detained after a boat reached the beach at Samphire Hoe near Dover on Tuesday afternoon. It followed a separate dinghy landing undetected at Folkestone on Monday — the first such uncontrolled landing for around a year.
Speaking to GB News, Powell said small boat crossings remained a challenge but argued that government measures were already reducing the numbers arriving in Britain.
“Small boat crossings remain a challenge, but we have seen a significant fall this year in the number of people coming across on small boats thanks to the range of measures that this government has brought into effect.
“It does require a huge range of measures to do that, from dealing with things at source, from tackling people coming here in the first place, from the pull factors, from having strong border security, from having the tough powers that we need to detain to deport people.
“All of these things which this government has done over the last two years, are starting to bear fruit, with significant falls in the number of small boat crossings and a significant fall in the number of asylum hotels and accommodation around the country as well.
“But more needs to be done and we’ll continue to do it.”
Official Home Office figures show that 33,374 people arrived by small boat in the year ending June 2026, 23 per cent fewer than the 43,309 recorded in the previous year. The government has also reported increased French efforts to prevent crossings, with 185 crossing events stopped during the first three months of the latest UK-France agreement.
But the two recent uncontrolled landings have triggered an immediate political row over whether Britain’s border controls are sufficiently effective.
Farage, the Reform UK leader, said: “Multiple boats even arrived undetected. It’s insane! Labour have totally lost control of our borders.
“Reform will put the Royal Navy in the Channel and return every illegal to France.”
Farage has previously proposed using the Royal Navy to intercept small boats and return them to France. The French government has rejected the proposal, arguing that such action would violate French sovereignty and international law.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has ordered an urgent review by Border Security Command into the two incidents and said the failure to intercept the boats was “not acceptable”.
The review will examine how the boats reached the Kent coastline without being intercepted and whether changes are needed to surveillance and interception arrangements.
The incidents are particularly notable because uncontrolled landings are rare. The latest arrivals came despite an expanded UK-France operation designed to prevent boats leaving northern France, alongside increased intelligence-sharing and enforcement against smuggling networks.
The government therefore faces a difficult balance: official figures show a significant reduction in detected small boat arrivals over the past year, but the appearance of boats on British beaches without interception has exposed a persistent vulnerability in the border system.
Powell’s admission that “you can’t stop everything all of the time” is likely to intensify pressure on the government as Mahmood’s review gets under way.
For Reform, the incidents provide a fresh opportunity to argue that Labour’s approach remains insufficient. For ministers, the challenge is to demonstrate that the broader fall in crossings is translating into a border system capable of detecting and intercepting vessels before they reach Britain’s shores.
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