Record Channel migrant arrivals in first half of 2024: UK

The number of migrants arriving in the UK by crossing the Channel on boats hit a record in the first half of 2024, interior ministry data showed on Thursday.

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Officials processed 13,489 arrivals in the six-month period, an 18 per cent jump year-on-year and the highest figure ever during the first half of a year, according to the statistics.

They compare to 11,433 migrants making the perilous journey -- across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes -- from January to June in 2023.

The figures are a reminder of the challenge facing the UK's new Labour government as it tries to reduce the arrivals amid public unease over the issue.

The date came in the wake of more than a week of disorder -- dubbed anti-immigration riots -- across England and in Northern Ireland which saw some rampaging mobs chant "stop the boats".

The phrase was an unfulfilled pledge from Conservative former premier Rishi Sunak, who lost last month's general election to Labour's Keir Starmer.

The disturbances, which hit more than a dozen English towns and cities, followed a deadly knife attack on a group of children wrongly blamed on an asylum seeker.

The ministry's latest figures showed that 81 percent of arrivals by people without legal permission to enter the UK in the year to June came on small boats from mainland Europe.

UK officials began counting these "irregular" cross-Channel arrivals in 2018, when there were just 11 in the first half of the year.

Since then, more than 133,000 have arrived -- 70 per cent of them men and around a fifth under-18s, according to the data.

Afghans comprised 18 percent of the arrivals in the year to June -- the single largest nationality cohort -- followed by Iranians (13 per cent), Vietnamese (10 per cent), Turkish (10 per cent) and Syrians (nine per cent).

The new statistics revealed the average numbers in each boat had increased again, from 10 in the year ending June 2019, 44 in the year ending June 2023 to 51 people in the latest corresponding period.

UK authorities have repeatedly warned that smuggling gangs organising the crossings are adapting their methods, using bigger boats and packing more people in.

Starmer has vowed to "smash the gangs" as the centrepiece of his strategy to tackle the issue, after scrapping contentious Conservative plans to deport thousands of migrants to Rwanda.

Meanwhile, separate statistics showed further progress in reducing the asylum backlog, with the numbers waiting for an initial application decision dropping by around a third in the year to June.