Priti Patel is running out of excuses for the Channel migrant crisis

When immigration minister Chris Philp announced last summer that he was in the process of agreeing a ‘new operational plan’ with his French counterparts to stop the cross-Channel traffic in irregular migrants, it seemed as though the government was finally getting a grip on the crisis.

In a statement to camera he declared: 

‘We had a very constructive meeting with our French colleagues in Paris this morning. We have reaffirmed our unshakeable shared commitment to making sure this route of crossing the Channel is made unviable…we have worked on a joint operational plan, with the objective in mind of completely cutting this route. We’re going to work at pace in the coming days to make that plan a reality.’

A couple of weeks later, in early September, he gave a bit more detail in the Commons, telling MPs of a ‘joint intelligence cell’ that had already resulted in successes. He said the Government was ‘currently working to return nearly 1,000 cases where migrants previously claimed asylum in European countries’

Philp also flagged up the appointment of Dan O’Mahoney as clandestine Channel threat commander, tasked with a mission to ‘collaborate with the French to build on joint work’.