French demand £30m to stop migrants crossing Channel

France is demanding that British taxpayers pay tens of millions of pounds to stem the flow of thousands of migrants who are being smuggled into the UK by criminal gangs from the Continent.

Royal Navy boats and spotter planes could also be deployed in the English Channel as early as this week as the Government steps up efforts to stem the record number of migrants being smuggled into the UK.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, and Ben Wallace, the Defence secretary are working on a joint plan to deploy naval vessels, drones and even spy planes, to stop the migrants making landfall on the south coast of England, senior Government figures told The Telegraph.

Under a plan to be presented to the French government in Paris on Tuesday, Royal Navy and Border Force vessels will pick up the migrants and their dinghies and take them directly to Dunkirk in northern France.

However the deal needs France's agreement and on Saturday night it emerged that the French government will formally ask the UK to pay £30million to help fund patrols on the beaches of northern France.

A Home Office source said ministers had not yet decided whether to agree to the French demands.

"Throughout history French governments have demanded money to end migrant crossings," the source said.

Separately a war of words was also hotting up with a senior French government official describing claims that France must do more to stop the people smugglers bringing migrants over the channel as "fantasy claims".

A senior French government official told the Telegraph: “The simple fact is that a huge amount of work is successfully being put into stopping these crossings.

“Patrolling an exceptionally busy stretch of sea is very difficult – those involved in operations in both France and Britain will attest to that, but there has been a lot of progress.”

Britain has paid more than £100million to fund the French response to the migrant crisis. In 2015, £10 million was committed to security reviews, as well as measures intended to disperse migrants.

That was followed by £17 million in 2016, £36 million in 2017, £45 million in 2018, £3.25 million in 2019 and £2.25 million in the year to this March.

Tim Loughton MP, the senior Conservative member of the Home Affairs select committee which monitors immigration for Parliament, said: "It is pretty rich for the French to be demanding yet more money from UK taxpayers to deal with a problem that they have singularly failed to deal with on their own territory.

"Throwing more money after bad when the problem could be solved if they agreed to turn around boats in the water and for us to repatriate illegal immigrants."

Mild weather and a calm sea have encouraged record numbers of migrants to try to get from northern France to southern England in recent days.

About 4,000 migrants have crossed this year, more than double the total for the whole of 2019.  At least 350 people have been intercepted in the past two days, including 235 - the record for a single day - on Thursday.

On Saturday, 17 vessels were brought to the UK carrying 151 migrants, including one migrant in a wheelchair was seen being brought ashore in Dover.

As the crisis worsened last week, MOD sources branded the idea of naval deployment in the Channel as “potty”. Buton Friday evening, Ms Patel formally asked for help from the Ministry of Defence in a phone call with Mr Wallace.

Mr Wallace then agreed to instruct his advisers to put together a military response on Saturday which could include deploying Archer class fast patrol boats and river class offshore patrol vessels off the south coast.

US-made P-8A Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft, drones and helicopters could also be used to spot migrants setting off in their their boats from the French coast so they can be intercepted by UK vessels.

The MoD will support an existing Home Office plan to intercept migrant boats in the Channel and then to pass them either at sea to the French navy or on land at the port of Dunkirk for months.

The joint operation is to be commanded by former Royal Marines Commando Dan O'Mahoney from the Joint Maritime Security Centre in Portsmouth.

Trials, led by Mr O'Mahoney, were carried out in April, May and June. The source said: "We have been testing tactical interceptions of rubber dinghies at sea.

"We are good to go, we know how to intercept boats, we know how to pick them out of the water and we can. This is one of the major requests we have got of the French government."

The plan will be presented by Chris Philp, the Minister for Immigration Compliance, at a meeting with French interior minister Gérald Darmanin in Paris on Tuesday.

Ms Patel said on Saturday night: “The number of illegal small boat crossings is appalling. We are working to make this route unviable and we and arresting the criminals facilitating these crossings and making sure they are brought to justice."

Mr O'Mahoney, who has held positions at the National Crime Agency, and the Border Crime Command at Heathrow airport, added: "This role is vitally important in the fight to end the heinous crime of people smuggling across the Channel."

A spokesman for the Military of Defence said: "We are assessing the requirement using the formal Military Aid to the Civilian Authorities process and are working hard to identify how we can most effectively assist. As ever, the MoD will do all it can to support HM Government requirements."

The new hardline approach against people smuggling is likely to prove politically controversial with former Labour Home secretary Jack Straw saying yesterday it could lead to boats capsizing.

But Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chairman of the House of Commons defence select committee, said it was "right" that the Navy provided support as long as it was only "temporary".

Separately a plane load of migrants is due to be flown back to mainland Europe in a chartered aircraft on Wednesday.

The Former Marine gunning for people-smuggling gangs

As a former Royal Marines Commando who served in Iraq and Kosovo, it is hoped Dan O’Mahoney has what it takes to thwart the organised people smugglers gangs operating from Calais.

After record numbers of migrants have been intercepted in the English Channel heading for the South Coast of England this month, his appointment as the Clandestine Channel Threat Commander will see him grapple with a problem repeated home secretaries have failed to resolve - Britain’s porous borders.

Since 2019, Mr O’Mahoney has served as director of the UK’s Joint Maritime Security Centre. He worked with 15 agencies trying to obtain intelligence and data to maintain maritime security around the British Isles.

He worked with his counterparts in other countries to try to identify any threats - terrorist or otherwise - to Britain’s national security interests at sea.

The task he faced was considerable: the UK marine area extends to nearly 300,000 square miles, and shipping carries about 95 per cent of British trade, with UK ports handling more than 300 million tonnes of international cargo.

Despite numerous senior roles as a civil servant in later life, his career started in March 1999 when he joined the Royal Marines in 3 Commando Brigade. He soon served in Kosovo on peacekeeping duties, but in 2003 he was sent to Iraq as part of the A539 Assault Squadron Royal Marines as they launched a series of amphibious assaults as part of the Allied invasion.

Pictures obtained by the Telegraph show him manning the gun on a Landing Craft Air Cushion at the port of Um Qazar, Iraq, as part of Operation Telic, the code name for the invasion.

He became a civil servant in 2010 when he joined the Home Office and three years later he became chief of staff to Border Force’s director general, an organisation even then struggling to stem the influx of migrants travelling here from the so-called Jungle camp in northern France.

A year later, he was appointed deputy director of Border Force strategy, hinting at his ability to grapple with the wider issues the agency faced. In 2015, he joined Border Crime Command at Heathrow Airport.

In 2017, he became deputy director at the National Crime Agency, focusing on anti-corruption operations.

He is a trustee of Royal Marines Club charity and is a trained trauma risk management practitioner for veterans, a role he uses to promote the importance of mental health.

Eight years ago he took part in an attempt to break the grueling Marathon Speedmarch world record, helping to raise more than £700,000 for marines and their families.

Just before his appointment as the Home Office's new Small Boat Commander by Home Secretary Priti Patel this weekend, he deleted his Twitter account. His last tweet was about his passion for buying fast food at the Pret a Manger chain. He explained how if he “could turn back time” he would have made packed lunches and then use the money to buy a “new car… or holiday home.”