Migrants continue to cross the English Channel from France (Image: Getty Images)
Rumblings regarding whether the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are only going to get louder over the coming months as our politicians continue to grapple with the ongoing small boats crisis. Reform UK has made it clear that if they were in government they would quit the ECHR. The Conservatives appear to be mulling over taking a similar position with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch expected to outline her party’s stance at their conference next month.
There are even elements of the Labour Party who are painfully aware that failure to get a grip on the crisis that has already seen 50,000 illegal migrants enter this country since Labour came to power, may well scupper their chances in future elections. The Labour view appears to be one of reform or review as opposed to complete withdrawal.
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Party grandee Jack Straw is urging Sir Keir Starmer to ‘decouple’ the UK’s human rights laws from the ECHR so courts cannot misuse it to block deportations. Former Labour Home Secretary Lord Blunkett has called on the Prime Minister to ‘suspend’ the ECHR to allow the deportation of tens of thousands of rejected asylum seekers.
Jo White, MP for Bassetlaw and leader of the Red Wall group of around 40 Labour MPs, has also called for a review. Undoubtedly, Labour is feeling the heat over the small boat crisis with the issue achieving cut-through on the doorstep and voters demanding to know why more is not being done.
MP’s inboxes are littered with concerned constituents who are raising the issue with opinion polls now showing that it is increasingly the one thing that matters – in some cases trumping the NHS and the economy as something that most needs fixing.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is due to outline plans to rewrite laws which would restrict the ability of judges to use elements of the ECHR (namely Articles 3 and 8) to stop the removal of foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers.
You may recall it was such legislation that laughingly allowed an immigration tribunal to rule that an Albanian criminal should not be deported due to his son’s dislike of foreign chicken nuggets.
But is it realistically possible to reform the ECHR in such a way that Article 3 (Prohibition of Torture) and Article 8 (Right to respect for private and family life) are not misused by lawyers and judges when it comes to deportation? Possibly – though any tweaks would require the sign-off from 46 signatory countries which would be a vast political challenge and one that could take months, if not years.
Supporters of the ECHR famously cite that Britain played a major part in its drafting and implementation in 1951 and that Winston Churchill was a key earlier supporter. Winston and others were keen to get something in place to ensure the atrocities that took place during the Second World War were never repeated.
There is no question over whether the ECHR was needed after the first 50 years of the last century, but in this century, it has become abused by elements of the legal system. Those calling for the UK to quit it entirely face the argument that it would require a rewriting of the 1998 Belfast Good Friday Agreement – the peace agreement designed to end The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
The Good Friday Agreement contains references to the ECHR and there is concern that a rewrite using UK and common law human rights principles to replace these references would not be acceptable to all parties. However, supporters of withdrawing acknowledge that whilst the Good Friday Agreement requires the incorporation of ECHR rights into Northern Ireland law it does not necessarily mean the UK must remain a member.
Other defenders of the ECHR make the point that leaving would put Britain on par with nations such as Russia or Belarus when it comes to human rights, that Britain would lose its standing in the world and would forfeit its right to criticise other countries for their human rights abuses.
Those wanting to leave rightly point out that America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are not members – yet remain perfectly capable of ensuring that their populations enjoy the human rights expected by those living in a civilised country.
There is an increasing view that quitting the ECHR is the silver bullet needed to properly get a grip of the small boat crisis. In the absence of lawyers, judges and campaigners in the legal system and the charity sector stopping their abuses of the UK’s signatory to the Convention, it is hard to see otherwise.
Small boat migrants crisis and possible silver bullet UK is rumbling toward
Britain’s small-boat migration crisis has entered another important phase, with the government facing renewed pressure to demonstrate that its strategy can deliver lasting reductions in Channel crossings.
The latest developments have revived a question that has dominated British immigration politics for years: is there a single policy capable of finally breaking the business model operated by people-smuggling gangs?
The answer from ministers has generally been no.
In July, the Home Office explicitly said there was “no single silver bullet” for ending small-boat crossings, describing the UK-France returns arrangement as only one element of a broader strategy.
Yet the language of a “silver bullet” continues to dominate political debate because the numbers remain politically significant, even though crossings have fallen substantially compared with previous years.
Crossings are down, but the crisis has not disappeared
The latest official figures provide a complicated picture.
Government statistics showed 199 migrants arriving in three small boats during the week ending September 20, while 40 people were prevented from crossing in five separate events. The government stresses that these figures are provisional and can change as operational data are revised.
The broader trend has also been downward.
The House of Commons Library reported in September that 33,000 people had arrived in the UK by small boat in the year ending June 2026. Small boats accounted for around 88% of all people detected arriving in the UK without authorisation during that period. The number remains substantial, although it is below the peak reached in 2022, when approximately 46,000 people arrived through this route.
The government therefore has evidence it can point to when arguing that its measures are having an effect.
But the political problem is that reductions do not eliminate the underlying phenomenon.
That became particularly clear in September.
A record day creates fresh pressure
On September 23, 781 people arrived in the UK in small boats, the highest number recorded on a single day so far in 2026.
ITV reported that the provisional total for the year had reached 18,565 by September 24, around 42% below the comparable figure in 2025 and 26% below the figure at the same point in 2024.
The figures therefore tell two stories simultaneously.
Overall crossings are significantly lower.
But individual days can still produce very large numbers of arrivals.
Two uncontrolled landings in September also generated political criticism because boats managed to reach British shores without being intercepted.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered an urgent review, saying that even one uncontrolled landing was unacceptable. Education Secretary Lucy Powell, meanwhile, argued that it was impossible to stop every crossing at every moment, while stressing that the government was continuing to strengthen enforcement.
That disagreement illustrates the central difficulty.
A government can reduce crossings substantially without eliminating them completely. But politically, every large arrival creates renewed questions about whether the system is actually under control.
The “silver bullet” question
The phrase “silver bullet” is useful because it captures the expectation surrounding many proposed solutions.
One proposal is greater cooperation with France.
Another is a more extensive returns arrangement.
Others have called for stronger action against smuggling gangs, additional surveillance, changes to asylum law, military involvement or withdrawal from international legal arrangements.
Reform UK has advocated particularly far-reaching measures, including the deployment of the Royal Navy and changes to the legal framework surrounding removals.
The Conservatives have also argued for significantly tougher immigration measures.
Meanwhile, the Labour government has emphasised cooperation with France, disruption of organised crime and the expansion of returns.
The difficulty is that the Channel route is not controlled by one institution.
It involves criminal networks in several countries, migrants making decisions about the risks of crossing, French enforcement, British border authorities, maritime rescue services, asylum law and international obligations.
That makes a single intervention unlikely to solve every part of the problem.
The UK-France deal
One of the most significant experiments has been the UK’s “one in, one out” agreement with France.
Under the arrangement, some people arriving in the UK by small boat can be returned to France, while the UK accepts an equivalent number of people through legal routes from France.
The government has presented the mechanism as a way of changing the calculation faced by people considering an illegal Channel crossing.
But the scheme has also faced practical limitations.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs in September that around 1,400 people had been returned to France under the arrangement. She also said the average cost per return had been approximately £56,000.
Mahmood defended the arrangement but acknowledged that scaling up large numbers of removals into the French system was operationally difficult.
That is a crucial point.
A returns agreement can have a deterrent effect only if people believe that crossing the Channel could actually result in removal.
If only a relatively small proportion of arrivals can be returned, the potential deterrent effect is necessarily more complicated.
France now wants a different approach
The future of the agreement has become even more uncertain.
Recent reporting indicates that France intends to end the bilateral “one in, one out” arrangement when the current agreement expires on October 1, 2026.
Le Monde reported that French officials believe a broader European Union-UK framework would be preferable to relying on France alone. The newspaper also reported that the UK had returned roughly 1,400 people under the scheme despite much larger numbers attempting Channel crossings.
That development could force Britain to consider what comes next.
The government has spent considerable political capital presenting cooperation with France as an important part of its strategy.
If the bilateral mechanism ends, ministers will need to demonstrate that alternative arrangements can maintain cooperation across the Channel.
That is one reason the search for a “silver bullet” is likely to continue.
Smugglers are adapting
Another reason the crisis is difficult to solve is the ability of smuggling organisations to change their methods.
The Times recently reported that smugglers were using a wider area of the French and Belgian coastline and experimenting with smaller boats and different launch points.
The newspaper said this “scattergun” approach was making detection more difficult and putting additional pressure on British and French enforcement resources.
This matters because border enforcement is effectively a contest between authorities and criminal organisations.
When surveillance improves, smugglers can change launch locations.
When patrols increase in one area, another route can be attempted.
When one type of vessel becomes easier to detect, another can be used.
That does not mean enforcement cannot work. It means that successful enforcement has to remain adaptable.
The human cost
The continuing danger of the crossings was demonstrated tragically on September 28.
French authorities reported that a 10-year-old child and two women died while attempting to cross the Channel in an overcrowded inflatable boat carrying 105 people.
Officials said the deaths appeared to have resulted from crushing rather than drowning. Numerous other passengers were injured.
The incident underlines why the issue cannot be viewed solely through the lens of political statistics.
Every attempt involves serious physical risks.
The Channel is one of the world’s busiest shipping areas, and small inflatable boats can be unstable even in relatively calm conditions.
Smuggling networks therefore expose passengers to considerable danger while profiting from the demand for illegal journeys.
Could legal routes be part of the answer?
The government has also signalled a greater emphasis on legal routes.
Shabana Mahmood recently announced that the UK would reopen its refugee resettlement scheme, with priority expected to be given to vulnerable groups including Palestinians and Afghan women and girls.
The government has presented legal routes as part of a broader attempt to distinguish controlled refugee admissions from irregular Channel crossings.
Whether expanding legal routes significantly affects small-boat numbers is difficult to establish.
People arriving through the Channel do not all have the same circumstances, nationalities or motivations.
Nevertheless, policymakers have increasingly discussed legal routes alongside enforcement because the two approaches address different parts of the migration system.
The political battle
For Reform UK and the Conservatives, the continued existence of small boats provides an opportunity to argue that the government’s measures do not go far enough.
Reform has called for much more aggressive action, including naval involvement and changes to Britain’s legal framework.
The Conservatives have also advocated tougher deportation and border measures.
The Labour government’s response is that crossings have fallen substantially and that enforcement must be combined with international cooperation.
That creates an argument over both numbers and definitions.
If crossings are down by more than 40% compared with the same point last year, the government can point to measurable progress.
But if hundreds of people can still arrive in a single day, critics can argue that the underlying system remains vulnerable.
Both observations can be true simultaneously.
What could actually work?
The evidence so far suggests that the answer is unlikely to be one dramatic intervention.
Effective enforcement against small boats may require several measures operating together: intelligence-sharing, action against organised smuggling networks, cooperation with France and other European countries, maritime surveillance, efficient asylum processing, workable returns arrangements and safe legal routes for people with legitimate protection needs.
The government’s own parliamentary response essentially acknowledges this by describing the France agreement as only one part of a wider strategy.
The question is therefore not simply whether Britain can find a “silver bullet”.
It is whether several policies can collectively reduce crossings while remaining operationally workable, legally sustainable and capable of adapting to changes in smuggling tactics.
Britain moves towards another crucial test
The coming months could be important.
The UK-France returns arrangement is approaching its October deadline, while smugglers have demonstrated their ability to alter routes and tactics.
At the same time, overall crossings remain substantially lower than they were a year earlier, providing the government with evidence that its current approach has produced measurable reductions.
But the deaths in the Channel and the recent uncontrolled landings demonstrate that the underlying problem has not disappeared.
For the government, the challenge is to turn a reduction in crossings into a durable long-term trend.
For its political opponents, the challenge is to demonstrate that their alternative proposals can overcome the practical and legal obstacles involved.
And for the public, the debate increasingly comes down to a series of competing questions: how should Britain control its borders, how should it work with France and Europe, how should genuine refugees access protection, and how can the criminal gangs organising dangerous crossings be disrupted?
There may be no single “silver bullet”.
The evidence instead points towards a much more complicated reality: the small-boats crisis is a system involving borders, criminal networks, international cooperation, asylum policy and human safety.
The next stage of Britain’s response will be judged not simply by the promises made by politicians, but by whether the number of dangerous crossings continues to fall while the system remains capable of responding when smugglers inevitably adapt.