'Shocking!' Chris Philp slams French authorities for 'shepherding' illegal migrants to Britain with free life jackets

The rigid inflatable craft is believed to have come from the French border patrol vessel Ridens, which can also be seen in the video a few hundred yards from the migrant boat.

The former head of Border Force Tony Smith told GB News the controversial practice could be seen as "encouraging" the people smugglers.

Discussing the footage on GB News, Philp congratulated the People's Channel for the investigation, branding the activity "shocking".

Philp fumed: "What we saw were French authorities actively facilitating the passage of illegal immigrants across the Channel. Entirely young men, not a single woman or child in sight on that video at all.

"They are breaking into the country and the French maritime authorities are facilitating that happening."

Noting that the French to attempt to intercept "about half" of the illegal crossings, Philp called on the French authorities to "do more" to "intercept at sea".

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Philp explained: "The French should be either intercepting on the shore, and they intercept about half of them, but that's obviously not enough. The rest that they can't intercept on the shore, they should intercept at sea close to the French shore and take them back.

"And if that was happening, if all of these boats were were cut off near the French shore, pretty soon the illegal immigrants would stop attempting the crossing in the first place."

Criticising the French efforts, Philp continued: "But instead, the French authorities are shepherding these boats to the median line, in the middle where Border Force pick them up. I think it's completely unacceptable.

"What we should be the Government should be doing is saying that if the French want to receive that money, then they should be intercepting not just some migrants, but all migrants if necessary, at sea instead. And it's quite easy to do it near the shore."

"The dinghies are very visible, they're not hard to find, particularly once they're on the water. And if the French intercepted them near the shore, they wouldn't get anywhere near British waters. And we should be setting that as a condition of the funding."

Calling on the Government to implement stronger deportation tactics, Philp suggested that the Labour Government need a solution like the canned Rwanda scheme to send migrants back "as soon as they set foot on our shores".

Philp concluded: "What our Government should do is rapidly remove all of these illegal immigrants, making the crossing to some other place outside Europe, either their country of origin or to some other place like Rwanda.

"And again, if these illegal immigrants were quickly removed from the UK, pretty soon they would stop attempting the crossing in the first place. We need to return every single person whose foot sets shore on British sand to some other place, like Rwanda or somewhere else to stop it in the first place."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

"The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay and we will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.

"That is why this Government has put together a serious plan to take down these networks at every stage."