The Channel migrant crisis has taken a grim new turn, as this morning a new record was broken.
GB News can exclusively reveal that 106 people were crammed onto just one migrant boat overnight in the largest single load to arrive in UK waters.
In an ominous new development, the boat they arrived on was a new design, longer than the current inflatable rafts used by the people smugglers.
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That boat has now been recovered and taken to Dover harbour, where it is being examined by Border Force and law enforcement.
The new design raises serious concerns that people smugglers have a new supply line of bigger vessels that can carry many more migrants across the Channel.
The crisis has already reached record levels, with more than 50,000 small boat migrants having now arrived since Sir Keir Starmer took power.
Last month, the average number of migrants on each small boat was 60.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
A new design of boat has been used by smuggling gangs
|GB NEWS
Previously, the biggest number to make it to the UK on a single boat had been 96 on a dangerously overcrowded boat that just managed to limp into UK waters.
The use of bigger migrant boats will be of deep concern to UK authorities, who have ploughed significant additional resources into their attempts to disrupt the people smugglers' supply lines.
One senior maritime security source told GB News: "This is highly alarming.
"It looks like the smuggling gangs have specified larger boats, which we know are designed and built in back street factories in China.
"Bigger boats mean bigger numbers of arrivals, at a time when we're already seeing record numbers crossing from France.
"If we are witnessing the advent of a new, larger migrant boat, this is the worst possible news for those attempting to smash the gangs."
Migrants arriving in Dover
|PA
Almost 27,200 migrants have crossed the Channel illegally so far this year.
That figure is 47 per cent ahead of the 18,466 who crossed at this point last year.
Today, already, around 200 migrants have made it to UK waters.
The Prime Minister has said he is confident that Labour's policies under the new Border Security Command will reduce small boat numbers, but that any reductions will take time.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Last night we intercepted a 10m soft bottomed vessel transporting 106 people across the Channel illegally. It is a matter of pure chance that this grossly overcrowded taxi boat survived more than fifteen hours at sea, and it again shows the complete disregard people smugglers have for whether people live or die.
“We will stop at nothing to dismantle the business models of those smuggling gangs and bring them to justice. That is why this government has put together a serious and comprehensive plan to take down their networks at every stage.
“Through international intelligence sharing under our Border Security Command, enhanced enforcement operations in Northern France, and tougher legislation in the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, we are strengthening our ability to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the gangs.
"This latest incident also shows the importance of the agreement we have reached with the French authorities to review their maritime enforcement tactics, so that they are able for the first time to intercept boats in shallow waters and prevent taxi boats from parking offshore to collect large numbers of migrants unhindered."
The revelation of the latest figures comes as Sir Keir Starmer has been warned that current migrant numbers could "double" by the end of the year.
Speaking to GB News, Rob Bates, a research director from the Centre of Migration Control, claimed that Britain could see 50,000 migrants cross illegally into Britain by the end of the year.
He also declared the crisis is "getting out of hand".
Sharing his stark prediction for the record-breaking numbers, Bates told GB News: "I think we're now at the point that this is far exceeding even the worst years that we saw in 2022 and 2023.
"We're about 40 per cent up when it comes to Channel crossings on last year, and we are probably going to see 50,000 people come across the English Channel."
Senior maritime security sources have told GB News the new "mega dingy" recovered from UK waters overnight is of a design seen in the Mediterranean recently.
However, the extra long inflatables had not been seen in the English Channel before last night.
GB News has been told the new vessels are 18 metres long, seven metres longer than the current migrant boats used in the Channel.