Labour ministers accused of 'turning blind eye' as yacht gangs smuggle dozens of asylum seekers into Britain

Earlier this week, five men were arrested after a yacht carrying seven Albanian nationals was stopped off the south coast of England.

Now, officials have warned the Government has lost control of the crisis, adding the Home Office has no idea of the scale of the problem.

Professional Officer at the Immigration Services Union Lucy Moreton told MailOnline: "We know it [yacht smuggling] is happening, but we do not know the extent. The reason we do not know is we do not look, and ultimately we cannot afford to look.

"We are putting the UK at risk by not looking but we cannot afford to look."

Ms Moreton said migrants who arrive via yacht are deliberately trying to avoid detection, usually because they already have deportation orders issued against them.

She warned attention is often diverted to small boats, with not enough Border Force resources to deal with the issue.

Researcher for the Oxford Migration Observatory Mihnea Cuibus added: "It is partly because of a lack of resources because of course this is really hard to monitor and hard to track.

"One does sympathise that this would be very hard to get a handle on and at the same time the Border Force has put a lot of its resources into the small boats phenomenon but there are not enough to also deal with this."

"It's likely that a lot of people coming in on yachts, a lot of them don't plan on claiming asylum in the UK".

He added most asylum seekers do not arrive in Britain on a yacht, as the cost of a place on the vessel is in the region of £15,000, compared to around £1,000 to £2,000.

Last week, the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Border Force officers arrested five men after a yacht carrying seven illegal Albanian migrants was intercepted nearly five nautical miles inland from the south coast in Chichester Marina, West Sussex.

Two crew members, one a British national aged 42 and another aged 25, were arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal immigration to the UK.

Three more people, a British national aged 38, and two Albanians aged 24 and 32, were suspected of being a "shore party" to meet the yacht.

They were both arrested on suspicion of people smuggling offences, with the seven Albanians taken to immigration detention.

Home Office intelligence estimates there are up to 9,000 locations where boats could be landed by gangs seeking to bring migrants, drugs, and other contraband into the country.

Villages as far inland as 35 miles have been instructed to watch out for illegal migrant boats.

On TikTok, accounts seeming to be run by people smugglers have advertised yacht trips to the UK.

One post, which showed a luxury yacht, said: "We're resuming the yacht to the UK this weekend."

A Home Office spokesman told GB News: "We are bearing down on illegal small boat crossings and people smuggling. We’ve introduced an offence criminalising the online promotion of unlawful immigration services, and are working with major social media companies, alongside the NCA, to rapidly remove online adverts that promote dangerous crossings."

"This action comes as the government has delivered a record-breaking rate of disruptions to criminal smuggling activity, up by nearly 50 per cent in year ending March 2026.

"Since coming into power, this Government has removed and deported 67,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals, an increase of 41 per cent.

"Our Border Security Command maintains constant vigilance over attempts to enter the UK illegally, using state of the art surveillance. Anyone who seeks to smuggle people into the country will face the full force of the law."