Today Programme (02/07/25) – Item re: ‘Ever rising tide of small boat crossings’

Only the most flinty-hearted or those with nastier ideological prejudices would not be moved by the item the Today Programme broadcast this morning of a migrant father, who having made the long, hazardous journey to Calais and paid a ‘people smuggler’ $20,000 for a place in a dangerously overcrowded boat with his family, abandoned their attempt to get to the UK to rescue his children who’d fallen into the sea. ¹

However the majority (over 70% in 2024) of migrants attempting that hazardous and illegal route are young men over the age of 18. ² During the calmer conditions of June more than 20,000 migrants have crossed the Channel, presaging a record for 2025 estimated at 50,000 plus by the end of the year.

The media and politicians have focused on the number of people arriving via illegal and irregular immigration routes across the English Channel in ‘small boats.’ Yet, even with the recent surge, those are still a very small proportion of people coming to the UK – 29,000 arrived via that route in 2023, just 2% of the total 1.2 million migrants coming into the country legally in the same year. ³ The much greater number attracted and encouraged by the then government’s policy of using (exploiting) overseas workers as ‘cheap labour’ to take up hard-to-fill, poorly paid jobs in the National Health Service, care system, and hospitality sector – as well as by the over-reliance of some universities on international students to shore-up their questionable business models. Whilst the majority of those (over 90%) return home after their work or study visas have expired, it is estimated that since 2020 more than 60,000 each year on average stay on illegally. ⁴

It is an undisputed fact that the UK population is growing, increasing by over 9 million people since 1997 to the current estimate of 68 -69 million ⁵, ⁶ and projected by the Office of National Statistics to top 76 million by the mid-2040s. ⁷ The other indisputable, if inconvenient, fact is that with an average Total Fertility Rate (number of children per woman over her reproductive life) in the UK of just 1.49, the majority of that population growth (60%) is due to net migration – the difference between the number of people coming to live here and those leaving. ⁸ As noted in a House of Commons Library briefing last year, “The UK population is projected to grow because the ONS expects net migration to add people to the population each year for the foreseeable future”. ⁹

Contradictory policies, mixed messaging and incentives from past and present governments , ‘Stop the Boats!’, ‘Smash the Gangs!’, whilst encouraging migrant ‘Skilled Workers’ to shore-up the National Health Service and Care System, and increasing the number of international students attending UK universities (over 20% of the total student population 2023/4) do not give the public confidence that politicians have got a grip on the issue.

The current challenges are nothing to what is to come: the mass migration and forced displacement of up to 1 billion people from the Equatorial regions of the world by 2050 as accelerating climate change brings average temperatures of 29 Degrees C or more. Particularly across sub-Saharan Africa countries, whose development and the wellbeing of their peoples (especially for women and girls) are already challenged by ongoing and rapid population growth.

By 2070, almost 20% of the Earth’s land area could be affected, spreading around the Equatorial belt from Australia, Africa, India, the Pacific, to Central and Latin America – collectively home to over 3 billion people. Leading to what the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has described in its 2022 Ecological Threats Report as: “catastrophic ecological threats” … driven by “a nexus of interrelated challenges [which are] … likely to see larger refugee flows from forced migration, impacting both source and recipient countries.” IEP’s uncomfortable analysis being that most of the world’s population growth is occurring in the least stable and peaceful countries, where climate change is set to hit hardest, cannot be ignored: “The total population of the 40 least peaceful countries is projected to increase by 1.3 billion by 2050…these countries also face the worse ecological threats, with the sub- Saharan population expected to increase by 95 per cent by 2050.” ¹⁰

We tried to communicate, stimulate discussion and promote the urgently needed, positive available actions* about this much bigger, gathering storm in our report published last year, Exodus Equator – One Billion on the Move by 2050 – but got almost zero media interest in the UK or indeed in any ‘rich’ country! In contrast, journalists from LMIC countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the front-line of climate change covered it.

The only related coverage here in the UK has been via Private Eye’s characteristically sharp satire summarising the longer-term scenario in 4 ironically ‘sunny’ bullet points and nailing the inadequate international action Private Eye Magazine (Fun Summer Heatwave Quiz! Issue 1652, p28, 27 June – 10 July).

*Available positive actions:

Reverse short-sighted, ‘self-harming’ cuts in overseas aid by UK, US & all ‘rich’ developed countries to meet UN’s target for Aid of 0.7% of a country’s GNI.
Provide serious funding ($1-2 trillion annually) to help developing countries initiate climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience measures.
Stabilise global human population through enabling women and girls access to education and choice over modern contraception – Trump’s ‘Global Gag’ cuts to USAID removed family planning support to 47.6 million women and girls in 2025. ¹¹ UK Government Aid cuts to Family Planning initiative estimated to lead to 3.7 million unwanted pregnancies, 1.2 million unsafe abortions, nearly 4,000 maternal deaths in LMICs. ¹²