Britain could face up to 100,000 migrants arriving each year unless it strikes a deal with France, a former Border Force chief has warned, after record numbers crossed the Channel this week.
Tony Smith, the former director-general of Border Force, said numbers were in danger of reaching 'epidemic' levels.
His comments come after a record 1,185 migrants crossed the Channel on Thursday and three who fell from kayaks were feared dead. The French stopped 99 migrants that day.
Mr Smith said the numbers of migrants arriving in the UK could reach levels last seen in the Sangatte crisis in 2001, when thousands of migrants tried to smuggle themselves into Britain, unless France agreed to take back people intercepted at sea or those who reached the UK.
Tony Smith, the former head of UK Border Force who has warned a failure by the UK to reach a new agreement with France on how to deal with migrant crossings could lead to 100,000 migrants arriving each year
Mr Smith, who himself helped implement the deal to halt the crisis in the early 2000s, told The Telegraph: 'If you're talking about 1,000 a day you are getting to the epidemic proportions I predicted we might reach in 2001.
'That's when we had 100,000 in a year with the vast majority coming across the Channel.
'They were sleeping in the streets in Dover.
'There was a huge injection of money into the Home Office to cope with that.
'If we accept those numbers are going to continue, we are going to have to build facilities for the migrants to be properly looked after.'
Mr Smith's comments come after a record 1,185 migrants crossed the Channel on Thursday and three who fell from kayaks were feared dead. The French stopped 99 migrants that day
The deal struck between Britain in France in 2003 led to border controls including ID checks on the French side, and millions spent on improving security around ports.
Earlier this week, Boris Johnson urged France to 'close off' the flow of migrants crossing into their country to stop them from sailing to the UK.
Thursday's total surpassed the previous single-day record for the current crisis of 853 set earlier this month as the November figure soared past 3,500, more than four times last November's 791.
The figure for this year is almost 24,000 – close to three times as many as in 2020.
Home Secretary Priti Patel said Brexit would not disrupt a deal between Britain and France as she called the crisis a 'shared problem' with France and its neighbours that required a 'shared solution'.
She added: 'Stopping this criminal activity is too important to let anything get in the way and suggestions that wider issues are affecting cooperation are wide of the mark.
'Our police and border force teams work hand in glove, day in, day out.
'Together we are arresting and prosecuting organised criminals, preventing numerous departures and saving lives.
'But last week showed we must do more.
'I want to go further and faster and that's why I will be holding talks with [French interior minister] Gerald Darmanin this week.'
