Britain has "lost control" of its borders, defence chief tells Sky News

Britain's Defence Secretary John Healey has delivered a scathing assessment of the country's border situation, declaring that the UK has "lost control" over its borders during the last five years.

His remarks came after a record-breaking 1,194 migrants arrived on British shores in a single day—the highest daily total of 2025 so far.

Speaking to Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips on Sky News, Healey accused the previous Conservative government of leaving the asylum system "in chaos" and presiding over "record levels of immigration," Caliber.Az reports.

"The truth is, Britain's lost control of its borders over the last five years," he said. "The last government left us an asylum system in chaos and record immigration levels, which we are now having to address."

According to official government figures, Saturday’s crossings involved 18 small boats, bringing the provisional total for 2025 to 14,811—making it the highest number recorded in the first five months of any year since Channel crossing data collection began in 2018. This marks a 42% increase compared to the same period in 2024 (10,448) and a 95% rise from 2023 (7,610).

The current single-day record for Channel crossings remains at 1,305 on 3 September 2022.

Shocking images over the weekend showed French police observing migrants, including children, boarding boats in shallow waters near Gravelines, between Calais and Dunkirk, without intervention. Some reports indicated that police later escorted the vessels as they sailed towards the UK.

Commenting on the footage, Healey said, “Pretty shocking, those scenes yesterday… We saw the smugglers launching elsewhere and coming around like a taxi to pick them up.”

He stressed that a key issue is the inability of French police to stop boats launching from shallow waters. “It’s a really big problem,” he said. However, he claimed that a new level of cooperation between the UK and France has been reached, with both sides now working on an agreement to allow French authorities to take action before boats leave the shore.

“They're not doing it yet, but for the first time in years, we’ve got the agreement they will change the way they work,” Healey said. “Our concentration now is to push them to get that into operation—to intercept the smugglers and stop these people in the boats, not just on the shore.”

By Khagan Isayev