'Taxi boats' pick up migrants in waist-deep water as Channel smugglers switch tactics

As the weather in the Channel clears, the French police are struggling to halt a potentially record-breaking surge of people from reaching the UK in small boats organised by a growing network of smuggling gangs. Downing Street said on Tuesday the situation was "deteriorating."

Although the French authorities claim they're now intercepting more than two thirds of those boats before they reach the sea, the smugglers are now changing tactics to launch so-called "taxi boats" from new sites, in new ways, and with ever greater speed.

Instead of inflating their boats in the dunes along the coast, close to police patrols, the gangs are launching them from better hidden locations, often dozens of kilometres from the main departure beaches.

They then cruise along the coastline, like taxis or buses, picking up their paying customers who now wait in the sea, out of reach of the police.

Just before sunrise last Friday, we encountered a group of perhaps 80 people gathered in calm, waist-deep water, off a beach near the village of Wissant, south of Calais. There were several women and children in the group, from countries including Eritrea and Afghanistan.

We counted 18 French gendarmes watching them from the shore, declining to intervene.

An inflatable taxi boat, operated by a smuggling gang, had just arrived by sea and now circled repeatedly. Over the course of perhaps 10 minutes, one man sitting at the front of the boat appeared to usher people forwards, to clamber onboard in relatively organised, even orderly, groups.