More migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats so far this year than over the whole of 2023, it has emerged.

Around 300 are understood to have arrived in the UK on Friday.

Home Office figures showed 509 people made the journey on Thursday in 11 boats, taking the provisional total for 2024 to date to 29,154.

This would mean yesterday’s arrivals took the yearly total past the 29,437 who crossed the English Channel last year.

It is already the deadliest year on record in the English Channel, with at least 56 fatalities.

Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick said: “Labour’s plans to ‘smash the gangs’ are in disarray after first contact with reality.

“They’ve scrapped, not strengthened, the Rwanda scheme and are now powerless to stop the boats.

“Britain is now at the mercy of the smuggling gangs - and the British public will pay the price with more asylum hotels and dangerous individuals on our streets.”

The BBC on Friday revealed how the German city of Essen, just four hours from Calais, has become a key hub for smugglers orchestrating their vile trade.

Germany is a key transit country for smugglers bringing dinghies and engines to the French coast, with networks known to use warehouses for their equipment.

Thousands of migrants also pass through the country, with organised crime gangs using safehouses near Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt, Essen, Dusseldorf, Bochum and Dortmund.

The criminals admitted they use multiple warehouses in Essen, sometimes offering ‘bait’ to German police.

This sees the gangsters allow the authorities to seize boats and equipment – but not enough to disrupt their businesses.

The smugglers also bragged to the undercover BBC reporter that they could get boats and equipment to Northern France within four hours, which means they are comfortable using the motorway networks to cross the border.

They said a boat, engine and 60 lifejackets would cost £12,500 if they were to organise a crossing themselves.

And they hinted of a “new crossing point” not being monitored as much by French police.

A former Home Office official said: “The German Government are among the most unhelpful at stopping the boats. Most of the boat equipment passes through Germany and they have done next to nothing to clamp down on the smuggling gangs”’

Robert Bates, Research Director at the Centre for Migration Control, told the Daily Express: “At every step of the operation, the organised criminality is two or three steps ahead of the authorities.

“Whether it’s the use of agents to process the migrants’ cash payments, the covert transportation of vessels from Turkey, stored discreetly in German warehouses, and then driven up to the French coast, or the highly secretive means through which the gangs communicate with their customers, the take home message is that Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer are failing.

“And that is because they have misdiagnosed the problem.

“These gangs are charging just £1,660 and have plenty of prospective customers. Even if continental authorities are able to pop a couple of dinghies, or confiscate a few engines, this simply means that the gangs will cram a few more migrants on those boats that are not detected.

“The people smugglers are frankly smarter and more determined than our politicians. Until we have a government that actually wants to solve the problem, rather than produce platitudes that satisfy the Refugee Council and left-wing lawyers, then the gangs are going to continue amassing small fortunes.”

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said in August that he wants more joint British-German operations to stop migrant boats reaching northern France.

Sir Keir said a new pact between London and Berlin could bolster data and intelligence sharing and intensify joint operations.

Charities working in France have identified vehicles with Belgian, German and Dutch number plates at a notorious migrant camp near Dunkirk.

Researchers from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime said: “The smugglers will rent a property in these towns and fill it with migrants or use an intermediary who can provide a property.

“Some migrants, however, choose to stay closer to the coastal areas, often in hotels that are known for accommodating almost exclusively migrants, refugees and low-level smugglers during the Summer months, when weather conditions are more amenable for the crossing.

“These hotels are among the cheaper options on offer and in some cases reportedly provide additional services, such as shipping migrants’ luggage to the UK upon arrival.

“They also act as recruitment hubs for smugglers and some hotels reportedly offer discounts on accommodation for smugglers’ clients.”