Andy Burnham and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood were slammed for losing control of the UK’s borders after 1,000 illegal migrants arrived in just three days. Home Office figures show 150 small boat migrants arrived in Monday September 21; 154 arrived on Tuesday September 22, and 781 on Wednesday September 23. It means 1,085 came in a three-day period.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “It does show that Shabana Mahmood has no control of our borders, with these boats making it all the way across undetected. There may be others, as you rightly say. Now, last week was a shocking week … we had a boat crossing from Normandy crossing towards the Isle of Wight, the longest ever crossing, and in just three days last week – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – over 1,000 illegal immigrants entered the country.”

Speaking to GB News, he claimed France was doing nothing to stop small boats despite payments of £1 billion from the UK government.

“The French Interior Minister Monsieur Nuñez admitted a couple of days ago that the French gendarmes that we pay for have orders to stand around doing nothing and not intervening. I personally witnessed that just a few weeks ago on the beaches. They’re doing nothing to stop these boats.”

Mr Philp highlighted Conservative plans to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

“There is only one solution to this, which is to do what the Australians did about 13 years ago: leave the ECHR and deport all of these illegal immigrants within a week of arrival, and then the crossings will pretty quickly stop.”

In an interview to coincide with Labour’s annual conference, taking place this week in Liverpool, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Brexit had made stopping small boats harder.

He told BBC South East the UK and European Union “had a more co-operative system, if you like, in the past” to prevent small boats crossing sea between France and Great Britain.

“We are not able to have the same levels of collaboration that we used to have, but I don’t put that forward as a reason why we won’t keep working until we get the crossings right down,” he said.

The Prime Minister said he would not name a date by which the Government would stop all crossings.

“But what I will say to you is I will not stop, nor will the Home Secretary, until we bear down every element of this criminal, illegal activity,” he added.