Migrants were pictured making the journey across the English Channel as Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron were locked in crunch talks over how to prevent the dangerous crossings.
People wearing life jackets were seen arriving in Dover, Kent and disembarked from a Border Force boat on Thursday.
Nigel Farage was also on a boat in the Channel and said he saw 78 migrants, including four women and children, crossing the water accompanied by a French vessel.
“This is a classic day in the English Channel over the last five years when the weather’s calm, or a red day, as they call it,” the Reform UK leader told GB News .
“You’ve got a migrant boat and we’ve seen it through the binoculars.
“There’s about 70 people on board, being escorted, all the way over by the French Navy and behind us, we have Border Force sitting on the 12-mile line, waiting for the handover.”
Border Force vessels were there as part of the response to multiple small boats on Thursday morning, according to HM coastguard.
A spokesman said: “HM Coastguard has been co-ordinating a response to multiple incidents involving small boats in the Channel this morning, 10 July.
“UK Border Force vessels have been sent as part of this response.”
More than 21,000 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel so far in 2025, which is a record for this point in the year since data collection began in 2018.
It comes as the Prime Minister and French president said a “new deterrent” was needed to stop the crossings.
Sir Keir hopes President Macron will sign up to a “one in, one out” deal on Thursday, the last day of Mr Macron’s state visit to the UK.
Under the terms of the deal, Britain would accept migrants with links to the country in exchange for sending others back across the Channel.
It will reportedly see 50 asylum seekers a week sent back to France.
But with an average of 800 people crossing the Channel each week, it would mean the equivalent of just one in 17 migrants returned.
Defence Secretary John Healey told the BBC on Thursday: “There is no single solution to this, there is certainly no quick fix.
“The Borders Bill with the new powers that we are putting through Parliament will allow us counter terrorism powers to deal with the smuggling gangs.
“That will be more action to come. The action with the French that needs to be stepped up will be stepped up as a result that we now have a good working relationship [and] an acceptance with the French, and increasingly other European nations, that Britain can’t tackle these small boats alone and we have a shared challenge of illegal migration across Europe.”
