The engines of migrants' inflatable boats could be snared in nets as security chiefs try to tackle a surge in illegal Channel crossings, it emerged today.
The tactic is being examined as a way of stopping migrants reaching British waters, according to the Home Office's Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O'Mahoney.
He believed the move could allow a "safe return" strategy in which British vessels would transfer migrants back to France.
However the measure has far been delayed because France currently refuses to accept back such migrants.
Refugee rights' campaigners also fear desperate, would-be asylum-seekers could threaten to jump overboard if they are being towed back to French waters.
Former Royal Marine Mr O'Mahoney said the plan involved "safely disabling the engine and then taking the migrants on board our vessel".
He told the Sunday Telegraph: "We definitely are very, very close to being able to operationalise a safe return tactic where we make an intervention safely on a migrant vessel, take migrants on board our vessel and then take them back to France."
It was one of a number of methods "which we may deploy over the next few months”, he said.
He added: “We are working with maritime security departments across law enforcement and military, everywhere across government (to) come up with new tactics to tackle this problem."
The latest idea comes after “blue sky” plans floated in Home Office discussions which included stationing asylum seekers on mothballed ferries anchored off the coast, deploying wave machines to force their inflatables back to France, erecting barriers in the sea to blockade boats, and sending migrants to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.
Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds told the Mirror: “Asylum processing centres thousands of miles away, prison ships, floating glass walls, wave machines and now nets.
"The Tories’ proposals on Channel crossings are inhumane and unconscionable, putting lives at risk.”
At least 1,880 migrants completed the perilous Channel crossing in September, and more than 7,000 are thought to have arrived this year.
